Cato Institute scholars Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have produced a layman-friendly yet thoroughly referenced draft report summarizing “the important science that is missing from Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” a U.S. Government document underpinning the EPA’s December 2009 endangerment rule, the foundation of all of the agency’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations.

Pat and Chip’s draft report, titled Addendum: Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is a sober antidote to the climate fear-mongering patronized by the Obama administration, mainstream media, the U.N., corporate rent seekers, and the green movement. Among the best features are the numerous graphics, some of which I will post here.

Taking these in no particular order, let’s begin with the scariest part of Al Gore’s “planetary emergency”: sea-level rise. Is the rate of sea-level rise dangerously accelerating? No. Over the 20th century, there was considerable decadal variation in the rate of sea-level rise but no long-term trend.

Decadal rate of sea level rise from satellites (red curve) appended to the decadal rate of global sea level rise as determined from a nine-station tide gauge network for the period 1904–2003 (blue curve) and from a 177-station tide gauge network for the period 1948–2002 (magenta). Adapted from Holgate, S.J., 2007: On the decadal rate of sea level change during the 20th century. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, doi:10.1029/2006 GL028492

The UN IPCC Fouth Assessment Report (2007) famously concluded that “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” However, recent studies attribute components of the observed warming to other factors. Adding up those contributions, Pat and Chip calculate that greenhouse gas concentrations account for less than half of the observed warming since 1950.

“Observed” global average temperature anomalies from 1950–2010 (red) and “adjusted” global temperature anomalies after accounting for non-greenhouse gas influences from a cold bias in sea surface temperatures, a warm bias in land temperatures, increases in stratospheric water vapor, and revised estimates of the warming effect from black carbon aerosols (blue). The trend through the adjusted temperature anomalies is less than half the trend in the original “observed” data series. [Sources provided in footnotes 67-73 on p. 34.] 

Climate models typically overestimate actual warming, indicating that they overestimate climate sensitivity (the amount of warming resulting from a given increase in GHG concentrations).

During the 15 year period from 1997-2011, the observed rate of global warming as derived from the five major compilations of global average surface temperatures (GISS (red), NOAA (green), Hadley Center (dark blue), MSU satellite—University of Alabama version (yellow) and MSU satellite (Remote Sensing Systems version (light blue) falls out in the left-hand tail of the distribution of model projected trends of the same length (grey bars).

Is the recent Midwest drought evidence that our fuelish ways are destabilizing the climate system? No. There is no long-term trend in U.S. soil moisture such as might be correlated with the increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) shows no trend in the area of the nation experiencing drought or excessive wetness over the period of record that begins in 1895.

In fact, throughout the U.S., soil moisture in the 20th century increased in more areas than it declined.

Source: Andreadis, K.M., and D.P. Lettenmaier, 2006: Trends in 20th century drought over the continental United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L10403, doi:10.1029/2006GL025711

Okay, but as the world warms (and as urban heat islands expand), there are going to be more heat waves, and more people will die, right? Yes and no. “Mortality from heat waves declines as heat wave frequency increases, and deaths from extreme cold decline dramatically as cold air preferentially warms.” Cities with the most frequent hot weather, such as Phoenix, AZ and Tampa, FL, have virtually no heat-related mortality.

 Average heat-related mortality in U.S. urban areas has declined nationwide; subsequent research shows this trend continues into the 21st century. [Sources: Davis RE, et al., 2003. Changing Heat-Related Mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives 111, 1712–18. Kalkstein, L.S., et al., 2011. An evaluation of the progress in reducing heat-related human mortality in major U.S. cities. Natural Hazards 56, 113-129.]

Is global warming spinning up ever more powerful tropical cyclones? In the Atlantic Basin, there has been no long-term trend in the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index (which combines the duration and intensity of each storm into a seasonal total).

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index for the Atlantic Basin from 1851 through 2010. There is obviously no relationship to long-term temperature rise or GHG concentrations. Data available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html.

Nor has there been a long-term increase in ACE globally since 1970.

Global hurricane activity as measured by the ACE index has been in general decline since the early 1990s and as of 2011 was near its 40-year low. Source: Maue, R.N., 2011: Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity. Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L14803, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711

Is global warming altering wind patterns such that more hurricanes are striking the U.S.? There has been no long-term trend in the number of hurricanes and major (category 3-5) hurricanes making landfall in the U.S.

U.S. landfalling decadal hurricane counts reached their maximum in the 1940s. Source: Blake, E.S., C.W. Landsea, and E.J. Gibney, 2011: The deadliest, costliest, and most intense United States tropical cyclones from 1851 to 2010 (and other frequently requested hurricane facts). NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-6, National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center, Miami, FL, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf

Okay, but apart from hurricanes, has the area of the U.S. experiencing extreme weather expanded as GHG concentrations have increased? The National Climate Data Center’s Climate Extremes Index (CEI) plots the ”fraction of the area of the United States experiencing extremes in monthly mean surface temperature, daily precipitation, and drought.” The CEI has increased since 1970 but the current weather regime “clearly resembles that of the early 20th century, long before major greenhouse gas emissions.”

Climate extreme index, not counting tropical storms and hurricanes, 1920-2010. Source: Gleason, K.L., et al., 2008: A revised U.S. Climate Extremes Index. Journal of Climate, 21, 2124-2137.

But surely, tornadoes are more frequent now than ever, and what else can explain this except the increase in GHG concentrations? Actually, it’s the ability to detect small tornadoes that has increased. If we consider just the large tornadoes (F3-F5) that have been detectable for decades, there is no trend.

Number of strong U.S. tornadoes, 1950–2011. Source: NCDC, U.S. Tornado Climatology, 7 March 2012, at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html, visited 11 May 2012.

But tornadoes are killing more people, right? Nope.

U.S. tornado death rate, 1900–2011. Sources: Updated from Goklany (2009a), using USBC (2011); NWS, Hazard Statistics at http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats.shtml, accessed May 11, 2012; NWS, Storm Prediction Center, Annual U.S. Killer Tornado Statistics, at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/fataltorn.html, accessed May 11, 2012.

