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The answer is the most forceful possible no.Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany's pro-renewables policy has been a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of bad energy policy:Bad for consumersBad for producersBad for the environment (yes, really; I'll explain)Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solar panel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German press and public.I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world which hopes to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet -- but it's time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.Some awful statistics before I get into the details:Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world's nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn't sound bad, but keep going.)Germany's residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]Germany's utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn't even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany's GDP for 50 years straight. [4] That doesn't include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.Here's the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany's carbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing [5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned "renewables first" market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage -- it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it's used. [29] The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can't run steadily enough to operate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn't hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you're convinced by these facts, feel free to stop reading now, throw me an upvote, and go on about your day. This is going to get long -- I haven't even explained the half of it yet. There are lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worse the picture gets.Issue 1: Wrong place, wrong tech to start the green revolutionRenewables advocates constantly hold up Germany as an example of how large-scale rooftop solar power is viable. But the problem is, Germany's emphasis on solar power is bad policy. I'm pretty sure other countries can do solar better, but that isn't saying much because German solar is just awful. To be blunt, it's a stupid place for politicians to push solar panels. I was there all last week for a work meeting and I didn't see the sun the entire time. From talking to the locals, it's overcast for about a third of the year in the region near Hanover where I was staying. Their solar resource is simply bad, nearly the worst of any well-populated region in the world:Annual Solar IrradianceBetween the northern latitude, the grey weather, and the Alps blocking much of the diffused morning sunlight from the south, Germany is a terrible place for solar power. When you put the US side-by-side on the same scale, you realize that Germany has the same solar power potential as dismal Alaska, even worse than rain-soaked Seattle:Solar Radiation MapI look at this and ask, "what on earth are they thinking?" They couldn't have picked a worse generation technology for their climate.But most people seem to look at it and say, "if Germany is investing so much in solar power, then it's obvious the US should build solar panels too." I insist we examine the contrapositive: if solar power is only taking off slowly in the US, even with significant subsidies/incentives and one of the world's best solar resources, then the Germans should be building even less solar capacity. It's clear their market must be severely distorted for them to pursue such a sub-optimal energy policy.You're welcome to disagree with my thought process here, but the simplest proof can be seen in the capacity factor, which is the percent of the nameplate capacity that is actually generated over the course of a year. The existence of nighttime means solar capacity factors must be less than 50%, and when you add clouds, dawn, dusk, dust, and non-optimal installations, 18% is the average capacity factor for panels in the continental US. [9] In contrast, Germany's total solar capacity factor in 2011 was under 9%! [1]German residential solar panel installations today cost about $2.25/watt capacity, [10] versus a hair over $5/watt in the US. [11] (Numbers vary over a considerable range. Most of this is labor/permitting costs.) But German panels generate less than half as much actual power over time. So when you normalize the panel install cost by capacity factor, US and German solar power generation are already at cost parity. The payback periods for solar investments are about the same in California and Germany. This is surprising to most solar advocates, who tend to blame higher costs for the low uptake rates in the US. But system economics alone do not explain disparities in installation rates.So why does Germany have 16 times as much nameplate panel capacity per capita as the US? [12] Yes, permitting is much easier there, but that's mostly captured by the $/watt costs since installation companies usually pull the permits. And I don't think the German people are that much more pro-environment than the rest of the world. There's no good reason for the disparity that I can find -- it ought to swing the opposite way. Solar just isn't a good power source for a cold, dark country that has minimal daytime air conditioning load. Solar in Phoenix, Arizona makes sense, but not in Frankfurt. The only conclusion I can come to is that Germany's solar power boom is being driven entirely by political distortions. The growth of solar is not economically justified, nor can it continue without massive political interference in power markets.Many people are surprised to hear that Germany only gets a tiny 2.0% of its total energy / 4.6% of its electricity from solar power (in 2012). [5,13] All the headlines about new records on peak summer days make it seem more like 50%. Despite all the cost and pain and distortions, PV solar has turned out to be a very ineffective way of generating large amounts of energy. They could have generated at least four times as much carbon-free power via new nuclear plants for the same cost. [14] (Nuclear would have been a better option for a lot of reasons. I'll get to that later.)With subsidies for new solar systems phasing out over the next 5 years, solar growth has already started to decline. The installation rate peaked and is now dropping. [13, 15] Despite falling panel and installation costs, the majority of new German solar projects are expected to stop when subsidies end. They're already on the downward side of the technology uptake bell curve:(Data after 2008 from [14], prior to 2008 from Wikipedia)If you pay close attention, all the pro-solar advocates are still using charts with data that stops after 2011. That's because 2011 was the last year solar was growing exponentially. Using data through July 2013 and official predictions for the rest of this year, it's now clear that solar is not on an exponential growth curve. It's actually on an S-curve like pretty much every other technology, ever. Limitless exponential growth doesn't exist in the physical world. [13]Also note the huge gap on that graph between the actual generation and the nameplate capacity. That's where the miserable capacity factor comes in. (I think this is the source of a lot of misplaced optimism about solar's growth rate.) Green media outlets only report solar power either in peak capacity or as percent of consumption on sunny summer days. Both of these measurements must be divided by about 10 to get the true output throughout the year.In reality, solar is scaling up much slower than conventional energy sources scaled up in the past, despite solar receiving more government support. This graph shows the growth rate of recent energy transitions in the first 10 