Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[agentaqua]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/06/canadian-oil-workers-fired_n_4741305.html


Canadian Oilsands Staff Fired, Reportedly Replaced With Foreign Workers



CP | By The Canadian Press


Posted: 02/06/2014 6:27 pm EST Updated: 04/08/2014 5:59 am EDT

CANADA TAR SANDS


FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - The federal government is investigating an allegation that several dozen Canadians working in Alberta's oilpatch were laid off this week and replaced with foreign workers.

A spokeswoman with Employment Minister Jason Kenney's office said Thursday that he has asked for an urgent review.

The Alberta Federation of Labour said that 65 of its ironworkers were laid off on Tuesday. The workers' paystubs say they were being paid by a company called Pacer Promec Joint Venture.

Federation president Gil McGowan said the employees were immediately dismissed from their jobs at Imperial Oil's (TSX:IMO) Kearl oilsands mine.

"They called the guys into an office, told them that they were gone, and they literally walked past the replacements on the way out," McGowan said.

He alleged the foreign workers from Croatia are making about $18 an hour — half the wage of the Canadians.

A spokesman for Imperial Oil said its contractors make their own hiring decisions.

Melissa Ligertwood with Calgary-based Pacer Corporation said in a statement that the company is not actively recruiting foreign workers and is no longer involved in the Kearl project. She said Pacer is affiliated with Promec Construction.

A woman who answered the phone at Promec in Calgary said no one was available to comment on the matter until Monday.

"The allegations in question are very troubling," Alexandra Fortier, Kenney's press secretary, said in an email.

"Our government will not tolerate any abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our government has recently made reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to ensure that Canadians are first in line for available jobs, and this program remains under review."

Ottawa brought in new regulations in December to calm fears that foreigners were snatching jobs from Canadians, allowing officials to conduct workplace inspections without warrants and blacklist employers who break the rules.

The move followed a furor over laid-off workers at RBC being ordered to train their replacements — including those who came to Canada on TFW permits. A B.C. mining company was also in hot water for hiring more than 200 Chinese workers after an ad seeking Mandarin-speakers failed to attract Canadian applicants.

McGowan said, despite the changes, the program is being exploited. And the government isn't doing enough to stop it.

"This is not an isolated case. Increasingly, this is becoming business as usual."

McGowan has heard complaints from two other groups of oilpatch workers in the past month that they have been replaced by cheaper, foreign labour.

"The (government) is allowing employers to use the program as a tool to drive down wages and displace Canadians, despite all the reassurances to the contrary."

 

[OldBlackDog]

As you tell me all the time, not a climate scientist. Just a blogger.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J._Romm

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/04/3587527/ipcc-irreversible-impacts/

IPCC Scientists Emphasize Immorality Of Inaction By Focusing On ‘Irreversible Impacts’


by Joe Romm Posted on November 4, 2014 at 9:09 am

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"IPCC Scientists Emphasize Immorality Of Inaction By Focusing On ‘Irreversible Impacts’"


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What is the biggest change in the new climate report by the world’s top scientists and governments compared to the one they released back in 2007? It can be summed up in one word: “Irreversible.”





In the 2007 assessment of climate science by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that word appeared only 4 times in the final, full “synthesis” report. Irreversibility only received 2 mentions and minimal discussion in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).

Seven years later, the word appears 31 times in the full synthesis report of the IPCC’s fifth assessment. The SPM mentions “irreversible” 14 times and has extended discussions of exactly what it means and why it matters.

Certainly the fact that we are on track to harm billions of people who contributed little or nothing to their harsh fate makes climate inaction a grave “wrong.” But what makes our current inaction uniquely immoral in the history of **** sapiens is that the large-scale harm is irreparable on any timescale that matters — and, of course, that we could avoid the worst of the irreparable harms at an astonishingly low net cost.

What do the world’s leading scientists mean by “irreversible impacts”?


Warming will continue beyond 2100 under all RCP scenarios except RCP2.6. Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions. A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period….

It is virtually certain that global mean sea-level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions.

Translation: Impacts will be even worse than described in this report after 2100 in every case but the one where we sharply cut CO2 emissions starting now (to stabilize at 2°C total warming). And as high as total warming ultimately gets, that’s roughly as high as temperatures will stay for hundreds of years after we bring total net human-caused carbon pollution emissions to zero.

The “case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period” means a time far beyond when humanity has merely eliminated total net human-caused emissions — from deforestation and burning fossil fuels (and from whatever amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks we have caused, such as CO2 and methane release from defrosting permafrost).

To even start reversing the irreversible, we have to go far below zero net emissions to actually sucking vast quantities of diffuse CO2 out of the air and putting it someplace that is also permanent, which we currently do not know how to do at scale at any plausible price. One can envision such a day when we might — if we sharply reduce net carbon pollution to zero by 2100, as we must to stabilize near 2°C. But it’s hard to imagine when it would ever happen if emissions are anywhere near current levels (let alone higher) by 2100, and we have unleashed myriad amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks that make the job of getting to even zero net emissions doubly difficult.

If we don’t get on a very different emissions path ASAP, then some of the most serious climate changes caused by global warming could last 1000 years or more. The SPM explains, “Stabilisation of global average surface temperature does not imply stabilisation for all aspects of the climate system.” That is to say, if we don’t quickly embrace the 2C emissions path, then even at a point many hundreds of years from now when temperatures start to drop, some changes in the climate — sea level rise being the most obvious example — will likely keep going and going.

