Despite The Current Heat Wave...

...global warming took another serious blow recently:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

The short version is that these 'alarmist computer models' used assumptions that were based more on the alarmists' political agendas rather than actual empirical data.

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

And, at this point, we know for a fact that they aren't at all honest about it. Hot Air summarizes this way:

AGW advocates insist that people respect the scientific consensus that we’re all going to kill Mother Earth if we don’t take radical action now to stop emissions of a natural substance into the atmosphere. However, we don’t have consensus, and what little we do have seems less and less scientific as data emerges.

Being a little more blunt, Doug Powers says this:

In all fairness, I wouldn’t expect computer models to be spot-on simulations of the real climate system, but in honest research I would expect computer models to, at least once in a while, not always coincidentally err on the side of the equation that just happens to make Al Gore richer and serve as “evidence” that the UN should be further funded to police the impending catastrophe.

He also reports on a related story. Remember the poor, poor polar bears that are drowning because so much of their ice is melting due to global warming and they can't find anywhere to get out of the water (never mind that they can swim 60 miles at the drop of a hat)? It's political propaganda put up by someone now under investigation for misconduct:

A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.

Charles Monnett, an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, was told July 18 that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into “integrity issues.”

He's claiming that he's being 'politically persecuted' by the Obama administration, but that's as laughable as the notion of polar bears dying off (remember, there are 5 times as many polar bears today as there were 50 years ago).

Oh, and it's also laughable because that very same Obama administration is continuing to push garbage policies based on Monnett's own political position, like this new gem:

In what has become a depressingly repeating pattern, if you take your eyes off of the EPA for too long they get up to all sorts of plans to “save” America. When they’re not fiddling around with vehicle mileage standards or cross-state emission regulation plans, they apparently spend their time taking a fresh look at ozone standards. They were originally set to issue some new guidelines on July 29 during the height of the debt debate, but the plan was temporarily tabled. Now, however, it’s back on the menu.

The U.S. economy won a temporary reprieve with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement last week that new ozone standards, which had been slated for this summer, will be delayed. The EPA’s “reconsideration” of the ozone standards it set in 2008 and issuance of more stringent standards violate all three of the fundamental values EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged to honor: “science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.”[1]

This enormously expensive regulation is unsupported by scientific evidence, violates the Clean Air Act (CAA), and appears timed to evade ongoing judicial review of the rulemaking process. Even the EPA’s estimate that the new rule will impose up to $90 billion in compliance costs annually[2] severely understates the impact on economic development and jobs in communities where attainment of the new standards will be impossible.

Back in 2008 the standard for ozone levels was set at an already challenging level of 75 ppb (parts per billion). Combined with other efforts, both regulatory and voluntary on the part of industry, air quality has been steadily improving from low points in the seventies. So why tinker with success, right?

Never ones to let a little think like that stop them, the EPA is now pushing to tighten the ozone standard to 60 ppb. (A proposal which has raised any number of eyebrows, since certain popular destinations fail to meet that standard today, including Yellowstone National Park.) But this will at least improve everyone’s health, right? According to a new study from NERA Economic Consulting, the health benefits are “greatly exaggerated” at best.

EPA’s assumed causal relationship between ozone and mortality has not been supported by EPA’s science advisors;

The health benefits EPA attributes to the tighter ozone standard should are due to a slight reduction in particulate matter (dust), which already is regulated separately by EPA; and

The EPA’s own data show that the benefits of the proposed ozone standard will not outweigh the costs.

But there must be some upside to this, right? We’re all supposed to focus on jobs now, as I recall. Hopefully this will at least help us out on that front!

Oh, it’s going to have an effect, alright. A study by Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI estimates that strengthening the ozone standard to 60 ppb could cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030, and destroy 7.3 million jobs.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled banging of your heads against the wall.

The longer these people remain in charge of American policy, the more damage they do...and for all the wrong reasons.