[Editor Note: In light of the 5th anniversary of Climategate on November 19th, MasterResource proudly reposts Steve Gorham’s summary from last year, Revisiting Climategate as Climatism Falters. Good analysis becomes more valuable with the passage of time. This post, and Gorham’s book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, pass this test.]

” … the real scandal was not so much that two or three climate scientists behaved badly, but that virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.”

– Paul Stephens, “Climategate Anniversary,” The IPCC Report, November 17, 2014.

Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, is on the wane. Once riding high, the ideology of man-made climate change is losing its influence in governments across the world.…

“Only by expanding our research to include careful and honest studies of natural factors will science be able to discern and separate significant human influences from the powerful natural forces responsible for minor-to-profound climate fluctuations throughout history. Only then will we begin to improve our ability to predict why, when, how and where Earth’s climate is likely to change in the future.”

Bad climate knowledge, quantified as multi-decadal predictions, tell impoverished countries that they can develop only with “green” wind and solar energy. The World Bank, U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and other financial institutions increasingly refuse to provide grants or loans for electricity generation projects fueled by coal or natural gas, for example. (Whether or not these agencies should exist is another question.)

In the face of domestic statism institutionalizing poverty, millions continue to die every year because they do not have electricity to operate water purification facilities; refrigerators to keep food and medicine from spoiling; or stoves and heaters to replace wood and dung fires that cause rampant lung diseases.…

“But while the IPCC chooses to look the other way, the scientific evidence supporting low equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to pile up…. This is all around good news, for it means that we can focus more on expanding energy access (via fossil fuels) around the world rather than curtail our energy growth.”

There are basically three key parameters that determine the pace and magnitude of future climate change: 1) how much carbon are we going to emit, 2) what percentage of those emissions will remain in the atmosphere (as opposed to being taken up by the biosphere), and 3) how much will the climate warm as a result of what remains in the atmosphere. We understand these things a lot better than we often let on.

The first parameter seems difficult to assess on timescales that exceed a couple of decades.…

“A groundbreaking gathering of the most acclaimed thinkers, scholars, and policymakers on our historic energy revolution, the global prosperity it will produce, and the federal policy that threatens it.”

Date: September 25/26, 2014

Place: Hyatt Regency Houston

Contact: REGISTER NOW

Kudos to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) for hosting a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital. The global warming establishment, including many government-grant-dependent local university professors, may stay away. But open-minded Houstonians and visitors will get a multi-disciplinary dose of sound physical science, political economy, and resource economics at this two-day event.

TPPF describes the conference as follows:

At the Crossroads is a unique gathering of the world’s foremost experts, brought together to analyze the historical crossroads at which our county sits. The burgeoning opportunities flowing from the energy revolution are now directly threatened by federal regulatory mandates to displace coal, oil, natural gas.