Articles by Katie Spence

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts July, August, and September will be hotter than usual. And for those who view warmer temperatures as problematic, that’s a significant cause for concern.“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” said United Nations secretary-general António Guterres on March 19. “The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink.“Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts. Sirens are blaring across all major indicators: Last year saw record heat, record sea levels, and record ocean surface temperatures. … Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting.”President Joe Biden called the climate “an existential threat” in his 2023 State of the Union address. “Let’s face reality. The climate crisis doesn’t care if you’re in a red or a blue state.”In his 2024 address he said, “I don’t think any of you think there’s no longer a climate crisis. At least, I hope you don’t.”When recalling past temperatures to make comparisons to the present, and, more importantly, inform future climate policy, officials such as Mr. Guterres and President Biden rely in part on temperature readings from the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN).The network was established to provide an “accurate, unbiased, up-to-date historical climate record for the United States,” NOAA states, and it has recorded more than 100 years of daily maximum and minimum temperatures from stations across the United States.The problem, say experts, is that an increasing number of USHCN’s stations don’t exist anymore.“They are physically gone—but still report data—like magic,” said Lt. Col. John Shewchuk, a certified consulting meteorologist.“NOAA fabricates temperature data for more than 30 percent of the 1,218 USHCN reporting stations that no longer exist.”He calls them “ghost” stations.Mr. Shewchuck said USHCN stations reached a maximum of 1,218 stations in 1957, but after 1990 the number of active stations began declining due to aging equipment and personnel retirements.NOAA still records data from these ghost stations by taking the temperature readings from surrounding stations, and recording their average for the ghost station, followed by an “E,” for estimate.President Joe Biden, joined by agency officials, speaks during a briefing on extreme heat conditions, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on July 27, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)The addition of the ghost station data means NOAA’s “monthly and yearly reports are not representative of reality,” said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute.“If this kind of process were used in a court of law, then the evidence would be thrown out as being polluted.”Critical DataNOAA’s complete record of USHCN data is available on its website, making it a vital tool for scientists examining temperature trends since before the Industrial Revolution.Jamal Munshi, emeritus professor at California’s Sonoma State University, wrote in a 2017 paper that because many of the stations in the USHCN, and their data, date back to the 1800s, they’ve been “widely used in the study of global warming.”“The fear of anthropogenic global warming has generated a great interest in temperature trends such that even minute changes in the temperature record are scrutinized, and controversial implications for their effects on climate, extreme weather, and sea level rise are weighed against the cost of reducing emissions as a way of moderating these changes,” Mr. Munshi wrote.“Energy and development policy around the world are impacted by these evaluations.”Mr. Shewchuk said the USHCN data is the only long-term historical temperature data the United States has.“In these days of apparent ‘climate crisis,’ you would think that maintaining actual temperature reporting stations would be a top priority—but they instead manufacture data for hundreds of non-existent stations. This is a bizarre way of monitoring a climate claimed to be an existential threat,” he said.A member of a weather team breaks down a weather station on top of a radar truck being displayed during a NOAA education day to learn about tornadoes, in Memphis on Feb. 8, 2023. (Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)“Observed data is real. Altered and fabricated data is not real. Period.”The website, noaacrappy, lists all of the ghost, or “zombie” stations, their location, how long they’ve been closed and then links to NOAA’s recordings.Significantly, the map shows, not all of the stations used to interpolate temperature data are near the closed station. Thus, hypothetically, it’s possible that since Oklahoma City’s stations are all “zombies,” interpolation data is coming from as far away as Gainesville, Texas, which is more than 136 miles away, and Enid, Oklahoma, which is more than 100 miles away.“For various reasons, NOAA feels the need to alter this data instead of fixing equipment problems they think exist,” Mr. Shewchuk said.“Fixing temperature reporting stations is not rocket science. If we can go up to space to fix the Hubble telescope, we can surely come down to earth to fix a few thermometers.”Premium PicksNOAA’s use of ghost temperature stations isn’t a recent phenomenon. In 2014, Mr. Watts raised the issue of ghost stations and bad data with NOAA’s chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, Tom Peterson, and Texas’ state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, who confirmed there was an issue.“Anthony – I just did a check of all Texas USHCN stations. Thirteen had estimates in place of apparently good data,” Mr. Nielsen-Gammon wrote in an email to Mr. Watts, according to a report on the latter’s website.“It’s a bug, a big one. And as Zeke [Hausfather] did a cursory analysis Thursday night, he discovered it was systemic to the entire record, and up to 10 percent of stations have ‘estimated’ data spanning over a century.”At the time, Mr. Watts reported on his climate website, “Watts Up With That,” that NOAA was taking the issue seriously and expected them to issue a fix shortly.That fix never materialized. “They’re still doing it, and it’s even worse” he said.NOAA’s Cooperative Observer Program, which includes the USHCN stations, is a network of daily weather observations taken by more than 8,500 volunteers, its webpage states.Mr. Watts said the process for volunteers is “labor intensive.”(L–R) Philippe Papin, hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, and Richard Pasch, senior hurricane specialist, work on tracking unsettled weather over the eastern Gulf of Mexico in Miami on May 31, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)“It requires people to record high and low temperature, rainfall, the temperature at the time of observation, and do it at a very specific time, every day. And this has to then be recorded and sent to the National Climatic Data Center in Nashville, now known as the National Center for Environmental Information,” he said.“Some of it’s still done on paper, some of it’s still done with touchtone over the telephone. It requires a lot of dedication and effort on the part of the observer. It’s a thankless job. And as a result, observers have been disappearing. A lot of them have left due to attrition by death. And then there’s no one to take on that job.”Mr. Watts explained that when that happens, instead of subtracting the unmanned station from the overall number of USHCN stations, NOAA creates a number from surrounding stations.