2017: Annual New Year’s Prediction Challenge For Climate Alarmists

Happy New Year’s! Welcome to 2017, and the 7th year of my prediction challenge, which virtually no Warmists will take. And one year closer to End Of Life As We Know it. 2050 and 2100 are fast approaching, the primary dates that the climate alarmists always want to use to denote when Earth is going to burn, baby, burn in fire, dan dan daaaan, fire, dan dan daaaaan.

2016 saw historically low numbers for wildfires and tornadoes, just like 2013, 2014, and 2015. There was just one landfalling U.S. hurricane, Matthew. There have still been no major hurricanes making landfall since 2005, the longest stretch since the Civil War era. There were 16 named Atlantic storms, with seven hurricanes (the average since 1980 is 12.1 storms and 6.4 hurricanes, with 2.7 major hurricanes). Thousands of cold temperature high temp records were set. Summer wasn’t as hot as usual. In other words, the weather just didn’t cooperate with Warmist predictions. Hence, they have made a big effort, building on 2013, to change their predictions and fold all weather, including cold and snow, as being caused by “climate change”.

No child born over the last 18 years has seen statistically significant warming, and no child born this century has seen any warming.

And Warmists still can’t prove anthropogenic causation of all warming.

New Year’s is usually a time when we make resolutions which we abandon when we realize that chocolate, bacon, and beer are great (and bacon cooked in beer and covered with chocolate!) In the blogosphere, we often make predictions for the New Year. Instead, how about a challenge?

For a long time, the alarmists have been making predictions as to what the climate will do. They say in 10 years, 50, 100. Instead, why not, say, make predictions for……2017! What I want for them to do, from the biggest of big climahypocrites, such as Al Gore, James Hansen, Barack Obama, and Leonardo DiCaprio, to the smallest climate dupes, is tell us exactly what the climate will do this year. For some of these questions, I’m using the USA, but, alarmists from around the world can use their own country/region, if they like:

  • What will the average temperature of the Earth be for 2017? Most scientists place the average at 59 degrees F (15 C) (it depends on the range of dates used, cherry picking to use more of the cooling period during the 40’s through 70’s). How far above, or below, will it be?
  • What will the average temperature be for the USA? The rough average for the USA is 53 F.
  • How many tropical systems will there be in the Atlantic? How many will hit the USA?
  • What will the four seasons do in 2017? Warmer, colder, hotter, wetter? Tell us
  • What will each month look like in the USA? How about in your home state?
  • Which months will be above average, and which ones below, temperature wise?
  • What states will have big floods, and during what months?
  • What will tornado season look like?
  • How many destructive thunderstorms will there be, and in which states?
  • How many “extreme” weather events will there be? Oh, wait, that’s right, Warmists now call all weather events “extreme” now
  • How much ice will the poles gain/lose?
  • Will the Arctic be ice free this summer? It failed to be ice free in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 and has gained ice
  • You’re predicting doom for Antarctica: what will happen this year?
  • What will the average precipitation be for your home city? Average temperature? Average low’s and highs?
  • How many earthquakes will there be (since, apparently, climate change/globull warming creates earthquakes)?
  • Pick an island, and tell us how much the sea will rise around it.

There are many, many, many more questions that can be asked, but, I know what the alarmists are thinking: “Teach, that is weather, not climate! I refuse to participate!” Ah, but, what, exactly, is climate? Let’s pull a couple good definitions

  • Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time
  • Climate is the average weather conditions at a particular place over a long period of time. Climate is the long-term predictable state of the atmosphere. It is affected by physical features such as mountains, rivers, positioning of the globe, plateaus, deserts, depressions and much more.
  • The general or typical atmospheric conditions for a place and/or period of time. Conditions include rainfall, temperature, thunderstorms, lightning, freezes, etc.

Notice, “long term predictable.” Weather and other natural forces create climate. And right now the alarmists are saying “but, Teach, one year is not considered to be a “long period of time!”” Well, you have plenty of data available for the long term, and, with all your vast knowledge of what the climate is doing, due to man’s release of greenhouse gases, surely you alarmists can make predictions for 2017 based on that long term data, and be mostly correct, right? Surely, you aren’t afraid to make predictions for this year, and tell us what the climate during 2017 will do, right? But, you have to make your predictions, and can’t go back and change them up as the year goes on, the way many organizations, like NOAA, the Met Office, and the IPCC do. And at the end of the year, we will see how well you have done.

And since you are now claiming that every weather event is a result of Hotcoldwetdry, er, climate change/climate disruption, you should be able to give us a few predictions. You’re somehow able to make those predictions for the long term, why not the short term?

Of course, if you use any of the models from Warmist groups, you’ll be bound to fail

There’s your real “97% consensus”, though we can substitute the squishy feelings based word “consensus” with that sciencey word “data”.

