GREENIE WATCH MIRROR The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

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31 December, 2018

10 Worst Climate-Driven Disasters Of 2018 Cost $85 Billion

Where is the evidence that ANY of these events were driven by climate change?  There is none. It's all supposition. Below is all that the PDF underlying the report below had to say about causation:

"All of these disasters are linked with human-caused climate change. In some cases scientific studies have shown that climate change made the particular event more likely or stronger, for example with warmer oceans supercharging tropical storms. In other cases, the event was the result of shifts in weather patterns - like higher temperatures and reduced rainfall that made fires more likely - that are themselves consequences of climate change.

2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record, with average global temperatures nearly 1°C above the pre-industrial average. The warming trend is clear, with the last four years the hottest on record, and matches scientific projections of the results of human emissions of greenhouse gases. This report highlights some of the disastrous consequences of this warming that are already striking."

It's just Warmist boilerplate, treating theory as fact and assuming that correlation is causation in the usual Warmist non-scientific way. There is no scientific way a connection to any of the events COULD be demonstrated after the fact. 


U.K. charity Christian Aid just published its 2018 report Counting The Cost: A Year of Climate Breakdown in which they analyze the economic impact of climate change-driven weather events over the past year.

Founded in 1945, Christian Aid is an organization that works to eradicate global poverty. As indicated by research inspired by the principles of Effective Altruism, ending radical poverty is one of the three cause areas that we should prioritize in our philanthropic efforts.

Christian Aid's report highlights once again how devastating the economic impact of climate change may be. All 10 events identified by the charity caused damage of over USD 1 billion, while four of them cost more than USD 7 billion each.

All of these disasters can be connected to human-driven climate breakdown. As a substantial body of research highlights, the number of extreme weather events is increasing worldwide and this can be linked to climate change. For example, warmer oceans can supercharge tropical storms.

Significantly, these 10 events affected rich and poor countries alike. However, Christian Aid emphasizes how in many developing countries the human cost of climate change can be much higher than the financial cost.

SOURCE 






Climatologist counters climate-disaster predictions with sea-level report

For years, climate prognosticators have warned that human-caused global warming is fueling catastrophic sea-level rise, but now climatologist Judith Curry is rocking their boat.

In her latest paper, Ms. Curry found that the current rising sea levels are not abnormal, nor can they be pinned on human-caused climate change, arguing that the oceans have been on a "slow creep" for the last 150 years - before the post-1950 climb in carbon-dioxide emissions.

"There are numerous reasons to think that projections of 21st-century sea level rise from human-caused global warming are too high, and some of the worst-case scenarios strain credulity," the 80-page report found.

Her Nov. 25 report, "Sea Level and Climate Change," which has been submitted for publication, also found that sea levels were actually higher in some regions during the Holocene Climate Optimum - about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.

"After several centuries of sea level decline following the Medieval Warm Period, sea levels began to rise in the mid-19th century," the report concluded. "Rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. It is concluded that recent change is within the range of natural sea-level variability over the past several thousand years."

Such conclusions are unlikely to find favor with the global-warming movement, or within the academic climate "consensus," where some experts have predicted that mean sea level could rise by five to 10 feet by the end of the 21st century.

Then again, Ms. Curry is accustomed to making waves. The former chair of the Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, she represents one of the biggest names on the so-called "skeptic" side of the climate debate, the counterweight to Penn State climatologist Michael Mann, who leads the "warmist" camp.

She said the problem is that the disaster scenarios are driven by the most extreme forecasts of carbon-dioxide emissions, known as RCP8.5, which she and other critics have described as so extreme as to be implausible.

"[President] Trump, he said something about people talking about the extreme scenarios - well, they are," Ms. Curry told The Washington Times. "Consideration of extreme scenarios has some value, but they're portrayed as the expected outcome, and that's really not useful."

She argued that a more appropriate estimate would be about 0.2 to 1.5 meters, or six inches to five feet, and that anything over two feet is "increasingly weakly justified." Mean sea level has risen by about seven to eight inches since 1900.

By lending her prestige to the sea-level debate, she could chill the rash of lawsuits filed by cities and counties in California, Colorado and New York-as well as the state of Rhode Island - calling for oil-and-gas companies to pay billions in damages associated with future coastal flooding.

Ms. Curry agreed that there is a human-caused component to the problem, but said it has more to do with the earth sinking than the oceans swelling.

"In most of those cases where they're suing, half of the sea-level rise is really from the land sinking, rather than anything that the ocean is doing," she said. "If you look at Galveston and New Orleans, much more than half is caused by sinking. And this comes from geologic processes, it comes from landfills on wetlands."

She cited groundwater withdrawal in the Chesapeake Bay area, which has also caused sinking.

"That's really underappreciated, this whole issue of problems with coastal engineering that we've caused that have made things worse," Ms. Curry said.

