U.S. Senators Vote To Block EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’

Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation Reports Republican Senators Weigh How To Undercut Obama’s Climate Strategy

A Senate committee voted Tuesday to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using ‘secret science’ to back its regulations. The vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee came after the GOP-controlled House repeatedly approved the bill. It previous was stalled in the Democratic-majority Senate. Under the measure, which President Obama has threatened to veto if the Senate passes it, the EPA would only be allowed to use scientific studies whose detailed results are posted publicly online. --Timothy Cama, The Hill, 28 April 2015

President Barack Obama and Congress are headed for another power clash on the international stage, as key Senate Republicans challenge his efforts to forge a global pact on climate change. The White House considers the agreement with nearly 200 nations a historic opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions world-wide. But some GOP senators view it as executive overreach, and they are quietly considering ways to warn other countries that the president doesn’t speak for them and may not be able to deliver on his promises to slash emissions. --Colleen McCain Nelson, The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2015

India has voluntarily announced efforts to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from the 2005 level without reckoning the emissions from agriculture sector, Lok Sabha was informed today. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said during Question Hour that though India was a party to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, it did not have legally binding green house gas (GHG) emission reduction commitments. --Press Trust of India, 29 April 2015

India has pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20 - 25% in 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This target does not cover emissions from the agricultural sector. India proposed the target during the Copenhagen negotiations and submitted it to the Copenhagen Accord on 30 January 2010. --Climate Action Tracker

The Modi government has cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded NGOs that failed to file their annual returns. The order, quietly issued on April 6, came days before the Centre’s effort to tighten the grip on prominent NGOs that receive foreign funds like Greenpeace India and the Ford Foundation. The security establishment has been advocating a hard line on foreign-funded NGOs for years. But it was only after a change of regime at the Centre that the home ministry started the groundwork for the crackdown. --Aloke Tikku, Hindustan Times, 28 April 2015

With news that Pope Francis will release a document articulating the importance of addressing climate change, a document that will be paired with a three-month-long campaign for individual parishes per the Times and a speech to Congress that is likely to broach the subject — can Pope Francis actually change Americans' minds? We're skeptics. Attitudes on global warming have been fairly flat for decades now, with those considering it a subject for worry comprising just over half of the population and those not worried at all slowly gaining in number. --Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 28 April 2015

There was no discussion at this week’s Vatican “conference” en route to Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. What’s to discuss? Anybody who disagrees is an apostate, destined for damnation. The important point is to stop them bringing climate hell to earth. The event – along with an accompanying statement — confirmed that the Vatican has become an arm of the godless United Nations, and an unabashed shill for its murky Sustainable Development Goals. The Vatican’s climate change statement peddles eco-liberation theology based on the tedious demonization of markets and capitalism. --Peter Foster, Financial Post, 29 April 2015

Its hard to tell if we are witnessing mass climate hysteria, or just loathsome fear mongering to promote a political agenda, but it is oh so predictable, and oh so sickening. Every weather event and every tragedy is now due rising CO2. To paraphrase Dr. Viner, “natural storms and earthquakes are now just a thing of the past”. With the help of a few alarmist scientists, the media bombards us with the meme that “Everything is caused by rising CO2.” Today the Seth Bornstein prize for yellow climate journalism goes to Newsweek. --Jim Steele, Watts Up With That, 29 April 2015

Jean-Pascale van Ypersele, a Belgian activist scientist who is seeking leadership of the UN climate panel, approaches climate change not as a dispassionate scholar, but as a committed environmental activist. He is an honourary member of that granddaddy of green groups, the Club of Rome. He has accepted financing from Greenpeace and produced a report for that organization at the very same time he was serving as an IPCC official. This is outrageous behaviour. If a judge in a murder trial were writing reports for the prosecutor’s office, no one would believe for a second that he was impartial. He’d be dismissed. --Donna Laframboise, No Frakking Consensus, 28 April 2015

New Survey: Nearly Half Of Young Americans Are Climate Sceptics, 

The Younger They Are, The More Sceptical

In fact, the age group that least agreed with the statement that global warming is a fact and caused by CO2 emissions was that of 18 to 20-year-olds. The assumption that younger US adults are more liberal when it comes to global warming does not hold up; if anything, they are even more skeptical. --Emma Kromm, Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015

Global Warming Trend Lowered As Satellite Temperature Data Is Adjusted

America’s Youth Are Rebelling Against Climate Dogma

University of Alabama climatologists have released the newest version of their satellite temperature datasets. Interestingly enough, the updated satellite data came with a surprise: it lowered the Earth’s warming trend. --Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
 