The same holds for mortality rates and extreme weather generally:

For the U.S., the cumulative average annual deaths from extreme weather events declined by 6% from 1979–1992 to 1993–2006 (despite a 17% increase in population), while all-cause deaths increased by 14%. [Source: Goklany, I.M. 2009. Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 14, 102-09]

Hurricane damages keep going up and up, but that’s due to the ongoing rise in population and development in coastal areas. When hurricane damage is adjusted for changes in population, wealth, and inflation, there is no long-term trend.

U.S. tropical cyclone damage adjusted for inflation, population growth and wealth, 1900-2012 [Note - I am using a more updated graph than the one appearing in Addendum. Source: Pielke et al. 2008. Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900-2005, Natural Hazards Review, DOI: 10.1061/1527-6988, 9:1(29), updated 12/31/2012].

Okay, but warmer temperatures mean more photo-chemical smog and worse air pollution, right? Only if air pollutant emissions stay the same, but emissions have declined on average by 67% since 1980. Further declines are projected as auto fleets and capital stock are replaced by newer, cleaner models.

Despite an increasing population, energy consumption, and economic productivity, U.S. pollution emissions declined by 67% since 1980. [Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Air Trends, http://epa.gov/airtrends/index.html]

Whatever risks climate change may pose to U.S. agriculture in the future, warming historically has not been associated with reductions in crop yield.

U.S. Cotton, corn and wheat yields, 1866–2010 [Source: National Agricultural Statistics Service, QuickStats 1.0 (2010), available at http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics by_Subject/index.php?sector=CROPS, downloaded December 26, 2010]

Remember the U.N. Environment Program’s (UNEP) November 2005 prediction that there would be as many as 50 million climate refugees by 2010? Not only did those displaced populations fail to materialize, some of the areas UNEP supposed would be hardest hit by climate change impacts experienced rapid population increases. Something similar is going on right here in the USA. Decade by decade, millions of Americans vote with their feet to live in warmer climates.

U.S census data show that the largest percent increases in population are in the relatively dry and hot Pacific Southwest, the moist and hot southeast Texas, and the Florida peninsula.

But ‘everybody knows’ that global warming is the worst threat facing humanity. Okay then explain this: Why do U.S. (and global) population, per capita income, and life expectancy keep rising along with carbon dioxide emissions?

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, population, GDP per capita (affluence) and life expectancy at birth, 1900-2009. [Source: Goklany, I.M. 2009. Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 1(3), updated using the Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011, and National Vital Statistics Report 59 (4): 1; CDIAC (2010); GGDC (2010)]

Well, that should be enough to whet your appetite to read Addendum. I’ll conclude this post by reproducing the draft report’s ”key findings.”

Key Findings:

1. Climate change is unequivocal, and human activity plays some part in it. There are two periods of warming in the 20th century that are statistically indistinguishable in magnitude. The first had little if any relation to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, while the second has characteristics that are consistent in part with a changed greenhouse effect. (p. 17)
2. Climate change has occurred and will occur in the United States. U.S. temperature and precipitation have changed significantly over some states since the modern record began in 1895. Some changes, such as the amelioration of severe winter cold in the northern Great Plains, are highly consistent with a changed greenhouse effect. (pp. 38–56, 187–92)
3. Impacts of observed climate change have little national significance. There is no significant long-term change in U.S. economic output that can be attributed to climate change. The slow nature of climate progression results in de facto adaptation, as can be seen with sea level changes on the East Coast. (pp. 48–49, 79–81, 155–58, 173–74)
4. Climate change will affect water resources. Long-term paleoclimatic studies show that severe and extensive droughts have occurred repeatedly throughout the Great Plains and the West. These will occur in the future, with or without human-induced climate change. Infrastructure planners would be well-advised to take them into account. (pp. 57–71)
5. Crop and livestock production will adapt to climate change. There is a large body of evidence that demonstrates substantial untapped adaptability of U.S. agriculture to climate change, including crop-switching that can change the species used for livestock feed. In addition, carbon dioxide itself is likely increasing crop yields and will continue to do so in increasing increments in the future. (pp. 102–18)
6. Sea level rise caused by global warming is easily adapted to. Much of the densely populated East Coast has experienced sea level rises in the 20th century that are more than twice those caused by global warming, with obvious adaptation. The mean projections from the United Nations will likely be associated with similar adaptation. (pp. 173–74)
7. Life expectancy and wealth are likely to continue to increase. There is little relationship between climate and life expectancy and wealth. Even under the most dire climate scenarios, people will be much wealthier and healthier in the year 2100 than they are today. (pp. 139–45, 158–61)
8. Climate change is a minor overlay on U.S. society. People voluntarily expose themselves to climate changes throughout their lives that are much larger and more sudden than those expected from greenhouse gases. The migration of U.S. population from the cold North and East to the much warmer South and West is an example. Global markets exist to allocate resources that fluctuate with the weather and climate. (pp. 154–69)
9. Species and ecosystems will change with or without climate change. There is little doubt that some ecosystems, such as the desert West, have been changing with climate, while others, such as cold marine fisheries, move with little obvious relationship to climate. (pp. 119–38, 208)
10. Policies enacted by the developed world will have little effect on global temperature. Even if every nation that has obligations under the Kyoto Protocol agreed to reduce emissions over 80 percent, there would be little or no detectable effect on climate in the policy-relevant timeframe, because emissions from these countries will be dwarfed in coming decades by the total emissions from China, India, and the developing world. (pp. 28, 211)

In An Inconvenient Truth (pp. 280-281), Al Gore enthused about a Science magazine study by Princeton economists Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala. The study concluded that, “Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know how to solve the carbon and climate problems for the next half century.” Gore claimed the policies Socolow and Pacala recommend, “all of which are based on already-existing, affordable technologies,” could reduce emissions below 1970s levels.

But Gore could not know the solutions are “affordable,” because the authors did not attempt to estimate costs. The study basically shows that if political leaders can somehow coerce everybody to use less energy and adopt low- or zero-carbon energy technologies regardless of cost, they can significantly reduce emissions by 2054. We needed Princeton professors to tell us that?

