Climate Tricks 50, Letter to the US HOR Committee on Science, Space and Technology

This week, a group of scientists, engineers, physicians, economists, mostly from the US but with other signatories from abroad, wrote the Chairman of the US' House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, about temperature data quality. Originally posted in WUWT, 300 Scientists Tell Chairman of the House ScienceCommittee: ‘we want NOAA to adhere to law of the Data Quality Act’.

January 25, 2016

Chairman Lamar Smith
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
House of Representatives
Congress of the United States

Dear Chairman Smith,

We, the undersigned, scientists, engineers, economists and others, who have looked carefully into the effects of carbon dioxide released by human activities, wish to record our support for the efforts of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology to ensure that federal agencies complied with federal guidelines that implemented the Data Quality Act. This is an issue of international relevance because of the weight given to U.S. Government assessments during international negotiations such as the IPCC.

The Data Quality Act required government-wide guidelines to “ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, including statistical information,” that was disseminated to the public. Individual agencies, such as the EPA, NOAA and many others were required to issue corresponding guidelines and set up mechanisms to allow affected parties to seek to correct information considered erroneous.

We remind you that controversy previously arose over EPA’s apparent failure to comply with these guidelines in connection with its Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which was the subject of a report by the EPA Office of the Inspector General in 2011, see http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/20110926-11-p-0702.pdf In that case, EPA failed to comply with peer review requirements for a “highly influential scientific assessment” and argued that the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding was not a “highly influential” scientific assessment. If it wasn’t, then it’s hard to imagine what would be. (For a contemporary discussion of the EPA’s stance see
http://climateaudit.org/2011/10/04/epa-the-endangerment-finding-was-not-a-highly-influentialscientific-
assessment/ ).

In our opinion, in respect to Karl et al. 2015 and related documents, NOAA has failed to observe the OMB (and its own) guidelines, established in relation to the Data Quality Act, for peer review of “influential scientific information” and “highly influential scientific assessments.”

We urge you to focus on these important compliance issues. For your consideration we attach a draft letter which directly connects these issues to your committee’s prior request for documents.

Sincerely,
(List of signatories and tag lines)

The list of signatories is 18 pages long, see here.
I am one of the signatories, on page 14. I was invited by a good friend in the US, Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist. It seems that I am the only signatory from South East Asia.

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See also:

Climate Tricks 46, More alarmism --> more climate money expectation --> more disappointment, December 12, 2015
Climate Tricks 47, Severe UK flooding due to "man-made" warming, climate change? December 30, 2015 

Climate Tricks 48, Denying climate cycles, January 13, 2016 

Climate Tricks 49, No extreme weather, no severe storms in the past? January 14, 2016

Global warming hits Asia, Part 4, January 26, 2016

Climate Stupidity 23: Low Cloud and Rains due to Warming

Been raining here in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces the whole day yesterday, the rain showers extended until today and perhaps the next few days. No typhoon or tropical depression, simply on the "tail end of a cold front". It also rained on the first 2 days of this month. This morning it was great -- very low clouds over the metropolis, misty and cold, really nice.

The normal dry-but-cold months of November-December have become wet-and-cold, thanks to "man-made global warming". Many UN and government bureaucrats, plus climate rent-seekers among big international NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace, and corporate rent-seekers are in Durban, S. Africa now to "fight global warming and man-made climate change."

Here's the November 2011 air/tropospheric temperature anomaly. See the trend towards global cooling. Data from Real Science

Air temperature, land surface temperature, sea surface temperature, all experiencing declines in temperature anomaly (meaning "colder than normal") while global CO2 concentration keeps rising, see below. That is why the warmers change tune and say that "more CO2 causes more warming and more cooling." Cool guys.

Here's the growth of CO2 emission in major economies around the world, from 1950 to 2010. Data is from Updated carbon emissions defining the history of the global economy, November 14, 2011 by Warwick Hughes.

So if one will plot recent global air/tropospheric temperature vs. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, this is how it looks like. Data from the Friends of Science.

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Meanwhile, I wrote several short papers on climate in 2009, posting 5 of them here:

(1) Market Solution to Emission Problems

February 10, 2009

I favor market-driven climate change (CC) mitigation via innovation and business. This is because they are still part of human adaptation to CC. What I am against is additional government intervention, regulation and taxation, to "fight and mitigate" CC and global warming. If more companies will join the race to produce more effective solar panels, more efficient windmills, etc., fine. Then let governments abolish corporate income tax, dividend and capital gains tax, documentary stamp tax, etc. on those firms, in exchange for government not giving them "incentives" and subsidies. As demand for green and renewable energy sources increase, and as government distortion through multiple taxation and regulation decrease, suppliers of those commodities will find the sector highly profitable, and more players will come in, and the Greens, adaptationists and alarmists will both be happy.

The volume of human-induced CO2 in the atmosphere and in the planet is directly a function of economic activities. That is, we can say that

(human-induced) CO2 emission = GDP size x Emission Intensity (EI)

A country can have less emission intensity due to modern and less polluting technologies but if the GDP size is big, like the US and combined EU GDP, CO2 emission will still be big.

Governments-inspired mitigation policies that target -30 percent (or higher) CO2 emissions within 20 or 30 years can only mean that (a) EI will significantly decline, or (b) GDP size will have to decline, or both. Since (a) cannot happen in a short period of time as various government-initiated distortions discourage the entry of so many investors and businesses into the sector (eg, coal companies closing their operations and running towards solar farms and wind farms production), the unexpected victim or sacrificial goat will be economic growth. Less trips by cars, jeepneys, trucks, buses, ships and airplanes = less pollution.