years after each source reached grid scale (1% of total supply):[13]I think this chart is the best way to make an apples-to-apples comparison of uptake rates. Only about a quarter of the "renewables" line is due to solar (the majority is biomass, wind, and trash incineration). So the true solar growth rate from 2001-2011 is only 1/4th as fast as nuclear from 1974-1984, and 1/6th as fast as natural gas from 1965-1975. [13]When a new energy source is genuinely better than the old energy sources, it grows fast. Solar is failing to do so. Yet it's had every advantage the government could provide.What this all implies is that without government intervention, PV solar can't be a significant source of grid power. The economics of German solar have only made sense up til now because they tax the hell out of all types of energy (even other renewables), and then use the proceeds to subsidize solar panels. Utilities are forced to buy distributed solar power at rates several times the electricity's market value, causing massive losses. The German Renewable Energy Act directly caused utility losses of EUR 540 million in August 2013 alone. [16] It's a shocking amount of money changing hands. When you strip away the well-intentioned facade of environmentalism, this is little more than a forced cash transfer scheme. It's taking from utilities (who are losing money hand over fist on grid management and pre-existing conventional generation capacity) and from everyone who doesn't have rooftop panels, and shoveling it into the pockets of everyone who owns or installs panels. Which means it's both a massive market distortion and a regressive tax on the poor.This explains why per-capita solar uptake is so high in Germany. The government has engineered a well-intentioned but harmful redistribution system where everyone without solar panels is giving money to people who have them. This is a tax on anyone who doesn't have a south-facing roof, or who can't afford the up-front cost, or rents their residence, etc. People on fixed incomes (eg welfare recipients and the elderly) have been hardest hit because the government has made a negligible effort to increase payments to compensate for skyrocketing energy prices. The poor are literally living in the dark to try to keep their energy bills low. Energiewende is clearly bad for social equality. But Germany's politicians seem to have a gentleman's agreement to avoid criticizing it in public, particularly since Merkel did an about-face on nuclear power in 2011. [17]Issue 2: Supply VariabilityOne major problem with all this solar-boosting, ironically, is oversupply. It's mind-boggling to me that a generation technology that provides less than 5% of a country's electricity supply can be responsible for harmful excess electricity production, but it's true. On sunny summer afternoons, Germany actually exports power at a loss compared to generation costs: EUR 0.056/kWh average electricity export sale price in 2012, [18] vs EUR 0.165/kWh average lifetime cost for all German solar installed from 2000 to 2011. [14] (This is optimistically assuming a 40 year system life and 10% capacity factor -- reality is probably over EUR 0.20/kWh.) German utilities often have to pay heavy industry and neighboring countries to burn unnecessary power. On sunny summer days, businesses are firing up empty kilns and furnaces, and are getting paid to throw energy away.You can argue that this excess summer solar generation is free, but it's not -- not only is this peak summer output included in the lifetime cost math, but excess solar power actually forces conventional power plants to shut down, thereby lowering the capacity factor of coal & gas plants. Yes, this means large-scale solar adoption makes non-solar power more expensive per kWh, too! On net, excess solar generation is a significant drag on electricity economics. You're paying for the same power generation equipment twice -- once in peak conventional capacity for cloudy days, and again in peak solar capacity for sunny days -- and then exporting the overage for a pittance.Why would they bother exporting at a loss? Because the feed-in-tariff laws don't allow utilities to shut off net-metered rooftop solar. Utilities are forced by law to pay residential consumers an above-market price for power that isn't needed. Meanwhile, Germany's fossil-burning neighbors benefit from artificially-low EU energy market prices. This discourages them from building cleaner power themselves. It's just a wasteful, distorted energy policy.Remember, electricity must be used in the same moment it's generated. [29] The technology for grid-scale electricity storage does not yet exist, and nothing in the development pipeline is within two orders of magnitude of being cheap enough to scale up. Pumped-hydro storage is great on a small scale, but all the good sites are already in use in both Europe and the US. The only plan on the table for grid-scale storage is to use electric car batteries as buffers while they're charging. But that still won't provide anywhere near enough capacity to smooth solar's rapidly-changing output. [19] And if people plug in their cars as soon as they get home from work and the sun goes down, the problem could get even worse. California's regulators have recently acknowledged that the generation profile at sundown is the biggest hurdle to the growth of solar power. The classic illustration is the "duck chart" (shaped like a duck) that shows how solar forces conventional power plants to ramp up at an enormous rate when the sun stops shining in the evening:[29]People often complain about wind power being unreliable, but when you get enough wind turbines spread over a large enough area, the variability averages out. The wind is always blowing somewhere. This means distributed wind power is fairly reliable at the grid level. But all solar panels on a power grid produce power at the same time, meaning night-time under-supply and day-time over-supply. This happens every single day, forever. At least in warm countries, peak air conditioning load roughly coincides with peak solar output. But Germany doesn't use much air conditioning. It's just a grid management nightmare. The rate of "extreme incidents" in Germany's power grid frequency/voltage has increased by three orders of magnitude since Energiewende started. [20]The severe output swings have even reached the point where Germany's grid physically cannot operate without relying on neighboring countries to soak up the variability. The ramp-down of solar output in the evening happens faster than the rest of Germany's generation capacity can ramp-up. (Massive power plants can't change output very quickly.) Which either means blackouts as people get home from work, or using non-solar-powered neighbors as buffers. Here's one day's generation profile for German solar power, showing how net electricity imports/exports are forced to oscillate back and forth to smooth out the swings in production:[21]If Germany's neighbors also had as many solar panels, they would all be trying to export and import at the same time, and the system would fall apart. The maximum capacity of the entire EU grid to utilize solar power is therefore much lower than the level reached by individual countries like Germany and Spain.Solar boosters often say people need to shift their energy consumption habits to match generation, instead of making generation match consumption. That's feasible, to an extent -- perhaps 20% of power consumption can be time-shifted, mostly by rescheduling large consumers currently operating at night like aluminum electrosmelters. But modern civilization revolves around a particular work/sleep schedule, and you can't honestly expect to change that. People aren't going to give up cooking and TV in the evening, or wait three hours after the sun goes down to turn on the lights. And weekends have radically different consumption profiles from