An Alternate Vision Of The World, Finally Getting A Chance To Play Out

In my youth (I'm talking about the 1950s through the election of Reagan in 1980), there really were not two competing political visions for the United States.  Instead, there was near universal acceptance of the idea that the federal government could fix all the problems of the people by hiring "experts" and giving them authority to enact regulations together with piles of taxpayer money to spend.  OK, an occasional cranky economist might stand up and ask a question from time to time (Milton Friedman anyone?); but with a huge majority the economics profession was also completely on board with the program.  Among Republican presidents, Eisenhower never lifted a finger to try to roll back anything about the New Deal, and Nixon was as much in favor of "big government" in domestic affairs as any Democrat.  Meanwhile, both houses of Congress were completely controlled by Democrats from 1955 to 1980.  The Congressional Republicans did not have much of an alternative message.  Basically, their pitch was that they would slow things down and avoid some of the worst excesses of their opponents.  

I know I'm exaggerating, but not by much.  Goldwater in 1964 did try to articulate an alternative libertarian vision, and ended up not only losing badly himself, but also giving the Democrats strengthened Congressional super-majorities to get much of their agenda enacted.  It's no accident that Medicare, Medicaid, and much of the War on Poverty date from the years immediately after the Johnson landslide in 1964.

And even in the years following Reagan's election, the push-back started slowly, with as many set-backs as victories.  Reagan never experienced Republican control of both houses of Congress, and neither of the two Bushes had much appetite a tug of war against the bureaucracy or against the prevailing Washington groupthink of bureaucratic expertise.  When Republicans took control of Congress in the 1990s, and again in the 2000s, it seemed like their main program was not to push back against the bureaucracy, but rather to give some of the infinite piles of money to "our" friends rather than "their" friends.

I give all this background to put into context the current hysteria and frenzy that has greeted the Trump presidency.  Even though plenty of people disagreed with Obama on many issues, there was never anything like this.  For that matter, I and many other conservatives and libertarians have plenty of disagreements with Trump -- as to trade protectionism; as to whether a "balance of payments deficit" is a bad thing and whether such a thing can be "fixed" by "better trade deals"; as to whether a big wall on the Mexican border will accomplish anything meaningful for the money; as to whether massive "infrastructure" spending is a good idea; as to many details about immigration; and so forth.  

But are these the issues that are motivating the desperate primal screaming that we have been seeing the past few weeks?  I don't think so.  None of the issues just mentioned (with the possible partial exception of immigration) is the kind of thing that normally generates this kind of emotion.  The thing that generates such emotion is the push back against the bureaucracy and and the parasites in government-funded agencies and academia.  Suddenly, many people who have spent their lives doing what they perceive as "good" with taxpayer-funded salaries and grants are being told that it was all a bad idea from the get-go.  Their funding could be cut!  Their lifetime sinecure could be gone!  They could lose their jobs and their livelihoods!  They might have to compete for jobs and customers in the private sector!  The Democratic Party could lose its taxpayer-backed funding (from public employee unions, particularly teachers unions)!

How many of the current crop of protesters and rioters represent people actually on the government gravy train?  With the exception of a few who have been outed (like the UC Berkeley employee involved in planning riots, or the professor of "lobster porn" at the big NYU demonstration), it's hard to get any numbers.  But what is clear is that the bureaucracies are organizing internally to "resist" the results of the last election.  The New York Times had a big article on the front page of the Sunday edition, headlined "'A Sense of Dread' for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition."   The article describes the "intensity of feelings" among the bureaucrats that has become "raw" as they realize that incoming political appointees in many cases question the very missions of the agencies.  

Or, consider this piece by Victoria Taft at the Independent Journal Review on February 2, describing various groups of federal employees holding meetings to plan "resistance" and "work slowdowns."  Or, from the Washington Post on January 31:

The resistance is so early, so widespread and so deeply felt that it has officials worrying about paralysis and overt refusals by workers to do their jobs.

So far, almost none of the administration's predicted push back against the bureaucracy has even occurred.  But, as the new cabinet secretaries slowly get confirmed, will we actually be getting a chance to see an alternate vision of the world -- a vision without bureaucratic micromanagement of every aspect of our lives -- get a chance to play out?  One can only hope.  