Any alarmist up for the challenge? And no cheating be reading the Farmer’s Almanac, which tends to be right way more than the Met, NASA, UN IPCC, and other alarmist groups are. Forget about your PR blitzes, “spreading awareness” campaigns, your advocacy, your stunts, and tell us what will happen. If you’re correct, for a change, maybe people will start to believe you again.

Oh, and a second challenge: live your life in 2017 in the manner you tell everyone else to live. Go “carbon neutral”. Give up your fossil fueled vehicles. No washing machines. No dryers. No refrigerator ice makers. No A/C. No gas heating and cooking. No pets. No kids. No hairspray. No new clothes. Turn all power off at home when not at home. Flip those circuit breakers. 2 minute showers. Move into a tiny home.

Read: 2017: Annual New Year’s Prediction Challenge For Climate Alarmists »

If All You See…

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle causing it to get so hot it snows, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Independent Sentinel, with a post on New Year’s with liberals.

Let’s start off the new year with an ode to fossil fueled vehicles, which Warmists want Everyone Else to give up.

BTW, sorry for the light posting the past week. Had a nice cold. Thought I was better Friday, and ended up having to go home since I was sweating inside. Slightly better Saturday, enough to work, not enough to care about reading the news. Better today.

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – Happy 2017 Edition

Bill Randall patriotic pinup

Happy Sunday! The start of a new year, something special, something exciting, a time for resolutions which will be broken by the 10th. This pinup is by Bill Randall, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Victory Girls Blog notes that Trump=Love
  2. The People’s Cube has the top 13 things that didn’t happen in 2016
  3. The Lid has the top 30 hoax hate crimes since Trump was elected
  4. White House Dossier notes Obama going after pizza
  5. Powerline discusses the slow learner in Germany
  6. Vlad Tepes notes another peaceful Muslim in slow learner’s Germany
  7. Maggie’s Farm has a tune for 2017
  8. Fire Andrea Mitchell has more info on the Turkey terrorist attack
  9. Chicks On The Right discusses the Hypocrite in Chief
  10. Alan Colmes is already starting the complaints about Trump golfing
  11. Adrienne’s Corner notes the things she wants to go away in 2017
  12. A View From The Beach isn’t impressed with Ariana Grande’s objection to objectification
  13. Watts Up With That? covers the Scott Adams climate challenge
  14. Scottish Skeptic lets you in on a Scottish new year’s tradition
  15. And last, but not least, Director Blue notes how George Soros has destroyed the Democratic Party

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. (BTW, since someone asked, the reason I leave links for the previous week up (or you might see a *) is because they are place holders for later in the day or for next weeks. Easier than rewriting all the time. Also, the listing order has to do with how they are added over time, not how good a post is. I just copy and paste from the previous week, then edit. If you see one of the *’s, go ahead and check out the blog anyhow, see if there is an update. I cannot update with my Android during the day.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – Happy 2017 Edition »

Federal Judge Places Injunction On Obama Transgender And Abortion Rules

Barack Obama ends 2016 by losing yet another court case

(Buzzfeed) A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect.

The lawsuit — brought by Texas, a handful of other states, and some religiously affiliated nonprofit medical groups — challenges a regulation implementing the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation “forbids discriminating on the basis of ‘gender identity’ and ‘termination of pregnancy’” under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.

Explaining the lawsuit, O’Connor wrote, “Plaintiffs claim the Rule’s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017.”

Judge O’Connor also included something else not mentioned in the Buzzfeed article

(Fox News) O’Connor wrote in a 46-page ruling that the rules “likely violate” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and “places substantial pressure on Plaintiffs to perform and cover transition and abortion procedures.”

In other words, the Obamacare rules would essentially force compliance for doctors and medical facilities to do things they do not want to do, and, let’s face it, Leftists intentionally attempt to go to places and force compliance. That’s how we end up with religious bakers and florists and others being fined and losing their businesses because they don’t do gay weddings. They could have gone to another business, but, no, they want to force compliance.

(Washington Post) The regulation in question implements Section 1557 of the ACA, which prohibits health-care entities that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex. According to the regulation, this prohibition extends to discrimination based upon “gender identity,” “sex stereotyping” and “termination of pregnancy.” Among other things, it requires that covered entities treat individuals in accordance with their self-proclaimed gender identity, which is defined as a person’s “internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”

In other words, it required that medical facilities ignore basic biology based on the fantasies of deluded people and activists.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Federal Judge Places Injunction On Obama Transgender And Abortion Rules »

If All You See…

…is a sky full of carbon pollution that will doom us all in 2017, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on bureaucratic stupidity

Read: If All You See… »

If You Believe In The Free Market You Should Totally Believe In ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

Being the last day of 2016, I’m breaking the Laws Of The Internet and using “Or Something” in a second headline. It’s worth it

Why Free Market Believers Should Naturally Accept Climate Change Science

Are you someone who has faith in the power of free markets? Then you should naturally accept the evidence that human activity is bringing about climate change.