Challenging her sea-level conclusions are scientists like Mr. Mann. In a June debate with Ms. Curry at the University of Charleston in West Virginia, he argued that the latest models show that "ice sheets can collapse more quickly than we thought."

"If you had asked us five years ago what the best estimate was of the sea level rise we could see by the end of the century, we would have told you three feet," he said, adding, "Well, now if you ask us, we have to say, it may be closer to six to eight feet."

She and Mr. Mann have sparred before. At a March 2017 congressional committee hearing, he denied calling her a "climate science denier, to which she retorted, "It's in your written testimony. Go read it again."

"I think he's learned that there's a lot of backlash when he calls me a denier, so he calls me a contrarian," said Ms. Curry with a laugh. "And I don't think he's really mentioned me much lately. I think he's been burned."

She said she doesn't believe her findings on sea-level rise are particularly controversial, saying that they jibe with those of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"It's pretty well-documented in the literature," said Ms. Curry. "I frame the problem a little different, and my conclusions are a little different than some people, but this has been pretty well-documented and supported."

Ms. Curry left academia in January 2017 for a host of reasons, one of which was the "craziness" associated with the politics of the climate-change debate. She moved to Reno and has since devoted her energies to her company, Climate Forecast Applications Network.

Her clients include the federal agencies and companies in the energy and insurance business seeking answers on the risks associated with climate change. After a lifetime spent in the ivory tower, she said she finds the real-world work rewarding.

"When there's something that really depends on the outcome and the understanding of this information, rather than just using it as a political tool to drive policy, it's really a different ballgame," she said. "People making real decisions, people spending real money - their companies could be hurt by getting things really wrong in either direction. So that's what I'm trying to help with."

Given that nobody wants to be labeled a "denier," what does she prefer to be called? That's an easy one.

"I'm a scientist. And I regard it as my job to continually reevaluate the evidence and reconsider my conclusions. That's my job," Ms. Curry said. "And some people don't really want scientists. They want political activists. But if you want a scientist, give me a call."

SOURCE 






EPA targets Obama crackdown on mercury from coal plants

The Trump administration on Friday targeted an Obama-era regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying the benefits to human health and the environment may not be worth the cost of the regulation.

The 2011 Obama administration rule, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion clean-up of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

Overall, environmental groups say, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in roughly the last decade.

Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities and other birth defects in children, among other harm. Coal power plants in this country are the largest single manmade source of mercury pollutants, which enters the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.

A proposal Friday from the Environmental Protection Agency would leave current emissions standards in place. However, it challenges the basis for the Obama regulation, calculating that the crackdown on mercury and other toxins from coal plants produced only a few million dollars a year in measurable health benefits and was not warranted.

The proposal, which now goes up for public comment, is the latest Trump administration move that changes estimates of the costs and payoffs of regulations in arguing for relaxing Obama-era environmental protections.

It's also the administration's latest proposed move on behalf of the U.S. coal industry, which has been struggling in the face of competition from natural gas and other cheaper, cleaner forms of energy. The Trump administration in August proposed an overhaul for another Obama-era regulation that would have prodded electricity providers to get less of their energy from dirtier-burning coal plants.

In a statement, the EPA said Friday the administration was "providing regulatory certainty" by more accurately estimating the costs and benefits of the Obama administration crackdown on mercury and other toxic emissions from smokestacks.

Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, condemned the move.

The EPA has "decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" after the successful clean-up of toxins from the country's coal-plant smokestacks, Carper said.

He and other opponents of the move said the Trump administration was playing with numbers, ignoring what Carper said were clear health, environmental and economic benefits to come up with a bottom line that suited the administration's deregulatory aims.

Janet McCabe, a former air-quality official in the Obama administration's EPA, called the proposal part of "the quiet dismantling of the regulatory framework" for the federal government's environmental protections.

Coming one week into a government shutdown, and in the lull between Christmas and New Year, "this low-key announcement shouldn't fool anyone - it is a big deal, with significant implications," McCabe said.

SOURCE 






Nancy Pelosi revives special House committee on climate change

She aims for Green votes -- and screw the workers

The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, has appointed the Florida representative Kathy Castor to lead a special committee on climate change that will be reinstated in the new Congress.

The climate panel is similar to one that Pelosi created when Democrats last controlled the House, from 2007 to 2011. It was eliminated when Republicans took the majority.

Pelosi, the likely House speaker, said Castor brings experience, energy and "urgency to the existential threat of the climate crisis" facing the US and the world. Castor is set to begin her seventh term representing the Tampa Bay area and serves on the energy and commerce committee.

"Congresswoman Castor is a proven champion for public health and green infrastructure, who deeply understands the scope and seriousness of this threat. Her decades of experience in this fight, both in Florida and in the Congress, will be vital," Pelosi said.

Castor said in a statement that she was honored to lead the panel and pledged to "act with urgency to reduce carbon pollution" and "unleash" American ingenuity to create clean-energy jobs.