weekdays.It all adds up. PV solar output doesn't properly sync up with power demand. That severely limits the maximum percentage of our electricity needs it can provide. Germany hit that limit at about 4%. They are now finding out what happens when you try to push further.Issue 3: Displacing the wrong kinds of powerYou may have noticed in the daily generation chart above how wind power is throttled back when the sun comes out. Residential solar has legal right-of-way over utility-scale wind. A lot of the power generation that solar is displacing is actually other renewables. Most of the rest is displacing natural gas and nuclear power. Coal power is growing rapidly. [6,8]Here's what the weekly generation profile is predicted to look like in 2020:[22]Notice the saw-tooth shape of the big grey "conventional" (coal/gas) category. What all this solar is doing is eating into is daytime base load generation, which seems good for displacing fossil fuels, but in the long run it's doing the opposite.The majority of electricity worldwide comes from coal and nuclear base load plants. They are big, efficient, and cheap. But base load generation is extremely difficult and expensive to throttle up and down every day. To simplify the issue a bit, you cannot ramp nuclear plants as fast as solar swings up and down every day. It takes several days to shut down and restart a nuclear plant, and nuclear plants outside France are not designed to be throttled back, so nuclear cannot be paired with the daily oscillations of PV solar. Supply is unable to match demand. You end up with both gaps and overages.Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of the Fukushima accident, but the Germans didn't really have a choice. They are being forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output. That's a big, big problem -- Germany gets four times more electricity from nuclear than solar, so the math doesn't add up. The generation time-profile is wrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replace nuclear plants with something else.The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas "peaker" plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and load-following gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they're doing is building more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It's expensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and then throttle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilities than nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has been fighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, and coal is in.If you're a regular follower of my writing, you'll know what a terrible idea this is. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionably the most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistake that any group of environmentalists has ever made. It's unbelievable how much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushima meltdown was pretty much a "worst case scenario" -- one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactor meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions -- and not a single person has died from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer rates due to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number too small to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful to the public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation has killed more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone had just stayed in place. [26,27]In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceans with mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other human activity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the industrialized world. [23]This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important. Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricity demand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damage this does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit from the solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solar power that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When you get to the "duck chart" stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you'll end up worse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet. But there's more.Issue 4: The kickerThe category for "biomass" power you see in all these charts is actually firewood being burned in coal plants. 38% of Germany's "renewable energy" comes from chopping down forests and importing wood from other countries. [28] Effing firewood, like we're back in the Middle Ages or something. Due to overzealous renewables targets, and a quirk in the EU carbon pricing system that considers firewood carbon-neutral, Europe is chopping down forests at an alarming rate to burn them as "renewable biomass." The environmental movement has spent most of the last 200 years of industrialization trying to fight deforestation, and that noble goal has been reversed in an instant by bogus carbon emission calculations.In the very long run, over 100 years or so, firewood is close to carbon neutral because you can regrow the trees and they absorb CO2 as they grow. Unfortunately, using firewood for fuel destroys a living carbon sink and releases all its carbon to the atmosphere right now. When you consider that you're destroying a carbon sink as well as releasing stored carbon, firewood is actually much worse than coal for many decades thereafter. [28] The next few decades is humanity's most critical time for reducing carbon emissions, so this policy is mind-boggling lunacy.Germany is so focused on meeting renewables targets that it is willing to trample the environment to get there. They've managed to make renewables unsustainable! It's tragicomic.To summarize: Energiewende is the worst possible example of how to implement an energy transition. The overzealous push for the wrong generation technology has hurt citizens, businesses, and the environment all at the same time.I want to make it clear that I'm not saying we should abandon solar. It should definitely be part of our generation mix. Due a mix of bad climate and bad policy, Germany ran into problems at a very low solar penetration, and other countries will be able to reach higher penetrations. But even if we ignore cost, there is still a maximum practical limit to solar power based on the realities of grid management.You can't build more PV solar than the rest of the grid can ramp up/down to accept. The necessary grid storage for large-scale solar power is a "maybe someday" technology, not something viable today. Calls for 50% of power to come from solar in our lifetimes are a fantasy, and we need to be realistic about that.You can't force utilities to buy unneeded power just because it's renewable. The energy and materials to build the excess capacity just goes to waste. That is the opposite of green.We have to learn those lessons. We can't sweep this failure under the rug.Every time a renewables advocate holds Germany up as a shining beacon, they set back the credibility of the environmental movement. It's unsupported by reality and I think even gives ammunition to the enemy. We have to stop praising Germany's Energiesheiße and figure out better ways to implement renewables. Other models should work better. They have to -- the future of the world depends on it.[1] Solar power by country[2] Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good - SPIEGEL ONLINE[3] German 'green revolution' may cost 1 trillion euros - minister[4] Global Warming Targets and Capital Costs of Germany's 'Energiewende'[5] Germany's 'Energiewende' - the story so far[6] Germany: Coal Power Expanding, Green Energy Stagnating[7] Merkel's Blackout: German Energy Plan Plagued by Lack of Progress - SPIEGEL ONLINE[8] Merkel’s Green Shift Backfires as German Pollution Jumps[9] Capacity factor, Price per watt[10] German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at $4.44[11] It Keeps Getting Cheaper To Install Solar Panels In The U.S.