Myron Ebell writes March 28, 2019 in the Sacramento Bee PRO: Climate Science Needs a Critical Review by Skeptical Experts Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Is global warming a looming catastrophe? President Donald Trump has often said he doesn’t think so even while his administration continues to release official reports warning that it is.

The president will soon find out who is right by convening a high-level commission to do a critical review of the fourth National Climate Assessment issued last November and other government reports.

Surprisingly, most of the climate science funded by the federal government has never been subjected to the kind of rigorous and exhaustive review that is common practice for other important scientific issues and major engineering projects.

For example, when NASA was putting men on the moon, every piece of equipment and every calculation were scrutinized from every possible angle simply because if anything went wrong the mission would fail.

Serious problems and shortcomings with official climate science have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly qualified scientists such as Princeton’s brilliant physics professor William Happer only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports.

Yet the conclusions and predictions made in these official climate science reports are the basis for proposed energy policies that could cost trillions of dollars in less than a decade and tens of trillions of dollars over several decades.

Given the magnitude of the potential costs involved, taking on trust the bureaucratic processes that have led to official consensus is simply foolish. Thus the review to be undertaken by the proposed President’s Commission on Climate Security is long overdue.

To mention only three major issues among many that need to be scrutinized:

First, the computer models used have predicted far more warming than has occurred over the past 40 years. Why have such models failed and why are they still used are important questions.

Second, predictions of the various negative impacts of warming, such as sea level rise, are derived from highly unrealistic scenarios; and positive impacts, such as less ferocious winter storms, are minimized or ignored. What would a more honest accounting of all the possible impacts of climate change look like?

Third, surface temperature data sets appear to have been manipulated to show more warming in the past century than has occurred. The new commission should insist that the debate be based on scrupulously reliable data.

Since news of the proposed review leaked out in February, a furious campaign to stop it has been mounted by the federal climate bureaucracy and their allies in the climate industrial complex.

On the surface, this seems puzzling. If the alarmists are confident that the science contained in the official reports is spot on, they should welcome a review that would finally put to rest the doubts that have been raised.

On the other hand, their opposition suggests that the science behind the climate consensus is highly suspect and cannot withstand critical review. In other words, they’ve been peddling junk and are about to be found out.

A press release from one alarmist pressure group was headlined: “58 Senior Military and National Security Leaders Denounce NSC Climate Panel.”

Denouncing an expert review seems a most inappropriate response, and especially to one that is designed to be open and subject to further review by other experts, such as the National Academies of Science.

I wonder if environmental pressure groups have ever denounced doing another environmental review of projects – for example, the Keystone XL pipeline – they are trying to stop.

Two prominent promoters of global warming alarmism recently published an op-ed in which they accused the Trump administration of using “Stalinist tactics” to try to discredit the climate science consensus.

Let’s hope that they’re not as ignorant about science as they are about history. It’s the enforcers of climate orthodoxy and opponents of open debate who are using Stalinist tactics.

Sen. Mike Lee mocks Green New Deal in speech featuring tauntauns, giant sea horses and babies is an article at KSL.com.  A video clip is above to appreciate his standup delivery.  Text from the speech is reprinted below in italics with my bolds.

Sen. Mike Lee offered what he considers a serious solution to climate change Tuesday in an often flippant speech about the Green New Deal on the Senate floor: babies.

The Utah Republican mocked the Democratic proposal with images of a machine-gun wielding Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur, tauntauns from “Star Wars,” Gov. Gary Herbert fending off sharks with a tennis racket, and Hawaiians on giant sea horses — not to mention some bad puns.

“The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution that we’re considering this week in the Senate, but the serious business of human flourishing — the solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married and have some kids,” Lee said.

His speech came ahead of a failed vote in the Senate to begin debate on a sweeping resolution to combat climate change called the Green New Deal. Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,-D, N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced the legislation.

Lee said problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans.

“More babies will mean more forward-looking adults, the sort we need to tackle long-term, large-scale problems,” he said. “American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing countries.”

Lee said the plan essentially calls for the elimination of all airplanes and all cows.

