Amid the media’s elation over the United Nations climate deal reached in Paris on Dec. 12, one significant outcome has been overlooked. The European Union failed to achieve its main objective, namely that the agreement adopt carbon-dioxide mitigation commitments that are “legally binding on all parties.” While this may appear to be a major setback, it liberates Europe from the restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol—which runs out in 2020—and opens the way for more flexible and less damaging policies. The toothless nature of the Paris agreement finally allows EU member states to abandon unilateral decarbonization policies that have damaged Europe’s economies and its international competitiveness. Under such circumstances, the unconditional climate policies of President Obama would be left out in the cold. –Benny Peiser, The Wall Street Journal, 22 December 2015
Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 2, 2015, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking records of communications from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials regarding methodology for collecting and interpreting data used in climate models. The lawsuit sought the same documents unsuccessfully subpoenaed by a House committee. Judicial Watch sued the agency on December 2 and served the complaint on the agency on December 8. Less than a week later, on Tuesday, December 15, NOAA finally began to turn over documents to the House committee. That same day, NOAA called and told Judicial Watch that it would begin searching for documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request. —Judicial Watch, 22 December 2015
Federal officials are turning over scores of emails and documents related to climate science research in response to a subpoena from a House committee. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official said Thursday that the agency provided about 100 documents to the House Science Committee this week. The documents relate to an investigation kicked off by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), into NOAA’s climate science research, specifically a study that concluded there has not been a 15-year “pause” in global warming. Skeptics of climate change (sic), including Smith, have used the idea of a pause to show that higher greenhouse gas emissions have not contributed to global warming. –Devin Henry, The Hill, 17 December 2015
Another week, another study showing that our official climate data gatekeepers have been exaggerating the extent of “global warming” to make it look more scary, more urgent, more desperately in need of extra funding for our official climate data gatekeepers. This one, co-authored by meteorologist Anthony Watts (of Watts Up With That? fame) shows that at least half of the “global warming” in the US since 1979 has been fabricated by NOAA. While satellite records have shown no global warming for at least 18 years, the land based data sets like the ones maintained by NOAA for the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) continue to show a warming trend. One reason for this discrepancy, the study suggests, is that NOAA has been cherry-picking its raw data. That is, it has ignored the evidence from those weather stations showing little or no late Twentieth century warming and instead placed undue emphasis on the ones that do show warming. –James Delingpole, Breitbart, 21 December 2015
The European Union, once hailed as the climate change leader of the world, was canvassing the developing country bloc to accept an agreement that was discordantly against its own non-negotiable position wanting a strict legally-binding protocol and not a loosely-bound agreement that the Paris outcome eventually became. As the Third World Network rightly catches the fine print it analyses, “This means that there is an obligation to take the measures necessary, with the aim of achieving the emissions reduction target, but not to achieve the target itself.” –Nitin Sethi, Business Standard, 22 December 2015
