Is Dominion’s offshore wind project ‘arbitrary and capricious’? NOAA says YES!

By Collister Johnson |May 27th, 2023|32 Comments @ CFACT

Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been issuing a raft of “Incidental Harassment Authorizations” (IHA) to offshore wind developers. The IHAs allow the developers to “harass” marine mammals – including critically endangered Right Whales – as long as the activity is “incidental” to some form of offshore wind development approved by the authorities.

When the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was passed by Congress the lawmakers had in mind ‘incidental’ activities such as marine research work. Wind developers, however, have been applying for these permits as part of their “preconstruction” work – primarily sonar mapping of the ocean floor to plot the placement of connector cables and wind towers. Over the last two years, 16 of these IHA’s were approved by NOAA for developers of wind generation projects up and down the East Coast. Each of them allowed “incidental” activity only for a period of one year.

Just as critics of these IHAs feared, after these permits were authorized and preconstruction activity began, dozens of dead whales and dolphins started washing up on beaches from New York to Virginia. This prompted NOAA to issue a “Notice of Unusual Mortality Event”, which didn’t suspend the sonar mapping but did indicate that NOAA finally recognized, in the famous words of Apollo 11, “Houston, we have a problem”.

Now comes the granddaddy IHA application of them all:  A request by Dominion Energy for an IHA lasting five years.  Why?  Because it is seeking permission to harass marine mammals in conjunction with its effort to build a massive, 176 turbine, offshore wind project located 27 miles off the coast of Tidewater Virginia.  If approved, it would be the largest offshore wind project in the world.

To obtain this IHA, Dominion had to “open the kimono” about its project. That is, for the first time it had to describe exactly what this so-called incidental activity might actually involve.

And it is an eye-opener.

A total of 107 different ships, some as large as 538′, would ply the waters of Virginia for five years, taking thousands of trips to and from the project and the port of Hampton Roads, thus increasing substantially the probability of ship strike fatalities, the leading cause of anthropogenic marine mammal deaths.

Whales and dolphins beware: The sonar mapping would continue non-stop, often conducted “daily”. The wind tower construction and cable dredging would take place for 6 months out of the year. In toto, it amounts to a gargantuan industrialization of the hitherto open ocean waters – a monster factory (not a “farm”) larger than Yellowstone Park that would stand in the salty, corrosive waters of the Atlantic for 20 to 30 years. Then, at the end of its useful life, it will have to be torn down – “decommissioned” – with most of the remains dumped in landfills, because the bulk of the hardware cannot be recycled.

This proposed project raises an important question: What will happen to the marine environment after this factory is installed? True environmentalists especially want to know what will happen to endangered species, such as the Right Whale, only about 350 of which still exist and whose migration path lies directly within the boundaries of the project.

NOAA states on at least three separate occasions in the IHA that “no serious injury or mortality of whales is anticipated or proposed from authorization” of the project. This is a strange way to describe their conclusion of “no impact”. Not that “there will be no human caused mortality”, nor that “there will be negligible human caused mortality”. Rather, just that human caused mortality is “not expected”.

Upon further examination it appears Dominion may have opened its kimono a little too far.

Every endangered species on the Federal endangered species list is given a designation by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS –  a subsidiary of NOAA) called the Potential Biological Removal rate (PBR). The PBR is defined by the MMPA as “the maximum number of individuals, not including natural mortality, that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach its optimum sustainable population”.

NMFS has declared the PBR for the Right Whale to be 0.7. This means, in NOAA’s own words, that “the population cannot sustain on average over the course of a year the death or serious injury of a single individual due to human causes”.

That’s right. This massive industrialization of the Right Whale environment can not cause even one Right Whale death per year over a period of 5 years.

And here comes the stunner. Dominion recognizes the determination by NMFS that the annual human caused mortality rate for the Right Whale caused by the project is eight point one. This means that in NOAA’s own opinion there will be eight human caused dead Right Whales caused by the project every year, even though the allowable amount is zero.

The courts have found this kind of circumstance to be prima facie evidence that the regulation is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion”. That is, there is a fatal, internal inconsistency in this regulation which predicts one outcome (8 human caused deaths) while simultaneously mandating an outcome that is completely contrary (zero human caused deaths).