The IPCC reports are primarily reviews of the scientific literature, so the new focus on the irreversible nature of climate change is no surprise. In 2009 we reported on research led by NOAA scientists titled “Irreversible climate change because of carbon dioxide emissions,” which concluded “the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.”

Significantly, that NOAA-led study warned that it wasn’t just sea level rise that would be irreversible:


Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the ”dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise.

Recent studies strongly support that finding for both sea level rise and Dust-Bowlification of some of the world’s most productive agricultural lands.

Significantly, this 2014 Synthesis report is the first time I have seen the world’s leading scientists and governments explain why the irreversibility of impacts makes inaction so uniquely immoral. Here is the key finding (emphasis in original):


Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence). Mitigation involves some level of co-benefits and of risks due to adverse side-effects, but these risks do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation efforts.

That is a tremendously important argument. Sure, the climate panel says, mitigation efforts have risks in addition to their co-benefits — “possible adverse side effects of large-scale deployment of low-carbon technology options and economic costs,” as the full report explains. But the risks involved in reducing greenhouse gas emissions are both quantitatively and qualitatively different than the risks stemming from inaction because they aren’t likely to be anywhere near as “severe, widespread, and irreversible.”

The full report expands on this critical point, noting that “Climate change risks may persist for millennia and can involve very high risk of severe impacts and the presence of significant irreversibilities combined with limited adaptive capacity.” In sharp contrast, “the stringency of climate policies can be adjusted much more quickly in response to observed consequences and costs and create lower risks of irreversible consequences.”

In short, if some component of the mitigation strategy turns out to start having unexpected, significant negative consequences, humanity can quickly adjust to minimize costs and risks. But inaction — failing to embrace aggressive mitigation — will lead to expected climate impacts that are not merely very long-lasting and irreversible, but potentially beyond adaptation.

Finally, yes, I realize that if humanity is not motivated by the genuine prospect of ruining a livable climate for our children and grandchildren, then how much we screw future generations after 2100 isn’t going to move people. But you can’t blame scientists for thinking **** sapiens is actually a rational and moral species, capable of caring about people who haven’t even been born yet.

The founding fathers certainly cared about such future generations and understood how obviously immoral it was to subject them to irreversible adverse impacts. As The Constitutional Law Foundation has explained, “The most succinct, systematic treatment of intergenerational principles left to us by the founders is that which was provided by Thomas Jefferson in his famous September 6, 1789 letter to James Madison.”

I summarized Jefferson’s position here. The key question for Jefferson was very simple: Must later generations “consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course of a life?” Soil was an obvious focal point for examining the issue of intergenerational equity for a Virginia planter like Jefferson.

The answer to Jefferson was another self-evident truth:


Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation….

It is immoral for one generation to destroy another generation’s vital soil — or its livable climate. Hence it is unimaginably immoral to Dustbowlify their soil and ruin their livable climate irreversibly for many centuries if not millennia. So let’s not do that, okay?

 

[agentaqua]

As you tell me all the time, not a climate scientist. Just a blogger. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J._Romm

I agree that that post was an op ed/blog. The IPCC report was NOT.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Ippc report was not written by climate scientists.
It was written by beaurocrats.

 

[seadna]

Ippc report was not written by climate scientists.
It was written by beaurocrats.

Baloney. You do realize the author list is published and anyone can look it up and identify the credentials of the authors don't you? Two of the authors are scientists and faculty at my own institution - the University of Washington. Also, it's bureaucrats not "beaurocrats". This is my last post in response to your complete loads of BS. I will no longer feed this troll.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Sorry for the misspell.
So the scientists you know are climate scientists?
I would like to see the list with their credentials.
Everyone says that they must be climate scientists.

Baloney. You do realize the author list is published and anyone can look it up and identify the credentials of the authors don't you? Two of the authors are scientists and faculty at my own institution - the University of Washington. Also, it's bureaucrats not "beaurocrats". This is my last post in response to your complete loads of BS. I will no longer feed this troll.

 

[OldBlackDog]

The Assessment Reports and Special Reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cover a wide range of disciplines in fulfilling the IPCC’s mandate of assessing scientific, technological and socio-economic information in order to provide policymakers with a clear view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change.
The IPCC does not conduct its own research, run models or make measurements of climate or weather phenomena. Its role is to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic literature relevant to understanding climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. Author teams critically assess all such information from any source that is to be included in the report1.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Climate Change: This was one of the dogs that didn’t bark in the 2014 election, even after liberal billionaire Tom Steyer spent an estimated $70 million to promote the issue and a new U.N. report Sunday warned of “severe, pervasive, and irreversible” global warming that will worsen without environmental policy changes. Robert Brulle, professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, said a GOP-led Congress is more likely to try to stop Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new regulations on power plants than endorsing any additional steps to reduce U.S. carbon pollution. Said Brulle: “I am not an optimist about us doing anything – I think it looks bad for political action on climate change in any way.” –Will Bunsch, Philadelphia Daily News, 5 November 2014

 

[agentaqua]

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/11/0...ce=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=051114

Latest UN Climate Report Spells out Tough Work Ahead

And the world's eyes are on carbon-spewing Canada. Your move, Harper.

By Nick Fillmore, Today, TheTyee.ca


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ClimateSummit_600px.jpg



'We would like to avoid what happened in Denmark, in Copenhagen, where the heads of state and governments thought they could reach an agreement in the very few, last few hours.' French President Francois Hollande told Canadian Parliament of the upcoming Paris climate summit.