If An Inconvenient Truth were a balanced presentation rather than a CGI-embellished lawyer’s brief, Gore would have mentioned that Socolow and Pacala’s (S&P) study was a response to an earlier analysis, also published in Science, by New York University Prof. Martin Hoffert and 17 colleagues.

Hoffert et al. found that all existing energy technologies “have severe deficiencies that limit their ability to stabilize global climate.” They specificially took issue with the UN IPCC’s claim that “known technological options” could stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels at 550 parts per million (ppm) or even 450 ppm over the next 100 years. Noting that world energy demand could triple by 2050, they found that zero-carbon technologies that can produce 100 to 300% of present world power consumption “do not exist operationally or as pilot plants.” Bottom line: “CO2 is a combustion byproduct vital to how civilization is powered; it cannot be regulated away.” They concluded that it is not possible to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations and meet global energy needs “without drastic technological breakthroughs.”

I review this ancient history because Environmental Research Letters just published a study ‘updating’ (i.e. rebutting) the S&P analysis. The lead author is UC Irvine Prof. Steven Davis. One of three other co-authors is Martin Hoffert.

S&P estimated that seven ”stabilization wedges” could limit atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 500 ppm by 2054. The Davis team estimates it will take 19 and possibly 31 wedges to solve the climate ‘problem.’ In other words, the challenge is much more difficult than S&P believed.

But what, you may be wondering, is a “stabilization wedge”?

S&P depicted mankind’s emission trajectory on a graph. They estimated that if emissions could be held constant at 2004 levels, then atmospheric concentrations could be stabilized at 500 ppm in 2054. The area on the graph representing the growing gap between 2004 emissions and the projected increase in emissions over the next 50 years forms a triangle. S&P divide the triangle into seven wedges, each representing 1 gigaton of carbon (1 GtC) emissions in 2054 and 25 GtC in cumulative emissions over 50 years. Mankind could solve the climate ‘problem,’ S&P reasoned, by scaling up seven low- and zero-carbon technologies to the point where each avoids a cumulative 25 GtC by 2054.

Easier said than done! One of S&P’s strategies to achieve a stabilization wedge is to add double the current global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity. However, although once predicted to be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power is still not viable without subsidies and is not competitive with gas-fired electricity. The environmental movement, moreover, remains staunchly “no nukes,” and is unlikely to rethink its ideology in the post-Fukushima political climate.

Another strategy is to deploy carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at coal power plants. Despite billions of dollars in government R&D support, no commercial-scale CCS coal power plant has been built. None today could operate without hefty subsidies. If hit with a carbon tax or a CO2 emissions standard, most utilities would find it cheaper to build new natural gas power plants than to build new coal plants with CCS.

A third S&P strategy is to increase wind capacity by 50 times relative to the mid-2000s, for a total of 2 million large windmills. The word boondoggle leaps to mind. If wind energy is such a great buy for consumers, why do 29 states have to mandate it? If it’s truly ’sustainable,’ why did the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) assert that, despite enjoying government-guaranteed markets in more than half the states, the industry would crash unless Congress ponied up another $12.1 billion in special tax breaks?

Another strategy is to increase ethanol production 50 times. Subsequent research indicates that land conversions induced by ethanol production emit more CO2 than the petroleum displaced by ethanol consumption. Besides, even if ethanol were a low-carbon fuel, the scale up proposed – biomass plantations covering “an area equal to about one-sixth of the world’s cropland” – would intensify the already perilous fuel vs. food tradeoff and decimate millions of acres of forest and other wildlife habitat.

In the new study, “Rethinking Wedges,” Davis et al. note that since S&P was published in 2004, ”annual emissions have increased and their growth rate has accelerated, so that more than seven wedges would now be necessary to stabilize emissions.” More importantly, stabilizing emissions at current levels for 50 years would not be enough to limit CO2 concentrations to 500 ppm and, thus, avoid ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference,’ defined by climate negotiators as a warming of 2°C or more.*

So what would “solve the carbon and climate problem,” according to Davis et al.? You guessed it — “sharply reducing CO2 emissions over the next 50 years,” indeed, deploying enough wedges to achieve “near-zero emissions.” They estimate:

Given the current emissions trajectory, eliminating emissions over 50 years would require 19 wedges: 9 to stabilize emissions and an additional 10 to completely phase-out emissions. And if historical, background rates of decarbonization falter, 12 ‘hidden’ wedges will also be necessary, bringing the total to a staggering 31 wedges.

Figure explanation (from Davis et al. 2013): Idealization of future CO2 emissions under the business-as-usual SRES A2 marker scenario. Future emissions are divided into hidden (sometimes called ‘virtual’) wedges (brown) of emissions avoided by expected decreases in the carbon intensity of GDP by ~1% per year, stabilization wedges (green) of emissions avoided through mitigation efforts that hold emissions constant at 9.8 GtC y beginning in 2010, phase-out wedges (purple) of emissions avoided through complete transition of technologies and practices that emit CO2 to the atmosphere to ones that do not, and allowed emissions (blue). Wedges expand linearly from 0 to 1 GtC y from 2010 to 2060. The total avoided emissions per wedge is 25 GtC, such that altogether the hidden, stabilization and phase-out wedges represent 775 GtC of cumulative emissions.

What it means is that you can’t get there from here without fundamental technology breakthroughs — exactly what Hoffert et al. concluded in 2002. Over the next four decades the world will need multiple terawatts (trillions of watts) of new energy. None of the existing zero-carbon energies is up to the challenge:

CCS has not yet been commercially deployed at any centralized power plant; the existing nuclear industry, based on reactor designs more than a half-century old and facing renewed public concerns of safety, is in a period of retrenchment, not expansion; and existing solar, wind, biomass, and energy storage systems are not yet mature enough to provide affordable baseload power at terawatt scale. Each of these technologies must be further developed if they are to be deployed at scale and at costs competitive with fossil energy.