Sen. Mike Lee speaks on Senate floor Tuesday, March 26, 2019. (Photo: Sen. Mike Lee, YouTube)

Without airplanes, how would people get around the vast expanses of Alaska?  Tauntauns, Lee said, showing a picture of Luke Skywalker aboard one of the fictional snow lizards found roaming the wintry, windswept plains of Hoth.

“Not only are tauntauns carbon-neutral, but according to one report ‘a long time ago’ and ‘far, far away,’ they may even be fully recyclable for their warmth on especially cold nights,” Lee said, referencing a scene in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” where Han Solo slices open the beast with his lightsaber so a hypothermic Luke Skywalker can crawl inside.

Unable to fly, Hawaiians, Lee said, would have to ride giant sea horses to reach the mainland. “Under the Green New Deal, this is probably Hawaii’s best bet,” he said.

“But honestly, I think you’ve got to remember if they think the cows smell bad, just wait ’til they get a whiff of the sea horses,” he said.

Reducing the nation’s 94 million cows to zero means no more milk, cheese, steak or hamburgers, he said.

“Over the state work period last week, I visited some farms to find out for myself what Utah’s own bovine community thinks of the Green New Deal,” Lee said.

“Every cow I talked to said the same thing: ‘Boo.'”

Sen. Mike Lee speaks on the Senate floor Tuesday, March 26, 2019. (Photo: Sen. Mike Lee, YouTube)

Climate change hit home in Utah when sharks crashed through the window in Herbert’s state Capitol office in the made-for-TV flick “Sharknado: The 4th Awakens,” Lee said.

Displaying a painting depicting the climactic battle of the Cold War with Reagan packing a machine gun and a rocket launcher while riding atop a dinosaur with the American flag in the background, Lee said there was no such fight. The Cold War, he said, was won without firing a shot.

The image has as much to do with overcoming Soviet communism in the 20th century as the Green New Deal has to do with overcoming climate change in the 21st century, he said.

“The aspirations of the proposal have been called radical and extreme,” Lee said. “But mostly they are ridiculous.”

Another display of monotonic Climate Science is the uproar over a proposed White House panel of scientists to review and advise on statements about climate change appearing in various and sundry Federal Executive Branch organizations. Witness the sanctimonious John Kerry: Disband Your Climate Denial Panel, Mr. President.

Like spoiled children thwarted, warmists are throwing a tantrum at the prospect of being held accountable for parroting climate nostrums. After all, before now they have had no challenges to anything they say.  So they are outraged; Outraged, I say! Sen. Schumer says he pledges to defund the panel to silence them

Lost in the uproar over forming a red team to peer review climate science pronouncements on behalf of the WH is the existence of the Climate Blue Team operating uncontested for many years at NOAA Climate.gov. Having had the field to themselves for so long, the idea of another viewpoint seems unthinkable and wrong.

Introducing the Climate Blue Team (formed in 2010)

The Leaders

The Team General Manager is Thomas Karl, infamous for his hurried adjustment of the NOAA sea surface temperature dataset in order to erase the inconvenient “pause” this century. For the background on his actions prior to retiring see Bob Tisdale’s Open Letter to Tom Karl of NOAA/NCEI Regarding “Hiatus Busting” Data

Karl is joined by Richard Rosen who pushed for a NOAA press release to challenge Chris Landsea’s study on the issue of hurricane intensity and climate change, since it “takes a position that is supportive of the Bush administration’s view on the issue.” He also published a paper The economics of mitigating climate change: What can we know?, which concluded:  “Because of these serious technical problems, policymakers should not base climate change mitigation policy on the estimated net economic impacts computed by integrated assessment models. Rather, mitigation policies must be forcefully implemented anyway given the actual physical climate change crisis, in spite of the many uncertainties involved in trying to predict the net economics of doing so.”

Wayne Higgins heads up NOAA’s Program Office and is on the record attributing extreme weather events to man-made global warming: “So where we’ve looked forward decades, even out to a century and using those climate models with scenarios in which we actually ramp up the levels of greenhouse gases, we are able to confirm that human-induced climate change is something that is occurring now and that is actually likely to continue in the future,” he said.