“As a result, we end up with this milkshake of data that is basically a hot mess, and isn’t real in most cases,” Mr. Watts said.Mr. Shewchuk said as a forensic consulting meteorologist, he produced expert witness reports for legal cases.“I only used official ‘NOAA certified’ original weather data observations,” he said. “If I were to use ‘altered’ or ‘fabricated’ data, I would have been thrown out of court.”NOAA’s DefenseNOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information confirmed to The Epoch Times that it uses “ghost” station data.As an explanation, it said, “NOAA provides estimates for missing monthly temperature values in the USHCNv2.5 dataset. The approach to estimating missing values is described in the USHCN v2 overview paper, and values that are estimated are noted with a specific flag as described in the USHCN readme file.Students of the University of Illinois carry a weather station known as a StickNet, which collects temperature, humidity, pressure and wind data, during a NOAA education day to learn about tornadoes, in Memphis on Feb. 8, 2023. (Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)“This flag is used to distinguish the observed values from estimated values. This attribute of providing estimated values to create uniform periods of record for monthly temperature stations is somewhat unique to the USHCN monthly data, which has provided estimates for several decades.“While these estimates are provided as a service to users who may benefit from the data completeness provided by USHCN, NOAA itself does not directly use the estimates for closed stations (or for early periods before the observed record begins) in its own climate monitoring activities.”Mr. Shewchuk didn’t buy NOAA’s response.“It’s a shell game,” he said. “The ‘USHCN’ data is now included in a variety of larger datasets of various names, so now some can officially claim that ‘USHCN’ is not being used as a single entity.“However, all the USHCN data is actually used for all historic climate studies because the USHCN data is the only data that goes back over 100 years. Without this historical data, we are climate-change blind.”He added, “If NOAA doesn’t use USHCN data, then why do they use our tax monies to update the USHCN data files on a daily basis? Why do they use our tax monies to periodically go back and re-alter previously altered temperature data?”The Bigger IssueAccording to Mr. Watts, ghost stations are problematic but are only part of a much bigger problem.He explained that several different entities—such as the European Commission’s Copernicus, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Berkeley’s Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST), and NOAA—publish monthly and yearly climate data and advertise themselves as having “independent data.”“That is a lie,” Mr. Watts said about the independent data claim.“The USHCN data set and the [new] nClimDiv climate division data set [which uses the same stations and has the same problems] comes from the Cooperative Observer [Program] in the United States.Activists from climate group Fridays for Future shout slogans and march during a Global Climate Strike in New York on March 3, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)“Similarly, in the rest of the world, there is a Cooperative Observer [Program] that suffers from the same problems of attrition and incompetence. And it’s called the GHCN; the Global Historical Climatology Network.“All these different entities out there, like NOAA, GISS, BEST, all the entities I listed, use the same data from GHCN. And they all apply their own set of ’special sauce’ adjustments to create what they believe is true.“It’s almost like each of these entities is creating their version of the real, true God. You know, it’s like a religion. They’re using different mathematical and statistical techniques to produce their version of climate reality.“And it all goes back to the same original, badly-sited, badly-maintained ghost station dataset around the world. USHCN and GHCN are the same stuff. So, there is no independent temperature dataset. It’s bogus that anyone claims this.”Mr. Shewchuk said the warming the earth has experienced since the 1800s is much less than has been reported, but even if it weren’t, warmer temperatures are natural—not manmade—and not a cause for concern.“We are still thawing out from the Little Ice Age because the Bray and Eddy solar cycles are still in their warming phases,” he said. “[Carbon dioxide] is a greenhouse gas, but its contribution to today’s warming is trivial. Whenever someone asks me how much ’man-made‘ CO2 is increasing Earth’s temperature, I respond, ’Does the growth of a new eyelash increase your weight?’“There is no climate emergency. In fact, all measures of severe weather are decreasing—even tornadoes and hurricanes. Furthermore, global warming (at least the little that there is) and increasing CO2 are good for life on Earth. History clearly shows us that life thrives during warm periods (like the Medieval Warm Period) and suffers during cool periods (like the Little Ice Age).He pointed out that even NOAA and NASA report that increased CO2 has “greened the planet” and increased plant growth, which has benefited food production.“We should celebrate CO2—not demonize it.” […]

This year’s hurricane season, which officially starts June 1, is being predicted by WeatherBELL as the “hurricane season from hell,” with weather patterns similar to those of 2005, 2017, and 2020.Along with it, says the firm’s meteorologist and chief forecaster Joe Bastardi, will come the climate change blame game, which he calls a false narrative.In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, killing an estimated 1,833 people and causing approximately $161 billion in damages. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, Irma hit the Caribbean, and Maria hit the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, resulting in at least 3,364 fatalities and a combined cost of over $294 billion in damages.In 2020, six major hurricanes landed, resulting in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) dubbing 2020 the “most active season in recorded history.”Following each season, government officials, committees, and scientists were quick to blame climate change.“There is perhaps no better example of the potential for devastating global warming impacts than the Gulf Coast and Hurricane Katrina,” the U.S. Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming stated after Katrina.“While the contribution of human-caused warming to Hurricane Katrina is difficult to quantify, scientists have unearthed a trend towards larger, more intense storms as oceans around the world warm.”After Irma, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the 2017 season “the most violent on record.”“Changes to our climate are making extreme weather events more severe and frequent, pushing communities into a vicious cycle of shock and recovery,” he stated.After the 2020 season, Jim Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, blamed “warmer-than-average ocean temperatures” for the hurricane “hyper-activity.”He said an increase in more ferocious hurricanes over the past 40 years was linked to climate change.Premium PicksMr. Bastardi said he expects to hear similar messaging this year if it pans out like he’s predicting.