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Climate impacts on BC to be 'substantial' by 2100: IPCC scientist


Read more: Federal Politics, Environment,

Canada's dismal record on fighting climate change was brought into the spotlight twice this week -- first with a crucial UN report spelling out the tough task ahead for the world's nations, and second, with the president of France delivering an embarrassing lecture to the Harper government in our own Parliament on Monday.

Practically tongue in cheek, French President Francois Hollande, glancing at Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told Parliament that he had no reason to doubt Canada's commitment to reaching a global agreement on climate change when the final round of negotiations are held in Paris in December 2015.

But the president warned Parliament that negotiations must not be left to the last minute.

"We would like to avoid what happened in Denmark, in Copenhagen, where the heads of state and governments thought they could reach an agreement in the very few, last few hours. This is not possible," said Hollande. "We have to find an agreement within the coming months."

Released Sunday, the latest United Nations report on the threat of global warming is by far the most comprehensive to date, and includes the most serious warnings ever. It describes in detail the disaster ahead unless humankind can reverse carbon emissions by 2020 and then phase out emissions entirely by the end of this century.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was prepared to provide up-to-date information for governments attempting to deliver a new global treaty on climate change during the final UN Climate Summit next year.








The looming Paris summit presents a new challenge for the Canadian government in view of the fact that Canada remains, by some measures, the worst performer in fighting climate change of all industrialized countries.

Bad Canada

As hinted by the French president, Canada plays a leading role in destroying the atmosphere. Mechanical engineer John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota told Scientific American: "If we burn all the tarsand oil, the temperature rise, just from burning that tarsand, will be half of what we've already seen -- an estimated additional nearly 0.4 C from Alberta alone."

A federal election is scheduled to be held before the Paris summit. Over the next few months, Harper's government will have to decide if it will adopt a more progressive climate change position -- a move that, while unlikely, would probably win the Conservatives votes in the election. If another party becomes the government next October, it would have very little time to develop a new position in advance of the summit.

The IPCC strongly acknowledges that carbon emissions are rising at an alarming rate. While changes in the weather are not having a big impact in developed countries, climate chaos is already causing massive destruction and an estimated 150,000 deaths annually.

Even so, the IPCC report also offers hope. Panel chair Rajendra Pachauri said the world has the means to limit climate change. He said if the right solutions are put into place there can be continued economic and human development.

But considering the overall content of the report -- as well as the harsh information in a number of earlier reports -- it is questionable how much progress can be made because of a number of difficulties that must be overcome.

What must be done

The UN lacks the power to force governments to follow any particular course of action. While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sounds like he is in charge of a solid campaign for change, he's really a concerned cheerleader. Moreover, Sunday's report includes only vague -- and questionable -- suggestions concerning actions that should be taken to slow global warming. It says that:



•Most of the world's electricity should be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050;
•Renewables will have to grow from the current 30 per cent share to 80 per cent of the power sector by 2050;
•Fossil fuel power generation without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would need to be phased out almost entirely by 2100. (However, the world has only one CCS plant in operation as the technology has not proven to be reliable);
•Behavioural changes, such as eating less meat, can have a role in cutting emissions (a meek offer).


One ongoing issue that could delay progress concerns to what extent wealthy countries, which are responsible for much of the climate destruction to this point, are willing to assist less developed nations in covering the costs of mitigating the damage caused by climate change.

However, pledges to the Green Climate Fund, which was to raise $100 billion, have been slow to come in, so the UN now hopes governments and the private sector will commit $15 billion as starter capital. The Council of Canadians says the federal government should contribute $4 billion a year to the fund.

A serious issue ahead concerns whether the U.S. and China can reach a bilateral agreement on the burning of coal. If not, some countries may be reluctant to sign onto a binding deal next year.

UN officials fear that U.S. President Obama will not be able to sign a full agreement in Paris because the Senate, with many members receiving large donations from the energy sector, will veto the agreement, and the non-governmental sector is claiming that powerful multinational corporations are trying to hijack the entire UN climate process.

In anticipation of the release of the IPCC report, 55 Canadian environmental researchers and academics came together to urge the Harper government to begin fighting climate change in a serious way.

The group praised work carried out by lower levels of government to mitigate climate change. They pointed out that Ontario is phasing out coal-fired electricity plants and that Vancouver is promising to be the greenest city in the world by the year 2020, but they emphasized the country is lacking overall federal leadership to help co-ordinate such activities. [Tyee]


Read more: Federal Politics, Environment,


Nick Fillmore is a Toronto freelance journalist and a Tyee National columnist. He was one of the founders of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the International Freedom of Expression Exchange and the Canadian Association of Journalists. Nick supports media development projects in Caribbean countries by volunteering with the Association of Caribbean Media Workers.

 

[OldBlackDog]

By Rebecca Leber @rebleber Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images

In handing Republicans control of the Senate on Tuesday, Americans effectively voted for the party's hostile plans against President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy. Their votes also put the Senate's environment and climate policy into the hands of the worst science-denier in national politics: Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who is almost certainly the next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Inhofe claimed in 2003 that global warming might help humanity. “It's also important to question whether global warming is even a problem for human existence. Thus far no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. In fact, it appears that just the opposite is true: that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how we live our lives.”

In that same speech, he argued that an international body of climate change scientists “resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor.”

A report produced by his staff in 2010 argued that leaked emails from a group of climate scientists “reveal, among other things, unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some of the world’s preeminent climate scientists.” Those stolen emails, called “Climategate” at the time, showed debate among scientists over the results of a major climate report.