Dominion tries to save this obviously illegal result by adding language which states that the eight point one human-caused mortalities may be “from all sources combined” ( e.g. commercial fisheries, ship strikes, etc). But no amount of tortured rationale can save NOAA from its own interpretation that the project will result in human caused deaths of the Right Whale. (e.g., whale deaths caused by commercial fishing, if any, have nothing to do with the Dominion project.)

Oops. Dominion just let the cat out of the bag, and the evidence is right there in their IHA application. This project should be and will be struck down by the courts, not only because of the admitted Right Whale deaths, but also because of a host of other procedural and substantive errors committed by NOAA and BOEM while they attempt to bulldoze this project and all the other offshore wind developments through the regulatory system.

It will be good riddance. Whale-killing factories were outlawed a long time ago. This one should be too.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• Collister Johnson

  Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation. He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT's Board of Advisors. Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Hurricane hype, lies, censorship – and reality

Politicized hurricane and climate science breeds distrust, green energy and economic disasters

By Paul Driessen

Hurricane Ian is in the history books, having unleashed its Category 4 fury on southwestern Florida. Even as the area slowly digs out and rebuilds, the devastation and tragedies will linger in reality and memories. 

Ian was the latest of 123 hurricanes to hit the Sunshine State since official recordkeeping began in 1851. But not surprisingly, some wasted no time trying to link Ian to the most dominant issue of our time.

Climate change is “rapidly fueling super hurricanes,” a Washington Post headline proclaimed. “I grew up [in Florida] and these storms are intensifying,” CNN’s Don Lemon insisted. Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are making hurricanes “stronger, slower and wetter,” reporter Morgan McFall-Johnsen asserted. They’re becoming more frequent and intense, multiple commentators pronounced.

Ian should have “finally ended” the debate about “whether there’s climate change,” President Biden stated, as he assessed damage along Florida’s Gulf Coast with Governor and First Lady DeSantis.

The newest fear-mongering is slightly more sophisticated. Now hurricanes are gaining strength more rapidly, because of fossil fuels. The phenomenon even has a fancy name: “rapid intensification.”

This clever claim cannot be proven or disproven, because we didn’t have technologies to measure how rapidly certain storms intensified even a few decades ago. But for climate-obsessed White House and Deep State officials, news and social media campaigners, and academic and corporate grant seekers, it’s another incontrovertible truth.

It certainly enhances climate propaganda efforts and advances anti-fossil-fuel, pro-wind-and-solar agendas. But are “rapid intensification” and these other assertions supported by actual evidence?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides an extensive, handy resource: the complete record of all hurricanes that struck the continental United States (made landfall), 1851-2021. It offers fascinating insights, reveals surprising short term and recurrent cycles, but does not provide data to support claims of any recent trends, such as more frequent and intense, or stronger, slower and wetter.

Among its revelations is the sheer number of hurricanes – hundreds of them, many of which struck multiple states before dissipating, returning to pound other unlucky states, or heading back out to sea to maul Caribbean or Atlantic islands. Florida appears to have been hit more often than any other state.

Also surprising is the number of times New York and other Upper Atlantic States got pummeled. “Superstorm” Sandy (2012) was barely a Category 1, but NY State and City have been pounded and inundated by hurricanes as far back as 1869, including two Category 3s, in 1954 and 1985.

Another northernmost cyclone, Fiona (barely a Category 2 when it hit Nova Scotia this September 24), was quickly branded Canada’s “strongest and costliest cyclone on record.” It may have been costly – for the same reason today’s US hurricanes are: extensive, expensive development along coastlines. But the powerful 1775 Newfoundland hurricane caused storm surges up to 30 feet high and killed over 4,000 people; it’s still Canada’s deadliest natural disaster.

Returning to the southernmost USA, Florida was absolutely slammed by five Category 4, two Cat 3, one Cat 2 and four Cat 1 hurricanes in just six years. Thankfully, it was October 1944 through October 1950, before coastal development took off. But the loss of life was still horrific.

Imagine those twelve hurricanes punishing the state’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts today. It could happen.

Florida got bludgeoned again more recently – with one Category 2, one Category 4 and six Category 3 hurricanes hitting it in just 15 months: August 2004-October 2005. Some would call that an upward trend (doubtless due to global warming). However, not a single hurricane of any magnitude hit Florida during the following eleven years. (Was that significant downward trend also due to manmade climate change? Or must we employ liberal double standards again?)