Filling up 31 wedges will require “deploying tens of terawatts of carbon-free energy in the next few decades.” That will entail “a fundamental and disruptive overhaul of the global energy system.” In short, “Current technologies and systems cannot provide the amounts of carbon-free energy needed soon enough or affordably enough to achieve this transformation.”

Davis et al. recommend an “aggressive set of policies” to “support energy technology innovation across all stages of research, development, demonstration, and commercialization.”

But if existing zero-carbon technologies cannot affordably be scaled up to meet current and projected global energy needs, how likely is it that technologies either not yet invented or as yet prohibitively expensive can affordably replace the world’s fossil-fuel infrastructure? And aren’t there significant risks to public health and welfare from policies “aggressive” enough to implement a “disruptive overhaul” of the energy infrastructure that supports the lives and livelihoods of billions of human beings? Rethinking Wedges is a mix of realism and wishful thinking, environmental precaution and regulatory recklessness.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

* Here Davis et al. follow the self-anointed ‘scientific consensus.’ For an alternative assessment of climate sensitivity (how much warming results from a given increase in CO2 concentrations), see Chip Knappenberger’s Lower Climate Sensitivity Estimates: Good News, Another Lower Climate Sensitivity Estimate (with Pat Michaels), and Climate Sensitivity Going Down. For an alternative assessment of climate change impacts, see Indur Goklany’s Trapped Between the Falling Sky and the Rising Seas: The Imagined Terrors of the Impacts of Climate Change.

That fossil fuels are bad for people and the planet is a cardinal tenet of both mainstream and radical environmentalism. Cato Institute scholar Indur Goklany offers a dramatically different assessment in Humanity Unbound: How Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity.

Global average life expectancy (the best single indicator of health) hardly changed through most of human history, averaging 20-25 years during 1 A.D. to 1750. Similarly, global per capita output (the best indicator of material welfare) was equivalent to an estimated $470 in 1 A.D., even lower – $400 — in 1000 A.D., and only $640 in 1750. Through most of human history, the vast majority of people were “mired in poverty.” Thomas Malthus’s gloomy prediction that economic growth would only lead to overpopulation, famine, and death seemed to bespeak the wisdom of the ages.

However, the industrial revolution and the associated advances of science and technology freed humanity from its Malthusean trap. Goklany summarizes:

From 1750 to 2009, global life expectancy more than doubled, from 26 years to 69 years; global population increased 8-fold, from 760 million to 6.8 billion; and incomes increased 11-fold, from $640 to $7,300. Never before had the indicators of the success of the human species advanced as rapidly as in the past quarter millennium.

Fossil fuels are the chief energy source of modern civilization. Accordingly, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have increased rapidly along with life expectancy and per capita income. Goklany illustrates these trends with a graph that bears a striking resemblance to a hocky stick.

The most critical way fossil fuels have improved human existence is by increasing global per capita food production. Goklany explains:

Agricultural yields on the farm are driven by fertilizers, pesticides, water, and farm machinery. Each of these inputs depends to some extent on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels provide both the raw materials and the energy for the manufacture of fertilizers and pesticides; farm machinery is generally run on diesel or another fossil fuel; and irrigation, where it is employed, often requires large amounts of energy to operate pumps to move water.

The Haber-Bosch process for manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer is responsible for feeding an estimated 48% of today’s global population, pesticides have reduced crop losses from pests by 26-40%, and average crop yields on irrigated lands are 3.6 times higher than on rain-fed lands.

Agricultural technologies continually improve, so much so that today’s farms are far productive than those of only 50 years ago:

[I]n 2007, the global food and agricultural system delivered, on average, two and a half times as much food per acre of cropland as in 1961. New and improved technologies, coupled with greater penetration of existing technologies since 1961, account for 60 percent of total global food supplies.

Fossil fuels also provide energy for refrigeration and raw material for plastic packaging — technologies critical to limiting food spoilage and waste. Finally, fossil fuels are essential for transporting food from farms to population centers and from surplus to deficit regions.

The explosion in agricultural productivity is not only good for people, it is also good for species and wildlife habitat.

. . . to maintain the current level of food production [without fossil fuels], at least another 2.3 billion hectares of habitat would have had to be converted to cropland. This is equivalent to the total land area of the United States, Canada, and India combined. Considering the threats posed to ecosystems and biodiversity from the existing conversion of 1.5 billion hectares of habitat to cropland, the effect of increasing that to 3.8 billion hectares is inestimable.

The above calculation underestimates the additional habitat that would have to be converted to cropland because it assumes that the additional 2 billion hectares of cropland would be as productive as the current 1.5 billion hectares—an unlikely proposition since the most productive areas are probably already under cultivation.

* * *

Not only have these fossil fuel–dependent technologies ensured that humanity’s progress and well-being are no longer hostage to nature’s whims, but they saved nature herself from being devastated by the demands of a rapidly expanding and increasingly voracious human population.

Fossil fuels are key contributors to a virtuous “cycle of progress,” Goklany argues. A better fed population is healthier and more productive. A larger population produces more ideas and better technology. Electrification extends the work day and powers computers, cell phones, and medical devices. Trade encourages the division of labor and the dissemination of ideas and technology.

Goklany acknowledges it may be possible to replace fossil fuels in the future. But, “as the high subsidies and mandates for renewables attest, renewables are unable to sustain themselves today.” He concludes: ”Perhaps, with help from fossil fuels, new ideas will foster technologies that will enable a natural transition away from such fuels.”

In a fiery speech yesterday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) ”calls out” “climate deniers.” In the first half of the speech he goes ad hominem, attacking opponents as “front groups” who take payola from “polluters” to “confuse” the public by selling “doubt” as their product.

First a bit of free advice for the good Senator:

Your team has been playing nasty from day one. It didn’t get you cap-and-trade, it didn’t get you Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and it’s not going to get you a carbon tax.  

Vilification doesn’t work because biomass, wind turbines, and solar panels are not up to the challenge of powering a modern economy, and most Americans are too practical to believe otherwise.

