So much money is to be made from the CO2 Scare that it is not surprising that the beneficiaries are on the look out for ways to keep the cashflow going. The fatuous 'social cost of carbon' is one such device. Willis Eschenbach is on to it:

For all of these reasons and more, I find this entire “Social Cost of Carbon” enterprise to be a wholly unscientific effort to pretend that we can accurately monetize unknown results of an unknown misty future.

I implore Andrew Revkin and everyone involved in this scientific monstrosity to stop and consider what you are doing. The uncertainties are immense, as mentioned they go from surface to tropopause. The SCC is a transparent effort to justify throwing more taxpayer money down a rathole. And regardless of what value you think the SCC has or should have, you are adding the prestige of your name and reputation to a pseudo-scientific attempt to support and justify the imposition of new laws, restrictions, subsidies, cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, renewable mandates, and other ways to increase the cost of energy.

And increasing the cost of energy, no matter how it is done, shafts the poor more than anyone. Increasing the cost of energy is one of the most regressive taxes imaginable, and there is no opt-out at the bottom of the economic ladder. Rising energy prices hit the poorest of the poor harder than anyone.

More here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/11/the-recursive-cost-of-carbon/

The things you find at the bottom of big barrels! Here is a report of climate activists in the psychology sector of the CO2 Alarm Offensive finding that sneaky tricks might reduce the number of 'climate skeptics'. The trick is to feed people on 'weakened' 'skeptic' 'arguments', and demonstrate to them that these arguments are wrong. But, in the example given, this demonstration involved the junk science of the '97%' assertion. But when you're near the bottom of the barrel, what can you expect? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/23/study-presenting-deliberately-weakened-skeptic-arguments-increases-climate-acceptance/

The guy who spotted this latest turpitude is Eric Worrall, and he ends his report with these words:

The moral premise of this study is my most serious concern – it is not OK to play increasingly devious psychological tricks on people to win support. Of course it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, “weakened” version of your opponent’s position, which is what “inoculation” theory seems to be about – but that doesn’t make it right.

The rotten IPCC.

Donna Laframboise has spotted something interesting:

Mere days before he left office, Barack Obama’s Department of Energy (DOE) introduced a sweeping new scientific integrity policy. This matters because the DOE is the largest funder of physical sciences in America, and because climate change is one of its core concerns.

She notes this:

I am therefore happy to report that this same government has, in no uncertain terms, repudiated the process by which UN climate reports are produced.

Here is her summary of the logic involved:

To recap:

1. The US government says political tampering with scientific findings is a violation of scientific integrity.
2. IPCC reports are extensively tampered with by political officials.
3. IPCC reports therefore lack scientific integrity.
4. People who rely on IPCC reports are basing their decisions on documents that have no scientific integrity.

She enlarges upon these points in her post, linked to above.

Tim Ball in a recent post at WUWT provides more support for her conclusion. He ends the post with these words:

This brief and limited look at what the IPCC are saying on its own gives credence to Emeritus Professor Hal Lewis’s charge in his October 2010 resignation letter from the American Physical Society

“It [the global warming scam] is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

It is a pseudoscientific fraud because there was no data as the basis for any of their work. The scientists determined to achieve the objective of the IPCC, that is prove ‘scientifically’ that human CO2 was causing global warming, had to modify or eliminate the inadequate real data and create false data. Even if, under the new regime, the fraud is exposed and proper science and scientific methods are applied it will take a very long time to gather the minimum data required. Until that occurs it is all just hand-waving. However, there is enough evidence to know that the precautionary principle is not applicable. The little evidence we have indicates we are safer to do nothing.

This sickening story of Greenpeace hooligans (armchair division) attacking Willie Soon deserves to be added to the list of foul behaviour on the part of people riding the CO2 alarmism bandwagon: http://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2017/01/the-outrageously-indefensible-libels-against-willie-soon/

Extract.

Greenpeace was the contemptible mastermind, warping the perfect truth into a sham of misconduct and leading numerous ‘news’ organs uncritically to swallow their lies. Leading off with Greenpeace’s criminal libel was the once-venerable New York Times. With the NYT on the ramparts, sundry lickspittle warmists fell over themselves to mindlessly echo what they saw as Greenpeace’s juicy accusations and thunder their outrage at Dr Soon in articles and blog posts around the world.

They included the Washington Post, the Guardian, lots of little climate troublemakers, do-gooders, troughers, would-be despots, and big-money recipients, all too keen to signal their climate virtue and advance their lucrative stake in the climate change fraud to stop and think.

Cast-iron proof

In attacking this honest scientist, Greenpeace didn’t question his methods or conclusions. You might think that surprising, since attacking a scientist has no other target than his science. You find fault with it, so you question it. But they couldn’t, as they hadn’t found errors in his science, because he didn’t make any errors. So all they could do was to claim that he had failed to declare his funding properly, usually a serious blunder for any publishing scientist. But the blunder turned out, monumentally, to be Greenpeace’s, because Willie made no mistakes there, either.

There will always be despicable people in the world, and GreenPeace has more than a random share of them, incensed and self-authorised by whatever they can find to hand. Currently, it is the shameful hyperbole around a trace gas called carbon dioxide.