Even more startling, during the nearly twelve years between Wilma (Florida, Category 3, October 2005) and Harvey (Texas, Category 4, August 2017), followed two weeks later by Irma (Florida, Category 4) –  not a single Category 3-5 “major” hurricane struck the US mainland, anywhere. That’s an all-time record, surpassing the previous nine-year record, set in 1860-1869.

Equally amazing, the USA didn’t experience a single Category 5 hurricane until 1935. The next three struck in 1969, 1992 and 2018. All but Camille hammered Florida. Either these monsters truly didn’t exist before 1935, or we just couldn’t measure winds speeds above 156 mph until the 1930s.

The NOAA records reveal, and experts like Roger Pielke, Jr. can find, no upward trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. There are cycles of multiple monstrous storms, interspersed with stretches of few or no major hurricanes, or any hurricanes at all. But no discernable trends. (The strength of the epic Nueva Senora de Atocha hurricane of Mel Fisher fame in 1622 is anyone’s guess.)

But because of hyper-hyped hurricanes and other climate crisis fables, we’re supposed to abandon the fossil fuels that are 80% of the energy the United States and world require to sustain our factories, homes, hospitals and living standards; that give us affordable food, strong houses, early warning systems, and vehicles with enough fuel to get us out of harm’s way and rescue people trapped by flood waters.

Michael Bloomberg is now funding an $85 million campaign to end petrochemical manufacturing in the United States! That would force us to do without or import feed stocks for nitrogen fertilizers, makeup, paints, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fiber clothing, and plastics for toys, cars, boats, medical devices, packaging, solar panels – and wind turbine blades and nacelles. Even the frames on the Glock and Springfield pistols that Bloomberg’s private security guards carry are derived from petrochemicals.

(Bloomberg also thinks you just drop seeds in the ground, add water, they grow and you eat.) 

As to that fossil-fuel-free utopia – how many thousands of wind turbines, millions of solar panels and millions of backup battery modules would Florida alone need to power its economy? How many of them would have survived Ian’s, Andrew’s or Michael’s ferocious winds, floods and storm surges? How many years would it take to replace them afterward?

We can build gas turbines and nuclear power plants to withstand these natural furies – and we wouldn’t need many of them. How do we fortify sprawling “renewable, sustainable” energy systems?

So while you’re filling your gas tank, looking at your grocery bill and reflecting on what’s left of your retirement savings, you may want to listen less to Joe Biden and John Kerry – and more to real experts like Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, Stanley Goldenberg, Roger Pielke, Jr. – and the Miami National Hurricane Center’s Jamie Rhome, whom Don Lemon tried to browbeat into linking climate change to Ian.

The Biden White House and UN Intergovernmental Politicized Climate Cabal (IPCC) cannot abide that. They mean to monopolize the conversation, impose their climate and energy agenda, and silence anyone who challenges them.

The White House even has an Office of the National Climate Advisor, which works hand-in-glove with Big Tech and news organizations to censor, deplatform and demonetize inconvenient facts about climate models, actual global temperatures, hurricane and climate change reality, fossil fuel benefits, and the massive land areas, raw materials and mining required for wind, solar and battery power. Anything that differs from its narrative is “denial” and “disinformation.”

At stake are our freedoms and living standards, our access to reliable, affordable energy, and the looming specter of life in a totalitarian state of constant deprivation. Remember that in November.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental and human rights issues.

 

Garbage In, Garbage Out: 96% of NOAA Temperature Stations Fail ‘Uncorrupted Placement’ Standards

Penny Starr 29 Jul 2022 

A study that investigated the placement of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature stations found that 96 percent of the facilities used to measure heat failed to meet the agency’s own “uncorrupted placement” standards. 

Research for the study shows the 96 percent corruption is because the stations’ measurements are tainted by the effects of urbanization – or heat produced because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. 

The Heartland Institute compiled the report using satellite and in-person surveys of NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperatures in the United States. “With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” 

Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, who directed the study, said is the study announcement distributed to the press. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”............. To Read More......

•  Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed

The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part XXVIII

August 26, 2021 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

What I refer to as the “Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” is the systematic alteration of historical world temperatures to make it appear, falsely, that the most recent months and years are the “warmest ever.” The basic technique of the fraud is the artificial lowering of previously-reported data as to world temperatures in earlier years, in order to erase earlier warmth and amplify the apparent warming trend. This is the 28th post in this series. The previous post in the series appeared on October 5, 2020. To view all 27 prior posts, you can go to this composite link.  The deliverable products of the temperature fraudsters are purported charts of world temperatures derived from a thermometer-based surface record (called GHCN, or Global Historical Climate Network), generally going back to about 1880. The charts are engineered to appear in an iconic “hockey stick” shape, with relatively flat earlier years followed by a sharply rising “blade” in the most recent years.

