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UN conference on climate change, Bonn

June 5, 2013

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Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

 Press Conference Wednesday June 5, 2013

Statement of Craig Rucker

Both the UNFCCC and U.S. President Obama should acknowledge the global temperature standstill, abandon bias and extreme statements and embrace debate

Good morning. My name is Craig Rucker. I am the Executive Director of CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, an NGO founded in 1989 which focuses on issues of energy and the environment and human freedom, dignity and prosperity.

We at CFACT continue to be amazed at how people cling to their global warming talking points at UN climate conferences like this one and keep their heads buried in the sand whenever new information comes in. The United Nations cannot go on paying no heed to real world observational data, nor the expense, ineffectiveness, waste, fraud and abuse surrounding the policies being proposed.

Sadly, to attend a UN climate conference, is to enter an unrealistic wonderland.

Similarly, last week my President, U.S. President Obama said, “I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change.” The week before that his new Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz declared that he is “not interested in debating what is not debatable.”

President Obama’s use of the loaded and offensive term “deny,” which carries with it comparison to holocaust denial, denial of the greatest atrocity of the 20th century, coupled with Secretary Moniz’s call for closed minds and stifled debate are the exact opposite of what is genuinely needed.

We hear this kind of rhetoric too often from government officials and during UN climate conferences. This is the kind of rhetoric which has eroded public confidence in the climate process. This is not a way forward citizens of the world can have confidence in.

We at CFACT call on the UN and world leaders to foster and protect fair, open and impartial participation in the climate debate and to put an end to labeling or excluding citizens or scientists who dare to question. The right to question our leaders is inherent in the founding principles of the United Nations and in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

This right of free opinion and expression is sacred. Anyone who is confident in the correctness of their position on global warming science or policy need have no fear of the questions and opinions of others. They should, in fact, welcome them. Science without questioning is no longer science. Policy making without the protection of all to express their point of view is unfair, abusive and a recipe for mistake and folly.

Here are some points about global warming science and policy which are not receiving the attention they deserve:

  1. Global temperatures have been at a standstill since the nineties.

  2. Climate computer models call for a warmer world than that we have actually experienced.

  3. With little warming and none in recent years, claims that global warming is causing current extreme weather have no basis in reality and shamelessly exploit natural tragedies.

  4. Climate science is not “settled” and there is not, nor has there ever been a scientific “consensus”

  5. The climate mitigation policies that have been put in place and are being advocated for are ineffective and hugely riddled with waste, fraud and abuse.

Let me give an overview one at a time:

1. Temperature flat-line

Measurements of world temperatures show temperatures to have stalled with no significant warming since the nineties. Global warming campaigners are having a hard time accepting this, despite the fact that the world temperature data sets are assembled by researchers who in the past have been their allies.

CFACT decided to open their eyes for them and erected a billboard in Washington, D.C. which graphed temperature data from the Met Office beginning in 1998 showing no warming trend into the present.

Increasingly scientists and policy leaders are acknowledging this trend, but warming activists remain largely in a state of denial.

Note that I said “denial,” a state akin to grieving that people fall into from time to time, as opposed to calling anyone a “denier,” an ill-intentioned person akin to those who would cover up mass murder. We seek to inform people, not demonize those who disagree.

2. Climate computer models vs. reality

We have been told to put our full faith and trust in the work of climate computer modelers. We have been told the science is settled and beyond discussion. These computer models are the basis on which this conference, the Kyoto Protocol and any future climate treaty are built on. However, records of world temperature show a cooler world than that which models project. World temperatures have been below those projected by the IPCC’s modelers with a 75 percent certainty for years now and are only just managing to hang in at the bottom of those computer models to which IPCC assigned a 95 percent certainty. While we cannot say for certain, the very real possibility that world temperatures will soon be regularly coming in below the 95 percent certainty projections show an inability of the models to project the present. This calls the ability of the computer models to accurately project the future into serious doubt.

The economist John Maynard Keynes has been said to have asked, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Although it appears today that Keynes never actually said that, someone did and rightly so. So we must ask of President Obama, IPCC and the parties to this conference today, when the facts change do you have the courage to change your minds? Can we at least count on you to open your minds?

3. Extreme weather is natural

Going back to the global temperature data compiled by the Met Office, we see only a handful of years in the modern era that came in at more than a half degree above average. There simply is not much warming to date. With the flatline in warming since the nineties, attributing current extreme weather to global warming has no basis in science. 