[12] Germany Breaks Monthly Solar Generation Record, ~6.5 Times More Than US Best[13] Germany and Renewables Market Changes (source link in original article is broken, here is an updated link:http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp...)[14] Cost of German Solar Is Four Times Finnish Nuclear -- Olkiluoto Nuclear Plant, Plagued by Budget Overruns, Still Beats Germany’s Energiewende[15] 313 MWp German PV Capacity Added in July 2013 - 34.5 GWp Total[16] EEG Account: 5,907 GWh of Renewable Energy in August Sold for EUR 37.75 at Expenses of EUR 399.52 per MWh - EUR 540 Million Deficit[17] Germany will dilute - not abandon - its Energiewende plan[18] German power exports more valuable than its imports[19] Ryan Carlyle's answer to How large would an array of solar panels have to be to power the continental US? How much would such an array cost to build? What are the major engineering obstacles to powering the US this way?[20] Electricity demand response shows promise in Germany[21] Energiewende in Germany and Solar Energy[22] Problems with Renewables and the Markets[23] Ryan Carlyle's answer to What are some policies that would improve millions of lives, but people still oppose? Why do people oppose them? What is the one area where you wish politicians and the public would pay attention to scientific consensus or other data?[24] Stephen Frantz's answer to What is a nuclear supporter's response to the Fukushima disaster?[25] Fukushima Cancer Fears Are Absurd[26] Evacuation ‘Fukushima’ deadlier then radiation[27] Was It Better to Stay at Fukushima or Flee?[28] The fuel of the future[29] Fowl Play: how the utility industry’s ability to outsmart a duck will define the power grid of the 21st century

1970On December 2, the United States Environmental Protection Agency is established to protect the nation's public health and environment. Its national role includes finding ways to cleanup and prevent pollution, ensuring compliance and enforcement of environmental laws, assisting states in environmental protection efforts, and scientific research and education to advance the nation's understanding of environmental issues.Under amendments to the Clean Air Act, EPA moves to protect public health by setting national health-based standards for air pollutants, setting standards for auto emissions, and requiring states to submit new air quality plans.1971EPA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are charged with protecting children's health through lead-based paint prevention activities, including detection and treatment of lead-based paint poisoning, limiting lead use in certain consumer items, and banning the use of lead-based interior paints in residences built or renovated by the federal government.1972EPA bans use of DDT because the widely-used pesticide is found to be cancer-causing and accumulating in the food chain, posing a risk to public health and the environment.To limit raw sewage flowing into the nation's rivers, lakes and streams, EPA embarks on a major national commitment to build an advanced network of sewage treatment facilities. By 1988, virtually all U.S. cities will have built or committed to build such facilities, resulting in rivers and lakes that are safe for swimming, tourism and commercial and recreational fishing.The United States and Canada sign the International Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to begin cleanup of the Great Lakes, which contain 95 percent of the nation's fresh water and supply drinking water for 23 million Americans.1973EPA begins the ban that will phase out all use of lead in gasoline, resulting in a 98% reduction in lead levels in the air. The phase-out protects millions of children from serious, permanent learning disabilities by helping to reduce blood lead levels by 75%.EPA issues its first permit limiting a factory's discharges of pollution into waterways, starting a program that now holds more than 45,000 industrial facilities accountable for water pollution.1974Under the new Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA begins work to protect public health by setting health-based standards governing the quality of the public water supply, including requirements for physical and chemical treatment of drinking water.EPA sets the first national standards limiting industrial water pollution, launching a program that today prevents one billion pounds of toxics from reaching our rivers, lakes, and streams each year.1975EPA assumes responsibility for annually monitoring how cars and light trucks perform under new fuel economy standards--a move that, for the first time, allows consumers to choose cars based on their energy efficiency--under the new Energy Policy and Conservation Act.Car makers begin installing catalytic converters in new motor vehicles to meet EPA emission standards designed to protect public health from harmful air pollution.1976Responding to public concern over "midnight dumping" of toxic wastes, EPA starts to establish controls over hazardous waste from the time it is generated, through transportation, treatment, storage and disposal, under the new Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.EPA begins efforts to protect public health through controls on toxic chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk of injury. The new Toxic Substances Control Act sets the stage for EPA's ban that will phase out production and use of cancer-causing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), a widely-used material often discharged into the environment.1977Air quality and visibility in national parks and wilderness is further protected with new amendments to the Clean Air Act, with provisions that preserve clean air in these important natural areas.1978EPA and other federal agencies ban the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as a propellant in most aerosol cans. CFCs destroy the earth's ozone layer, which protects life on earth from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.1979Because of their potential for causing cancer and other adverse health effects, EPA bans two herbicides containing dioxins, chemical compounds that are byproducts of certain industrial activities that cause cancer and other adverse health effects. One of the herbicides was an ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange.1980Building on earlier efforts to clean up toxic waste sites, EPA develops a nationwide program for toxic waste site cleanups under the new Superfund law, as well as establishing a list of the most hazardous toxic sites in the U.S. The new law is in part prompted by Love Canal--an industrial dumping ground since the 1970s--which New York State declared a "grave and imminent peril" to nearby residents two years earlier.1984Concerns about gasoline and hazardous chemicals seeping from storage tanks and landfills into underground drinking water supplies prompt new amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, under which EPA institutes efforts to prevent such contamination and require treatment of hazardous wastes prior to land disposal.1985After British scientists report a giant hole in the Earth's protective atmospheric ozone layer, EPA joins an international convention in Vienna calling for worldwide cooperative efforts to eliminate use of substances that deplete the ozone layer.1986Public concern about explosions and leaks of toxic chemicals, such as occurred in Bhopal, India, helps lead to passage of the first community right-to-know law directing manufacturers, users and storers of certain chemicals to keep records about the location, quantity, use, and any release of those materials, and for EPA to make such information available to the public. EPA also begins to work with states and localities to prevent accidents and develop emergency plans