Every few years the government (this is a joint effort of NASA and NOAA) comes out with a new version of these data. The latest version is called GHCN version 4, which began in 2018. Here is a chart from the Columbia University website (the NASA branch involved in this project, known as the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is located on the Columbia campus in uptown Manhattan) showing a side-by-side comparison of the version 3 and version 4 GHCN data. Both show the famous hockey stick shape, although version 4 increases the recent uptick somewhat.

My October 5, 2020 post mainly summarized a piece by a guy named Tony Heller that had appeared on October 1 of that year. Heller’s piece focused specifically on alterations to the temperature record of the U.S., as opposed to the entire world. Heller provided links to earlier and later NASA/GISS data reports, clearly showing that temperatures originally reported for earlier years had subsequently been lowered to enhance the warming trend and to make the most recent years appear to be the “warmest” — in spite of the fact that if temperatures previously reported had been correct, then earlier years including 1953, 1934, and 1921 had actually been warmer than the most recent years.

Heller also noted, as I have many times, that NASA and NOAA make no secret of the fact that they are systematically altering and lowering earlier-year temperatures,

Reality is that the data alterations are no secret, and that NOAA and NASA acknowledge that they do it.

The problem is not that the alterations are a secret, but that they are opaque. You would think that it would be impossible for earlier-year temperatures to change at all, let alone that they would systematically change in a way that just happens to enhance the desired narrative of the promoters of the global warming scare. The justifications for the alterations appear to be just so much bafflegab, completely lacking in specific rationales for each change that you would think would be required — particularly given that these temperature charts are being used as a basis for a multi-trillion dollar fundamental transformation of the world energy economy.

Anyway, into this mix now comes a young Japanese woman named Kirye, who has taken up the Heller tradition of compiling and publishing instances of government alteration of the data that underlie the NASA/NOAA temperature charts. Kirye posts periodically on Heller’s website, known as RealClimateScience, and also at the NoTricksZone site. A couple of days ago (August 24) Kirye had a post at NoTricksZone titled “Adjusting To Warm, NASA Data Alterations Change Cooling To Warming In Ireland, Greece.” Adding to Heller’s work, this post goes outside the U.S. to look at two European countries that ought to have good and reliable temperature data. The post specifically focuses on the period 1988 to present, which is the period of the supposed sharp uptick in temperatures represented by the “blade” of the hockey stick in the NASA/NOAA charts above.

What Kirye finds is that in both Ireland and Greece, NASA and NOAA have altered the data to turn a cooling trend into a warming trend for the 1988-2020 period. Here is her comparison of the “unadjusted” data for Ireland compared to the “GHCN version 4” currently being reported:

(Editor's Note: Go to the original for this active chart as I can't reproduce it here. RK) 

Kirye gives a link for these graphs to the NASA/GISS website. That is where she got the information. The NASA/GISS site has a map of the world with a little dot for each station, and if you click on any station you can get a plot courtesy of NASA that shows both the “unadjusted” and “version 4” temperature series for that station. Kirye has taken both versions straight from NASA itself. It’s just that only when you combine and present the data the way Kirye does do you realize that the bureaucrats have systematically altered the temperature trend for an entire country from down to up. Suddenly you clearly see that the entire apparent upward trend consists of unspecified “adjustments.” The same applies for both Ireland and Greece.

Can they even attempt to justify what they have done? At the same NASA/GISS page linked by Kirye, I find a further link saying “For details see FAQ.” Maybe I can find the answer here? So I followed that link, and another, and come to the end of my road at this document titled “FAQs on the Update to Global Historical Climatology Network–Monthly Version 3.2.0.” This document specifically relates to the version of GHCN just preceding version 4, but I have no reason to think that the basic methodology has changed. Here is an extremely revealing “FAQ” with the relevant part of its answer:

Why is the century‐scale global land surface trend higher in version 3.2.0?

