The Trump administration is rolling out nominees for various cabinet positions and the transition team is submitting questions to federal departments required for their due diligence prior to the handover of executive responsibility.

All this is normal procedure, yet the climate establishment is going ballistic. The Progress websites have gone into overdrive, led by Podesta and funded by Soros and Steyer. It is a massive outpouring of articles intended to inflame and incite outrage against anything the Trumpers are up to in taking up their mandate.

Other alarmists are producing reports like this recent one: Trump’s transition: sceptics guide every agency dealing with climate change, from the Guardian (here).  In all such communications, the appointees are profiled, and denigrated:

Trump has assembled a transition team in which at least nine senior members deny basic scientific understanding that the planet is warming due to the burning of carbon and other human activity. These include the transition heads of all the key agencies responsible for either monitoring or dealing with climate change. None of these transition heads have any background in climate science.

Trump has also nominated Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA and is expected to pick congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to head the interior department. Pruitt has claimed that scientists “continue to disagree” about the causes and extent of global warming while McMorris Rodgers has said that former vice-president Al Gore, who has championed climate action, “deserves an ‘F’ in science.”

Time for Climatists to Put Up or Shut Up

Amazingly, these long-entitled activists are blind to the opportunity now presented to them. For many years, climate alarmists have refused to debate the science of their position, declaring that the “science is settled.” People like John Christy suggested that there could be at least a little funding for “red teams” to present the counter view to IPCC consensus science. All was for naught when true believers were in power.

Now there will be roundtable discussions at the highest levels of powerful departments and agencies, such as Energy, Interior, NASA, and EPA. If the incoming powers-to-be are uneducated in climate science, let those concerned about global warming make their case, show their facts, convince skeptical people through reason and persuasion. It is now time to put up or shut up. It is exactly the wrong time to be appealing to emotions and trying to stir up craziness. Moral indignation and trash-talking the other side is the opposite of engaging in discussion and debate over what is claimed to be an essential issue of our times.

We may yet have the great climate debates so long avoided by those convinced they had all the answers and the others should just trust them. If climatists have something reasonable to say and not just fear and bullying, it is time to step up to the plate.

As Greg Sorrell writes at the Federalist (here), the Trump administration is right to take emotion out of climate policy.

One of the last formal debates was prior to 2009 Copenhagen COP. Pre-debate the audience was 61% Pro and 39% Con on the premise: Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response. Post-debate, it was 53% Pro and 47% Con.  With such results occurring frequently, climatists stopped participating.

The current world political climate is shame-and-blame in order to gain approvals for the Paris accord. Thus pressure is applied to political officials at every level to show their colors on acting to “fight climate change.”

For example, Hillary declared to great applause: “I believe in Science.” (I don’t know where to start on that.) This week Canada PM Trudeau announced he would impose a federal carbon tax of $10 a tonne starting in 2018, rising to $50 a tonne in 2022 on any province that did not enact its own equivalent carbon pricing. Several provincial premiers walked out at that point, disappointed that collaboration and consensus-building had only one predetermined outcome.

There is no place to hide these days, and politicians who have a rational position on climate science (in contrast to Hillary) had better legislate on the issue. A common sense legislative motion could read something like this (followed by supporting documentation and references).

Whereas, Extent of global sea ice is at or above historical averages;

Whereas, Populations of polar bears are generally growing;

Whereas, Sea levels have been slowly rising at the same rate since the Little Ice Age ended 150 years ago;

Whereas, Oceans will not become acidic due to buffering from extensive mineral deposits and marine life is well adapted to pH fluctuations that do occur;

Whereas, Extreme weather events have not increased in recent decades and such events are more associated to periods of cooling rather than warming;

Whereas, Cold spells, not heat waves, are the greater threat to human life and prosperity;

Therefore, This chamber agrees that climate is variable and prudent public officials should plan for future periods both colder and warmer than the present. Two principle objectives will be robust infrastructure and reliable, affordable energy.

Comment:

The underlying issue is the assumption that the future can only be warmer than the present. Once you accept the notion that CO2 makes the earth’s surface warmer (an unproven conjecture), then temperatures can only go higher since CO2 keeps rising. The present plateau in temperatures is inconvenient, but actual cooling would directly contradict the CO2 doctrine. Some excuses can be fabricated for a time, but an extended period of cooling undermines the whole global warming mantra.

It’s not a matter of fearing a new ice age. That will come eventually, according to our planet’s history, but the warning will come from increasing ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere. Presently infrastructures in many places are not ready to meet a return of 1950s weather, let alone something unprecedented.

Public policy must include preparations for cooling since that is the greater hazard. Cold harms the biosphere: plants, animals and humans. And it is expensive and energy intensive to protect life from the ravages of cold. Society can not afford to be in denial about the prospect of the current temperature plateau ending with cooling.

Footnote:

The Trudeau initiative is an example of the alternative to legislating a rational position. It is virtue-signalling by adopting a token carbon price, which will not lower CO2 concentrations, nor reduce temperatures. The tax will enrich government coffers, which is a key motivation for politicians hiding behind this noble cause.

In 2015, gasoline taxes in Canada represented on average 38.5 cents per litre, which is approximately 35% of the pump price. That includes 10¢/litre federal tax, provincial fuel taxes ranging from 6 to 19 ¢/litre, plus sales taxes. Taxing at $10 a tonne starting in 2018 would add a carbon tax on top as shown below:

Fuel Type	UNITS FOR TAX	2018 Added Tax
Gasoline	¢/litre	2.22
Diesel (light fuel oil)	¢/litre	2.56
Jet Fuel	¢/litre	2.61
Natural Gas	¢/litre	1.90
Propane	¢/litre	1.54
Coal – high heat value	$/tonne	20.77
Coal – low heat value	$/tonne	17.77

These pennies added on top will not change behavior, but millions of consumers’ dollars will be skimmed in a hidden way, including rising transportation costs of everything.

If this was anything other than a tax grab, they would do one or both of two things:

• Make the tax revenue neutral by paying the monies collected back to consumers; and
• Make the increases in the carbon tax rate conditional upon rising temperatures as measured by satellites. (as proposed by economist Ross McKitrick)