in the case of dangerous releases of chemicals.1987The United States is one of 24 nations that sign the Montreal Protocol, pledging to phase out production of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which are widely used as refrigerants and aerosols but are linked to destruction of the protective atmospheric ozone layer.1989EPA makes publicly available the first annual community right-to-know information on the location and nature of toxic chemical releases in communities around the country, through the new Toxics Release Inventory. A major chemical corporation pledges to reduce such releases by 90% (and later meets that goal).1990EPA assesses a penalty of $15 million--the largest single civil penalty in the Agency's history--against Texas Eastern Gas Pipeline Company, for extensive PCB contamination at 89 sites. In addition to the fine, the company is required to pay for PCB cleanups estimated to exceed $750 million.EPA develops and implements new Clean Air Act Amendments under which states must, for the first time, demonstrate continuing progress toward meeting national health-based air quality standards for harmful pollutants such as smog and carbon monoxide.In keeping with the new Pollution Prevention Act that encourages industry to control toxic emissions by using cost-effective changes in production, EPA inaugurates the first major public-private partnership to significantly reduce polluting industrial emissions.Reducing Risk, a landmark report from EPA's Science Advisory Board, calls for the setting of national environmental priorities and greater use of science in decision-making on environmental regulation.1991In the largest environmental criminal damage settlement in history, Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping agree to pay $25 million in fines, $100 million in immediate payment to the U.S. and Alaska governments for restoration work, and establish a $900 million remediation fund arising from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.Under EPA's coordination, all Federal agencies begin using recycled and recyclable products whenever possible, under a new government-wide policy, a move that will vastly increase the market for such products. Separately, EPA finds that recycling of hazardous wastes has increased 127% in just the two-year period since 1989.EPA joins other federal agencies in assessing the danger to human health and environmental damage from the intentional oil spills and 700 oil well fires set by Iraqi troops in Kuwait during the Arabian Gulf War.1992To protect seashore recreation, ocean life, and the fishing industry, EPA's ban ends dumping of sewage sludge into oceans and coastal waters.1993EPA consolidates and toughens its environmental enforcement program to ensure compliance with environmental laws and to penalize polluters who break those laws.EPA announces the Common Sense Initiative, a sweeping effort to fundamentally shift environmental regulation--moving away from the pollutant-by-pollutant, crisis-by-crisis approach of the past to an industry-by-industry approach for the future. This new approach is designed to achieve results that are cleaner, cheaper and smarter--cleaner for the environment, cheaper for business and taxpayers, and smarter for America's future.To protect public health and increase food safety, EPA begins a major initiative to encourage manufacturers to develop new, safer pesticides.EPA's comprehensive scientific evaluation of independent research finds that secondhand cigarette smoke can cause cancer and impair the respiratory health of children and others.EPA reports that curbside recycling programs and related efforts have tripled the recycling rate for the nation's trash--from 7% of all non-hazardous waste collected in 1970 to nearly 22% in 1993.1994EPA announces a new set of pollution-control standards to reduce by 90% the toxic air pollutants from chemical plants by 1997. This action will result in the biggest reduction in air toxics in U.S. history.After decades of conflict, the Clinton Administration negotiates a consensus plan to protect the most valuable economic and environmental resource of the state of California--water. The San Francisco Bay Delta supplies drinking water to two-thirds of the State's people and provides irrigation for 45% of America's fruits and vegetables.Superfund cleanups are greatly accelerated, resulting in as many cleanups completed in 12 months as were completed in the program's first decade--an accomplishment that will be repeated in 1995 as well.New grants are launched by EPA to help 50 U.S. communities revitalize inner-city brownfields abandoned, contaminated sites that were formerly industrial or commercial properties and return them to productive use for the community, resulting in both economic and environmental gains.The Clinton Administration nearly doubles the list of toxic chemicals that must be publicly reported under the community right-to-know laws, giving Americans a dramatic increase in the information they need about toxic pollution from manufacturing facilities in communities nationwide.1995Two-thirds of the U.S. metropolitan areas with unhealthy air in 1990 have now met air quality standards, making the air safer to breathe for 50 million Americans in major cities such as San Francisco and Detroit.EPA issues new requirements for municipal incinerators to reduce toxic emissions by 90%.

No No No! The Maldives are growing not sinking as sea levels are falling there.The Maldives Are Not Sinking13,023 viewsSUBSCRIBE 1.8KAn excerpt of the documentary "Global Warming Doomsday Called Off!" In this clip professor Nils Axel Morner, from Stockholm University travels to the Maldives and finds out that the ocean levels have dropped in recent years.Richard GuyHello Professor you are perfectly right the sea levels are not rising. You dont have to go to the Maldives however you can stay home in Stockholm and study what has been happening in Scandenavia for hundreds of years.The sea levels have been falling there as well as all around the world. Ancient villages in Norway and Sweden which were once on the sea are now hundreds of miles inland. The same in happening on Alaska and New Jersey and New York and on both coasts of the United States. So the Media hype of rising seas is maintained for a reason. In a recent conference in Sicily which I attended on ses level recession a lecturer from Australia said that the Australian government has rezoned the Coastline as a future floof plain and as a result foreshore land values have dropped. As soon as the land prices drop large corporations buy up the foreshore. Go Figure.?Richard Guy" "Author of "The Mysterious Receding Seas"Are Pacific Atolls Sinking Under The Waves?–New Study Says NotFEBRUARY 1, 2013Maldivesend metaBy Paul HomewoodThe prospect of low lying islands in the Pacific disappearing under the waves is enough to get greenies wetting their knickers and Ed “Dopey” Davey, the UK Energy Secretary, putting his hands in our pockets to give billions away to the Maldives and the rest.Of course, we already know that the Maldive government itself does not believe any of this rubbish. That’s why they are building new airports and tourist developments, as if they were going out of fashion!But what do the proper scientists think, as opposed to the discredited rent seeking variety?A new study by EC Rankey, “Nature and stability of atoll island shorelines: Gilbert Island chain, Kiribaati, Equatorial Pacific” , takes a close look at the issue.In a study that integrated field observations, differential global positioning system data, historical aerial photographs and ultra-high resolution remote sensing images that examined the nature, spatial patterns and rates-of-change of the shorelines of 17 islands on the Maiana and Aranuka atolls of Kiribati’s Gilbert Island chain, Rankey (2011) obtained a wealth of data that come to bear on this important question. And