Inhofe refuted climate change science in 2012 by citing the Bible. “[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

For anyone still uncertain about where he stands, Inhofe reiterated his position with his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141105112535.htm

Population boom, droughts contributed to collapse of ancient Assyrian Empire


Date:

November 5, 2014


Source:

Springer Science+Business Media


Summary:


Researchers have drawn parallels between decline of Assyrian civilization and today's situation in Syria and Iraq. There's more to the decline of the once mighty ancient Assyrian Empire than just civil wars and political unrest. Archaeological, historical, and paleoclimatic evidence suggests that climatic factors and population growth might also have come into play.



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Researchers have drawn parallels between decline of Assyrian civilization and today's situation in Syria and Iraq.


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There's more to the decline of the once mighty ancient Assyrian Empire than just civil wars and political unrest. Archaeological, historical, and paleoclimatic evidence suggests that climatic factors and population growth might also have come into play. This is the opinion of Adam Schneider of the University of California-San Diego in the US, and Selim Adalı of the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Turkey, published in Springer's journal Climatic Change. In the 9th century BC, the Assyrian Empire of northern Iraq relentlessly started to expand into most of the ancient Near East. It reached its height in the early 7th century BC, becoming the largest of its kind in the Near East up to that time. The Assyrian Empire's subsequent quick decline by the end of the 7th century has puzzled scholars ever since. Most ascribe it to civil wars, political unrest, and the destruction of the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, by a coalition of Babylonian and Median forces in 612 BC. Nevertheless, it has remained a mystery why the Assyrian state, the military superpower of the age, succumbed so suddenly and so quickly.

Schneider and Adalı argue that factors such as population growth and droughts also contributed to the Assyrian downfall. Recently published paleoclimate data show that conditions in the Near East became more arid during the latter half of the 7th century BC. During this time, the region also experienced significant population growth when people from conquered lands were forcibly resettled there. The authors contend that this substantially reduced the state's ability to withstand a severe drought such as the one that hit the Near East in 657 BC. They also note that within five years of this drought, the political and economic stability of the Assyrian state had eroded, resulting in a series of civil wars that fatally weakened it.

"What we are proposing is that these demographic and climatic factors played an indirect but significant role in the demise of the Assyrian Empire," says Schneider.

Schneider and Adalı further draw parallels between the collapse of the Assyrian Empire and some of the potential economic and political consequences of climate change in the same area today. They point out, for instance, that the onset of severe drought which, followed by violent unrest in Syria and Iraq during the late 7th century BC, bears a striking resemblance to the severe drought and subsequent contemporary political conflict in Syria and northern Iraq today. On a more global scale, they conclude, modern societies can take note of what happened when short-term economic and political policies were prioritized rather than ones that support long-term economic security and risk mitigation.

"The Assyrians can be 'excused' to some extent for focusing on short-term economic or political goals which increased their risk of being negatively impacted by climate change, given their technological capacity and their level of scientific understanding about how the natural world worked," adds Selim Adalı. "We, however, have no such excuses, and we also possess the additional benefit of hindsight. This allows us to piece together from the past what can go wrong if we choose not to enact policies that promote longer-term sustainability."




Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Journal Reference:
1.Adam W. Schneider, Selim F. Adalı. “No harvest was reaped”: demographic and climatic factors in the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Climatic Change, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s10584-014-1269-y
http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-014-1269-y.pdf

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030163048.htm

They know the drill: Leading the league in boring through ice sheets


Date:

October 30, 2014


Source:

University of Wisconsin-Madison


Summary:


Hollow coring drills are used to extract ice cores that can analyze the past atmosphere. Scientists have now documented carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 23,000 and 9,000 years ago, based on data from an 11,000-foot hole in Antarctica.



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Kristina Slawny (left) and Jay Johnson (right) stand next to the Deep Ice Sheet Coring Drill, designed and managed by the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Credit: Jay Johnson


[Click to enlarge image]






Wisconsin is famous for its ice fishers -- the stalwarts who drill holes through lake ice in the hope of catching a winter dinner. Less well known are the state's big-league ice drillers -- specialists who design huge drills and use them to drill deep into ice in Greenland and Antarctica, places where even summer seems like winter.


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The quarry at these drills includes some of the biggest catches in science.

A hot-water drill designed and built at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) and the Physical Sciences Laboratory was critical to the success of IceCube, a swarm of neutrino detectors at the South Pole that has opened a new frontier in astronomy.

Hollow coring drills designed and managed by UW-Madison's Ice Drilling Design and Operations (IDDO) program are used to extract ice cores that can analyze the past atmosphere, says Shaun Marcott, an assistant professor of geoscience at UW-Madison. Marcott was the first author of a paper published today in the journal Nature documenting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 23,000 and 9,000 years ago, based on data from an 11,000-foot hole in Antarctica.

The ice drilling program traces its roots to Charles Bentley, a legendary UW-Madison glaciologist and polar expert. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation and housed in the Space Science and Engineering Center.

"Building on Charlie's achievements, IceCube enhanced our competency of drilling expertise," says IDDO principal investigator Mark Mulligan. "A 2000 award from the National Science Foundation brought in more engineers and technicians who understand coring and drilling."

IDDO program director Kristina Slawny spent six austral summers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide project, which provided cores for Marcott's climate study. "It's an experience like no other," she says. "We sleep in unheated single tents that get really warm in the day and quite cold at night."