Connecticut In The Grip Of The School Funding Fallacy

In the realm of the thoroughly disproved fallacies of progressivism, perhaps the very most thoroughly disproved of all is the idea that throwing more taxpayer money at failing unionized schools will improve the education of the students in those schools.  Just a couple of weeks ago, in a post titled "How Do You Measure 'Success' In K-12 Education?" I covered the latest of umpteen such failed efforts in the federal government (the $7 billion School Improvement Grants program), and here in New York City, (Mayor de Blasio's "Renewal Schools" program).   After multiple years and vast amounts of money, neither of those programs could demonstrate any positive impact of any kind in any metric selected, from test performance to graduation rates to college enrollment.

This is just one of those things where no amount of actual evidence can ever convince people that it's not working. Today, the state of Connecticut is about to head down the same path yet again.  The chance that Connecticut's new initiative will work is exactly zero.

Recall first the big news in Connecticut last September: In long-running (commenced in 2005) school finance litigation instituted by Yale Law School faculty, a judge in Hartford issued a 90 page decision declaring Connecticut's school finance system to be "irrational" and "defaulting on [the state's] constitutional duty" to provide all students with an adequate education.  I covered that decision here.  The court's decision did not set any specific remedies, and seems to contemplate a lifetime job for the judge in overseeing and meddling in the state's school finance system.  The court's decision is currently on appeal and temporarily stayed.

However, on Wednesday Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy made a budget presentation in Hartford.  According to coverage in the New York Times yesterday, Malloy said that he "broadly . . . agreed with the [court's] decision," and that "it would be better for the state to 'design and take our own medicine' rather than leave it to the courts."  OK, Gov, what's the big concept for fixing things?  You guessed it!  Throw more taxpayer money at failing unionized schools.

In the Times, their headline tells you all you need to know about their take on the story, which will not surprise you:  "Malloy Moves to Narrow gap Between Connecticut's Rich and Poor School Districts."   What exactly is the "gap" they are talking about?  Nothing in this article will tell you.  Do you get the impression that the state of Connecticut is granting more money to rich school districts than to the poor ones.  Undoubtedly, it is the intent of the headline writer, and of the article's author, to give you that impression.  But of course, that impression would be completely false; indeed, it would be the complete opposite of the truth.

Fortunately for us, Connecticut puts out some pretty thorough data on its public school funding.  Here is a chart with per student funding by district for each of Connecticut's districts for the 2015-16 year; and here is a chart of source of revenue by category (state, local, federal) for each of Connecticut's districts for the 2014-15 school year.  Put the two together, and you can get a pretty good idea of what if any "gap" might exist between the "rich" and "poor" districts.

For example, with a little arithmetic, we learn that, as of the most recent year available (2014-15), among Connecticut's "poor" urban districts, Hartford got about $14,900 per student from the state; New Haven about $12,500; and Waterbury about $9700.  Among its "rich" suburban districts, Greenwich got just over $1000 per student; Darien got about $950; New Canaan got under $600; and Fairfield got a big $535.  Gap?  Now, you may think that it is perfectly appropriate for Connecticut to give most to all of its state funding to its poorer districts, while leaving the richer districts mostly on their own.  But really, to call this a "gap" in favor of the richer districts couldn't be more ridiculous.

But maybe, you think, the "gap" they are talking about must be the gap that exists between the rich and poor districts after the rich districts top up their school spending with the vast local resources.  If so, you will be surprised to learn that total school spending per student in Connecticut does not not vary much as between the richest and poorest districts, and there is no obvious pattern that richer districts always spend more.  Some of the poorest districts spend at or near the top, and some of the richest districts spend less than some of the poorer ones.  Using the same six towns as before, total per student spending, this time for the 2015-16 year, was: Hartford $19,313; New Haven $18,248; Waterbury $15,219; Greenwich $21,331; Darien $19,318 (about the same as Hartford); New Canaan $19,576; and Fairfield $16,561 (well less than Hartford or New Haven). 

But as always, the only solution they seem to be able to come up with to fix the failing city schools is more taxpayer money.  From the Times:

Increases of around $10 million or more would go to 11 municipalities. Hartford would get the largest increase, more than $47 million, followed by Waterbury, which would receive a $43 million increase. Both cities have a substantial number of poor families. 

That $47 million increase for Hartford will (if it goes through) represent about a 14% increase in its annual state school funding.  For Waterbury, a smaller city currently receiving substantially less, the $43 million would represent almost a 25% increase.