the conclusions he derives from that information are vastly different from the data-sparse contentions of the world’s climate alarmists.Rankey found, for example, that short-term (four-year) rates of shoreline changes can indeed be dramatic, with significant intrusion of seawater over sloping shores. However, much longer (forty-year) rates of change are much smaller; and not all of his analyses depict shrinking dry-land surfaces, as some of the studied islands have actually been accruing above-water area. And so it is that he forthrightly and correctly states that "the atoll islands are not washing away."Similar island surface responses have been found by Webb and Kench (2010), who studied 27 other atoll islands in the central Pacific, using historical aerial photography and satellite images over periods ranging from 19 to 61 years, during which time interval they say that instrumental records indicated a rate of sea-level rise of 2.0 mm per year in the central Pacific. Yet in spite of this sea level rise, they too found "no evidence of large-scale reduction in island area," noting that the islands "have predominantly been persistent or expanded in area on atoll rims for the past 20 to 60 years," adding that 43% of the islands "increased in area by more than 3% with the largest increases of 30% on Betio (Tarawa atoll) and 28.3% on Funamanu (Funafuti atoll)."Years earlier, Connell (2003) had also found no evidence for the oft-repeated island doomsday claims, demonstrating the great importance of real-world data – as opposed to climate model simulations – when it comes to considering the current and future status of the Earth’s many islands. And so it is that Rankey concludes his analysis by counselling that "solutions must consider the natural complexity of these [island] systems, rather than advocate overly simplistic notions of the causes of, and the solutions to, coastal change."It looks like the Maldives can carry on building their new airports after all!James Grant MatkinNovember 7, 2015 11:46 pmYes this article makes much sense. Indeed another potential answer to the Pacific Islands failing to sink into oblivion these past 200 years due to life giving C02 is the fact the seas are hardly rising at all. The oceans rose only 5 inches rather than 6 inches as originally thought over the past 100 years according to very recent research at Harvard and Rutgers. Think about the your experience with tides and waves at the seashore and you realize this small increase is imperceptible or de minimus. The massive sea rise soon as much as 50 feet predicted by the climate alarmists is unbelievable nonsense. The National Geographic published an article on this issue scolding the alarmists for their wild predictions about dooms day soon for the islands. Fifty years ago I lived on a small Pacific Atoll in the Cooks – Manihiki and it has just like the Maldives added a new airport because the land is expanding. Finally, the Antarctica is also expanding rapidly and now holds the record as the coldest place on earth raising the issue of another ice age creeping up on us. This is the largest glacier on the planet and so its expansion will retard further any ocean rise.https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/are-pacific-atolls-sinking-under-the-wavesnew-study-says-not/This Pacific Island Was Expected to Disappear, But It's Actually Growing LargerWhat's going on!?DAVID NIELD15 FEB 2018The Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu has long been marked as a prime candidate to get swallowed up by the ocean as sea levels rise, but new research shows the land mass of the nation is actually expanding.Friday, 08 January 2016 Item titleClimate Alarmists Have Been Wrong About Virtually EverythingItem AuthorWritten by Alex NewmanThe planet’s atmosphere is very large and the amount of human emissions of Co2 plant food in comparison are very small. ln fact they are so small they are NEAR ZERO. Therefore, it is impossible to even imagine how this minute amount of a non-toxic wholly beneficial gas could have any impact on the earth’s climate.The greenhouse metaphor and science hypothesis is fake. There is no greenhouse cover on the earth because Co2 from trace human activities is too minute to matter. Human activities simply do not matter to the climate.Think about it - how could a trace gas almost zero like Co2 at 0.29% in the atmosphere (not even 1%) from humans have any effect on the climate? It cannot. The greenhouse hypothesis is demolished on the facts of size.The Rice Video - Carbon Dioxide in perspective by The Galileo MovementThe Rice Video - Carbon Dioxide in perspective by The Galileo MovementThe amount of Co2 today at just 400 ppm. Co2 today pales in comparison with the past when there was more than 5000 ppm which is > 10 X as much! [ Remember with breath out we exhale > 35,000ppm of Co2 into the atmosphere.]The entire misnamed greenhouse gases (these are infared gases that have absolutely nothing to do with greenhouses) together make up less than 4% of the earth’s atmosphere. The major gases are Nitrogen at 76.56% and Oxygen at 20.54 %. How can such a puny amount < 4% control the climate warming? It cannot.This critical graph of all the gases in the atmosphere is always ignored by climate alarmists because they know it would sow doubt about their ridiculous view that the science is settled.It is essential to understand the complexity of measuring human made Co2 emissions and to realize at a detail level the trace amounts are indistinguishable from natural sources of co2.Too little Co2 to trap the sun’s heat rather the reality is more like a shattered greenhouse.Like this smashed greenhouse from vandals in Scotland the greenhouse effect is literally and figuratively full of holes.The greenhouse hypothesis was demolished by a famous American Physicist Dr. RW Wood in 1909 and trashed many times since by leading climate scientists. The atmosphere contains approximately 800 Gt of Co2 with 95% coming from natural sources of vegetation, land and ocean and 4% form human fossil fuel emissions. Here is a vital graph sourced from the IPCC and it is only an a rough estimate and far from accurate -The amounts are measured in Gt and obviously the are just estimates. There is no actual observation of the three primary different sources of Co2. Numbers are simply statistical estimates from data. This is a significant problem for the alarmist theory of human caused global warming.“For example, until recently estimates of the carbon dioxide yield of one of the world’s best known land volcanoes, Kilauea Volcano (Hawaii), was 2,800 tonnes/Co2/day. In 2001, Gerlach and co-authors established by measurement a more accurate figure of 8,800 tonnes/day. which is over three times as great. If such uncertainty attends to well-studied subaerial volcanoes, the estimates of carbon dioxide emissions from submarine volcanoes, the majority, are obviously little better than guesses.” Robert M. Carter, CLIMATE: THE COUNTER CONSENSUS.NO DOUBT THE 2001 ESTIMATE IS WRONG AFTER RECENT HAWAII VOLCANIC EXPLOSIONSKilauea is one of the most active volcanoes on earth and has been in a state of constant eruption since 1983, turning explosive this month after a magnitude 6.9 volcano rocked the area.So far, at least 47 homes and other structures have been destroyed by lava from 23 open fissures, forcing thousands from their homes.This means the human contributions in context are not well understood because no one, including the IPCC, can satisfactorily account for the observed levels in detail. There is no doubt carbon dioxide sources and sinks have large DATA ERRORS. Even with guesses the IPCC admits man’s carbon dioxide contribution is small, but the IPCC argues that, nonetheless, anthropogenic emissions will ‘tip’ the natural balance of the planet causing dangerous climate change and acidification of the ocean.One expert climatologist Tim Ball estimates that human production of carbon dioxide is more than four times less than the combined statistical error (32Gt) on the estimated carbon dioxide production from all other sources. IBID, page 74 Carter.This means that human emission are no more than the statistical error of the estimates.