“If you hang around people constantly spouting negative stuff and how bad it is, guess what you’re going to believe? … It’s a great strategy for pushing this thing—if I wanted to argue the CO2 [carbon dioxide] argument, I’d do exactly what they’re doing,” Mr. Bastardi told The Epoch Times.“But there’s been no increase. And the size of the storms is getting smaller. That’s the other thing: hurricanes are smaller and more compact.”Oceanographer and certified consulting meteorologist Bob Cohen concurred.He said there’s currently a transition from El Niño patterns to La Niña, which is “correlated with higher-than-normal hurricane activity.”“Right now, the subsurface temperatures are much cooler than during El Niño,” he told The Epoch Times. “The immediate near-surface temperatures are still warmer, but the subsurface water pool and the warm water pool have dissipated, and so once that pops to the surface, it becomes La Niña,” Mr. Cohen said.People walk along the beach looking at property damaged by Hurricane Ian in Bonita Springs, Fla., on Sept. 29, 2022. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)He said he expects “we’ll hear a lot more alarmist messaging” if 2024 is a busy hurricane season, as predicted.But, like Mr. Bastardi, Mr. Cohen said hurricanes aren’t getting bigger or more intense. He said that as temperatures naturally warm coming out of the Little Ice Age, hurricanes and weather events will get less intense—not exponentially worse.Basic Physics and TemperatureThe Earth endeavors to exist in a state of equilibrium; it tries to equalize the temperature between the equator and the poles, which drives weather, according to Mr. Cohen.“When you look at the 50,000-foot big picture, the Earth is a heat engine,” he said. “The tropics remain fairly constant in temperatures, and it’s the poles that have the greatest change.“The gradient drives the storms. … If the poles warm, the temperature gradient decreases, which would mean less of a requirement for more intense storms from Mother Nature. It’s basic physics.”Mr. Bastardi agreed.“Look at Ida versus Betsy,” he said. “Betsy’s hurricane-force winds extended out 150 miles to the west and 250 miles east. Ida 50 miles to the west, and 75 miles to the east. They’re both category 4. They both had similar pressures. Which was the worst storm? The bigger storm. But they don’t tell you that.”NOAA’s hurricane division shows Hurricane Betsy hitting Florida and Louisiana in 1965 with a central pressure of 946 millibars and a maximum wind speed of 132 miles per hour. Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in 2021 with a central pressure of 931 mb and a maximum wind speed of 149 miles per hour.However, NOAA data doesn’t include the overall size of a hurricane.NOAA’s continental United States hurricane impact, landfall data from 1851 to 2022. (The Epoch Times)“Hurricanes now are like fists of furry rather than giant bulldozers that come in and plow the coast,” Mr. Bastardi said. “But [NOAA] won’t show the entire picture. Because if they did, people would say, ‘What the heck!’”He said the reason hurricanes are more costly now is because of increased infrastructure along the coasts, not because of increased severity.NOAA’s historical hurricane data dating back to 1851 supports the premise that hurricanes aren’t getting worse.It adds as a caveat to its data that “because of the sparseness of towns and cities before 1900,” hurricanes may have been missed or their intensity underestimated.NOAA’s data also shows hurricanes are getting less severe in terms of central pressure.Even with possible missing data, the NOAA data show an average central pressure decline of 0.00013mb per year between 1851 and 2022 (2023 data isn’t included yet), and max wind had a marginal average increase of 0.00011mph per year for that same period.Hurricane Florence gains strength in the Atlantic Ocean as it moves west, as viewed from the International Space Station on Sept. 10, 2018. (NASA via Getty Images)The agency uses the Saffir-Simpson scale to categorize hurricanes from 1 to 5 based on maximum sustained wind speed.Fear Before RealityGovernment agencies, such as NOAA, often lead with an alarming statement about increased weather severity, but beyond the headlines, the data show a different story, Mr. Cohen said.For example, in its 2023 State of the Science fact sheet titled “Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate Change,” NOAA asks the questions: “Has human-caused climate change had any detectable influence on hurricanes and their impacts?” and “What changes do we expect going forward with continued global warming?”It answers itself by stating that “Several Atlantic hurricane activity metrics show pronounced increases since 1980.”A few paragraphs later, NOAA states that if the data from the 1900s to the present is considered, “There has been no significant trend in annual numbers of U.S. landfalling tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes.”Instead, there’s a “decreasing trend since 1900 in the propagation speed of tropical storms and hurricanes over the continental U.S.”Mr. Cohen said NOAA’s approach is problematic. Its initial statements are “scary” and then “it discounts these same statements.”“It’s very confusing because it goes back and forth between blaming climate change and blaming natural variability,” he said.The reliance on climate modeling instead of observed reality is one of the problems with government reports, Mr. Cohen said.The National Hurricane Center released its forecast for Tropical Storm Idalia’s path on Aug. 28, 2023, showing the storm forming into a major, Category 3 hurricane before hitting somewhere along Florida’s Gulf Coast. (NOAA/NHC)In its fact sheet, NOAA says it hasn’t found clear evidence of a “greenhouse gas-induced change in historical observed Atlantic hurricane behavior.”“Since a highly confident attribution has not yet been established for Atlantic hurricanes, future projections rely mostly on climate models alone.”Mr. Cohen said the real observations don’t agree with the models.“Some will say, ‘Well, if the observations don’t agree, then the observations are wrong.’ But it’s the opposite. It’s the models that are wrong,” he said.Mr. Bastardi concurred and added that much of what’s being presented to the public is propaganda, not science, intended to facilitate a specific outcome.“The climate agenda is the nail in freedom’s coffin. We’re more prosperous, we have five times the number of people, and we have one-fiftieth the number of climate disasters than we did in the 1900s,” he said.“But we’ve got this mass brainwashing going on, and it’s all over incremental nonsense—very, very small things that are just amplified to make people think that things are really bad.”Philippe Papin, hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, tracks unsettled weather over the eastern Gulf of Mexico in Miami on May 31, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images)CO2 ImpactWhen asked if human-caused CO2 has an impact on hurricanes, Mr. Bastardi was quick to say “no.”Mr. Cohen agreed. “Greenhouse gas doesn’t warm the ocean, except in the top millimeter. The deep warming is caused by the sun. The greenhouse gas theory, which is effect, irradiates heat that tries to escape back down to the Earth in a wavelength that only goes into the oceans at the top—the ocean’s skin or the top few millimeters. So, you don’t get changes in ocean heat content because of greenhouse gasses,” he said.