But if more money translated into better and more successful schools, then why is it that Hartford, already spending $19,313 per student, isn't achieving about the same results as Darien and New Canaan, and well better than Fairfield?  Don't expect the Times to enlighten you on such questions.

Meanwhile, classic "blue" jurisdiction Connecticut is facing approximately its 30th annual budget "crisis."  The additional money for these poor urban school districts will have to come from somewhere -- either from the (already meager) grants to the richer districts, or from other state spending, or from increased taxes.  Any of these options will make Connecticut even less competitive in attracting new businesses and entrepreneurs, and in keeping its wealthy citizens from leaving for more attractive states.  Given that it is absolutely certain that the additional money will not improve the schools, would Connecticut's poor be better off instead with a better business climate that might attract more businesses and jobs?  Nobody in Connecticut thinks to ask such questions. 

Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart" -- Part III

Each day I skim over the op-eds in the New York Times so that you don't have to.  And what do I come upon yesterday but an op-ed by two prominent Republican economists (not quite an oxymoron), Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiw, advocating for "A Conservative Case for Climate Action."  Uh-oh.  And then, upon checking my emails, I learn that there is a nearly-identical op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "A Conservative Answer to Climate Change," this time with different authors -- former Treasury Secretaries George Shultz and James Baker.  A co-ordinated attack!

Get ready:  A bunch of Grand Pooh-Bahs, calling themselves "conservatives," have formed something they are calling the Climate Leadership Council to advocate for a new approach to tackling "climate change."  Besides the authors listed above, the members include another ex-Treasury Secretary (Hank Paulson), an ex-chairman of Wal-Mart (Rob Walton), a venture capital guy (Thomas Stephenson), and long-time do-gooder Ted Halstead (who seems be the one who rounded the whole thing up).  All of these guys have co-authored a new paper, just released, titled "The Conservative Case For Carbon Dividends."  

Now, these authors are obviously a collection of really, really smart guys.  And, because they are really, really smart, they have that special ability that you and I lack, which is the ability to devise ultimate solutions to the most difficult societal problems through the magic of the government's power to tax and spend.  And, you will not be surprised to learn, they have used their very special ability to devise the solution to that most critical problem of our time, "climate change."  And what is the solution?  You guessed it!  A large and steadily-growing tax!:

[T]he federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions.  It might begin a $40 per ton and increase steadily.  this tax would send a powerful signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints.    

Does anything about this sound familiar?  Oh yes, it was the "Risky Business Coalition," another small collection of Grand Pooh-Bahs who also issued a clarion call for drastic action by the U.S. federal government to stop "climate change," this one back in mid-2014.  That call was the subject of my first post in this series on June 25 of that year, "Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart."  The Climate Leadership Council and the Risky Business Coalition have substantial overlap in their small list of members -- Paulson, Shultz and Walton lent their names to both groups.  (The other members of the RBC were Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.)  RBC advocated a massive transition away from fossil fuels and toward so-called "clean energy" -- although its mechanism of how to make that happen was far from clear.    

All the members of this new Climate Leadership Council are obviously people of great ability and great accomplishment.  No one would doubt that they are really "smart."  But, before seeking to impose hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes on the American people, do you think that people this smart could be troubled to ask a couple of the most basic questions?  Questions like:  Even assuming the U.N.'s worst-case projections for world temperature increase caused by CO2 emissions, how much could this tax be expected to reduce that increase?  Of course they do not address that question.  Hey, everybody knows that we have to reduce carbon emissions -- we're just coming up with the best way to do it!  However, if we humble peasants are interested in the answer to the question, we can go the the Cato Institute's handy Carbon Tax Temperature Savings Calculator (which in turn is based on the government's own model known as MAGICC).  If we go there, we will find that, assuming that this new tax can reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 60% (that will never happen), and that climate "sensitivity" is 3 deg C per doubling of atmospheric CO2 (crazy high), then this new tax will save a big 0.032 deg C of warming by 2050, and 0.076 deg C of warming by 2100.  Why, 83 years from now, that's almost enough to be as large as the margin of error of the measurement!

Or maybe these really "smart" guys could ask whether there is actually any dangerous warming going on that requires these kinds of massive government-directed "solutions."  I won't go here into the extensive government temperature data alteration that is the subject of my series "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time."  But Roger Simon at PJ Media yesterday was quick to point out the disastrous timing of the NYT/WSJ op-eds, coming as they did just a few days after whistleblower John Bates's revelations of data manipulation at NOAA intended to dupe world leaders into making "climate" agreements.  How much of recent world temperature increase is real, versus an artifact of altered data?  Maybe we will find out as the new Trump administration takes control of the reins. 