Crew compatibility is "huge," says Slawny, "and in a remote environment we focus on it, so we've had really good continuity in our driller hiring. Once a group has worked together, we want them to stay. When everyone is cold and tired, they can get agitated easily, but for the most part, the crew was happy to be down there."

Still, "everything goes wrong, even the stuff you don't expect," she says. "One year it's mechanical, the next year it's electrical. One of our staffers, Jay Johnson, is a brilliant engineer and machinist who can fix anything, but it can take long hours and sleepless nights to keep the drill running."

Many projects under development require mobile drills, says Mulligan. "The science community has said we need a certain type of core in a certain location, but you may only be able to get there with a helicopter or small plane. That forces us to design smaller, or make something that can be set up relatively quickly. Agile and mobile are very big words."

As concerns about the climatic effects of greenhouse gases mount, Marcott says deep, old ice offers a ground-truthing function. "How do you know that today's carbon dioxide variations are even meaningful?" he asks. "We have only 50 years of instrument data."

Climate studies require a much longer horizon, Marcott adds. "When I measure CO2 from 20,000 years ago, I actually have air from 20,000 years ago, and so I can measure the concentration of CO2 directly. There is no other way to do that."

Much of the credit, Marcott says, is due to UW's ace ice drillers. "Without the ice cores being as pristine as they are, without the drillers being able to take out every single core unbroken to provide us with a 70,000-year record of CO2, we would not be able to understand how this powerful greenhouse gas has affected our planet in the past."

Today, carbon dioxide is growing at 2 parts per million per year -- 20 times faster than the preindustrial situation recorded in the ice cores. But even at the slower rate, climate reacted very quickly to changing levels of the key greenhouse gas, Marcott says. "It's not just a gradual change from an ice age to an interglacial. We need to know how the Earth system works, but without these ice cores, and the great effort from the drilling team, we would not be in a position to know."




Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. The original article was written by David Tenenbaum. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Journal Reference:
1.Shaun A. Marcott, Thomas K. Bauska, Christo Buizert, Eric J. Steig, Julia L. Rosen, Kurt M. Cuffey, T. J. Fudge, Jeffery P. Severinghaus, Jinho Ahn, Michael L. Kalk, Joseph R. McConnell, Todd Sowers, Kendrick C. Taylor, James W. C. White, Edward J. Brook. Centennial-scale changes in the global carbon cycle during the last deglaciation. Nature, 2014; 514 (7524): 616 DOI: 10.1038/nature13799
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13799

 

[GLG]

Climate Change: This was one of the dogs that didn’t bark in the 2014 election, even after liberal billionaire Tom Steyer spent an estimated $70 million to promote the issue and a new U.N. report Sunday warned of “severe, pervasive, and irreversible” global warming that will worsen without environmental policy changes. Robert Brulle, professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, said a GOP-led Congress is more likely to try to stop Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new regulations on power plants than endorsing any additional steps to reduce U.S. carbon pollution. Said Brulle: “I am not an optimist about us doing anything – I think it looks bad for political action on climate change in any way.” –Will Bunsch, Philadelphia Daily News, 5 November 2014

Chump change compared to your team....

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-money-changes-climate-debate/
Searching for a reason major climate change legislation hasn't passed Congress yet?
You could do worse than start looking around Washington, D.C., with its endless think tanks, lobbying firms and trade groups, many of which have swung into action in the past to block such bills and stand ready to do so in the future.
A recent study published in the journal Climatic Change finds that much of the millions of dollars that funds these groups comes from secret sources, and a good portion of the rest is from publicity-shy conservative foundations and wealthy donors.
The groups, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, and wealthy individual donors often espouse libertarian views that don't jibe well with giving the government more power to combat climate change.
That there's still a debate about whether climate change exists is not an accident. Conservative think tanks over the last two decades have consistently warned about the costs of addressing climate change and raised doubts in the minds of the public about the accuracy of the science behind it.
The study's author, Robert Brulle, a sociology and environmental science professor at Drexel University, takes a systematic look at what he calls the climate change counter-movement (CCCM), made up of groups that Brulle says have an average annual income of just above $900 million, although much of that money is not even spent on climate change-related activities and is used for other issues.
To be most effective in spreading their message to the public to influence opinion, staffers in these groups "publish books, they give congressional testimony, they go around and make speeches, they serve as sources for newspapers, they write op-eds," Brulle said.
"It's based on a political strategy, which is to develop these arguments and get them out into the public," he said, adding that the environmental movement doesn't have equivalent think tanks. The total impact is hard to tell, but only 46 percent of Republicans believe there's solid evidence the world is warming, compared with 84 percent of Democrats, according to a 2013 Pew study.
The reason these foundations and think tanks matter is that they appear to have influenced the views of many in the public and Republican lawmakers who have opposed strong congressional action on climate change. For example, a review of House floor transcripts shows that Republicans repeatedly cited Heritage Foundation studies on the negative U.S. economic impacts of the climate legislation sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and then-Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that passed the House in 2009 but later stalled in the Senate.
'Like guerilla warfare'
Brulle's study found that a lot of these groups' funding comes from just over 20 wealthy foundations. For example, from 2003 to 2010, foundations that were partly associated with Mellon fortune heir Richard Scaife gave $39.6 million; the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee gave $29.6 million; and foundations affiliated with Koch Industries Inc. or its owners, the Koch brothers, contributed $26.3 million. About 70 percent of the groups' income sources are not even known, according to Brulle.
"It's like guerilla warfare; all you can hope for is to stay [in the debate] long enough for people to wake up," said Richard Lindzen, a professor emeritus of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who said he believes think tanks have "relatively little" influence over the climate debate.
Environmental groups that urge strong action on climate change, he said, "want power; they want influence. The more they can frighten people, the more influence they have. ... It's always been a vehicle for control."
Nicolas Loris, a fellow focused on energy and environmental issues at the Heritage Foundation, acknowledged that the climate is changing and said man-made emissions are "certainly" affecting the climate.
Loris said he doesn't think it is necessary to disclose Heritage's donors, because it's a private organization. "To me, that's an attack on liberty, and it discourages giving, and it really is a distraction from the real issues at hand," he said.
He said Heritage isn't "beholden to the fossil fuel industry or wealthy donors" and said his group wants energy subsidies removed for all sources.
When asked whether the climate debate has gone on so long because conservative think tanks have raised doubts about the issue, he said: "I think that's partly true, certainly the economic effects of the policy proposals."
The biggest donor listed is Donors Trust/Donors Capital Fund, which accounted for almost $79 million; individuals can put their so-called donor-advised funds at Donors Trust and then direct the organization to give money on their behalf to nonprofits.

