Perennial climate-change alarmist Dana Nuccitelli is upset—as always. This time, it’s because Donald Trump nominated Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) to become the next administrator of NASA. What’s Nuccitelli’s beef? “Scientists and astronauts are usually chosen to lead NASA, for obvious reasons. Bridenstine is neither ….” Likewise, ClimateHawksVote.com, led by 350.org founder and environmental activist Bill McKibben and self-described Communist and former Obama adviser Van Jones … [Read more...]
Why Do @Rogues Love Darkness?
In "What The 'Rogue' EPA, NPS and NASA Twitter Accounts Teach Us About The Future Of Social," Kalev Leetaru peers inside the Pandora's box of the implications of "rogue" social media accounts---accounts that purport to express the views of people from within (or recently having left) government agencies, corporations, etc., in opposition to the official views of those agencies, corporations, etc., but the actual authors of which are not revealed. It's a frightening prospect. Before anyone … [Read more...]
Seeing Red—New NASA Climate Change Video Uses Questionable “Data” for Colorful Deception
A visitor to Cornwall Alliance's Facebook page recently asked our thoughts on a new video from NASA purporting to demonstrate that global warming is happening rapidly and that there's been no slow-down, let alone "pause," in the last two decades. Among other media, Huffington Post featured the video in an article titled "NASA Climate Change Video Shows Just How Quickly the Earth Is Warming." As is typical, the video uses frightening graphics to communicate numbers that are far less than … [Read more...]
Was July the “Hottest Month on Record”? Who Cares?
Mainstream media the world over breathlessly report that scientists say July 2016 was the “hottest” month in the global temperature record stretching back to 1880 (or as CNN wrongly reported, “ever”)! And future Julys will only become hotter! Repent, the end is near! Or maybe not. Consider: First, for most of the world, whether land or sea, raw data were nonexistent for most of the period before, roughly speaking, the 1960s, making precise claims about global temperature before then … [Read more...]
Leading Scientists Urge Greater Data Quality Accountability
Over 300 scientists, engineers, economists, and other scholars last week sent a letter to Congressman Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in support of the Committee’s efforts to implement greater accountability for the scientific work of federal agencies involved in climate research, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Environmental Protection Agency … [Read more...]
Low Climate Sensitivity Makes Fighting Global Warming Unwise
To achieve the IPCC’s 3˚ “best estimate” of warming from doubled CO2 since the Industrial Revolution by the end of this century, GAT would have to rise another 2.593˚ in the remaining 63.5 years, a rate of 0.41˚ per decade, which is 3.7 times as fast as the observed rate so far. To achieve the 2˚ lower bound claimed for over 20 years, GAT would have to rise two-and-a-quarter times as fast as the observed rate. Even to reach the 1.5˚ the IPCC now claims is the lower bound, GAT would have to rise … [Read more...]
The Pluto Flyby that almost did(n’t) happen
“Hello, Pluto, we’ve made it here.” Its taken a while, but finally we have a real Pluto flyby. NASA’s New Horizons probe flew by Pluto this morning (July 14), capturing history’s first up-close looks at the little rock that couldn’t (Pluto was declared no planet a short while ago, but might make a comeback after today). Later tonight we’ll know definitively if the mission was a success. The closest approach came at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT), when the spacecraft zoomed within 7,800 miles (12,500 … [Read more...]
If they Could Put a Man on the Moon …
A couple of years ago a group of engineers and other scientists involved in the Apollo space program took interest in the debates over global warming. They called themselves The Right Climate Stuff, and they set out to make as objective assessments as they could of the arguments pro and con on global warming, human influence on it, and proposals to mitigate it. Lots of folks wondered why astronautical engineers should have thought they had anything special to contribute to the debate. Over the … [Read more...]
Oppressing the Poor In the Name of Fighting Global Warming
"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." So said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message last week. That he spent under 5% of the speech on the subject—about one-ninth as much as on the economy, one-fifth as much as on our need to overcome cynicism, and a little less even than on affordable college education—and tucked it away in a section about two-thirds of the way through suggests that the President doesn't really believe it … [Read more...]
NASA’s Children’s Climate Change Website, and the book 1984: Creating Spies One Child at a Time
What would you say if your child accused you of a thought crime, and turned you in to the thought police? Would you say it was ridiculous? Perhaps you would say, “There is no ‘thought crime’ in the United States.” Surely your children would never try to accuse you of a crime or try to change your behavior. Well, think again, because that is exactly what websites like NASA’s Climate Kids intends to do, except they won’t accuse you of thought crime, they will accuse you of a climate crime. This … [Read more...]