“You get that because of solar insulation, the direct sunlight, which is a different wavelength. And so, changes in thermal heat content are not due to greenhouse gasses.”Mr. Bastardi agreed and said there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to the climate and what causes warming or cooling, particularly in the oceans.“We’re woefully short of knowing what’s going on in the oceans,” he said. “We have one data point for every 112,000 square miles. It does not do anything except faintly estimate what’s going on.”The Discoverer Enterprise drilling rig continues the effort to recover oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill site in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast on July 3, 2010. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)He said the increase in geothermal activity in the oceans since 1990 has been warming the oceans. But he’s also seeing a predicted cooling.“What’s more startling to me is how cold the Indian Ocean is forecast to get over the next six months. I mean, I’ve never seen a drop like this forecasted,” he said.During the incoming change to the La Niña pattern, upwelling in the oceans brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface, pushing the Pacific jet stream northward. That can result in droughts in the southern United States, increased rain and flooding in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, and an increased risk of hurricanes, according to NOAA.“The warming of the oceans is a big deal,” Mr. Bastardi said. “But there may be a countering going on. As far as La Niña goes, the planet is warming. And it’s warming in a way that creates stronger than average easterly winds across the Pacific, which means upwelling, and upwelling means cooler water.“All a La Niña is is a resistance to the warming that’s taking place. And unless there is a shutdown of whatever input that is—if you’re a CO2 guy, you think it’s manmade, and if you’re me, you believe it’s natural—until that shutdown occurs, the oceans will continue to warm.“Now, here’s a dirty little secret: We don’t have the data to know exactly what’s happening.”The warming currents of El Nino drive temperatures up; the reverse process called La Nina drives temperatures down. (NOAA)Mr. Bastardi predicts this hurricane season “will turn into a real political football” over the climate change narrative.Mr. Cohen added, “You never see it asked: ‘For humans, what is the optimal temperature?’“Nine times more people die from cold than heat. The yields in Africa now because of the CO2 are huge, feeding millions of people. So many articles, particularly in the mainstream media, are written to scare people. And that leads to the general public thinking we’re heading into a bad situation. And that’s not the case.“Warmer weather is better.” […]

Each year from 2023 to 2030, climate change sustainable development goals will cost every person in economies such as the United States $2,026, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. In lower-income economies, the per-person annual cost ranges from $332 to $1,864.In total, the global price tag comes to about $5.5 trillion per year.Separately, a report from the left-aligned nonprofit Climate Policy Initiative found that in 2021 and 2022, the world’s taxpayers spent $1.3 trillion each year on climate-related projects.It also found that the “annual climate finance needed” from 2031 to 2050 is more than $10 trillion each year.“Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future,” President Joe Biden said on Nov. 14, 2023, while announcing $6 billion in new investments through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).“The impacts we’re seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious, and more costly.”At its signing in August 2022, President Biden said the IRA “invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever—ever, ever, ever—in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our economic—our energy security.”A report from Goldman Sachs put the dollar amount much higher, stating, “Critical funding for this next energy revolution is expected to come from the IRA, which will provide an estimated $1.2 trillion of incentives by 2032.”More ArticlesThe trillions of dollars being poured into new initiatives stem from the goals set by the United Nations’ Paris Agreement’s legally binding international treaty to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions” in the hope of maintaining a temperature of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.But any decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions won’t have an effect for hundreds to thousands of years—even under the most restrictive circumstances, according to some experts.“If emissions of CO2 stopped altogether, it would take many thousands of years for atmospheric CO2 to return to ‘pre-industrial’ levels,” the Royal Society states in a report on its website. The organization describes itself as a “fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists.”“Surface temperatures would stay elevated for at least a thousand years, implying a long-term commitment to a warmer planet due to past and current emissions,” the report states. “The current CO2-induced warming of Earth is therefore essentially irreversible on human timescales.”A frequently asked questions page on NASA’s website holds the same position.Steam and exhaust rise from a power plant on a cold winter day in Oberhausen, Germany, on Jan. 6, 2017. (Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)“If we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries,” NASA states.And, other scientists say, that’s because CO2 isn’t the culprit in the first place.“CO2 does not cause global warming. Global warming causes more CO2,” said Edwin Berry, a theoretical physicist and certified consulting meteorologist. He called Royal Society’s position on CO2 “pure junk science.”Ian Clark, emeritus professor for the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Ottawa, agreed that if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the Earth would continue warming—but not because of CO2.He said that contrary to popular opinion, temperature doesn’t follow CO2—instead, CO2 follows temperature, which, itself, is due to solar activity.Temperature and CO2One of Mr. Clark’s primary areas of research is paleoclimatology (the study of climate conditions using indirect records such as tree ring data, ice cores, and other proxy records), and in particular, Arctic paleohydrogeology, which is the study of the Earth’s water throughout history.“During the ice ages, we had great temperature variations, and this has to do with, not straight-up solar activity, but the amount of solar activity that is hitting the Earth at certain important latitudes, all caused by celestial events,” Mr. Clark said.