World Climate Report (WCR)

Background

The World Climate Report (WCR), is a “research review” and blog edited by Patrick Michaels, funded by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), and associated with the WFA’s Greening Earth Society (GES). New Hope Environmental Services (NHES), a consulting firm run by Patrick Michaels, also claimed WCR as its bi-weekly newsletter. The following is from a 1997 archive of the NHES website:¹

“The World Climate Report is a research review edited by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels. World Climate Report provides policy makers, journalists, and the interested public with an ongoing and accurate portrayal of the science of global climate change which will function as an antidote to the vision of apocalypse promoted by the professional environmental community and by the United Nations.

Funding for this publication is provided by Western Fuels Association, Inc. with additional funding by associated companies. Western Fuels operates on a not-for-profit basis as a supplier to consumer-owned electric companies.”

The Western Fuels Association (WFA) offered the following description in its 1995 annual report, as reported in How Industry Combats Climate Protection by John Passacantando:²

“Our publication and distribution of World Climate Review has clearly had an impact on the climate change debate. After 11 quarterly editions, we are discontinuing the magazine and replacing it with World Climate Report. This bi-monthly newsletter will provide a rapid response to the spurious reports that try to create virtual climate reality, a phoney picture of increasing weather catastrophes caused by carbon dioxide emissions.”³

Michaels is also director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.⁴

Note that while World Climate Report describes itself as “The Web’s Longest-Running Climate Change Blog,” as of 2017, the most recent post on the website was October 5, 2012 and it is unclear if the group is still in operation.⁵

Until 1999, www.nhes.com housed World Climate Report, which subsequently redirected to the Greening Earth Society Website as of 2000. The Greening Earth Society is a non-profit created by the Western Fuels Association (WFA) in 1997 to serve as a “a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use.” Based on website archives, New Hope Environmental Services then used that web domain from 2002 until some time in 2012.⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰

For a time, WCR publications and back issues could also be found at CO2andclimate.org, a website that described itself as “A Service of The Greening Earth Society.” According to a Greening Earth Society Press release dated January 4, 2000, World Climate Report merged with Environment News (a Heartland Insitute Publication) to become the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News:¹¹ ¹² ¹³

“Environment News will become Environment & Climate News with the February edition, thanks to its merger with World Climate Report , a biweekly newsletter previously published by New Hope Environmental Servics, Inc., with funding from Greening Earth Society.

The merger was announced today by Greening Earth Society, based in Arlington, Virginia, and The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit research organization that has published Environment News since launching the monthly newspaper in June 1997.”

Michaels once described New Hope’s purpose as to “publicize findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media. This entails both response research and public commentary.”¹⁴

Stance on Climate Change

2004

In a 2004 blog post, WCR published a list of “Facts” regarding climate change, positing that “there are some pertinent facts about global warming that Kerry will probably ignore.”:¹⁵

“Fact No. 1. The rate of global warming during the past several decades has been about 0.18ºC per decade. There is no evidence that this rate is increasing. If this continues to the end of the 21st century, the temperature increase will be about 1.8ºC. Some fraction of this warming is a result of natural fluctuations in the earth’s climate as well as from other non-greenhouse-related changes (changes in land use, urbanization, industrialization, data quality, etc.); there is evidence that controls on black carbon (soot) pollution could result in less warming. A warming of this magnitude is near the low end of the range of projections issued in 2001 by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Associated with a low-end warming are low-end projections of sea-level rise and other types of environmental changes.

“Fact No. 2. During the past several decades, the earth’s vegetation has responded in an overwhelmingly positive fashion to changes in the earth’s climate. On average the growing season has lengthened (primarily by beginning earlier in the spring) and the total plant biomass has increased by about 10 percent. This remarkable growth enhancement has been due both to the fertilization effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as well as the beneficial effects of the patterns of climate change across the globe.

“Fact No. 3. During the past several decades, anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide have continued to rise, but the rate of build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has leveled off. That means that the earth’s biosphere has responded by increasing the rate of carbon dioxide uptake. This is evidenced by Fact No. 2—enhanced global plant growth.

“Fact No. 4. During the past several decades (and more), human technological advances have kept pace with, and in most cases exceeded the rate of climate change—no matter what the cause. For example, in major U.S. cities, where the thermal effects of urbanization are many times larger than the effects of any climate change, the population has become less sensitive to periods of extremely high temperature (heat waves). This is documented through declining heat wave mortality. In fact, today, many U.S. urban areas experience no increases in mortality during heat waves—a situation that was vastly different only 20 to 30 years ago.”