Well, now for the good news.  I don't know how it happened, but somehow, at some point,  Republican politicians stopped being susceptible to falling for the climate alarm scam.  The old guys had all fallen for it.  Presidential candidates McCain and Romney were both on board with the climate alarm bandwagon.  And this Climate Leadership Council crowd is considerably older still (Shultz is 96 (!), Baker 86, Paulson 70, Feldstein 77).  Meanwhile, in today's Congress, you literally won't find a single Republican to speak in favor of massive fossil fuel restrictions to stop the existential threat of "climate change."  Could they have figured out that the politics of "climate change" is really about massive government programs and handouts and growth that will have little to no effect upon the climate?  Probably.  You don't actually have to be very smart to figure that out.    

Not A Single Senate Democrat Stands Up To Teachers Unions

What's been predicted for the past week or so has now occurred:  Betsy DeVos has been confirmed as Secretary of Education by a  51-50 vote, with Vice President Mike Pence called upon to cast the tie-breaking vote.  Not a single Democrat broke ranks.  Apparently this is the first time in history that a Vice President was called upon to cast a tie-breaking vote for the confirmation of a cabinet secretary.

Obviously, defeat of DeVos was a top priority for the teachers unions, and they pulled out all the stops.  DeVos has devoted much of her life to the cause of school choice, particularly to giving poor and minority children the ability to escape failing unionized public schools.  Fox News yesterday described the "furious push" to find one more Republican to vote against DeVos and defeat the nomination.  Forbes on January 17 accurately identified DeVos as "public enemy number one" with the teachers unions.

The guiding theme of the anti-DeVos campaign has been that she has "used her money, power and influence to destroy public education. . . . ," (per "education activist" Marie Corfield, quoted in the Forbes piece).  Funny, but when I was a kid, the inner city public schools in essentially all major cities were already a disaster -- and that was well before DeVos started her advocacy.

Well, you don't have to look very far, or think very hard, to understand what this is all about.  School choice absolutely does pose an existential threat to the teachers unions.  When there is educational choice, that means charter schools and private schools, most of which are non-union. The charter and private schools can out-perform the traditional public schools precisely because they can institute teacher evaluations, pay differentials and termination of under-achieving teachers -- all things that are verboten in the unionized schools.  So as soon as the alternatives are available, parents move their kids away from the traditional schools and into the alternatives.  

According to a UFT dues schedule here, each unionized teacher means about $1300 - 1400 in dues revenue per year to the union.  With about 3 million K-12 teachers in public schools, that means that each 1% loss in market share costs the teachers unions some $40 million in dues revenue per year.  Real money.  If public school alternatives suddenly went from their current market share of about 7% to more like 20%, we could be talking about a loss of multiple hundred million dollars per year for the teachers unions.  And, of course, the teachers unions are the number one funders of the Democratic Party and its candidates.

Somehow, few seem to comment on the fundamental immorality of denying school choice to poor and minority kids in order to keep open the taxpayer money spigot for the teachers unions and the Democratic Party.  An exception is David Harsanyi.  His January 22 piece at the Patriot Post is headlined "Dem's Fight Against School Choice Is Immoral"; sub-headline: "Teachers unions are the only organizations that openly support segregated schools."  Excerpt:

Democrats often tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet, few things have hurt African-Americans more over the past 40 years than inner-city public school systems. If [former] President Obama is correct and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic stratum, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.  Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, typically those who are black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.  The National Education Association spent $23 million during the last election cycle alone to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are.

I would only comment that that $23 million from the NEA in the last cycle is but a small part of the total value of teachers union cash and in-kind contributions to the Democratic Party, its allies, and its candidates.  First, in addition to the NEA there are the UFT and various other independent teachers unions.  Then there are contributions to various PACs, Super-PACs, and "issue advocacy" organizations.  Then there are the in-kind efforts:  phone banks, mailings, voter cards, driving people to the polls.  A fair estimate of the total value of the cash and in-kind contributions of teachers unions on behalf of the Democratic Party, allied groups, and candidates in an election cycle is a minimum of $200 million. 

So, poor and minority kids and your parents, face the facts:  you contribute pennies per election cycle to the Democratic Party and its candidates, and the teachers unions contribute hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Dems know where their bread is buttered, and it's not by you.  Not one single one of them will stand up for you when it counts.