“The Earth, in our solar system, is moving around and being jostled. And we have different orbiting patterns that affect solar input, and that creates ice ages and interglacial periods—which we’re in now. And CO2 tracks that. So we’ll see enormous temperature changes, going from ice ages to interglacials, and CO2 gets very low during ice ages and very high during interglacials.“And that gives the appearance that CO2 is driving the climate, but it’s actually following. It lags by about 800 years.”Pupils, wearing protective glasses, look at the partial solar eclipse in Schiedam, Netherlands, on June 10, 2021. (Marco de Swart/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)Mr. Clark said that during ice ages, and particularly the past 10,000 years, scientists have a fairly good idea of the temperature, thanks to proxy records. He said those records show that the Medieval Warm Period was likely much warmer than today, and agriculture and civilization flourished.But the Little Ice Age followed that from the 1400s to 1800s. “And that’s when we had difficulty with agriculture,” Mr. Clark said.“The Thames froze over. We have all sorts of recollections about how cold, and some would say miserable, it was back then. But then it started warming up again. So, about every 1,000 years or so, we seem to have these fluctuations. This is due to solar activity, and that’s where we see the importance of the sun, which is the ultimate source of energy beyond geothermal and nuclear energy. Solar drives climate.”Another peer-reviewed study, by scientist William Jackson, examined the relationship between CO2 levels and temperature over the past 425 million years.Mr. Jackson is a distinguished research and emeritus professor for the department of chemistry at UC–Davis who specializes in understanding the role that molecules such as CO2, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide play in planetary atmospheres.His paper, published in 2017, found that “changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not cause temperature change in the ancient climate.”Similarly, a group of researchers whose report was published in Nature found that when looking at carbon isotope compositions at the million-year scale, long-term atmospheric carbon dioxide was unrelated to temperature, and even showed an inverse trend, especially after major events such as volcanic eruptions.A geological timescale showing the concentration of CO2 and temperature fluctuations over time. (Courtesy of Dr. Patrick Moore)They further found that when temperature and atmospheric CO2 reached a certain level, organic carbon burial drastically increased, eventually resulting in a significant decrease in atmospheric CO2 levels.That activity, Mr. Berry said, is nature balancing the levels of CO2—which is an ongoing process.Inflow and OutflowCO2 flows from the atmosphere into plants through photosynthesis and soil through decomposition, is absorbed by the oceans, and is then released through respiration, evaporation, and fossil fuel combustion. The entire process is called the carbon cycle.Moreover, Mr. Berry said that once CO2 in the atmosphere increases to a certain level, nature automatically increases the outflow.“It’s almost like a bathtub, which may have a spout open so that water can flow out of it if it reaches a certain level,” he said. “A certain setting of the inflow will raise the level to a certain point. And as the [water] level goes up, the faster it’ll flow out. There’s a balance level for any inflow setting—a balance level where it all stays the same. In other words, the outflow equals the inflow. And when the outflow reaches the inflow, it’s at its balance level, and it no longer accumulates.”Mr. Berry said the premise that humans are solely responsible for increasing CO2 is problematic.According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since 1750, CO2 concentration has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) to more than 420 ppm, and the IPCC claims that this increase is anthropogenic, or caused by humans.Sepp Kipfstuhl of the East Greenland Ice-Core Project works with a chainsaw to cut a larger entrance to the new tunnel at the camp on Aug. 6, 2022. (Lukasz Larsson Warzecha/Getty Images)“Current concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 [methane] far exceed pre-industrial values found in polar ice core records of atmospheric composition dating back 650,000 years,” the IPCC states.“Multiple lines of evidence confirm that the post-industrial rise in these gases does not stem from natural mechanisms. … Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and from the effects of land use change on plant and soil carbon are the primary sources of increased atmospheric CO2.”Mr. Berry called the IPCC’s statement “totally garbage.”“I used the IPCC’s own carbon cycle data, which IPCC says is accurate to about 20 percent,” he said. “The model doesn’t give humans producing 140 ppm. It comes out closer to 30 ppm. Which essentially means the IPCC is wrong.”Mr. Berry said there’s no scientific basis for the claim that a “certain amount of carbon dioxide in the air causes a certain amount of temperature increase.”“They say we have to reduce (CO2) to 350 ppm to cool it down to where temperature was a while ago? There’s no physics to that,” he said.“That whole claim is totally garbage. CO2 doesn’t cause a change in temperature; temperature causes a change in CO2.”Climate Dictated by Sun“If we completely cut out emissions, CO2 would stop rising at its current rate,” Mr. Clark said. “But it would probably continue to rise to a certain point, and then it could come down. But that would be driven by temperature.”Mr. Clark said that in different parts of the world and at different times of the year, CO2 fluctuates “between 15 and 20 percent,” and that’s driven by the temperature of the seasons.“If we start having cooler summers and colder winters, those fluctuations would start driving CO2 further down. But overall, climate is going to do whatever the sun dictates,” he said.Astronomers at the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured this image of a solar prominence erupting from the surface of the sun on Oct. 25, 2002. It is shown here with the Earth in scale to demonstrate the immense size of this solar phenomenon. (SOHO/ESA/NASA/Getty Images)“We have a fairly good understanding of the different cycles the sun can go through and how they pile up. Sometimes, they amplify each other. Sometimes they cancel each other. So, we get kind of a chaotic signal, but some come through quite strongly—this 1,000-year cycle seems to be quite strong.“We had the Roman Warm Period, then the Medieval Warm Period, and now we have the Modern Warm Period; one, two, three. And history and the records tell us they only last a couple hundred years, and we’re already a hundred-some-odd years into this one.”In addition to not affecting temperature, Mr. Clark said the attempts to reduce CO2 are dangerous because of the anticipated effect on plants.“C4 plants, like corn, evolved just 20–30 million years ago. And they evolved in response to the declining CO2 in the atmosphere. So, they’re a relative latecomer to our biosphere and reflect the danger of decreasing CO2,” he said.A majority of plants, such as trees, wheat, and rice, are what’s known as C3 plants, which thrive at higher CO2 levels of 800 to 1500 ppm.Mr. Clark said one of the benefits of increasing CO2 is improved global grain yields and the general greening of the planet.A farmer moves an irrigation system in his cornfield near Whiteland, Ind., on July 20, 2012. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment about the Royal Society’s findings that temperature will continue to increase for hundreds to thousands of years even if CO2 emissions were to cease today, Alex Matthews-King, the group’s senior press officer, said via email, “This is a peer-reviewed report authored jointly by Fellows from the Royal Society and U.S. National Academy of Science.”He pointed to the report’s foreword, which states: “Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, which has been accompanied by sea level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes.“The impacts of climate change on people and nature are increasingly apparent. Unprecedented flooding, heat waves, and wildfires have cost billions in damages. Habitats are undergoing rapid shifts in response to changing temperatures and precipitation patterns. Calls for action are getting louder.”Mr. Clark agreed that humans “do have a footprint on this planet, there’s no question about that.”But he suggested that the underreported larger effect is being felt in the oceans, where humans have “killed off 90 percent of the large fish population, and whales, and all the rest.”He said he believes that the money and resources spent on climate conferences could go to “actually improve environmental problems.”“Anybody who’s a climate realist recognizes that the money we’re spending on mitigation—where we think that we are turning back the CO2 thermostat or trying to turn back to the thermostat and save the world 1.5 degrees of warming—knows that it’s a fantasy. There’s no way we will affect climate with what we’re doing.” […]

To preserve a “livable planet,” the Earth can’t warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the United Nations warns.Failure to maintain that level could lead to several catastrophes, including increased droughts and weather-related disasters, more heat-related illnesses and deaths, and less food and more poverty, according to NASA.To avert the looming tribulations and limit global temperature increases, 194 member states and the European Union in 2016 signed the U.N. Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty with a goal to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.”After the agreement, global spending on climate-related projects increased exponentially.In 2021 and 2022, the world’s taxpayers spent, on average, $1.3 trillion on such projects each year, according to the nonprofit advisory group Climate Policy Initiative.More ArticlesThat’s more than double the spending rate in 2019 and 2020, which came in at $653 billion per year, and it’s significantly up from the $364 billion per year in 2011 and 2012, the report found.Despite the money pouring in, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 2023 was the hottest year on record.NOAA’s climate monitoring stations found that the Earth’s average land and ocean surface temperature in 2023 was 1.35 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.“Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record—it was the warmest by far,” said Sarah Kapnick, NOAA’s chief scientist.“A warming planet means we need to be prepared for the impacts of climate change that are happening here and now, like extreme weather events that become both more frequent and severe.”But a growing chorus of climate scientists are saying the temperature readings are faulty and that the trillions of dollars pouring in are based on a problem that doesn’t exist.More than 90 percent of NOAA’s temperature monitoring stations have a heat bias, according to Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute, author of climate website Watts Up With That, and director of a study that examined NOAA’s climate stations.“And with that large of a number, over 90 percent, the methods that NOAA employs to try to reduce this don’t work because the bias is so overwhelming,” Mr. Watts told The Epoch Times.“The few stations that are left that are not biased because they are, for example, outside of town in a field and are an agricultural research station that’s been around for 100 years … their data gets completely swamped by the much larger set of biased data. There’s no way you can adjust that out.”A meteorologist monitors weather in NOAA’s center for weather and climate prediction in Riverdale, Md., on July 2, 2013. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)Meteorologist Roy Spencer agreed.“The surface thermometer data still have spurious warming effects due to the urban heat island, which increases over time,” Mr. Spencer said.He is the principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his work with satellite-based temperature monitoring.Mr. Spencer also said computerized climate models used to drive changes in energy policy are even more faulty.Lt. Col. John Shewchuk, a certified consulting meteorologist, said the problems with temperature readings go beyond heat bias. The retired lieutenant colonel was an advanced weather officer in the Air Force.“After seeing many reports about NOAA’s adjustments to the USHCN [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] temperature data, I decided to download and analyze the data myself,” Lt. Col. Shewchuk told The Epoch Times.“I was able to confirm what others have found. It is obvious that, overall, the past temperatures were cooled while the present temperatures were warmed.”He contends that NOAA and NASA have adjusted historical temperature data in such a way as to make the past appear colder and, by so doing, make the current warming trend more pronounced.Faulty Temperature ReadingsThe urban heat island effect causes higher temperatures in areas where there are more buildings, roads, and other forms of infrastructure that absorb and then radiate the sun’s heat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.The agency estimates that “daytime temperatures in urban areas are 1–7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than temperatures in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures are about 2–5 degrees Fahrenheit higher.”Consequently, NOAA requires all its climate observation stations to be located at least 100 feet away from elements such as concrete, asphalt, and buildings.Students of the University of Illinois carry a weather station during a NOAA education day on tornadoes, in Memphis on Feb. 8, 2023. (Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)However, in March 2009, Mr. Watts released a report that shows that 89 percent of NOAA’s stations had heat bias issues due to being located within 100 feet of those elements, and many were located by airport runways.“We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat,” Mr. Watts said.“We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.”The report concluded that the U.S. temperature record was unreliable, and because it was considered “the best in the world,” global temperature databases were also “compromised and unreliable.”Following the report, the U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office confirmed Mr. Watt’s findings and stated that NOAA was taking steps to address the issues.“NOAA acknowledges that there are problems with the USHCN data due to biases introduced by such means as undocumented site relocation, poor siting, or instrument changes,” the OIG report reads.