“A perspective that follows is that even were human emissions to be reduced to zero, the difference would be lost among other uncertainties to the global carbon budget. What is presently missing from the public debate, then - and it is not provided by computer model outputs, either - is an appreciation of both the small scale (in context) of human emissions, and the range of uncertainty in the carbon budget.”GREENHOUSE GASES COMPOSITIONHere is a key graph of all Greenhouse gases that shows detailed percentages of where the source of C02 in the atmosphere and human emissions are miniscule at only 0.117%.Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from other natural sources it is foolish to think humans make any difference. Even the most costly efforts to limit human Co2 emissions if they succeeded would have a very small-- undetectable-- effect on global climate.http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossil...It may be a little hard to picture just how minute the fossil fuel emissions across the globe are. Please take 3 minutes to view this helpful Australian Rice video that helped Australia’s public decide to axe the futile carbon tax.AXE THE TAX AUSTRALIA THE RICE VIDEO 85880 32 CO2 1 HUMAN CO2The Rice Video - Carbon Dioxide in perspective by The Galileo MovementIt is hard to imagine, but essential to realize they have no effect on the climate, just how small the Co2 emissions from fossil fuels are. Co2 so small drawn to scale it is invisible.Ibid, page 75"Many chemicals are absolutely necessary for humans to live, for instance oxygen. Just as necessary, human metabolism produces by-products that are exhaled, like carbon dioxide and water vapor. So, the production of carbon dioxide is necessary, on the most basic level, for humans to survive. The carbon dioxide that is emitted as part of a wide variety of natural processes is, in turn, necessary for vegetation to live. It turns out that most vegetation is somewhat 'starved' for carbon dioxide, as experiments have shown that a wide variety of plants grow faster, and are more drought tolerant, in the presence of doubled carbon dioxide concentrations. Fertilization of the global atmosphere with the extra CO2 that mankind's activities have emitted in the last century is believed to have helped increase agricultural productivity. In short, carbon dioxide is a natural part of our environment, necessary for life, both as 'food' and as a by-product."- Roy Spencer, Ph.D. Meteorology, Former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies, NASA"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a colorless, odorless trace gas that actually sustains life on this planet. Consider the simple dynamics of human energy acquisition, which occurs daily across the globe. We eat plants directly, or we consume animals that have fed upon plants, to obtain the energy we need. But where do plants get their energy? Plants produce their own energy during a process called photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to combine water and carbon dioxide into sugars for supporting overall growth and development. Hence, CO2 is the primary raw material that plants depend upon for their existence. Because plants reside beneath animals (including humans) on the food chain, their healthy existence ultimately determines our own. Carbon dioxide can hardly be labeled a pollutant, for it is the basic substrate that allows life to persist on Earth."- Keith E. Idso, Ph.D. Botany"C02 is not a pollutant as Gore infers. It is, in fact essential to life on the planet. Without it there are no plants, therefore no oxygen and no life. At 385 ppm current levels the plants are undernourished. The geologic evidence shows an average level of 1000 ppm over 600 million years. Research shows plants function most efficiently at 1000-2000 ppm. Commercial greenhouses use the information and are pumping C02 to these levels and achieve four times the yield with educed water use. At 200 ppm, the plants suffer seriously and at 150 ppm, they begin to die. So if Gore achieves his goal of reducing C02 he will destroy the planet."- Tim F. Ball, Ph.D. Climatology"To classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant is thus nothing short of scientific chicanery, for reasons that have nothing to do with science, but based purely on the pseudo-science so eagerly practiced by academia across the world in order to keep their funding sources open to the governmental decrees, which are in turn based on totally false IPCC dogma (yes, dogma - not science)."- Hans Schreuder, Analytical Chemisthttp://www.populartechnology.net...CO2 CORRELATION WITH TEMPERATUREC02 has been 11 times more prevalent in the atmosphere than today. With the long view of ice cores going back 600 million years there is no correlation of Co2 with temperature.Also looking over the past 2000 years of climate history you cannot find a correlation of temperature and Co2.The ice core data about Co2 impact over the 20th and 21st Centuries shows no correlation with temperature.If you break out human sourced Co2 from non- human the lack of correlation with temperature is obvious. The catastrophy claim of the alarmists is only limited to our trace amount of fossil fuel emissions of Co2.The current global warming trend started before 1700, yet human CO2 emissions were negligible before 1850. So the theory that humans started the recent global warming is absurd and obviously wrong.Have you ever seen a graph of human CO2 emissions versus temperature (the alleged cause and effect) anywhere in the media or from the climate establishment? Why not?Why do the climate establishment and mainstream media instead show us graphs of atmospheric CO2 levels versus temperature? Isn’t this misdirection to disguise the almost complete non-correlation between our emissions and the temperature?http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10...Solar correlation with past temperatures is very strong.Here is another graphic that helps see how de minimus C02 is: “Over the past century, atmospheric CO2 has increased by one part per ten thousand. That is equivalent to packing an extra ten people into the Rose Bowl.”https://realclimatescience.com/2...It is beyond imagination that this minuscule amount of non-toxic life giving through photosynthesis gas is having any effect on the climate.If you live in Vancouver there is only one molecule of C02 from fossil fuels statistically from the city to Hope an hour away and that molecule is a climate control knob???Human emissions are very small by comparison; if all human industrial CO2 emissions stopped tomorrow the greater natural system would remain in equilibrium.The TRUTH about carbon dioxide (C02): Patrick Moore, Sensible EnvironmentalistHuman CO2 Emissions are Wholly Beneficial - Dr Moore20,981 views14th October, 2015 Lecture by Dr Patrick Moore in London at the Global Warming Policy Foundation outlining why our CO2 emissions are wholly beneficial, and may have even prevented the end of life on Earth.The use of CO2 in greenhouses can give light use efficiencies exceeding those of field crops (Wilson et al 1992). Glasshouse crops with CO2 enrichment achieve maximum efficiency of light energy utilization between 12-13% (Wilson et al 1992). The ability of plants to utilize CO2 is dependent upon the presence of light, for this reason it is only useful to supplement CO2during the daylight hours (Styer and Koranski 1997).http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$dep...Seeing is Believing289,504 viewsco2sciencePublished on 9 Apr 2010Isolated for 42 days in chambers of ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations, we periodically document the growth of cowpea plants (Vigna unguiculata) via time-lapse photography.Submarine crew are reported to be the major source of CO2 on board submarines (Crawl 2003). Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm with a range of 0-10,600 ppm, and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm with a range of 300-11,300 ppm (Hagar 2003).Thus, CO2 at 40,000 ppm for 2 weeks did not affect performance on multiple tests of cognitive function in physically fit young airmen, a population probably not unlike submariners.https://www.quora.com/At-what-CO...GOVERNMENT ACTION IS TALK ONLY WITH NO IMPACTTHE CLIMATE IS COOLING WHY TRY TO MAKE IT COLDER?It is obvious that government action is terribly wasteful and useless assuming Co2 matters to the climate as renewables and carbon taxes are having zero impact on reality.Do we really want to go back in history to low levels of Co2 and low life expectancy? Now of course the above graph only shows correlation between increasing Co2 levels and increasing life expectancy. Obviously simple correlation does not prove causation. However as to causation the connection is that Co2 is essential to all plant and animal life on the planet through photosynthesis. Even the politically driven UN IPCC recognized that government plans to reduce Co2 levels could be disastrous to plants and have a devastating impact on life expectancy. As a result the PARIS ACCORD specifies in ARTICLE 2(b) that if reducing Co2 ‘threatens FOOD PRODUCTION’ the reductions and targets should be cancelled. Yes a full exemption is allowed for governments against action on lowering Co2 levels from human emission, THANKFULLY! The climate is getting colder as sunspots decline and yet the Paris Agreement hopes to make the climate even colder yet. WHY? This madness must stop.Why such shoddy climate science wrongly fingering human emissions of carbon dioxide without any physical studies ? The best explanation is lack of ethical science publicly revealed by the full disclosure of the infamous CLIMATE GATE emails. Here is a summary of highlight of fudging and distortions from the emails written in 2009-In February, the UK Guardian revealed that a key study co-authored by Phil Jones that purported to show there was no such thing as the well-researched Urban Heat Island effect was found to have relied on seriously flawed data. This, according to the Guardian, led to “apparent attempts to cover up problems with [the] temperature data.”In September, John Holdren, the man who had previously advocated adding sterilizing agents to the water supply to combat the overpopulation problem which he thought would ravage the Earth by the year 2000, and who currently is the Science czar in the Obama White House, advocated a name change for global warming to “climate disruption,” further affirming the theory’s non-scientific status as an unfalsifiable prediction that anything that ever is due to manmade carbon dioxide.Later that month, Britain’s prestigious Royal Society rewrote its climate change summary to admit that the science was infused with uncertainties and that “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future…”In October, a carbon reduction advocacy group called 10:10 released a video to promote its campaign in which those skeptical about participating in the program are literally blown up.And just this month, Scientific American, a publication that has been noted for publishing increasingly alarmist reports about the reality and the dangers of manmade- Co2 induced global warming, a poll of its own readers that found over 77 believe natural processes to be the cause of climate change and almost 80 responded that they would not be willing to pay a single penny on schemes to “forestall” the supposed effects of supposedly-manmade global warming (warming that even climategate scientist Phil Jones now admits is no longer taking place).https://www.corbettreport.com/climategate-is-still-the-issue/http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/GMDPP.pdfGLOBAL CLIMATE OBSERVATION SYSTEMThe 1997 Conference on the World Climate Research Programme to the Third Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded that the global capacity to observe the Earth's climate system is inadequate and is deteriorating worldwide: "Without action to reverse this decline and develop the Global Climate Observation System, the ability to characterize climate change and variations over the next 25 years will be even less than during the past quarter century."See Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems (1999) (Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)See surfacestations.org (Climate stations physical site survey data)See Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? (Anthony Watts, 2009. Heartland Institute)There has clearly been some warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998. However the global surface station based data is seriously compromised by major station dropout. There has been a clear bias towards removing higher elevation, higher latitude and rural stations. The data suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes, and improper sitting. There is missing data and uncertainties in ocean temperatures. These factors all lead to overestimation of temperatures.See A U.S. ClimateGate? (Dr. Joseph D'Aleo, Jan. 17 '10)See Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg (Marc Sheppard, American Thinker, Jan. 22 '10)"A simple graph by Canadian statistician, Ross McKitrick puts this in picture form. His graph shows that when many stations were selectively and suddenly eliminated from world temperature records, reported global temperature immediately and instantly appeared to step up alarmingly to higher levels-in the 1990's and 2000's.""Temperature measuring stations are placed mostly, 2/3rd, on places where effects of urban heat affects measurements, exhaust of air condition, parking lots, airports jet engines exhausts, increased traffic, concrete grounds etc. cause incorrect measurements, i.e. too high temperatures.""Globally, 12,000 to 14,000 stations during 1970-1989 were reduced to less than 8,000 in year 1991, further to less than 6,000 in year 2000 and to 1,500 now and mainly located at airports. Stations were relocated from previous sites in forests and rural areas to urban sites.These changes reducing rural stations in favour of urban stations is again unethical and biased science work because it is well known urban sites are unnaturally hotter.Heat pollution caused by concrete and paved roads acting like storage heaters or heat banks has created the Urban Heat Island which in turn allows the BBC and Met Office to fake global warming. #BBCbreakfast #BBCnewsDid you know that cities could be 7 degrees F warmer than neighbouring grassy areas, such as farms or parks? #HeatSciencehttps://earthobservatory.nasa.go...Measurements in cold Siberia were eliminated after the collapse of Soviet [Union]. Weather stations were moved from north to south, from high altitudes to low altitudes, all giving higher temperatures.""90% of stations give 1-2°C too high temperatures, i.e. more than IPCC claim for AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming).During 1950 to 1989 with 12-14,000 stations, average temperature is around 10.0°C and 1990 to 2000 temperature is 11-12°C, average around 11.5°C thus an increase of 1.5°C.90% of all air temperature measurements are taken over land, while land covers only 30% of the planet and the oceans cover 70%."http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChange.htm#McKitrickSee also French scientists research trashing the greenhouse gas effect idea.Now French Scientist Trashes Greenhouse Gas Theory | PSI IntlFinal point sea rise and falls chaotically like temperatures as seen over the past 21 years. Academic studies are really uncertain as to what cause sea level change.