Nick Gillespie at Reason today has an excellent round-up of the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) by reputable researchers as to whether school choice, particularly charter schools, improves student performance.  Here are his bullet points with embedded links:

 In Boston, a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard, Duke, and the University of Michigan, conducted a RCT and found:: "The charter school effects reported here are therefore large enough to reduce the black-white reading gap in middle school by two-thirds."

A RCT of charter schools in New York City by a Stanford researcher found an even larger effect: "On average, a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English."

The same Stanford researcher conducted an RCT of charter schools in Chicago and found: "students in charter schools outperformed a comparable group of lotteried-out students who remained in regular Chicago public schools by 5 to 6 percentile points in math and about 5 percentile points in reading…. To put the gains in perspective, it may help to know that 5 to 6 percentile points is just under half of the gap between the average disadvantaged, minority student in Chicago public schools and the average middle-income, nonminority student in a suburban district."

And the last RCT was a national study conducted by researchers at Mathematica for the US Department of Education. It found significant gains for disadvantaged students in charter schools but the opposite for wealthy suburban students in charter schools. They could not determine why the benefits of charters were found only in urban, disadvantaged settings, but their findings are consistent with the three other RCTs that found significant achievement gains for charter students in Boston, Chicago, and New York City.

I wouldn't expect much to change over night now that DeVos is Education Secretary.  Most of the federal funding to K-12 schools is pre-allocated by appropriation bills and funding formulas, and the Education Secretary can't just start moving money around tomorrow.  But the upcoming budget (for the next fiscal year starting in October) can start moving things around, including providing strong funding (or de-funding) incentives for states and districts that variously encourage or discourage school choice.  Expect the teachers unions to fight to the death for every inch of turf.  But this could be the beginning of a long, slow, painful decline.

The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part XIII

The "Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time" is the world temperature data tampering fraud, by which the politicized keepers of world temperature data, most notably at U.S. agencies NOAA and NASA, alter past temperature records to support a narrative of ongoing record-setting global warming.  Past articles in this series (Parts I through XII) can be found at this link.

I have always thought that the fraud would finally crack when a whistleblower or two would step forward.  But with the government passing out all the money, and strict conformance to orthodoxy required to keep your job and career in the field of climate science, that has not occurred.  Until now.  Two weeks ago we got President Trump, and a pledge to "drain the swamp."  Over this weekend, the first whistleblower on the temperature data tampering fraud has stepped forward.  He is Dr. John Bates, recently (late 2016) retired from the job of "Senior Scientist" at NOAA's temperature data operation in Asheville, NC, which is known (after a recent name change) as NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information).  The particular subject on which Bates has blown the whistle is the data underlying a June 2015 paper that appeared in Science magazine, authored by Thomas Karl and others, titled "Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus."  Karl, until his own recent retirement, was the Director of NCEI. 

First, some background so that you will understand the importance of this development.  The year 2015 was targeted by the Obama administration to be the culmination of its climate agenda.  A big summit was scheduled in Paris for December, to be attended by President Obama himself, and at which he badly wanted to sign the U.S. on to a global treaty calling for restrictions on "greenhouse gas" emissions.  But the administration had a problem, which was that according to the best (satellite) data, as of mid-2015 world temperatures had been in a "pause," or "hiatus," showing no trend either up or down, for some 17 years since 1998.  The "pause" had become the number one talking point of so-called climate "skeptics" and others seeking to de-rail the upcoming Paris meetings.  

Then, with exquisite timing, the Karl, et al., paper appeared in Science on June 4.  It claimed to do a re-analysis of temperature records and trends, based in large part on new or updated data sets, to reach a conclusion that there had been no "pause" or "hiatus" at all; rather, the paper concluded, based on its updated data, that the so-called "hiatus" was an "artifact of data biases."  Needless to say, the Karl paper came out with a massive government-orchestrated press barrage, and was picked up and parroted in all the usual "mainstream" media sources.  (E.g., New York Times, June 4, 2015, "Global Warming 'Hiatus' Challenged by NOAA Research").  Skeptics were equally quick to debunk the Karl paper.  (See, for example, Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale at Watts Up With That, June 4, 2015, "NOAA/NCDC’s new ‘pause-buster’ paper: a laughable attempt to create warming by adjusting past data"; and don't forget Manhattan Contrarian, June 7, 2015, "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part V").  According to a later post by Anthony Watts here, he told Karl in an email in June that his "highly questionable" paper was going to be the "Waterloo" for its authors.