The updated UAH satellite temperature data comes as scientists are looking into allegations of data tampering by government climate agencies, like NASA and NOAA. Scientists skeptical of man-made global warming argue that data adjustments made by climate agencies may not be scientifically justified. “Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement released by The Global Warming Policy Foundation. --Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller News, 29 April 2015
 

A group of scientists has been tasked with looking at the temperature record to find out if we're getting the straight story about global warming. The findings promise to be interesting. Maybe we'll finally get a definitive answer when the Global Warming Policy Foundation panel has finished its work. Whatever the results, we expect they'll withstand an audit. A lot of people will be closely scrutinizing this project. --Editorial, Investor’s Business Daily, 28 April 2015
 

If you’re a Chinese resident with a knack for predicting the weather, you might be best off keeping those skills to yourself. A new regulation from the Chinese Meteorological Administration bans amateurs and enthusiasts from publicizing their own weather reports, saying that only official authorities are allowed to offer such forecasts. --Te-Ping Chen, The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2015

The worm is turning with an uptick in skeptical thinking coming from the late-Millennials (born after 1994) who are just now starting to reach a voting age. This group was raised on climate dogma and relentless propaganda, and the age-old rebellion of youth is starting to kick in. It used to be that the older the survey group, the more skeptical it was. Youth are easily fooled by passion and name-calling. But new evidence suggests the rebellion factor is kicking in. --Jo Nova, 30 April 2015
 

Despite the overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus amongst experts in the field, climate cynicism persists. Presumably, many doubt the ability of scientists to honestly report the data and trends they observe in the climate. While it might be easy to believe that this cynicism has an ideological flavor, Republicans doubting climate change is not the entire problem. According to the HPOP 2015 data, only 56 percent of respondents trusted scientists to do the right thing most or all of the time. --Matthew Estes, Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015
 

The purpose of the trip to New York was to drum up US support for the think tank I founded in 2009, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and its campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in the company of our outstanding director, Benny Peiser. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the GWPF has a global reach, and its international influence is growing. Moreover, unlike the US think tanks involved in the climate change issues, we also (to use the American expression) reach across the aisle: we are rigorously non-partisan, and in that sense non-political. --Nigel Lawson, The Spectator, 2 May 2015
 

China is set to ban unofficial weather forecasts. Regulations to take force on Friday ban predictions on a wide variety of indicators from "wind speed, air temperature, humidity" to predicting disasters like "typhoons", "sandstorms" and "haze", according to the China Meteorological Administration. The China Meteorological Administration has said previously the rules are intended to prevent public panic caused by false predictions. --AFP, 30 April 2015

The Sun Is Almost Completely Blank Weakest

Solar Cycle In More Than A Century

The sun is almost completely blank. The main driver of all weather and climate, the entity which occupies 99.86% of all of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of fire in the sky has gone quiet again during what is likely to be the weakest sunspot cycle in more than a century. The sun's X-ray output has flatlined in recent days and NOAA forecasters estimate a scant 1% chance of strong flares in the next 24 hours. Not since cycle 14 peaked in February 1906 has there been a solar cycle with fewer sunspots. --Paul Dorian, Vencore Weather, 30 April 2015

Nations missed a self-imposed deadline to firm up pledges worth $4.7 billion (4.2 billion euros) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) by Thursday, mustering arrangements for less than $4 billion, the fund said. This leaves it short of the threshold to start funding projects to curb dangerous climate change, GCF executive director Hela Cheikhrouhou told journalists by teleconference from Songdo, South Korea. --Agence France-Presse, 30 April 2015
India and Japan have emphasised that coal will continue to be the predominant fuel for energy production for both the Asian countries. India’s energy consumption is likely to double. --Business Standard, 30 April 2015

The Economic Council of the ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU) wants to water down Germany’s current climate target for 2020. “It was a mistake not to reduce the CO2 target to 30 percent by 2020 while phasing out of nuclear energy, ” the Secretary General of the Economic Council, Wolfgang Steiger, criticised. The CDU’s Economic Council Secretary is now proposing a reduced climate target: “A realistic target corridor of 35 to 40 percent now needs to be established.” --Rheinische Post, 1 May 2015

Thirty years ago, he would have certainly been honored as “Master Architect of Socialism” or “Chief Activist of Socialist Labour” ... east of the Elbe. Sigmar Gabriel is doing everything possible to re-establish a comprehensively planned economy in Germany: the green energy transition pushes the gates to energy-socialism far open. Already a whole republic of green electricity councils establishes determined plan-prices, solar and wind comrades produce arbitrary amounts of power, the population pays compulsory levies, supply and demand are suspended and party politics determine plan fulfilment figures. --Wolfram Weimer, Wirtschafts Woche, 24 April 2015