Free and competitive markets work efficiently in large part because they are phenomenal information aggregators, gathering and sorting facts about consumer preferences and business production costs, and guiding market participants to engage in actions that provide benefits to both sides. Markets can easily help figure out the most efficient way to deliver coffee to people’s homes, for example, or to reduce air pollution in cities. Markets also determine which ideas succeed (the iPhone, for instance) and which ones fail (Kool Kardashian Kard).

Likewise, scientific ideas thrive or perish in a marketplace of their own. Whereas participants in an economic market are rewarded for delivering goods or services well, participants in the marketplace of scientific ideas get rewarded for overturning conventional thinking. This is because the scientific method works not by proving theories but by disproving them: Scientists pose and test rival explanations, and ultimately, the concepts that are disproven fall away while those that aren’t prevail.

Of course, that’s not what is happening with those who are in charge of “climate science”, where there is a preconceived notion, and the data and methodologies are changed to conform to those notions.

After more than 25 years, the idea that human activity has led to greater greenhouse-gas emissions and, thus, greater climate change has won out over competing theories to explain how the Earth’s climate system operates. Over time, the number of rival explanations has declined, rather than increased. And refinements to the dominant theory have strengthened, rather than weakened, the case for it. At a meeting I recently attended, the chairman of a university’s department of Earth and planetary sciences announced that he would no longer hire scholars in climate science because “the science is done.” While important measurements and observations will continue, the theoretical questions at the frontier have been answered.

This is just another way of saying “the science is settled, no one is Allowed To Question It.” Because science.

In the end, then, it is inconsistent to simultaneously accept that markets are powerful ways to allocate goods and services in the economy and also deny that human activity is causing substantial climate change. There’s room to argue over the economic implications of climate change or the best ways to mitigate and adapt to it, but the scientific consensus is no longer a matter of debate.

Of course, the so-called free markets have massive government interference, and the science of climate does, as well. Regardless, it is a cute, yet false, allegory. Most climate scientists are under the pay of governments, at least those in positions of power. They aren’t going to get funding, much less keep their jobs, if they start saying “um, guys, really, CO2 isn’t doing that much, our models are failures, and we sound more like a doomsday cult than a scientific community. Plus, this whole thing about increasing government power and raising the cost of living on people really doesn’t play well.”

Read: If You Believe In The Free Market You Should Totally Believe In ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Washington Post: The President Refuses To Face Reality On Russia Or Something

No, not that president. Not the one who’s been in office since 1/20/2009. The other one, which has the Washington Post Editorial Board Very Concerned

Trump refuses to face reality about Russia

ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT Obama’s sanctions against Russia for interfering with the U.S. presidential election came late, his action on Thursday reflected a bipartisan consensus that penalties must be imposed for Moscow’s audacious hacking and meddling. But one prominent voice in the United States reacted differently. President-elect Donald Trump said “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.” Earlier in the week, he asserted that the “whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.”

No, Mr. Trump, it is not time to move on. U.S. intelligence agencies are in agreement about “what is going on”: a brazen and unprecedented attempt by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election through the theft and release of material damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The president-elect’s dismissive response only deepens unanswered questions about his ties to Russia in the past and his plans for cooperation with Vladi­mir Putin.

That’s cute, as there’s still no concrete proof that Russia swayed the election, and, really, if the DNC and Hillary Clinton, along with John Podesta, were competent, it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t Russia which implemented an unsecured server outside the control of the federal government, nor did they place material on the laptop of Huma Abadin’s pervert husband, Anthony Weiner.

What the WPEB is attempting to do is the same as other Democrats, and Mr. Obama: delegitimize Trump’s win, because they’re sore losers. And, where was this concern over Russia the past 8 years? The Washington Post certainly made fun of Mitt Romney and his concern about Russia back during the 2012 elections. Here’s what Claudia Rossett has to say

Obama from his first year in office pursued policies of appeasement and retreat that invited Russian aggression.

Just connect the dots, from Obama’s 2009 fawning “reset” with Putin, to his 2012 confidential promise, caught on an open microphone, of post-reelection flexibility, to his 2013 handover of his “red line” in Syria to the ministrations of Putin.

Then came Obama’s 2014 de facto acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and Obama’s de facto deference right up to the present date of Russia’s increasingly bold reach back into the Middle East, including air strikes in Syria.