The next step came in October 2015, when the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, chaired by Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, issued a subpoena to NOAA for the research documents underlying the Karl, et al. paper.  And then, in a highly unusual move, NOAA flatly refused to comply with the Congressional subpoena.  (Inside Climate News, October 28, 2015, "NOAA Stiff-Arms House Science Committee Subpoena Questioning 'Hiatus' Study"). And the Obama Justice Department refused to enforce the subpoena on behalf of Congress.  As far as I can ascertain, Smith never got the information he was seeking.  Something tells me some people at NOAA may shortly be wishing that they had complied.

Which brings us up to the recent events.  According to this post at Judith Curry's Climate, etc., upon his retirement from NOAA late last year, Dr. Bates initially submitted an op-ed to the Washington Post in December 2016 setting forth his revelations.  Needless to say, the Post declined to publish it.  After discussions with Ms. Curry, they decided to publish a longer version of the revelations at her site, and it appeared there on Saturday February 4.  Bates also provided his revelations to David Rose of the UK's Daily Mail, and a long article appeared there today.  The headline for Rose's article is "Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data." 

Rather than try to paraphrase, I'll include some fairly long quotes from Rose's article.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data. . . .  

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper. . . .  

In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.

There's lots more in the Mail article, and in Dr. Bates's post at Climate, etc.  Among the most important points are (1) the data underlying the Karl, et al., paper have never been properly archived, in violation of policy of both NOAA and Science, with the result that the paper cannot be replicated; and (2) the computer on which the secret Karl, et al., data resided has crashed and is unusable.  In other words, it's more or less the usual for the "science" coming out of NOAA and purporting to support the global warming narrative.

This story has just broken this weekend, and is already all over the skeptic sites like Watts Up With That, Icecap, Powerline, Climate Depot, Tallbloke, Breitbart, Zero Hedge and others.  But my searches don't turn up anything on any "mainstream" source, like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, or for that matter any major science site like Scientific American, Science or Nature.  Are they going to just try to ignore this and see if they can get away with it?

It is highly likely that criminal conduct occurred here, both in the intentional manipulation of data and in the obstruction of refusing to comply with a valid subpoena.  It seems like the paper's authors were counting on the Justice Department remaining in friendly hands until the expiration of the statute of limitations.  Unfortunately for them, that has not occurred.

Climate Alarmism Doesn't Seem To Be Scaring Anybody Any More

In a post back in December, I made this prediction:

As soon as the United States stops parroting the global warming line, the other countries will quickly start backing away from it as well.

Look around and you will find that this is happening much faster than even I would have thought.  Scott Pruitt hasn't even been confirmed yet as EPA administrator, and already the floodgates are starting to open around the world to rapidly expanding fossil fuel use, particularly coal.  Now mind you, no country has actually officially stated that "we don't buy that global warming crap any more."  If you just listen to their official words and pronouncements, it might seem that not all that much has changed.  But then, take a look at what they are doing, and you get a very different picture.

Let's have a round-up:

Japan.  Do you remember Japan's pledge, after the Fukushima nuclear plant incident in 2011, to transition away from nuclear and fossil fuels and toward the holy grails of wind and solar power?  It seems that that did not work out too well.  Andrew Follett in the Daily Caller on February 1 reports on Japan's newly revised energy plans.  Wind and solar?

Officials promised to replace nuclear power with wind or solar, but this caused the price of electricity to rise by 20 percent.

Enough of that foolishness!  What are the new plans?

Japan [has] plans to build as many as 45 new coal-fired power stations in the coming years.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is still firmly behind plans to build coal plants, despite repeated pressures from environmentalists to stop construction of the major new coal plants. Abe wants more new coal plants to make sure the island nation isn’t too reliant on any one source of electricity. . . .  Japan got 24 percent of its electricity from coal in 2010 and the country plans to get more than a third of its power from coal by 2040.

According to Follett, Japan is also planning to add natural gas capacity, as well as to restart most of its nukes.  Back to energy sanity!