So by all means, keep talking trash about your opponents. The shriller your rhetoric, the more skeptical the public will become about your bona fides as an honest broker of “the science.”

Okay, let’s examine Sen. Whitehouse’s argument. He accuses skeptics of peddling “straw man arguments,” such as that “the earth’s climate always changes; it’s been warmer in the past.” Well, it does, and it has! Many studies indicate the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than the current warm period (CWP). A study published in July in Nature Climate Change concludes the Roman Warm Period (RWP) was warmer than both the MWP and CWP. The Northern Hemisphere was substantially warmer than the present for thousands of years during the Holocene Climate Optimum (~5,000-9,000 years ago). Arctic summer air temperatures were 4-5°C above present temperatures for millennia during the previous interglacial period.

None of this is evidence man-made global warming is not occurring, but Sen. Whitehouse sets up his own straw man by making that the main issue in dispute. What the paleoclimate information does indicate is that the warmth of the past 50 years is not outside the range of natural variability and is no cause for alarm. The greater-than-present warmth of the Holocene Optimum, RWP, and MWP contributed to improvements in human health and welfare. 

Sen. Whitehouse says skeptics also knock down a straw man when they deny extreme weather events prove the reality of climate change. “No credible source is arguing that extreme weather events are proof of climate change,” he states. Again, it’s Sen. Whitehouse who whacks a man of straw. The problem for skeptics is not that people like Al Gore or the editors of Bloomberg cite Hurricanes Katrina or Sandy as “proof” of global warming, it’s that they blame global warming (hence “polluters”) for Katrina and Sandy. They insinuate or even assert that were it not for climate change, such events would not occur or would be much less deadly. As the Senator does when he says climate change ”loads the dice” in favor of events like Sandy and is “associated with” such events.

I freely grant that heat waves will become more frequent and severe in a warmer world (just as cold spells will become less frequent and milder). However, there is no persuasive evidence global warming caused or contributed significantly to the European heat wave of 2003, the Russian heat wave of 2010, the Texas drought of 2011, or the U.S. midwest drought of 2012. A slew of scientific papers finds no long-term trend in Atlantic hurricane behavior, including a recent study based on 370 years of tropical cyclone data. Similarly, a U.S. Geological Survey study finds no correlation between flood magnitudes and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in any region of the continental U.S. over the past 85 years.

More importantly, despite long-term increases in both CO2 concentrations and global temperatures since the 1920s, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather declined by 93% and 98% respectively. The 93% reduction in annual weather-related deaths is particularly noteworthy because global population increased more than 300% since the 1920s.

Although weather-related damages are much bigger today, that is because there’s tons more stuff and lots more people in harm’s way. For example, more people live in just two Florida counties, Dade and Broward, than lived in all 109 coastal counties stretching from Texas to Virginia in the 1930s. When weather-related damages are adjusted (“normalized”) to account for changes in population, wealth, and inflation, there is no long-term trend. So although a “greenhouse signal” may some day emerge from weather-related mortality and economic loss data, at this point global warming’s influence, if any, is undetectable.

Sen. Whitehouse dismisses as a “gimmick” skeptics’ observation that there has been “no warming trend in the last ten years” (actually, the last 16 years).  He contends that the 20 warmest years in the instrumental record have occurred since 1981 ”with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.” That may be correct, but it is beside the point. A decade and a half of no net warming continues the plodding 0.14°C per decade warming trend of the past 33 years. These data call into question the climate sensitivity assumptions underpinning the big scary warming projections popularized by NASA scientist James Hansen, the UN IPCC, and the UK Government’s Stern Review report.

Sen. Whitehouse says ”deniers tend to ignore facts they can’t explain away.” He continues: “For example, the increasing acidification of the oceans is simple to measure and undeniably, chemically linked to carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. So we hear nothing about ocean acidification from the deniers.” Not so. CO2Science.Org, a leading skeptical Web site, has an extensive (and growing) ocean acidification database. Almost every week the CO2Science folks review another study on the subject. Cato Institute scholars Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger also addressed the issue on their old Web site, World Climate Report. They don’t share Sen. Whitehouse’s alarm about ocean acidification, but they do not ignore it. The Senator should check his facts before casting aspersions.

Sen. Whitehouse quotes NOAA stating that the rate of global sea level rise in the last decade “was nearly double” the 20th century rate. That is debatable. Colorado State University researchers find no warming-related acceleration in sea-level rise in recent decades.

Here’s the big picture. Scary projections of rapid sea-level rise assume rapid increases in ice loss from Greenland. In a study just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists used satellite gravity data to measure changes in Greenland’s ice mass balance from April 2002 to August 2011. The researchers estimate Greenland is losing almost 200 gigatons of ice per year. It takes 300 gigatons of water to raise sea levels by 1 millimeter, so Greenland is currently contributing about 0.66 mm of sea-level rise per year. At that rate, Greenland will contribute 6.6 centimeters of sea level rise over the 21st century, or less than 3 inches. Apocalypse not.

Sen. Whitehouse concludes by castigating Republicans for inveighing against unchecked entitlement spending and the fiscal burdens it imposes on “our children and grandchildren” while turning a blind eye to the perils climate change inflicts on future generations. But such behavior is not contradictory if the risk of fiscal chaos is both (a) more real and imminent than Al Gore’s “planetary emergency” and (b) more fixable within the policy-relevant future.

Here are two facts Sen. Whitehouse should contemplate. First, even if the U.S. were to stop emitting all CO2 tomorrow, the impact on global temperatures would be a reduction of “approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050 and 0.17°C by the year 2100 — amounts that are, for all intents and purposes, negligible,” notes Chip Knappenberger, whose calculations are based on IPCC climate sensitivity assumptions. Similarly, a study in Nature Climate Change concludes that aggressive climate change ”mitigation measures, even an abrupt switch to zero emissions, have practically no effect on sea level over the coming 50 years and only a moderate effect on sea level by 2100.”