Eileen Shea led NOAA’s Climate Services program and sings from the same hymnbook:
“No scientist worth their salt will blame any individual event on climate change, but these storms are certainly being exacerbated by climate change, partly because hurricanes, especially, take their energy from the ocean, their energy and their moisture from the ocean, and the warm the water, the stronger the hurricane can grow. And the more expansive the warm water, the further the hurricane can go and stay strong.” Shea is one of the many climate scientists working in Asheville, sometimes referred to as “climate city.” For them, the debate over climate change has been long-settled.

Ko Barrett is Deputy Director of NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office and also a Vice Chair of the IPCC. In the latter role, she led the effort to produce SR15, the call to prevent 1.5C of warming. “This is the first time the IPCC has undertaken a focused report on the processes that drive change and the resulting impacts to oceans and the frozen parts of our planet,” said IPCC Vice-Chair Ko Barrett. “There is a huge volume of scientific information for us to assess, which can help policy makers to better understand the changes we are seeing and the risks to lives and livelihoods that may occur with future change.”

Louisa Koch is NOAA Director of Education. “Not only does such coordination minimize duplication among these programs, but the overall effort is enhanced also because each agency brings a complementary mission-driven focus to this complex, large-scale issue,” added Louisa Koch, director of education for NOAA. Why should the public care? Put simply, climate change affects everyone on Earth. Climate is “changing in ways that are going to impact society across the board,” said Louisa Koch, the director of NOAA’s Office of Education. “Communities need to understand what changes they are going to experience most intensely and how that’s going to impact them.”

The Blue Team Panel of Players

NOAA has a science panel comprising the players that review papers and articles, and ensure the warmist viewpoint is protected and reinforced. The Head Coach appears to be Wayne Higgins (above)

Jessica Blunden: Even though it was a relatively quiet hurricane year in the Atlantic, there were 36 major tropical cyclones worldwide – 15 more than average, said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden, co-editor of the report published Tuesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. And at the heart of the records is that all three major heat-trapping greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – hit record highs in 2015, Blunden said. “This impacts people. This is real life,” Blunden said.  ‘Earth’s fever rises’: New report shows many symptoms of climate change

Tim Boyer: “From this [study] we can better understand the effects of natural and man-made variability to the climate system,” said co-author Tim Boyer of NOAA’s Ocean Climate Laboratory. “Decision-makers can gauge what needs to be done to ameliorate the situation, or, if not that, to plan for the consequences of the excess heat.” The study was published in the journal Science Advances. The findings are important because the world’s oceans provide one of the best records of the excess energy trapped on Earth by increased greenhouse gases, largely from the burning of fossil fuels. As the seas heat up from climate change, the water expands and rises, causing coastal flooding and, in Antarctica, ice shelves to disintegrate.

Christopher Burt is a lucky man. As with others fascinated by weather records, his once obscure passion has been thrust into one of the central conversations of our time. Burt’s audience is surprisingly large. On average, 10,000 people a day read his postings on Weather Underground. Though he writes about all sorts of weather extremes, heat records are one of his greatest passions.

In 2010, two climate-change researchers using computer modeling and calculations of human cooling capacities predicted that large parts of the earth may become uninhabitable during heat waves in future centuries. The study was based on a scenario of rapid global warming and was probably a bit shrill in its view of the consequences—mass migrations and war—but the science was solid and easy to believe. After all, large parts of the planet are already uninhabitable, at least for some percentage of the population some percentage of the time. And the heat waves are hitting harder, and coming more frequently than ever before.

Leo Donner: Donner has also served as a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports help world leaders make decisions on dealing with the issue. The research scientist will discuss some IPCC conclusions, such as how humans have increased greenhouse gases through agricultural activity, burning fossil fuels and decimating forests in the Amazon. “One conclusion of the IPCC is that most of the observed change in global temperature is the result of human activity,” Donner said.

NOAA Scientist David Fahey in Boulder: a Lead Author of National Climate Assessment: The government’s National Climate Assessment cited human influence as the “dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of a worst-case scenario where seas could rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. When it comes to rapidly escalating levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the report states, “there is no climate analog for this century at any time in at least the last 50 million years.”