A couple more for the record here:
(1) The charmless bumpkin Gavin Schmidt remains trapped in his own world of make-believe, a virtual reality that has actually helped his career along very well, way beyond what anyone could have expected, thanks to poor leadership at NASA. He is a leading CO2 alarmist, and feels a compulsion to big-up negligible increases in estimated global mean temperature:

NOAA fixed the 2016 increase at 0.04 degrees Celsius. The British Met Office reported an even lower rise, of 0.01C. Both increases are well within the margin of error for such calculations, approximately 0.1 degrees, and therefore are dismissed by many scientists as meaningless.

The reports, however, set the global warming bell towers ringing. Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was quoted at Climate Central referring to the past temperature record and saying “2016 has really blown that out of the water.”

There were those in the mass media who took him at his word and provided satisfactory headlines for his cause:

Following the lead of the Schmidt and government press releases, USA Today wrote that “the planet sizzled to its third straight record warm year in 2016.” The New York Times’ front-page headline said, “Earth Sets Temperature Record for Third Straight Year.” The article declared that the latest readings were “trouncing” earlier numbers and the planet had thus “blown past” the previous records.

More info here: http://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2017/01/29/scientists_criticize_hottest_year_on_record_claim_as_hype.html

(2) A billionaire agitator, grown rich in part from coal stocks, has apparently become dismayed that despite his efforts to make 'climate change' a massive threat facing mankind, most people don't give two hoots about it. So, now he is appealing for others to tell him what they are concerned about, presumably, like countless political opportunists before him, so that he can then choose something to 'lead' that might get him more adulation or bang for his buck (and possibly elected as governor of California). Delingpole has spotted this and finishes on an encouraging note:

The even better news is that it illustrates how totally over green advocacy has become under Donald Trump. Steyer is the single biggest political donor in the US. If a guy as rich and connected as that can no longer see any political mileage in pushing the climate change scare, then it’s really not looking good for the green scamsters who depend on such Daddy Warbucks for their livelihoods.

It seems that the election of Donald Trump has caused Steyer to redirect his dollars to 'fighting' his new president.

Augean Stables anyone? The recent confirmation, as if any were needed, of the junk science and politically-driven manipulation inherent in the Karl et al. paper of 2015 came too late to remove the influence of that trashy piece of work on the Paris conference, but it is timely in the light of Trump's interest in reducing federal spending in some areas. Reducing it by at least 80% has been suggested by Professor Lindzen.

The Mail report is here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html
Breitbart cover it here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/05/whistle-blower-global-warming-data-manipulated-paris-conference/
Here is an extract from the latter link:

According to a report in The Mail on Sunday, NOAA scientist Dr. John Bates has produced “irrefutable evidence” that the NOAA study denying the “pause” in global warming in the period since 1998 was based on false and misleading data.

The NOAA study was published in June 2015 by the journal Science under the title “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus.”

Dr. Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, of “insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation.” Bates says that Karl did so “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.”

Bates said that NOAA bypassed its own protocol, never subjecting the report to NOAA’s strict internal evaluation process. Rather, NOAA superiors rushed the study through in a “blatant attempt to intensify the impact” of the paper on the Paris meeting on climate change, he said.

Hat-tip stewgreen on Unthreaded (Feb 5, 2017 at 5:38 PM) for reminding us of the fact that the Karletaltrash was exposed soon after publication for what it was, and that was reported and discussion here on Biship Hill: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/6/4/obamas-housekarls-dance-to-his-warming-tune.html

A Discussion thread on Temperature Data Corruption has also been started here by Robert Christopher: http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/2657082

Christopher Monckton has also been calling for drastic cuts in climate alarm agencies in the USA:
https://cliscep.com/2017/01/29/moncktons-10-steps-for-calming-climate-craziness

Australia the Fair
I really do despair
Your scientists are like snowflakes
Blowing in the air
And melting with the merest heat
The slightest passing fad
Can get them roused and ranting
They're shit-filled breaking bad
Flannery was a basket-case
A balloon of fetid air
And now comes Alan Finkel
My current new despair:

https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2017/02/06/trump-stalin-fake-news/

More on the disgraceful Alan Finkel at Jo Nova: http://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/australian-chief-scientist-says-trump-is-like-stalin-totally-missing-lefts-war-on-science/

See the original post for 18 embedded links illuminating Finkel's perversity in Jo Nova's terse report:

Alan Finkel, Australia’s Chief Scientist, is blind to the rampant censorship that’s been going on for 30 years:

Australia’s chief scientist has slammed Donald Trump’s attempt to censor environmental data, saying the US president’s behaviour was comparable to the manipulation of science by the Soviet Union.

Speaking at a scientific roundtable in Canberra on Monday, Alan Finkel warned science was “literally under attack” in the United States and urged his colleagues to keep giving “frank and fearless” advice despite the political opposition.

“The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere,” he said.

Governments have been attacking science for decades

The real Soviet style censorship works by cutting funding to inconvenient research, giving awards and grants to namecalling activists, and funding incompetent psychologists who pump out sympathetic press releases that smear researchers who find the “wrong” result. It works by supporting a demonising culture that means honest scientists face exile, insults, threats to be sacked, evicted, blackballed, terminated, punished, vilified and bullied, not to mention government funded fun aimed at blowing up your kids (as a joke), as well as entertainment about killing people like you, and in some cases, talk of a RICO investigation.

The role of Chief Scientist is obviously not to inform and challenge the PM, but to be the yes-man face for PR purposes.