The PHA software is used to detect and account for historical changes in station records that are caused by station moves, new observation technologies and other changes in observation practice. These changes often cause a shift in temperature readings that do not reflect real climate changes. When a shift is detected, the PHA software adjusts temperatures in the historic record upwards or downwards to conform to newer measurement conditions. In this way, the algorithm seeks to adjust all earlier measurement eras in a station’s history to conform to the latest location and instrumentation. The correction of the coding errors greatly improved the ability of the PHA to find these kinds of historic changes. As a result, approximately twice as many change points (inhomogeneities) were detected in v3.2.0 than in v3.1.0. . . .

Study that a little bit and think about what they are saying. There can be “station moves” or “new observation technologies” that can cause a “shift in temperature readings.” Fair enough. So has anybody contacted any of the Irish stations to find out if they have had a “station move” or “new observation technology” or anything like that since 1988? Absolutely not! Instead, they have a computer algorithm detect these things — or maybe invent them. The algorithm supposedly looks for “shifts.” So suppose readings at a particular station have somehow shifted to lower temperatures. Could it be that temperatures are reading lower because it got cooler? Obviously that does not fit the narrative. Time to declare a “shift.” Now, instead of reporting the cooling trend that is coming from the thermometers, you can adjust the earlier temperatures downward to reflect “new observation technology” or some such never-specified thing.

Note on Kirye’s dynamic graph that every single one of the stations in Ireland has had its trend adjusted from down to up by these computer algorithms. Did they all have station moves and/or “new observation technologies”? NASA doesn’t even pretend to have checked.

Take a look also at the “unadjusted” Irish plots on Kirye’s graph. Can you spot the supposed “shifts” that support having some computer come in and re-write the earlier temperatures to make the overall trend change from down to up?

At the end of the linked NASA document is a further link where you can supposedly get the computer code used for making what they call the “homogeneity corrections.” However, when I try that I don’t get anything I can open.

Anyway, this is what passes for “science” in the field of climatology.

61 Comments

Real Climate Science From David Legates Seems to Scare the Media, Will it Scare NOAA

September 12, 2020 By Jim Lakely Reposted from The Heartland Institute

BUCKLE UP! Let’s break it down and debunk tons of lies about Legates, climate science, the scientific method, and The Heartland Institute.  It’s not often that I read a MSM report and think that every single paragraph is full of sh!t. But this NPR story about Heartland friend and esteemed climate scientist David Legates has falsehoods in every single paragraph that doesn’t simply identify him.

Well done, NPR — which reached out to Heartland for comment on a Saturday two hours before they published this story “on a tight deadline” for a story they were obviously working on for days. Your tax dollars subsidize this fake news, by the way.

Let’s break it down and debunk tons of lies about Legates, climate science, the scientific method, and The Heartland Institute. Buckle up … and this is just a quick rebuttal. A more-comprehensive one — based on the Climate Change Reconsidered series Legates helped produce, is warranted. Lead paragraph:

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Legates has, indeed, been “questioning basic tenets of climate science,” if you substitute the word “science” for “dogma.” The very definition of science, in its most-basic sense from The Enlightenment to 2020, is “questioning the basic tenets” of current assumptions..........To Read More....

The Corruption of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: A National Peril

By Michael R. Fox PhD

I would like to thank Dr. Fox for allowing me to republish his work. Mike has been and intrepid warrior in the battle for sound science for many years. RK

As time passes the global warming fiasco becomes more and more understandable, and more incredulous, more unbelievable. Hard-nosed physical evidence of man-made global warming has yet to be provided by the promoters of warming, even after a nominal $80 billion dollars have been spent in the attempt to do so. Since some of the ideas for mitigating man-made global warming (yet to be demonstrated) involve trillion dollar measures, it is crucially important that we get the science right. If we don’t get the science right, we’ll never get the policy right.

Some of the measures being considered and employed are to limit the amount of fossil fuels being used for the production of electricity and for transportation. The United States derives about 50% of its electrical energy from coal and another 20% from natural gas. Crippling these energy sources obviously will cripple the United States economy and millions of jobs in those companies using the electricity. We learned in World War 2 that a nation can be crippled or destroyed by crippling or destroying their energy production infrastructures.

We are also learning that international powers have organized into the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is part of the United Nations for the purpose of limiting or abolishing the production of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. While the US is clearly targeted for these crippling measures other members of the UN other developing nations simply will not be implementing with these suicidal measures. The IPCC is also the brainchild of Maurice Strong, a billionaire socialist working closely with the UN. At the Rio conference of the IPCC in 1992 Maurice Strong made this statement to thousands of supporting fans and international leaders:

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations.