Alarmist All Star Katharine Hayhoe is a professor in the department of political science at Texas Tech University and director of its Climate Science Center. She was a lead author on the Climate Science Special Report, part of the fourth US National Climate Assessment. She writes books, produces videos, documentaries and gives interviews to raise awareness of climate change concerns. Katherine Hayhoe: “The most important thing is to accelerate the realization that we have to act. This means connecting the dots to show that the impacts are not distant any more. They are here and they affect our lives. It means weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, which is challenged by the fact that the majority of the world’s richest companies have made their money from the fossil fuel economy, so the majority of the wealth and power remains in their hands.” “Climate change is a long term trend superimposed over natural variability. There will be good and bad years, just like there are for a patient with a long term illness, but it isn’t going away. To stabilize climate change, we have to eliminate our carbon emissions. And we’re still a long way away from that.”

Sarah Kapnick is a scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
Global warming is going to steal away some of those postcard-perfect weather days in the future, according to a first-of-its-kind projection of nice weather. “The changes are more dramatic in parts of the developing world, where you have high concentrations of populations,” said NOAA climate scientist and co-author Sarah Kapnick.

Rick Lumpkin, director of NOAA’s Global Drifter Program: “Because the drifters provide a ground-truth of currents, they are great for combining with satellite observations to study climate-scale problems.” The oceans, the true keepers of climate change, may meet our grimmest estimates.

High Scoring Meteorologist Jeff Masters co-founded Weather Underground: “The Climate Has Shifted to a New State Capable of Delivering Rare & Unprecedented Weather Events.” Stronger hurricanes, bigger floods, more intense heat waves, and sea level rise have been getting many of the headlines with regards to potential climate change impacts, but drought should be our main concern. Drought is capable of crashing a civilization. We’ve set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action.

Richard Rood is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan where he teaches atmospheric science and climate dynamics.
“If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past. The Earth will warm. And since the response to warming is more warming through feedbacks associated with melting ice and increased atmospheric water vapor, our job becomes one of limiting the warming. If greenhouse gas emissions are eliminated quickly enough, within a small number of decades, it will keep the warming manageable and the Paris Agreement goals could be met. It will slow the change – and allow us to adapt. Rather than trying to recover the past, we need to be thinking about best possible futures.”

Scott Weaver is a Research Meteorologist at NOAA.s Climate Prediction Center and member of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).  “Today’s Climate Science Special Report is our most comprehensive and definitive look yet at the massive amount of sound scientific research on climate change, and it’s conclusions are inescapable – climate change is happening right now, it’s hurting American families, and it will get worse unless we act,” said EDF Senior Climate Scientist Scott Weaver. “This report should put any doubts about the existence or the severity of climate change to rest. We cannot afford to ignore this threat.”

Kandis Wyatt, Designated Federal Officer for US Climate Change Impact Reports, eg. 2014:
“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the arid Southwest, city dwellers from Phoenix to New York, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska. This National Climate Assessment concludes that the evidence of human-induced climate change continues to strengthen and that impacts are increasing across the country.”

Summary

What hypocrisy to criticize skeptics for finally attempting to organize and claim a bit of airtime to tell the other side of the story. Apparently the case for man-made global warming is so weak, no objections can be allowed.

Not much of a game without an opponent.

See Also Kelly Craft Vs. Monotonic Climate Science

Update February 24, 2019

Now that Kelly Craft, US Ambassador to Canada is Trump’s nominee for UN Ambassador, let’s return to the interview for which she will again be persecuted by climate alarmists/activists.

The Greek word for “one tone” is monotonia, which is the root for both monotone and the closely-related word monotonous, which means “dull and tedious.” Monotone is a droning, unchanging tone. A continuous sound, especially someone’s voice, that doesn’t rise and fall in pitch, is a monotone. Nothing can put you to sleep quite as effectively as a teacher talking in a monotone.

Monotonic climate science was on full display as journalists, pundits and tweeters freaked out over a comment by the new US ambassador to Canada.  Her offense:  saying there were two sides on the climate issue and she respects them both.

The story from CBC:  The new U.S. ambassador to Canada said Monday that she believes “both sides” of climate change science.

In an interview with Canada’s CBC News, Kelly Knight Craft said that she believes there is “accurate” science on “both sides” but did not specify what sides she was referring to.

“I believe there are sciences on both sides that are accurate,” Craft said. “Both sides have their own results from their studies, and I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.”