In Doha, we released an “Extreme Weather Report,” by Marc Morano, creator of CFACT’s award-winning Climate Depot news and information service which showed point by point the ways in which natural weather events are being mischaracterized by global warming campaigners.

Recently U.S. government scientists from several agencies reported together that last year’s drought in the U.S. was a rare, but natural event and was not man-made. Warming activists were crushed. They are still in denial. Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, tornadoes, fires, etc. are all natural just as the hurricane which destroyed the city of Galveston, Texas in 1900 was natural. Exploiting natural tragedies to advance a political agenda is shameless and those who do it should stop.

4. Unsettled science

 Recently eminent physicist Freeman Dyson criticized the climate science favored by this conference saying, “I just think they don’t understand the climate, their computer models are full of fudge factors.” As we’ve said, climate models predict a warmer world than temperature records show. This has caused a flurry of rationales to try and explain this. Is it a temporary pause? Is it the oceans? We do not know, but we do know this – if climate science were actually settled it would be capable of predicting real world conditions before they occurred, rather than rationalizing them after. As we say in America, no one values a Monday morning quarterback.

 Similarly, reports of an overwhelming “scientific consensus” have never had any genuine merit. The Climategate emails revealed a bickering cadre of climate researchers who are willing to substitute politics for the scientific method.

Researchers are intimidated and fear to publicly question warming. To do so subjects them to ridicule, loss of position and funding. Studies with no valid methodology are conducted by global warming activists which are rigged to produce the results they need for propaganda purposes. A recent such attempt declared a 97% scientific consensus, but ignored the fact that 2/3 of the abstracts surveyed took no position on man’s role in the climate and that more abstracts were against the proposition than were for it. In a recent German study, only 10 percent of scientists surveyed responded that they trust the accuracy of climate computer models and only 15% found climate science to be sufficiently understood to allow climate to be calculated.

 5. False solutions, waste, fraud and abuse

We had best hope that the long temperature standstill continues, and that man’s role in the climate has been over stated, because if there ever turns out to be any serious validity to the climate models, the policies designed to mitigate climate change are ineffective and riddled with waste, fraud and abuse.

A particularly egregious example were the Ugandans forcefully evicted from their homes to make way for a carbon credit forestry project. It is reported that eight-year-old Friday Mukamperezida burned to death after hired thugs set fire to his home to make way for the carbon credits project, while his mother was off seeking drugs to treat his illness. The millions in profits from this project are destined for European investors with little benefit to local Africans and certainly none for the victims of the forced eviction.

The carbon trading markets created as result of the ongoing UN climate process quickly became rife with fraud. On multiple occasions German authorities conducted massive investigations involving hundreds of people rapidly churning carbon trades and racking up hundreds of millions for themselves while producing no meaningful environmental benefit.

Witness as well the Italian mafiosi who have made millions through fraudulent schemes to profit from tax and ratepayer subsidies for wind energy, while producing little or no electricity.

Even where no crime is committed, the bankruptcies, waste and huge energy rate increases which result time and again from government mandated or subsidized “green” energy projects show how economically unsustainable these projects are.

Further, raising costs and restricting economic activity in the developed world is more than offset by expansion of economies in the developing world. What is the point of putting an industry out of business in Germany, France or the U.S. only to shift jobs and industry to China and India? We should welcome the rise of economic prosperity in the developing world, but not as a result of massive international rent-seeking.

 Would-be climate mitigation policies are effective at job destruction and wealth redistribution, but not at adjusting the thermostat of the world.

 In summary, with temperatures at a standstill, science unsettled, and global warming waste, fraud and abuse rampant, it is incumbent on the nations of the world to reassess and radically readjust the climate process. The first step is ending the climate of intimidation and suppression surrounding those who dare to question global warming science and policy. Eyes and minds need to open. Questioning and dissent should be welcomed. The media should stop reporting extreme, but shallow global warming claims without investigation, balance or question.

 The UN should return to valuing the freedom and prosperity which enables us as a species to be true stewards of our environment. The nations united here today should swear an economic and environmental Hippocratic oath and resolve immediately when considering climate policy, to “first do no harm.”

 Thank you.

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CFACT is a UNFCCC accredited NGO and the veteran of numerous UN conferences. CFACT is your ‘go to’ source for news and information for those seeking to balance coverage with reporting which challenges climate and sustainability orthodoxy. CFACT is available to all media.

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