 

[GLG]

Cont.....

'Good reasons to be anonymous'
"They've totally inflated the amount of money," said Whitney Ball, president and CEO of DonorsTrust, who pointed out that, for example, one big annual grant to AEI from DonorsTrust "has nothing to do with global warming." She later said: "No one ever talks about the funding that's on the other side. There's a lot of money out there ... to prove global warming."
She conceded that she hadn't read the study but said the Drexel researcher seemed to be more "systematic and intellectual honest about the whole thing" than previous researchers on the topic had been. She said that DonorsTrust does not reveal its account holders, many of them individuals from the business world, but said that "there are plenty of good reasons to be anonymous" when giving money.
She said that groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, which partly works on climate change and environmental issues, are on a "jihad against capitalism," but her group helps its donors "protect their legacy of liberty."
Exxon Mobil Corp. used to be a prominent funder of organizations that took a skeptical view of climate change, but in the mid-2000s, it stopped funding several think tanks "whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion" about the world's energy future, said Exxon spokesman Scott Silvestri.
Sounding more like a tree hugger than a representative of the world's leading oil company, Exxon's Silvestri said in a statement that "the risk of climate change is clear and the risk warrants action. Increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere are having a warming effect."
A number of the foundations and individuals, including the Bradley Foundation, Scaife and the Koch brothers, named in the study did not respond to requests for comment.
"If they want to hide their tracks on the funding flow, they can do so pretty easily under current laws. They give to 501(c)(3)s and (c)(4)s, and those funders don't have to reveal their sources, and so unless Congress changes the law, you're not going to get into the visibility of what those contributions are," Brulle said.
'In it for the long haul'
Why have the conservative think tanks been so successful on climate change?
"When it comes to conservative philanthropy ... the way in which they fund is that conservatives tend to fund large general operating support grants over many, many years, so they're in it for the long haul, and that allows the nonprofits that they fund to do things to be more flexible and mobile and agile and active in the advocacy realms," said Kevin Laskowski, senior research and policy associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
On the other hand, liberal foundations often tend to fund only for particular purposes and grant cycles, he said.
"It's very hard for an organization to string together its budget from restricted funding streams, and you tend to have a situation where some go into the battle with their hands tied [behind their back] and others have carte blanche to do what their funders are hoping they do," he said.
Climate change has also been made into a political hot-button issue, which makes it harder for both parties to find common ground to solve it.
"It's clear now that there's ... people who are in it for ideological reasons, over and above material interests, and I think the success of the think tanks has made climate change an ideological topic," said Riley Dunlap, a sociology professor at Oklahoma State University who has studied the climate change counter-movement.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500

Here is a link to the study they quoted in this op-ed
http://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing Delay - Climatic Change.ashx

It should be noted that our Canadian "think tanks" are getting in on the action with donations from fossil fuel and right wing agenda crooks. Most lost site of their principles back in the 90's and have strayed so far off that it's hard to take any of them seriously any more. Are they informing the public on good economic policy or are they just making stuff up. I tend to think they are towing the party line so evidence no longer has value and it's just tea party home spun wisdom.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Science
Another Ice Age?
Monday, Jun 24, 1974

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

 

[GLG]

Well done OBD you just proved global cooling or is it global warming... or global neutral.... hard to tell with a article from 1974. Your point?.....

Let's have a look at what this author 1975 article has to say lately.

My 1975 'Cooling World' story doesn't make today's climate scientists wrong

It's time for deniers of human-caused global warming to stop using an old magazine story as ammunition against the consensus of today's climate scientists.


Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/s...ate_scientists_wrong.html#ZDSSJcIy9S8HqUt5.99
(Inside Science) – "The central fact is that, after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." – Newsweek: April 28, 1975

That's an excerpt from a story I wrote about climate science that appeared almost 40 years ago. Titled "The Cooling World," it was remarkably popular; in fact it might be the only decades-old magazine story about science ever carried onto the set of a late-night TV talk show. Now, as the author of that story, after decades of scientific advances, let me say this: while the hypotheses described in that original story seemed right at the time, climate scientists now know that they were seriously incomplete. Our climate is warming -- not cooling, as the original story suggested.
Nevertheless, certain websites and individuals that dispute, disparage and deny the science that shows that humans are causing the Earth to warm continue to quote my article. Their message: how can we believe climatologists who tell us that the Earth's atmosphere is warming when their colleagues asserted that it's actually cooling?
Well, yes, we should trust them, despite the views of detractors such as comedian Dennis Miller, who brought my story to The Tonight Show in 2006. Several atmospheric scientists did indeed believe in global cooling, as I reported in the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek. But that was then.
In the 39 years since, biotechnology has flowered from a promising academic topic to a major global industry, the first test-tube baby has been born and become a mother herself, cosmologists have learned that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate rather than slowing down, and particle physicists have detected the Higgs boson, an entity once regarded as only a theoretical concept. Seven presidents have served most of 11 terms. And Newsweek has become a shadow of its former self.
And on the climate front? The vast majority of climatologists now assure us that Earth's atmosphere is not cooling. Rather it's warming up. And the main responsibility for the phenomenon lies with human activity.
"There's no serious dispute any more about whether the globe is warming, whether humans are responsible, and whether we will see large and dangerous changes in the future – in the words of the National Academy of Sciences – which we didn't know in the 1970s," said Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He added that nearly every U.S. scientific society has assessed the evidence and come to the same conclusion.
The recent National Climate Assessment takes an equally emphatic view.
"What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now," it states. "While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases."
I'm sure it's clear by now that I accept the views of the National Academy, National Climate Assessment, Mann, and the huge majority of his fellow climatologists. Nevertheless, websites devoted to denying the existence of human-caused climate change – or at least promoting the idea that nothing should be done about it – continue to use my article to validate their thinking. In fact the article has reportedly become the most-cited article in Newsweek's history.
Those that reject climate science ignore the fact that, like other fields, climatology has evolved since 1975. The certainty that our atmosphere is indeed warming stems from a series of rigorous observations and theoretical concepts that fit into computer models and an overall framework outlining the nature of Earth's climate.
These capabilities were primitive or non-existent in 1975. In fact my report reflected a real strand of climatological thinking back then. I was far from the only science writer to cover the possibility of global cooling. Time, Science News, and the New York Times, among other media outlets, wrote about it, because some climate scientists had genuine reasons to believe that the global climate might be cooling and had published scholarly papers on the matter.
Speaking personally, though, I accept that I didn't tell the full story back then. Indeed, the issue raises questions about the relationship between science writers and scientists as well as the attitudes toward science of individuals with political agendas.
"Three independent strands of science at the time got conflated in the articles: analyses of direct temperature data that showed a decline in temperatures particularly over the Northern Hemisphere since the 1940s; a very high level of pollution by sulfate aerosols that cooled the planet; and evidence that the timing of ice ages was caused by wobbles in Earth's orbit," explained Gavin Schmidt, deputy chief of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York. Indeed, he added, "some parts of the article are OK even today."
At the same time, however, evidence had emerged of increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a gas known to warm the atmosphere.
"The science was sort of speculative [in 1975]," Mann recalled. "A National Academy of Sciences report concluded there wasn't enough information at that particular time because we had two competing forces – aerosols and greenhouse gases. It wasn't entirely clear which would win out."
Ironically, efforts to clean up the atmosphere made it possible to resolve the scientific mystery and convince climatologists that human activity is warming the planet. Policy actions such as the Clean Air Act of 1970 in the United States and similar initiatives in other countries aimed to reduce the amount of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere. Since those compounds primarily reflect heat, their reduction effectively gave carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases more control over the Earth's temperature.
NASA scientist James Hansen was the first to sound the alarm. In 1988, he pointed out that a sort of Faustian bargain had cleaned up the atmosphere but at the cost of worsening the greenhouse problem.
Hansen and other climatologists began to develop models of the climate which showed the influence of human activity, via the burning of fossil fuels, on global temperatures.
Observations and analyses since then have confirmed and strengthened the models and the broad understanding of climate change, along with the portion that's due to human activity. Richard Somerville, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego, summarized the findings in an email.
"There are many lines of observational evidence that the world is warming, including globally rising air and ocean temperatures, retreating glaciers worldwide, increasing sea level, decreasing Arctic Sea ice extent, and mass loss on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica," he wrote. "In addition, an entire new body of climate science called 'detection and attribution' convincingly shows that the observed climate changes have distinctive space-time patterns that are consistent with causes due to human activities."

 

[GLG]

cont.....

The counterattack had started by the beginning of the 1990s. The purported evidence against global warming included the news articles on cooling by myself and others.
Some commentators, such as Dixy Lee Ray, former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, asserted that the articles represented climate scares that inevitably turned out to be untrue – as would the idea of global warming, they asserted.
Others took a less subtle route. The articles proved, they argued, that the atmosphere was cooling and that there was no reason to change that conclusion. In that view, climate science never changes.
However, both types of warming deniers, along with policymakers who have consistently opposed any regulation designed to reduce acid rain, the destruction of the ozone layer, and other perceived ills, have consistently used the articles – particularly mine – as ammunition.
But that's just one line of attack. Mann suffered another starting in 1998, after he published an article in the journal Nature; that included a "hockey stick" model that demonstrated a dramatic increase in the rate of recent global warming.
"I was at the receiving end of the attacks from many of the same individuals, think tanks, and organizations implicated in past attacks on other climate scientists, such as [late] climatologist Steve Schneider," he wrote in an email. "The attacks on climate science and on me specifically have escalated for a simple reason: As the scientific evidence becomes clearer and the threat becomes clearer, it takes yet more disinformation and propaganda to obscure the truth. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by fossil fuel interests seeking to muddy the waters. That has, in turn, provided cover for politicians doing their bidding in opposing any attempts to regulate carbon emissions."
Opponents of Mann and his fellow climatologists also seek to highlight areas of disagreements among climatologists. Certainly those disagreements exist. But they don't affect the reality that human activity is the primary trigger of warming in recent decades.
--
Peter Gwynne is a freelance science writer based in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and a frequent contributor to Inside Science. He is the author of "The Cooling World," which appeared in Newsweek in April, 1975.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/s...ate_scientists_wrong.html#ZPreJgXA2AjQ7THo.99