“All of the experts thought that an improved, modernized climate reporting system is necessary to eliminate the need for data adjustments.”Despite the assurances, Mr. Watts had doubts about NOAA addressing the issues and in April 2022 and May 2022, he and his team revisited many of the same temperature stations they had observed in 2009.He published his findings in a new study on July 27, 2022. It found that even more, approximately 96 percent, of NOAA’s temperature stations still failed to meet its own standards.“There are two main biases in the surface temperature network for the United States, and most likely the world, that I have identified,” Mr. Watts said.Global average surface temperatures have been variable, but show an increasing trend in recent decades. (Illustration by The Epoch Times)Over the years, he said, more and more infrastructure has been built up around the thermometer locations, and at night, the asphalt and concrete release the absorbed heat and push up the temperature.“You can look at any set of climate data, no matter who produces it, and you can see this effect. The low temperatures are trending upward much faster, and the high temperatures are virtually unchanged. But it’s the average temperature that’s being used to track climate change,” Mr. Watts said.He said that even though both NOAA and NASA claim that they can adjust their data to account for the urban heat island effect, the bias is impossible to overcome because the problem impacts 96 percent of surface stations.He said the few thermometers located at climate stations not experiencing a heat bias show half the rate of warming currently being reported.Transient TemperatureThe second primary bias that Mr. Watts identified is the transient temperature readings, which are short-term temperature changes that can give a false reading.NOAA started switching out their mercury thermometers in the mid-to-late 1980s, according to Mr. Watts.A billboard displays a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit during a record heat wave in Phoenix on July 18, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)The majority of its network now consists of electronic thermometers that can measure temperature within seconds.“But they’re only recording the high and the low temperature of the day, and these can be biased by simple effects of wind,” he said.“For example, you can have one of these temperature sensors placed near a parking lot, which happens to be to the east of the thermometer. And the wind has been predominantly from the south all through the day. But then, all of a sudden, you get a wind shift, and the wind shift could be caused by a number of different things. It could be caused by a change in the weather patterns. It could be caused by something blocking the wind from the south, like a semi-truck pulling up nearby.“So you get wind shifting out of the east suddenly, coming across the parking lot, and picking up that radiant heat. And the thermometer will respond to that in the space of a second or two. And it will report a high temperature from that wind gust that does not necessarily represent the weather that day. It’s an anomaly. And the same thing can happen at night.”Mr. Watts said transient temperature is such a well-known problem that the Met Office in the UK and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have abandoned their high-tech network and are retooling to get more accurate readings.“These are the problems that NOAA has not really fully addressed,” he said. “The folks who do the climate data never leave the office, and they don’t administer these stations. They [the stations] are left to the National Weather Service field offices—and the National Weather Service field offices are understaffed.“Some stations, like out here in the West, are hundreds of miles away or more from the National Weather Service office, so they can’t get out there and do maintenance regularly. And when the National Weather Service went to modernization in the early 1990s, they closed many Weather Service offices around the country.“And so, the maintenance on these thermometers—and a lot of these monitors are run by the public, a lot are volunteers—has fallen off. I’ve had volunteers, when I go visit, ask me if I can get the Weather Service to come out and fix something. But they can’t, because the problem is, they don’t have the budget.“The bottom line is that the Cooperative Observer Network, the COOP network—it’s literally a ragtag bunch of volunteers combined with some public agencies, such as police stations, fire stations, forest service, and so on.“This is not a rigorously scientifically controlled network at the operational level.”Heat waves cause distortion on the horizon as a pedestrian walks along South Las Vegas Blvd in Las Vegas on July 30, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)NOAA itself stated on its website that its temperature readings aren’t precise and that the agency adds a margin of error to its temperatures.Neither NOAA nor NASA responded by press time to The Epoch Times’ request for comment regarding transient temperature anomalies or Mr. Watts’s claim that adjusting for a heat bias is impossible.Adjusting Temperature ReadingsNOAA has also been adjusting historical temperature data. “Normally, when correcting data errors, you would expect a more random result in the data adjustments—both up and down—but the results instead show a systematic process of cooling the past and warming the present,” Lt. Col. Shewchuk said.An example is Iceland’s Reykjavik station.EPA data shows an increasing ratio of daily record high-to-low temperatures in order to indicate rising global temperatures (Illustration by The Epoch Times).In 2019, NOAA released an updated version of its software, GISTEMP v4. It shows Reykjavik station’s mean temperature for February 1936 as minus 1.02 degrees Celsius, and the annual mean temperature as 5.01 degrees Celsius. That’s a downward adjustment of 0.82 degrees Celsius for the month and 0.77 degrees Celsius for the year after the software update.When comparing the GISTEMP v2 monthly data against the v4 monthly data, an overall cooling of the past is observed.People cool off at a swimming pool during a heatwave near the town of Shtime, Kosovo, on July 22, 2023. (Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images)“Incredibly, the range of data adjustments exceeds 2 degrees Fahrenheit, which is significant with respect to current temperature trends,” Lt. Col. Shewchuk said.