March, 2004

In a 2004 post, titled “Extinguishing Extinction Hysteria,” WCR declared:¹⁶

“Human-induced climate change is not leading to mass species extinctions, nor should it in the future.”¹⁷

Funding

Western Fuels Association (WFA)

As of 1999, issues of World Climate Report, as presented on the Greening Earth Society Website, included a note that the project was funded by the Western Fuels Association. For example, in Volume 1, Number 1:¹⁸ ¹⁹

“World Climate Report is a research review edited by Patrick J. Michaels, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at The University of Virginia. Funding for this publication is provided by Western Fuels Association, Inc. with additional funding by associated companies. Western Fuels operates on a not-for-profit basis as a fuel supplier to consumer-owned electric utilities. Direct any correspondence or inquiries to World Climate Report, P.O. Box 455, Ivy, Virginia 22945.”

According to the NHES website, as of 1997:²⁰

“World Climate Report is a two-to-four page bi-weekly publication. Subscriptions are available at a price of $75 per year (24 issues). Please direct any subscription requests and/or questions and comments to:”

Back Issues

The Greening Earth Society formerly hosted a list of WCR back issues on its website. The following are those that were still available via the Internet Archive. Note that some were not indexed, and no longer appear available anywhere online.

Key People

Staff

Below are listed staff members at The World Climate Report website, as well as back issues of the PDF/print version of WCR (note that first issues were undated):

Name	1st Issue	1997	2000	2003	2006	2007	Description
Patrick J. Michaels	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Chief Editor
Paul C. Knappenberger	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Technical Supervisor
Robert E. Davis	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Associate Editor
Robert C. Balling Jr.				Y		Y	Contributing Editor
Amy Lemley		Y	Y	Y			Copy Editor
Oliver Frauenfeld				Y			Chief Web Technician
Thomas Gale Moore		Y					Health and Economics Editor
Philip J. Stenger	Y						Research Coordinator

Citations

The online blog portion of The World Climate Report’s at www.worldclimatereport.com regularly cites individual climate change deniers to support their articles. Below is a list of some notable individuals who have been cited at least once, by article mentioned.

“The Sun: O Inconstant Star!” — Feb 06, 2012.

Actions

March 12, 2009

World Climate Report attended the Heartland Institute’s 2009 International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC2), “ aka ‘the global warming skeptics’ conference.”²¹

According to World Climate Report, “ the behavior of the earth’s climate in recent years (a slowdown in the rate of global warming and sea level rise) has emboldened climate skeptics and is helping to win over public opinion that much of what they hear about global warming and its ill effects are exaggerations of the most likely outcome.”²²

In conclusion, while the blog admits that “Anthropogenic activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels) are the cause of the increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2, enhancing the earth’s greenhouse effect does increase the global average temperature, and the combination of the two is responsible for much of the observed ‘global warming’ of the past 30 years or so” it also concludes by stating that “ our understanding of climate change science and that the science is far from being ‘settled.’”²³

February 2, 2009

WCR reported that they had published Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know, a book by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.²⁴

According to the WCR description, the book “presents an in-depth look at consistent, solid science on the other side of the gloom-and-doom global warming story that is rarely reported and pushed aside: that global warming is likely to be modest, and there is no apocalypse on the horizon.”²⁵

December 2, 2008

According to WCR reporting, “Even if the world had lived up to the letter of the Kyoto law, it would have exerted an influence on global temperature that would have been too small to measure.” The WCR encourages the U.N. to “Chill Out on Climate Change” before the UN meeting on climate change in Poznan, Poland:²⁶

“The fact is that the world cannot afford any expensive climate policies now. Economic conditions are so bad that carbon dioxide emissions—the byproduct of our commerce—are likely going down because of the financial cold spell, not the climatic one. Indeed, a permanent economic ice-age would likely result from any mandated large cuts in emissions. If you’re liking your 401(k) today, you’ll love ‘Beyond Kyoto.’”²⁷

The same article confidently declares that “warming has stopped,” supposedly sourcing the IPCC’s own data.²⁸

“The lack of recent and future warming almost certainly means that the ultimate warming of this century is going to be quite modest. Instead, they should keep in mind that expensive policies to fight a modest climate change will only worsen the unprecedented cold snap affecting the global economy,” WCR concludes.²⁹

November 19, 2008

WCR argued that the EPA should reject an endangerment finding on carbon dioxide. The WCR article argues that “Global temperatures have declined,” that “The alarmist notion that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been silenced” and that “In other portions of the Endangerment TSD [technical support document], the logic is faulty and leads to unsupportable and ill-informed conclusions.”³⁰

The article concluded:

“As America moves forward, we develop technologies that help us better respond and adapt to the prevailing climate and better protect ourselves from climate extremes. Thus, climate has become, and will undoubtedly continue to become, less and less of an ‘endangerment’ to our general health and welfare. It would be foolish of the EPA to ignore history in reaching its ultimate conclusion.”³¹