President Trump appointed Craft, a prominent GOP fundraiser, to the ambassadorship earlier this year.

Craft told CBC that even though Trump has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, she thinks the U.S. can “absolutely” fight climate climate change.

“We all have the same goal, and that is to better our environment and to maintain the environment,” she said. “I feel like our administration has been on top of this regardless of whether or not they’d be pulling out.”

It is true Ambassador Craft had the look of a deer in the headlights.  She is from Kentucky where one doesn’t encounter sanctimonious warmists as frequently as in Ottawa, and especially not ones determined to get a “gotcha” quote from her.

All the comments at alarmist websites dissed her for thinking the issue could have two differing points of view. Going further, they repeatedly claim “science” does not have two sides, not now, not ever. And, of course, she offends them by saying she respects people on both sides of the matter. As an Ambassador, she sought common ground by pointedly not mentioning the specifics of how the US is actually reducing its CO2 emissions while Canada has not.

The damage here goes beyond climate science to the degradation of all scientific disciplines.  These smug journalists and their audiences know that on all kinds of issues reasonable people can disagree.  But somehow they have been brainwashed with the notion that science is a catechism with only one right answer.  That idea is false and a threat to modern civilization.

They hear only about Jim Hansen, Al Gore, Mike Mann and their ilk, and think their pronouncements are universally and eternally true.  Many, many scientists see things differently. Hard as it is to go from simplicity to complexity, let us enlighten these folks to some of the other sides of climate science .  First, meet Richard Muller who shares some concerns and not others.  Below in italics is his answer to a question raised on Quora:   What are some widely cited studies in the news that are false?

Answer by Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley.

That 97% of all climate scientists accept that climate change is real, large, and a threat to the future of humanity. That 97% basically concur with the vast majority of claims made by Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.

The question asked in typical surveys is neither of those. It is this: “Do you believe that humans are affecting climate?” My answer would be yes. Humans are responsible for about a 1 degree Celsius rise in the average temperature in the last 100 years. So I would be included as one of the 97% who believe.

Yet the observed changes that are scientifically established, in my vast survey of the science, are confined to temperature rise and the resulting small (4-inch) rise in sea level. (The huge “sea level rise” seen in Florida is actually subsidence of the land mass, and is not related to global warming.) There is no significant change in the rate of storms, or of violent storms, including hurricanes and volcanoes. The temperature variability is not increasing. There is no scientifically significant increase in floods or droughts. Even the widely reported warming of Alaska (“the canary in the mine”) doesn’t match the pattern of carbon dioxide increase–it may have an explanation in terms of changes in the northern Pacific and Atlantic currents. Moreover, the standard climate models have done a very poor job of predicting the temperature rise in Antarctica, so we must be cautious about the danger of confirmation bias.

My friend Will Happer believes that humans do affect the climate, particularly in cities where concrete and energy use cause what is called the “urban heat island effect.” So he would be included in the 97% who believe that humans affect climate, even though he is usually included among the more intense skeptics of the IPCC. He also feels that humans cause a small amount of global warming (he isn’t convinced it is as large as 1 degree), but he does not think it is heading towards a disaster; he has concluded that the increase in carbon dioxide is good for food production, and has helped mitigate global hunger. Yet he would be included in the 97%.

The problem is not with the survey, which asked a very general question. The problem is that many writers (and scientists!) look at that number and mischaracterize it. The 97% number is typically interpreted to mean that 97% accept the conclusions presented in An Inconvenient Truth by former Vice President Al Gore. That’s certainly not true; even many scientists who are deeply concerned by the small global warming (such as me) reject over 70% of the claims made by Mr. Gore in that movie (as did a judge in the UK; see the following link: Gore climate film’s nine ‘errors‘).

The pollsters aren’t to blame. Well, some of them are; they too can do a good poll and then misrepresent what it means. The real problem is that many people who fear global warming (include me) feel that it is necessary to exaggerate the meaning of the polls in order to get action from the public (don’t include me).