Whether under a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, or EPA regulation, the U.S. would keep emitting billions of tons of CO2 annually for a long time. So whatever climate policies Sen. Whitehouse thinks Republicans should support would have no discernible impact on climate change risk. The costs of such policies would vastly exceed the benefits. Rejecting policies that are all pain for no gain is exactly what the custodians of America’s economic future are supposed to do.

Yes, argues Daveed Gartenstein-Ross in The Atlantic (Sep. 17, 2012). Gartenstein-Ross is the author of Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror. I haven’t read the book, but judging from the favorable reviews, Gartenstein-Ross has the ear of defense hawks of both parties. Does he offer sound advice on global warming?

In his Atlantic article, Gartenstein-Ross chides Republicans for taking a “decidely unrealistic tack” on climate change. “The available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that climate change is real; that extreme weather events are increasing; and that this dynamic will have an impact on American national security, if it hasn’t already,” he avers. He goes on to blame this summer’s drought on global warming, citing NASA scientist James Hansen’s claim that the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave, and the 2011 Texas-Oklahoma drought have “virtually no explanation other than climate change.” (For an alternative assessment, see these posts.) 

Since 2010, notes Gartenstein-Ross, the Department of Defense has classified climate change as a conflict accelerant — a factor exacerbating tensions within and between nations. Well, sure, what else is Team Obama at DOD going to say in an era of tight budgets when no rival superpower endangers our survival? The concept of an ever-deepening, civilization-imperilling climate crisis is an ideal mission-creep accelerant. 

Gartenstein-Ross concludes by urging Republicans to face “reality” and take action on climate change. However, he offers no advice as to what policies they should adopt. Does he favor cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulatory cascade, ’all of the above’? Gartenstein-Ross doesn’t say. He ducks the issue of what economic sacrifices he thinks Republicans should demand of the American people. 

Below is a lightly edited version of a comment I posted yesterday at The Atlantic on Gartenstein-Ross’s article: 

Dear Mr. Gartenstein-Ross,

Some Republicans have taken an “unrealistic tack” on climate change — for example, denying that global warming is real or doubting whether carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. This, however, is an unfortunate consequence of the climate alarm movement’s rhetorical trickery. Al Gore and his allies pretend that once you accept the reality of global warming, then everything else they claim (e.g. sea levels could rise by 20 feet this century) or advocate (cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, Soviet-style production quota for wind turbines) follows inexorably, as night the day. Consequently, some GOP politicians and activists now believe they must deny or question a tautology (“greenhouse gases have a greenhouse effect”) in order to oppose Gore’s narrative of doom and agenda of energy rationing.

As a thoughtful analyst, you should see through this rhetorical trap. Yes, other things being equal, CO2 emissions warm the planet. That, however, does not begin to settle the core scientific issue of climate sensitivity (the amount of warming projected to occur from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations). It tells us nothing about impacts, such as how much Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise by 2100 (BTW, a realistic projection is inches rather than feet or meters). It does not tell us whether the costs of “inaction” are greater or less than the costs of “action.”

James Hansen’s attribution of the ongoing drought to global warming, which you cite, is a testable hypothesis. Patrick Michaels examines how the U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) matches up over time both with the U.S. temperature record and that portion of the record attributable to global temperature trends. Turns out, there is zero correlation between global temperature trends and the PDSI, but a significant correlation between plain old natural climate variability and the PDSI.

One massive fact conveniently swept under the rug by the climate alarm movement is that since the 1920s — a fairly long period of overall warming — global deaths and death rates attributable to extreme weather have declined by 93% and 98%, respectively. The 93% decline in aggregate deaths is remarkable, given that global population has increased about four-fold since 1920. The most deadly form of extreme weather is drought, and since 1920, worldwide deaths and death rates attributable to drought have fallen by an astonishing 99.98% and 99.99%, respectively. 

As Indur Goklany, author of the study just cited explains, the increasing safety of humanity with respect to extreme weather came about not in spite of mankind’s utilization of carbon-based fuels but in large measure because of it. Fertilizers, plastics for packaging, mechanized agriculture, trade between food surplus and food deficit regions, emergency response systems, and humanitarian assistance — advances that have dramatically increased global food security — all presuppose fossil fuels and the wealth of economies powered by fossil fuels.

A just-published study by Jeff Keuter of the George C. Marshall Institute finds that “environmental factors rarely incite conflict between states or within states.” For example, Israel and her Arab neighbors have gone to war several times — but never over access to water. Keuter finds that “efforts to link climate change to the deterioration of U.S. national security rely on improbable scenarios, imprecise and speculative methods, and scant empirical support.”

You mention the hunger crisis of 2008. Ironically, one of the contributing factors was a global warming policy – the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which artificially raises the demand for and price of corn. As you note, soaring corn prices also pull up the price of wheat.

Which brings me to a final point. It is one-sided and, well, risky to assess the security risks of climate change without also assessing the security risks of climate change policies. For example, economic strength is the foundation of military power. A great power cannot have a second-rate economy. Affordable energy is vital to economic growth. Carbon mitigation schemes have a vast potential to chill job creation and growth because they are designed to make energy more costly. That is the main reason Congress and the public rejected cap-n-tax.

The worse the economy, the more painful the trade-offs between guns and butter. How to cut the deficit without gutting core military capabilities is a key issue White House and congressional budget negotiators are grappling with right now. The revival of North America as an energy producing province is one of the few economic bright spots today, a source of new tax revenues as well as new jobs. From a national security perspective, now is the worst possible time to ramp up the already considerable regulatory risks facing the coal, oil, and natural gas industries.

“I’m not saying it is global warming, but it’s what global warming would look like. It’s consistent with the kind of weather climate scientists predict will become more frequent and severe as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase.”

“It,” in the preceding, refers to the persistent heat wave affecting the Mid-Atlantic region and the derecho that uprooted trees, downed power lines, and deprived nearly a million households in the D.C. metro area of electricity and air conditioning. Warmists, or most of them, know they cannot actually link a particular weather event to global warming, but they’d like you to make the connection anyway.

