The Obama administration continues to push its climate change agenda, with Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting while in Jakarta, Indonesia recently that the islands are at risk from rising sea levels.

His faith in rising sea levels, however, bears little relationship to scientific fact.

In September, 2013, American climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, refuted a significant connection between greenhouse gas emissions and rising sea levels.

Referring to sea levels over the past 50 years, he wrote in World Climate Report that “the current rate of sea level rise from global warming (is) ... only inching up at a rate of about 20 to 30 centimeters per hundred years ... there remains no evidence for a climate-related acceleration.”

Rising sea levels have always been a geological fact of life on Earth and have been caused by — among other factors — melting glacial ice, land subsidence, tectonic plate movement, ground water extraction and ocean oscillations.

But such misleading statements as Kerry’s are nothing new from disciples of Anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming (AGW).

Take carbon dioxide (CO2). The growing discrepancy between temperature measurements and climate model simulations over the last 15 years indicates that the effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated; while CO2 concentration has risen, global temperatures have stabilized.

The fear of catastrophic AGW is based principally on the theory that more carbon dioxide from emissions would make the earth much hotter.

But an analysis of satellite data from NASA’s Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) indicates the actual climate response to CO2 is only 20% to 30% of that extrapolated from climate model simulations.

According to the Hadley Centre/Climate Research Unit, the United Kingdom’s leading centres for the study of climate change, global warming during the last 60 years (1954 to 2013) was 34% less than the previous 60 years (1894 to 1953) while the CO2 increase was 4.6 times greater, indicating natural causes of climate change are more significant than CO2.

This position is supported by climate scientist Judith Curry, who told the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works last January that “... CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability ...”

In Jakarta, Kerry also referred to “carbon pollution”.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is essential to life on Earth. We exhale carbon dioxide at 40,000 parts per million (ppm) with every breath we take.

In 2007, when fear of catastrophic AGW was high, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided to define carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

The Obama administration is now attempting to use that designation to vastly extend regulations over all emitters, big and small. The result could be catastrophic for U.S. businesses and consumers.

In a submission before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is evaluating whether the Obama administration exceeded its authority when crafting the U.S.’ first greenhouse gas emissions regulations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims the emissions-permitting requirements can “take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper work costs alone” — certain death to small and medium businesses.

The U.S. can learn from others’ mistakes. The European Union is now abandoning its mandatory carbon targets after electricity rates skyrocketed 37% once extreme greenhouse gas reduction targets were set.

The EU experience shows a low-carbon economy simply constitutes a wealth transfer borne by businesses and taxpayers.

— Stirling-Anosh is the Communications Manager of Friends of Science

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