Having declared in 2011 that it was time for Syria’s President Bashar Assad to go, Obama today — following the rise of ISIS and more than 400,000 deaths in Syria’s war — leaves the U.S. sidelined as Russia, Iran and Turkey seek a deal that would strengthen Assad’s grip on power. Small surprise if along the way Putin concluded he could at no serious cost cyber-meddle with the U.S. itself.

With just three weeks left in office, Obama is flat out of time to remedy his eight-years of failure to contain Russia. But Obama does have time, if he harps chiefly on Russian hacking, to smear doubts across the legitimacy of Trump’s election.

The WPEB wonders if Trump’s dismissal is from a lack of experience. What of the guy who’s been president since 2009, and has the above track record? They even write

Mr. Trump has been frank about his desire to improve relations with Russia, but he seems blissfully untroubled by the reasons for the deterioration in relations, including Russia’s instigation of an armed uprising in Ukraine, its seizure of Crimea, its efforts to divide Europe and the crushing of democracy and human rights at home.

Who was president while that occurred?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Washington Post: The President Refuses To Face Reality On Russia Or Something »

If All You See…

…is a wonderful low carbon sailboat sailing the trackless seas raised by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Fire Andrea Mitchell, with a post on California decriminalizing underage prostitution.

Read: If All You See… »

Democrat AGs Really Want Trump To Keep Obama’s Clean Power Plan

Most of these Attorney Generals are also involved in harassing Exxon and lots of private organizations, demanding all their correspondence on a fishing trip to intimidate them and shut down their 1st Amendment Rights, such as NY AG Eric Schneiderman, who has had multiple suits thrown at him

(NY1) State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is spearheading an effort to save one of President Barack Obama’s plans to curb global warming.

In a letter sent Thursday, Democratic attorneys general in 15 states urged President-elect Donald Trump to preserve Obama’s Clean Power Plan. It seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by about one-third by 2030, but it’s being blocked by lawsuits from states and fossil-fuel companies.

The Supreme Court halted the plan in February while the lower court reviews the litigation.

Trump has stated that the CPP is gone when he gets into office, regardless of how the courts rule. We’ll see if that happens when he assumes office. Regardless, if these Dem AGs like the plan so much, they should lobby their governors and general assemblies to institute the policies at the state level, burdening their Democrat voting citizens with the higher costs and shakier power grid.

We also learn

(TPM)  Fourteen Democratic state attorneys general urged Donald Trump in a letter sent Wednesday to have his administration continue defending President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a monumental effort to address climate change that is the target of a lawsuit brought by more that two dozen, largely conservative states.

The letter also rebutted the legal arguments that some of the attorneys general suing Obama over the regulations made in their own letter sent to Trump earlier this month. The signees threatened to sue Trump if he followed those red state officials’ advice to simply instruct the Environmental Protection Agency not to enforce the climate plan.

Twenty four states have sued the Obama administration regarding the CPP. Trump’s best option is to simply cancel the CPP with a wave of his pen. If this is good enough for Obama, it’s good enough for Trump.

Read: Democrat AGs Really Want Trump To Keep Obama’s Clean Power Plan »

People Plan To Freeze Themselves In A Polar Plunge For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

Yes, it is that loopy time of the year

More than 200 Mainers Set to Take Polar Bear Plunge

With temperatures forecast to be in the mid to upper 20s, a group of dedicated Mainers will be taking a plunge into the Atlantic on Saturday at East End Beach in Portland to draw attention to climate change.

This will be the seventh year that Dr. Tony Owens, an emergency-department physician at Maine Medical Center, is taking the polar bear dip. He said all these folks braving the cold get people talking, and for some it may be the first time that they are talking about the impacts of climate change.

“My primary goal,” he said, “is to support that mission of highlighting climate change – global warming – and to try to engage citizens in supporting a sustainable environment.”

The event, which helps raise funding for the National Resources Council of Maine, kicks off with a 5-kilometer race at 11 a.m. and ends with a noon plunge into the Atlantic Ocean at East End Beach.

Emily O’Donnell, one of the more than 200 who pledged to dash and dip this weekend, said it gets family and friends to understand the depth of her commitment to getting the word out on the need for action to slow climate change.

Nothing says climate change like taking a fossil fueled vehicle to the beach to freeze your buns off. Warmists are rather amusing, though, in their spreading awareness silliness.

Owens, who also is a board member of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said that when they take the dip they will be at ground zero for one of the major local impacts of climate change: sea-level rise.

Oh, really? Perhaps the good doctor should have checked the hard data, rather than relying on scaremongering, in which we find for Portland, Maine: “The mean sea level trend is 1.87 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.15 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1912 to 2015 which is equivalent to a change of 0.61 feet in 100 years.” The other Maine stations are similar.

Read: People Plan To Freeze Themselves In A Polar Plunge For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Pirate's Cove