This is standard rhetorical fare whenever extreme weather strikes somebody, somewhere on the planet. A commenter on Georgia Institute of Technology Prof. Judith Curry’s blog notes the resemblance to an old court-room trick:

Kind of like a lawyer asking a improper question and then withdrawing it, because all s/he really wanted was to put the idea in the jury’s mind.  

In her blog, Prof. Curry discusses an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein titled, “This U.S. summer is ‘what global warming looks like’.” Mr. Borenstein interviewed 15 climate scientists in connection with the story, including Curry, yet did not include her responses to his questions in the article. How convenient! A few excerpts from their exchange:

SB: Can you characterize what’s going in the US in terms of a future/present under climate change? Is it fair to say this is what other scientists been talking about?

JC:  As global average temperature increases, you can expect periodically there to be somewhere on the globe where weather patterns conspire to produce heat waves that are unusual relative to previous heat waves. However, there have been very few events say in the past 20 years or so that have been unprecedented say since 1900.

* * *

SB:  This seems to be only US? Is it fair to make a big deal, since this is small scale and variability and is only US? However in past years, especially in late 1990s and early 2000s, the US seemed to be less affected? So what should we make of it?

JC:  Right now, this is only the U.S. Recall, 2010 saw the big heat wave in Russia (whereas in the U.S. we had a relatively moderate summer, except for Texas). Note, the southern hemisphere (notably Australia and New Zealand) is having an unusually cold winter.

* * *

SB:  What about natural variability? Are other scientists just making too much of what is normal weather variability?

JC: We saw these kinds of heat waves in the 1930s, and those were definitely not caused by greenhouse gases. Weather variability changes on multidecadal time scales, associated with the large ocean oscillations. I don’t think that what we are seeing this summer is outside the range of natural variability for the past century. In terms of heat waves, particularly in cities, urbanization can also contribute to the warming (the so-called urban heat island effect).

Data on hurricanes also confirm Dr. Curry’s point. Al Gore and others opined that 2004-2005 marked a shift to a new climate regime of increasingly powerful and destructive hurricanes. Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University finds that global tropical cyclone frequency has declined slightly from 1970 to the present, while global tropical accumulated cyclone energy (a measure of hurricane strength) has declined significantly since 2006.

Global Tropical Cyclone Frequency

Global Tropical Cycle ACE

Meteorologist Anthony Watts notes that the drought afflicting the U.S. Southwest and Midwest today is much less severe than the drought of the 1930s, before greenhouse gas emissions could have had much effect on global climate:

The 1930s drought was itself less severe than some that occurred in pre-industrial times. Observes the National Climate Data Center:

Longer records show strong evidence for a drought [in the 16th century] that appears to have been more severe in some areas of central North America than anything we have experienced in the 20th century, including the 1930s drought. Tree-ring records from around North America document episodes of severe drought during the last half of the 16th century. Drought is reconstructed as far east as Jamestown, Virginia, where tree rings reflect several extended periods of drought that coincided with the disappearance of the Roanoke Colonists, and difficult times for the Jamestown colony. These droughts were extremely severe and lasted for three to six years, a long time for such severe drought conditions to persist in this region of North America. Coincident droughts, or the same droughts, are apparent in tree-ring records from Mexico to British Columbia, and from California to the East Coast …

The good news is that, whatever effect global warming may have on weather patterns, death and death rates related to extreme weather declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since 1900.

Source: Indur Goklany, Global Death Toll from Extreme Weather Events Declining

As Goklany explains, these decreases in weather-related mortality are due in large part to the very fossil fuel-based economic activities — electric power generation, motorized transportation, and mechanized agriculture – that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

The policy implication is exactly the opposite of what the scientists who talk like lawyers want us to believe. In Goklany’s words:

Reducing these emissions through efforts to make fossil fuel energy scarcer and more expensive could, therefore, be counterproductive in humanity’s efforts to limit death and disease from not only such [extreme weather] events but also other, far more significant sources of adversity.

The Heartland Institute plans to pay Indur Goklany, an expert on climate economics and policy, a monthly stipend to write a chapter on those topics for the Institute’s forthcoming mega-report, Climate Change Reconsidered 2012. Earlier this week, Greenpeace and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) called for a congressional investigation of Goklany. In addition to being an independent scholar, Goklany is a Department of Interior employee. Federal employees may not receive outside income for teaching, writing, or speaking related to their “official duties.”

But as I pointed out yesterday on this site, climate economics and policy are (to the best of my knowledge) not part of Goklany’s “official duties.” It would be shocking if they were. Goklany is a leading debunker of climate alarm and opposes coercive decarbonization schemes. Why on earth would the Obama Interior Department assign someone like that to work on climate policy?

Greenpeace and Grijalva have got the wrong target in their sites. The inquisition they propose might actually have some merit if directed at one of their heroes: Dr. James Hansen of NASA. Hansen has received upwards of $1.6 million in outside income. And it’s not unreasonable to assume that most or all of that income was for teaching, writing, and speaking on matters “related to” his “official duties.”

My colleague Chris Horner laid out the juicy details last November in a column posted on Watts Up With That. In “Dr. James Hansen’s growing financial scandal, now over a million dollars of outside income,” Chris argued that Hansen gets substantial outside income for activities related to his official duties and does not always comply with federal financial disclosure regulations:

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.

Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee.

There’s more in Chris’s post, but you get the drift.

Now, I wondered whether Hansen, an employee of NASA, an independent agency, is subject to the same outside compensation rules as Goklany, an employee of an Executive Agency. The answer is yes. NASA’s guidelines on “outside employment” state that ”Employees should refer generally to the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, 5 CFR Part 2635,” and must comply with Subpart H.

CFR Part 2365, Subpart H bars an employee from receiving compensation for speaking, teaching, or writing “that relates to the employee’s official duties.” Quite sensibly, though, the employee may receive compensation for speaking, teaching, or writing not related to his official duties:

Note: Section 2635.807(a)(2)(i)(E) does not preclude an employee, other than a covered noncareer employee, from receiving compensation for teaching, speaking or writing on a subject within the employee’s discipline or inherent area of expertise based on his educational background or experience even though the teaching, speaking or writing deals generally with a subject within the agency’s areas of responsibility.

