Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Thoughts on Bill Gates' book  For Bill Gates, the case for net-zero is “rock solid”. The science is settled, and he is convinced that “the only way to avoid disastrous outcomes is to get to zero”. For readers already convinced of the “climate crisis” and the imperative to go to “net zero” by 2050, his book holds no surprises. For those more skeptical of popular discussions of climate change, what is most striking is that Gates – among the world’s most celebrated and successful data scientists — is so curiously unaware or indifferent to data that challenges many of the presumptions contained in his book. Thus, for example, while Gates is aware of the low energy density and intermittency of solar and wind power (when the sun sets and the wind does not blow) and the prohibitive costs of batteries to store electricity at grid-scale, he nonetheless finds it imperative that we have policies “to force an unnaturally speedy transition”. Net-zero “requires the US to build as much wind and s...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body, set up at the request of member governments. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. Its mission: "to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity , its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects." Note carefully that the mission of the IPCC clearly states "climate change caused by human activity" as a foregone conclusion - before it even begins to do any scientific research! The chief characteristic which distinguishes a scientific method of i...

On Tuesday the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center sent the University of Virginia and Michael Mann copies of 40 emails selected as examples of the 27 categories identified as benefitting from the Court’s review of UVA and Mann’s claims that emails in the taxpayer-funded school’s possession are properly subject to the specific exemptions under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). These categories range from discussions of professional retaliation against other scientists who challenged Mann’s work, to those sent to or from Mann from or copying an email account covered by other FOI laws, such as the federal Freedom of Information Act. The selected emails include graphic descriptions of the contempt a small circle of largely taxpayer-funded alarmists held for anyone who followed scientific principles and ended up disagreeing with them. For example, in the fifteenth Petitioners’ Exemplar (PE-15), Mann encourages a boycott of one climate journal and a direct...

If you thought the University of East Anglia email dump from two years ago was revealing, put your drink down and take a deep breath. There’s a whole new dump of 5,000 emails and documents leaked by FOIA.org, and they are just as damning – and more so – than the first batch. James Watts has the best synopsis here . Here’s a teaser sample from Michael Mann: email 1680.txt date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400 from: “Michael E. Mann”.. subject: Re: Something not to pass on to: Phil Jones Phil, I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too. I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigat...

The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. Publicists at the United Nations, Al Gore, and their supporters frequently claim that only a few “skeptics” remain – skeptics who are still unconvinced about the existence of a catastrophic human-caused global warming emergency. It is evident that 31,487 Americans with university degrees in science – including 9,029 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,487 American scientists are not "skeptics." These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global war...

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.   - Sir Arthur Eddington You probably haven’t heard much about Solar Cycle 24, the current cycle that our sun has just entered. However if Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, our lifestyles could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse . Solar Cycle 24 could mark a time of dramatic long-term change in the climate. According to geophysicist Philip Chapman , a former NASA astronaut, scientist and former president of the National Space Society, "It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age." In recent months the sun has lost its spots. By this point in the solar cycle, sunspots would ordinarily be present in significant numbers.  If the sun does not soon revert to its "normal" behavior, and the speculation in the scientific community is growing that it ...