There is another way to misrepresent the results of the polls. Yes, 97% of those polled believe that there is human caused climate change. How did they reach that decision? Was it based on a careful reading of the IPCC report? Was it based on their knowledge of the potential systematic uncertainties inherent in the data? Or was it based on their fear that opponents to action are anti-science, so we scientists have to get together and support each other. There is a real danger in people with Ph.D.s joining a consensus that they haven’t vetted professionally.

I like to ask scientists who “believe” in global warming what they think of the data. Do they believe hurricanes are increasing? Almost never do I get the answer “Yes, I looked at that, and they are.” Of course they don’t say that, because if they did I would show them the actual data! Do they say, “I’ve looked at the temperature record, and I agree that the variability is going up”? No. Sometimes they will say, “There was a paper by Jim Hansen that showed the variability was increasing.” To which I reply, “I’ve written to Jim Hansen about that paper, and he agrees with me that it shows no such thing. He even expressed surprise that his paper has been so misinterpreted.”

A really good question would be: “Have you studied climate change enough that you would put your scientific credentials on the line that most of what is said in An Inconvenient Truth is based on accurate scientific results? My guess is that a large majority of the climate scientists would answer no to that question, and the true percentage of scientists who support the statement I made in the opening paragraph of this comment, that true percentage would be under 30%. That is an unscientific guestimate, based on my experience in asking many scientists about the claims of Al Gore.

Then esteemed climate scientist Richard Lindzen, in a short video introduces you to more sides to the climate change issue:

Summary

Science in general, and climate science in particular is not monotonic, but polyphonic.  There are and have always been differing voices and tones in the search for objective truth.  Only the illiterate think otherwise.

The flavor of the activist/alarmist reaction is suggested by headlines from the usual suspects.

Scientist Who Rejects Warming Is Named to EPA Advisory Board Scientific American

Wheeler Appoints Climate Denier to EPA Science Board EcoWatch

Former coal lobbyist and acting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has named a climate denier to serve on the …

John Christy Was Just Named An EPA Science Adviser. His Climate Studies Have Been Repeatedly Corrected. Buzzfeed

A climate science skeptic with a history of botched research is the latest controversial addition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board …

Controversial climatologist John Christy, who once said scientists believed Earth was flat, to join advisory board at environment agency The Guardian

A more restrained report comes from AL.com Alabama climate change skeptic named to Trump’s EPA advisory board  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Trump administration continued its reshaping of how science is evaluated at the Environmental Protection Agency with the appointment Thursday of a slew of new members to a key advisory panel.

Among the eight additions to the agency’s Science Advisory Board are a number of members whose ideas run against mainstream scientific thinking on issues that include the health effects of radiation and the modeling of Earth’s climate.

Andrew Wheeler, the acting EPA chief, added the eight new members while reinstalling eight others selected during the Obama administration. He cast the appointments as a reaffirmation of the Trump administration’s commitment to hearing scientific opinions from a diverse set of voices.

“In a fair, open, and transparent fashion, EPA reviewed hundreds of qualified applicants nominated for this committee,” Wheeler said in a statement. “Members who will be appointed or reappointed include experts from a wide variety of scientific disciplines who reflect the geographic diversity needed to represent all ten EPA regions.”

But critics of the administration see this and other moves under Wheeler and former EPA chief Scott Pruitt as part of a larger push to make the agency’s decisions more friendly to industry.

“The general makeup of the Science Advisory Board has changed significantly in the past two years,” said Genna Reed, a science and policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “What we’re seeing is a decrease in the number of academics and a surge in the number of industry and consulting-firm members.”

With the announcement Thursday, 26 of the board’s 45 members have been appointed by the Trump administration.

The best-known new member of the panel, though, actually does work at a university. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is perhaps the most prominent climate skeptic in all of academia.

Christy acknowledges that humans have altered Earth’s climate. But he’s a polarizing figure within the climate science community for his criticism of mainstream climate models produced by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and of scientific conclusions about the severity of global warming reached by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Pointing to his own analyses of satellite temperature data, which suggest that observed warming is on the lower side of projections, Christy has argued that atmospheric temperatures are less sensitive to the buildup of greenhouse gases than the majority of other climate scientists say they are.

Among the many scientific institutions that say global warming is dangerous is the EPA itself. In President Barack Obama’s first year in office, the EPA determined greenhouse gases posed a risk to public health, giving the government the legal justification it needed to try to curb emissions from cars, coal plants and other sources.