Australia.   Do you remember that back on September 28 a big storm in South Australia caused the amount of power coming from its extensive wind farms to swing so wildly that it knocked out electricity to the entire province for a couple of days?  Going in to that disaster, South Australia was one of the world champions of wind power, crowing that it got up to 50% of its power from wind on some days.  Well, what are they going to do now to keep the disaster from re-occurring?  From The Australian on February 1:

Australia’s Turnbull government is planning to help fund the construction of new clean-coal-fired power stations­ in an extraordinary meas­ure to intervene in the looming energ­y security and pricing crisis. . . .  [T]he federal government will look to either repurpose plants or directly invest in the construction of new-generation coal-fired plants in partnership with the ­private sector.

Canada.  In 2015 the Canadians voted out the notorious Conservative "climate denier" Stephen Harper and voted in trendy lefty Justin Trudeau.  Surely this guy would carry forth the torch of the fossil fuel restriction movement?  Don't count on it.  From Yale Environment 360, January 17, "Canada's Trudeau Is Under Fire For His Record on Green Issues":

Trudeau’s critics say that while he has talked a good game on climate change, his actions have been in stark contrast to that rhetoric. Trudeau has approved two contentious pipeline projects to transport Alberta tar sands oil. One, the Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline, would carry oil from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest and beyond. The other, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline, would move oil and bitumen to ports in British Columbia for export, thus extending for decades the life of tar sands operations.  Trudeau also supports the highly controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. . . .  In addition, Trudeau has approved the $11.4 billion Pacific NorthWest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that would be built by the Malaysian national oil company, Petronas, at the mouth of British Columbia’s Skeena River.

China.  Of all the countries on the world climate stage, China is my favorite.  They are willing to say the most transparently deceptive things to make the environmental crowd think that they are going along with the program, when in fact they are just thumbing their noses -- and the environmentalists get completely taken in every time.  And thus on January 18 came the big announcement that China was canceling some 103 coal plants previously planned to be built.  Exciting!  From the New York Times of that date:

China is canceling plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, seeking to rein in runaway, wasteful investment in the sector while moving the country away from one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation, the government announced in a directive made public this week.

That sure sounds like something for a greenhouse gas-hating environmentalist to cheer about!  So let's try to put it in some perspective.  How much coal electricity-generating capacity does China already have, and how much is it still building even after the cancelation of the 103 plants?  As of 2015, China's coal-fired electricity-generation capacity was over 900 gigawatts, according to Bloomberg, and continuing to grow rapidly.  It seems that they had planned another 350 gigawatts; but with these cancelations, they will now limit that to another 200 or so gigawatts, to achieve a "limit" of about 1100 gigawatts of coal-fired generation capacity.  From Next Big Future on November 8:

China will need to cut about 150 gigawatts of coal-fired power from projects that are either approved for construction or already under construction to maintain the 1,100-gigawatt limit, Huang Xuenong, director of the power generation division of NEA said during the webcast. Without restrictions the country’s coal-fired power capacity could reach about 1,250 gigawatts by 2020, he said.
By contrast, the evil pollution-happy planet-destroying U.S. has coal-fired electricity-generation capacity of a big 305 gigawatts.  So China's announcement of cancelation of that last 150 gigawatts of planned capacity means that they are graciously going to "limit" their coal electricity-generation capacity to 3.7 times the U.S. capacity, rather than the previously-planned 4.2 times.  That sure sounds like "climate leadership" to me!   From Isabel Hilton at Yale Environment 360 on November 21:

With Donald Trump threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, China is ready to assume leadership of the world’s climate efforts. For China, it is a matter of self-interest – reducing the choking pollution in its cities and seizing the economic opportunities of a low-carbon future.   

Sure, Isabel.  And here's another way that China is seizing the "climate leadership" away from the United States:  by building well over a dozen new coal-fired power stations in the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovinia and Montenegro.  From Not A Lot Of People Know That on September 21:

The Balkan region’s first privately-funded power plant came online on Tuesday, increasing the region’s dependency on coal-fired power stations even as environmental concerns are driving them to the brink of the extinction elsewhere in Europe. It was built by China’s Dongfang Electric Corp and financed with the help of a 350 million euro ($391.13 million) loan from the China Development Bank. 

And that plant is just the first of many.  Paul Homewood of Not A Lot Of People Know That helpfully provides this map of planned coal-fired power stations in the Balkan countries, largely to be financed and built by Chinese investors and construction companies:

The best part about all of this is that in the time since President Trump's election the voices of climate alarm have reached entirely new levels of hysteria.  It's just that it seems that they aren't scaring anybody any more.