“NOAA also employs a very unusual follow-on data adjustment process, where they periodically go back and re-adjust the previously adjusted data. This makes it difficult to find ground truth, which seems more like shifting sands.”In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment about the adjustments to historical data, NOAA’s public affairs officer, John Bateman, said he reached out to one of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) climate experts, who responded: “NCEI applies corrections to account for historical changes in station location, temperature instrumentation, observing practice, and, to a lesser extent, siting conditions. Our approaches are documented in the peer-reviewed literature. At the national scale, the corrected data are in good agreement with the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), which has pristine siting conditions.”NASA didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment about adjustments to historical data.Satellite ReadingsTo get a more accurate reading of the Earth’s fluctuating surface temperatures, Mr. Spencer and climatologist John Christy developed a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites.Mr. Christy is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and director of the Earth System Science Center, who, along with Mr. Spencer, received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his work with satellite-based temperature monitoring.They started their project in 1989 and analyzed data going back to 1979.According to satellite data, since 1979, the Earth’s temperature has been increasing at a steady rate of 0.14 degrees Celsius every 10 years.And while 2023 was the hottest year on record due to linear warming trends, they say it’s not a cause for public panic.“Yes, it appears 2023 was the warmest in the last 100 years or so. But numbers matter. The magnitude isn’t large enough for anyone to feel,” Mr. Spencer said.“Besides, a single year is weather, not climate. What matters is the long-term trend, say many decades.”He said the 2023 data, added to the 45 years of data since 1979, doesn’t alter the overall trend of 0.14 degrees Celsius increase every 10 years“I believe both satellites and thermometers show a warming trend, especially since the 1970s,” Mr. Spencer said.“But the strength of that trend is considerably less than what climate models predict, and it is those models which are used to argue for changes in energy policy and CO2 emissions reduction.”An employee gestures toward a global map showing information coming in from NASA satellites at an exhibit at NASA headquarters in Washington on June 21, 2023. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)Lt. Col. Shewchuk agreed that satellite-based temperature data is more precise, and it shows a much smaller warming trend than NOAA’s surface-based warming trend. “The satellite data are a better measure of global temperature change because [they] do not suffer from conventional surface temperature station location problems or the numerous forms of NOAA data editing activities,”  he said. Satellite readings are also “routinely calibrated to radiosonde (weather balloon) data, which are the gold standard for atmospheric data.”Mr. Spencer published a report on Jan. 24 that addresses inaccuracies in climate modeling.“Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy,” the report reads.“Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.”Mr. Spencer said the public has been led to believe that modeling is “fairly accurate,” but a number of additional variables have been added to the modeling that result in higher temperature estimates. Steam billows from a coal-fired power plant in Craig, Colo., on Nov. 18, 2021. (Rick Bowmer/File/AP Photo)“Current claims of a climate crisis are invariably the result of reliance on the models producing the most warming, not on actual observations of the climate system which reveal unremarkable changes over the past century or more,” he wrote.NASA Props Up Ground ReadingsNASA claims on its website that ground thermometers are more accurate than satellite measurements.“While satellites provide valuable information about Earth’s temperature, ground thermometers are considered more reliable because they directly measure the temperature where people reside,” NASA stated.“Satellite data require complex processing and modeling to convert brightness measurements into temperature readings, making ground thermometers a more direct and accurate source of temperature information for us.”Mr. Spencer quickly pointed out the flaws in NASA’s claim.“Surface thermometers only cover a tiny fraction of the Earth, whereas the satellites provide nearly complete global coverage,” he said.“NASA’s complaint that the 16 separate satellites must be pieced together ‘like a jigsaw puzzle’ is ironic since the surface temperature record is pieced together from hundreds (if not thousands) of stations, with almost none of them, anywhere, providing a continuous, uninterrupted record unaffected by increasing urban heat island effects.“Finally, the complaint is that satellites only measure the deep atmosphere, not the surface where people live. … Well, if that is so, why are deep ocean temperatures touted as being so valuable for climate research? All of these measurements are important in their own right, and each system has its strengths and weaknesses. Our satellite dataset is widely used by climate researchers around the world.”A videographer films the NISAR satellite, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, inside NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Feb. 3, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)As to NASA’s critique that satellites don’t directly measure temperature but instead the brightness of Earth’s atmosphere, making them inaccurate, Mr. Spencer said: “Strictly speaking, that is true. But surface thermometers are electronic, so (technically) they measure electrical resistance.“The satellites are calibrated with the highest quality, laboratory-standard platinum resistance thermometers. If NASA is going to fault remotely-sensed satellite data, they might as well shut down their myriad Earth satellite programs, which have the same (supposed) ‘defect.’”Lt. Col. Shewchuk called NASA’s claim that satellite data is inferior to surface temperature readings “nonsense.”“UAH satellite data is the only data source that is truly global in nature. It effectively measures the temperature of earth’s entire atmosphere, and especially the lower troposphere—where our weather is actually created,” he said.“The only limitation is that the satellite data only begins in 1979.”Mr. Watts said that when he looked at data from ground surface stations in grassy fields (absent an urban heat island effect), the temperature readings closely matched Mr. Spencer’s satellite data.When asked why NOAA isn’t only using thermometers where there’s no possibility for an urban heat island effect, Mr. Spencer said: “I think their goal is not to get the most accurate long-term temperature record but to use as much thermometer data as they can get their hands on. This is good to build a congressionally-funded program and keep people employed.”The current amount of money, $1.3 trillion annually, being spent on climate initiatives is nowhere near enough, according to the Climate Policy Initiative.“In the average scenario, the annual climate finance needed through 2030 increases steadily from $8.1 to $9 trillion. Then, estimated needs jump to over $10 trillion each year from 2031 to 2050,” the group stated.“This means that climate finance must increase by at least five-fold annually, as quickly as possible, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”The organization lists its funders on its website, including the Rockefeller Foundation, WWF, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Its partners include BlackRock, two U.N. climate groups, several large global banks, and government groups such as the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a comment from NOAA. […]