This horrendous statement reminds one of the recent statement by Barack Obama calling for the limiting fossil fuels and the resulting skyrocketing costs of US energy costs.

Many nations have recognized the importance of electrical energy is the development of their economies and the advancement of prosperity in their nations. China builds a large new coal plant per week, and now has some 20 nuclear power plants under construction. It has also recently completed the largest hydro facility in the world at the 3 Gorges site. Other nations have recognized the importance of large supplies of affordable energy in that some 67 new nuclear plants are currently under construction around the world and that many more are in final design.

So who are these international leaders and energy experts with so much contempt seeking to oppose reliable sources of low cost energy in the US? Who are these leaders in the UN, the IPCC, the EPA, the White House, and elsewhere so hell-bent on crippling the US economy and much of the developed world? The answers are emerging. Why the deceit and deceptions about climate evidence?

Lorne Gunter writes in the National Post about the IPCC using environmental groups’ literature to bolsters its major publications. For example, in 2009 and 2010 it was shown that the UN’s (IPCC) had included questionable data on Himalayan glacier melt in its major 2007 climate assessment report and that it had done so deliberately to provoke government leaders to speed up environmental legislation.

The IPCC scientist in charge of the Himalayan glacier discussions conceded he was aware at the time that the melt prediction had not been peer-reviewed, but included it anyway because “we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”

In other words good science be damned, what the IPCC wanted was the science fiction of glaciers melts, not sound science.

By the end of March 2010 evidence had shown that at least 16 claims of impending climate doom in the IPCC’s vaunted 2007 report had been based on work done by environmental activists, most of which had not received independent reviews before being swallowed whole by the UN climate body.

For instance, the IPCC’s insistence that up to 40% of the Amazon rain forest was under imminent threat came from a World Wildlife Fund-International Union for the Conservation of Nature joint report written by a scientist-consultant and a freelance environmental journalist.

These processes have nothing to do with science; they have nothing to do with honesty, nothing to do with sound defensible science policy. They have a lot to do with low-grade uninformed environmental advocacy being involved with international energy policy.

More recently Christopher Booker of the Telegraph learned more of the poor science coming from the IPCC. A very large climate report was released recently by the IPCC which was filled with outlandish claims regarding green energy.

What only came to light when the full report was published last week was the peculiar source of some of the extraordinarily ambitious claims. It was based solely on a paper co-authored last year by an employee of Greenpeace International and something called the European Renewable Energy Council. This Brussels-based body, heavily funded by the EU, lobbies the European Commission on behalf of all the main renewable industries, such as wind and solar.

The chief author of the Greenpeace paper, Sven Teske, was also a lead author on Chapter 10 of the IPCC report, which means that the report’s headline message came from a full-time environmental activist, supported by a lobby group representing those industries that stand most to benefit financially from its findings.

Greenpeace adds nothing to the serious debate of future energy supplies or climate change yet here we have the IPCC letting Greenpeace have complete access to its reports. In fact the presence of Greenpeace advice in these IPCC pages diminishes and destroys the credibility of the IPCC. See for example, this link. Let us examine some of the words of the founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore.

Too few Americans and far too few media people know anything about the environmental movement and its transformation over the past 40 years into something vastly different. In Moore’s words they have become far more extreme and whose politics is little more than neo-Marxism in green garb. Moore was quite specific and pointed out some of the characteristics of the environmental movement today:

• Tend strongly to be anti-human
• Anti-science and technology
• Anti-trade and anti-capitalism
• Anti-business
• Anti-civilization
• Invariably misleading

Greenpeace can hardly be considered expert in science let alone in energy policy. As Patrick Moore told me, they aren’t very interested in humans either. They are environmental hacks with financial interests in generating and spreading their nonsense with the full force and support of the IPCC, UN, and US agencies.

In a recent report Dennis Ambler describes in detail many of the personnel relationships between the IPCC, the EPA, and many of the contractors shared by each of them . Ambler also provides some of the academic credentials of many of the people involved. Many do not have serious scientific credentials let alone in the highly specialized science of the new discipline of climate. This is not the place for looking for solid scientists or science literature and expertise. Who are these people?

David Lundgren has recently written that American leaders such as NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco still regard the IPCC as the “gold standard” for climate science. American leadership, both state and federal, seems incapable of separating sound science from political hearsay. They threaten the future economy of the US, our liberties, our freedoms, and national security. As a result our nation remains in great peril.