Christy, Alabama’s state climatologist, takes issue with EPA’s “endangerment finding.”

“I, as well as many others, am very skeptical of the basis of many of these findings, like the endangerment finding,” Christy said in an interview Thursday.

He said he believes the EPA’s reliance on what he regards as faulty climate models have led it to issue misguided rules for polluters. “If you use bad models,” he said, “you’re likely to come up with bad regulations.”

Christy is often called on by Republicans leery of government climate regulations to testify before Congress. At a 2015 House Science Committee hearing, Christy described the study of climate change as a “murky” science. “We do not have laboratory methods of testing our hypotheses as many other sciences do,” he said in his written remarks. “As a result, what passes for science includes opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic news releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups.”

Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University who has testified opposite Christy before lawmakers, has argued that Christy’s findings have become “a central pillar in the case for climate change denial” despite the fact they have “been shown to be an artifact of faulty computations.”

The advisory board will also now include Brant Ulsh, a health physicist at M.H. Chew & Associates whose work focuses on low-dose radiation.

In the past, the EPA has maintained there is some risk of cancer from any exposure to radiation. But Ulsh argues the way the government has modeled the health effects of small amounts of radiation exposure at places like nuclear power plants overplays that risk.

“Right now we spend an enormous effort trying to minimize low doses,” Ulsh told the Associated Press last year. “Instead, let’s spend the resources on minimizing the effect of a really big event.”

Another new panelist is Richard Williams, an independent consultant and former Food and Drug Administration official who has praised the Trump administration for cutting regulations.

In the fall of 2017, Pruitt upended the agency’s key advisory groups, announcing plans to jettison scientists who have received EPA grants.

The move set in motion a potentially fundamental shift, one that could change the scientific and technical advice that historically has guided the agency as it crafts environmental regulations.

“It is very, very important to ensure independence, to ensure that we’re getting advice and counsel independent of the EPA,” Pruitt told reporters at the time.

He estimated that the members of three different committees – the Scientific Advisory Board, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors – had collectively accepted $77 million in EPA grants over the past three years. He noted that researchers would have the option of ending their grant or continuing to advise EPA, “but they can’t do both.”

From CBC News January 22, 2019  Debate grows over impact of American funding being directed towards Canadian environmental campaign.  Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.

Alberta at Noon host Judy Aldous spoke to researcher and blogger Vivian Krause, as well as award-winning Calgary author Chris Turner, Monday about the degree to which U.S. dollars are shaping the conversation we’re now having in Canada about building pipelines.

Krause has estimated that various U.S. funders have contributed in the neighbourhood of $40-million in recent years to hundreds of Canadian environmental and Indigenous groups. The goal is to help them spread a message about the need to land-lock Alberta crude through protests against the construction of new pipelines.

Krause believes those American dollars are financing a message that has turned the conversation around, adding topics like pipeline development have become toxic.

“The campaign has been devastating,” Krause said.

“I think the campaign is the reason why Northern Gateway was cancelled: Energy East, Keystone, Trans Mountain.

“And this is the same organization, same strategy, same funders that stopped the Mackenzie [Valley] gas pipeline. I think the coastal gas pipeline is also in serious trouble.

“I have no hope for any pipeline [being approved for development] until this campaign is brought to an end,” she said.

Turner, meanwhile, said that foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the U.S. environmental group the Tides Foundation have far less of ability to manipulate the environmental agenda in Canada than Krause suggests.

He didn’t disagree with the numbers but disputed Krause’s interpretation of them.

Krause said she isn’t opposed to the principle of funding environmental groups from outside the country. However, she said she feels there has been a disproportionate focus on the oilsands by American environmental activists, particularly considering the U.S. is now one of the top oil producers on the planet.

She also suggested that by turning up the heat on Canadian energy development, those same activists are enabling — or perhaps are motivated by — a desire to open up markets for American oil producers.

“But here’s the thing,” she added. “Guess whose oil is getting to market and is getting the highest prices? It’s not Canadian oil or gas. It’s American oil and gas.”

She asked why environmentalist don’t instead focus on “landlocking the development of American oil and gas.”