This language seems to fit Goklany to a tee. The proposed chapter for Heartland on climate economics and policy is within Goklany’s discipline and area of expertise but it is not related to his official duties.

Can anyone with a straight face say the same about Hansen? How could Hansen’s teaching, speaking, and writing about climate change not be related to his official duties? How then could the outside income he has received for those activities not be unlawful?

Rep. Grijalva’s demand for a House Resources Committee “hearing” on Goklany is preposterous. A letter of inquiry would suffice even if there were evidence of improper conduct, which there is not.

My unsolicited advice to Committee Chair Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is to politely reject Grijalva’s request but also to ask Grijalva, just for the record, whether he and Greenpeace think the Committee should investigate James Hansen’s million dollar-plus outside income.

Yesterday, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) requested that the House Resources Committee investigate whether Department of Interior employee Indur Goklany accepted “illegal outside payments” from the Heartland Institute, and “what confidential information Goklany may have shared with Heartland officials in the course of negotiating his payment agreements.”

Grijalva made this request in a letter to Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Ranking Member Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The alleged ‘issue’ arose because one of the stolen Heartland documents, the Institute’s 2012 budget, proposes to pay Goklany $1,000/m to write a chapter on economics and policy for a forthcoming book, Climate Change Reconsidered: 2012 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

Grijalva, citing a letter from Greenpeace to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, claims federal employees are not allowed to take payment from outside organizations, particularly for “teaching, speaking and writing that relates to [their] official duties.”

I fully understand why Greenpeace and Grijalva want to harass and silence Goklany. Goklany is one of a handful of indispensable thought leaders in the climate policy debate.  He has demonstrated, for example, that, largely because of mankind’s utilization of fossil fuels, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather have declined by a remarkable 93% and 98%, respectively, since the 1920s. He has also demonstrated that, even assuming worst-case impacts from the UN IPCC’s high-end warming scenario, developing countries in 2100 are projected to be much richer than developed countries are today. Nobody takes the hot air out of climate hype like Indur Goklany! So naturally, Greenpeace guttersnipes want to besmirch and muzzle him.

Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way from the get-go. There are absolutely no grounds for Grijalva to investigate whether Goklany “may have shared” “confidential information” with Heartland. To make a charge like that, you’ve got to show probable cause, or at least some evidence. The mere speculative possibility that something might have happened does not authorize politicians to demand proof that it didn’t happen — not in a free country, anyway. Even Joe McCarthy pretended to have evidence for the allegations he made.

Think tanks often commission books, chapters, or papers from outside experts. If the sloths at Greenpeace and Grijalva’s office made the least effort, they would see that Goklany’s prolific scholarship on climate change relies exclusively on peer-reviewed, open-source literature.

Now let’s consider the alleged ban on outside payments for teaching, writing, and speaking. Here’s the relevant portion of the Justice Department’s Federal Employee Ethics Handbook:

An employee may not receive compensation — including travel expenses for transportation and lodging — from any source other than the Government for teaching, speaking or writing that relates to the employee’s official duties. For most employees, teaching, speaking, or writing is considered “related to official duties” if–

• The activity is part of the employee’s official duties;
• The invitation to teach, speak, or write is extended primarily because of the employee’s official position;
• The invitation or the offer of compensation is extended by a person whose interests may be affected substantially by the employee’s performance of his official duties;
• The activity draws substantially on nonpublic information; or
• The subject of the activity deals in significant part with agency programs, operations or policies or with the employee’s current or recent assignments.

Let’s take each bullet in turn. (1) To my knowledge, writing on climate economics and policy is not “part of” Goklany’s “official duties” at Interior. (2) Heartland invited Goklany to write a chapter on climate economics and policy because of his expertise, not “primarily because” of his “official position.” (3) Heartland’s “interests” are not “affected substantially” by Goklany’s “performance of his official duties.” (4) Goklany’s chapter would be based on peer-reviewed and open-source literature, not “nonpublic information.” (5) The proposed chapter presumably would not discuss Interior Department “programs, operations or policies.”

It may surprise Rep. Grijalva, but some experts who work in federal agencies also have careers as independent scholars. For decades, Goklany has written books and articles on weekends, at night, and during sabbaticals. His Web site, Goklany.Org, lists his numerous publications.

The Cato Institute published three of Goklany’s books: The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (2007), The Precautionary Principle: An Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment (2001), and Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution (1999). Since most people in America – including most authors — get paid something for their labors, I assume  Cato paid Goklany honoraria to write those books.

Do Greenpeace and Grijalva suppose that Goklany hid the books from Interior, or that Interior was too dim or lazy to find out that Cato had published them? Knowing Goklany, I would be shocked if he did not clear with higher ups whatever financial arrangements he negotiated with Cato. Ditto for anything he writes for Heartland.

Gleick did not need to steal Heartland documents for Greenpeace to discover Goklany’s “link” to Heartland. Take a look at Heartland’s Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, the prequel to the 2012 book project discussed in the purloined budget document. Appendix 2 (pp. 415-516) lists Goklany as one of eight contributing authors.

Heartland has distributed thousands of hard copies of the 2011 Interim Report and makes the book available for free download on three different Web sites (here, here, and here). Heartland will similarly publicize the heck out of the 2012 report to which Goklany may be a contributor. There is simply no “secret” here meriting a congressional probe.

So what’s it all about? Grijalva and Greenpeace are desperate to find some redeeming social value in Peter Gleick’s professional meltdown. They want to harass somebody, anybody, connected with Heartland. They want to divert attention from the stupendous embarrassment that Gleick has become for the self-anointed “consensus of scientists.” They want to suppress independent thought in federal agencies too prone already to the maladies of group-think and political correctness.

Bully tactics are more likely to turn people off than win hearts and minds. Like Gleick and the Climategate schemers, Greenpeace and Grijalva are their own worst enemies.