 

[GLG]

Rick Piltz, a climate policy analyst who resigned from the administration of George W. Bush in 2005, accusing it of distorting scientific findings for political reasons and then releasing internal White House documents to support his contention, died Oct. 18 in Washington. He was 71.
The cause was metastasized liver cancer, his wife, Karen Metchis, said. When he resigned, Mr. Piltz was a senior associate in a White House group that co-ordinated climate research among a dozen agencies.
He quit, he told PBS in 2006, because he thought he could no longer be “complicit” in what he viewed as “a conspiracy of silence.” He said his bosses had watered down language in scientific reports to play down warnings of global warming.
The essential issue in the climate-change debate is whether human activities – particularly emissions of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels – will raise temperatures over the next century. Many in the Bush administration questioned whether existing scientific evidence justified spending billions of dollars to cut emissions.
Proponents of curbing global warming say there is already a scientific consensus that the problem is real and accelerating. In June, 2005, Mr. Piltz sent The New York Times a fat FedEx package of documents that had been edited by Philip Cooney, a lawyer who was chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, the White House office that oversees federal environmental initiatives. Some of the dozens of editing changes in the documents were as subtle as the insertion of the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties.”
In an October, 2002, draft report of a summary of government climate research, titled “Our Changing Planet,” Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word “extremely” to this sentence: “The attribution of the cause of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult.”
Mr. Cooney crossed out a paragraph describing to what extent mountain glaciers and snowpack were projected to shrink. His note in the margins said the report was “straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings.”
The week that he sent the documents to the Times, Mr. Piltz, in a scathing memo circulated among government climate-change experts, declared, “Politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program.”
Before coming to the environmental council, Mr. Cooney had been a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s main trade organization, which opposes taking what it considers precipitous action on global warming. Mr. Cooney was “climate team leader.” Less than a week after the Times article, he resigned to take a job in public affairs with Exxon Mobil in Dallas.
White House press officers voiced full support for Mr. Cooney but declined to make him available for comment.
In testimony to a U.S. House committee in 2007, Mr. Cooney, a bearish, softly spoken man, said he had been trying to “advance the administration’s stated goals and policies” in making the edits, which he said were approved by James Mahoney, director of the Climate Change Science Program, for which Mr. Piltz worked. He said that Mr. Piltz had not complained to him personally before going public.
Writing in National Review in 2007, Mario Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a research organization that is skeptical of global warming, pointed out that Mr. Piltz, like Mr. Cooney, was not a scientist. Mr. Lewis argued that Mr. Cooney “did not alter a single data point or bottom-line scientific finding or conclusion,” making only slight changes in inflection. He suggested that Mr. Piltz seemed most disappointed that the Bush administration had disregarded a sweeping Clinton administration assessment of global warming on which Mr. Piltz had worked.
After resigning, Mr. Piltz spent the next nine months without income or benefits. He cashed in his retirement money and took out a loan on his home to start an advocacy group called Climate Science Watch. He blogged, did many interviews with the news media and testified before U.S. Congress several times.
In 2006, two liberal groups, the Fertel Foundation and the Nation Institute, which is affiliated with The Nation magazine, awarded Mr. Piltz their Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.
“Piltz was the first insider to expose how politics worked to undermine the integrity of the federal science program,” the citation said.
Frederick Steven Piltz was born July 29, 1943, in Detroit, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Michigan. He then moved to Austin, where he taught at the University of Texas, worked as a legislative researcher and joined the state’s Department of Agriculture when Jim Hightower, a liberal activist, was commissioner.
In Washington, Mr. Piltz worked for the Center for Clean Air Policy, a think tank; Renew America, an environmental organization; and the U.S. House science committee under the chairmanship of George Brown Jr.
When the Republicans took over the House in 1994, Mr. Piltz moved to the Global Change Research Program in the Clinton administration. Its name was changed to the Climate Change Science Program in the Bush administration. Under President Barack Obama, it went back to the original name.
Mr. Piltz lived in Bethesda, Md. Ms. Metchis, his wife, said he died at a hospice in Washington.
In addition to his wife, he leaves a daughter, Shayne Piltz. A brother, James, died in 1975. A previous marriage, to Charlotte Crafton, ended in divorce.
Mr. Piltz’s allies say he coined the term “climate denier” to describe those who disparage evidence of planetary warming. Whether he did or not, there is little doubt that in his testimony, blogs and interviews, he helped popularize it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/tech...ght-intransigence-on-climate/article21335454/

 

[GLG]

 

[OldBlackDog]

Well done OBD you just proved global cooling or is it global warming... or global neutral.... hard to tell with a article from 1974. Your point.

Science said that it was going to be a global cooling, read the articles.
The press blew it all out of proportion.

So, the public has seen by all the projections made that the press and the scientists are not to be believed.
Guess we will find out now as the US will not be doing much and China is going ahead full force.