"The costs of the changing climate and extreme weather events pose greater risks every day to American families, businesses and our way of life," Castor said. She added that the new panel "will tackle the crisis head on. Failure is not an option."

The membership and exact scope of the panel remain to be determined, but Pelosi said it would play a key role in shaping how Congress responds to the threat of global warming while creating good-paying, "green" jobs.

The Maryland representative Steny Hoyer, the incoming House majority leader, said last week the climate committee would probably not have legal authority to demand documents under subpoena. But he added that he did not think the panel would need subpoena authority, since experts will be "dying to come before them".

Climate scientists and other experts "are going to want to testify", Hoyer said. "I think they'll want to give the best information as it relates to the crisis."

The Democratic representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and other progressives, have pushed for a "Green New Deal" that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy such as wind and solar power. She and other leaders say the climate panel is a key platform to advance the green agenda.

SOURCE 






Australia: There's no such thing as a happy Greenie. The plastic bag ban is only the beginning

Six months ago it didn’t seem possible that Australians would ever give up the convenience of single-use plastic shopping bags.

But watching shoppers pack up their groceries at a nearby Woolworths Metro, it’s clear that the bag ban has worked.

During the busy lunchtime rush this month, there are definitely some people still buying the thicker 15c bags available at the checkout but most people either had their own bags or were choosing to carry their groceries without a bag.

One woman who was juggling a tub of yoghurt, carton of mini-cucumbers and a salad, told news.com.au that she would definitely have taken one of the old grey bags before but didn’t want to pay for one to transport her lunch back to work.

Even though she said she often forgot to bring her own bags, at least a third of her fellow shoppers had remembered to bring one. Only a handful of the approximately 50 shoppers bought the 15c bags. Other shoppers also improvised and were seen tucking lemons into handbags and microwave meals into backpacks.

While the major retailers won’t reveal how many of the thicker 15c bags they were now selling, this month Coles and Woolworths revealed their bag ban had stopped 1.5 billion thinner plastic bags being dumped into the environment.

A news.com.au Facebook poll also indicated most people were remembering to bring their own reusable bags.

Tim Silverwood, co-founder of Take 3, told news.com.au that anecdotal evidence suggested there were less of the thinner bags making their way to Australia’s waterways.

“During our clean-up activities in NSW and Queensland there’s definitely less thin grey shopping bags, according to our volunteers,” Mr Silverwood said. “I think we are all starting to realise now that it doesn’t take that much change to make a big difference.”

He said the success of the bag ban was a great opportunity to take the war against plastic to the next level. This includes passing legislation in NSW to ban bags as well, reduce the use of the thicker bags and to follow the example of the European Union, which has plans to phase out or reduce 10 types of single-use plastic items.

The National Waste Report 2018 released in November showed that just 12 per cent of plastic in Australia was recycled. About 87 per cent was sent to landfill.

Each state and territory approaches waste and recycling differently. There are container deposit schemes in all states except Tasmania and Victoria but only ACT, South Australia and Victoria have a landfill ban.

NSW is the only state or territory not planning to introduce a plastic bag ban. In NSW, Woolworths and Coles have voluntarily phased out the bags but Jeff Angel of the Boomerang Alliance said a ban was still needed because a lot of smaller stores like chemists and food outlets continued to give out the lightweight bags.

Mr Angel wants the supermarket giants to reveal how many of the thicker 15c bags were being used as there was anecdotal evidence they were also ending up in the litter stream and landfill.

The thicker bags are 55 microns thick instead of 35 microns so there is more plastic in them.

Western Australia’s environment minister Stephen Dawson recently revealed his intent to target the use of thicker bags — the type that Myer uses for example — as the next step. “I think it would be a gradual phase-out, just as we’ve done with say microbeads,” Mr Dawson said.

There are also many other forms of plastic that could be tackled and Australia is already behind in this area.

The European Commission has moved to ban or reduce 10 types of single-use plastics by 2030.

If approved, littering by these items will be reduced by more than half, avoiding environmental damage which would otherwise cost €22 billion ($A34 billion). It will also avoid the emission of 3.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

These products are the top 10 most found single-use items on European beaches and make up 43 per cent of total marine litter.

The items that will be targeted include food containers, cups for beverages, cotton buds, cutlery/plates/stirrers/straws, sticks for balloons/balloons, packets and wrappers, beverage bottles, tobacco product filters and sanitary towels/wet wipes among European Union countries.

Items like cotton buds made with plastic would be replaced by sustainable alternatives while there will be an attempt to reduce the consumption of things like food containers.

The commission will also tackle fishing gear, which makes up an extra 27 per cent of marine litter.

European Union countries have recognised the damaging impact plastics can have and the costs of cleaning litter up as well as the losses for tourism, fisheries and shipping.

Due to its slow decomposition, plastic accumulates in seas, oceans and on beaches. Plastic residues have been found in sea turtles, seals, whales and birds, but also in fish and shellfish, meaning humans could also be consuming them. There are estimates that mussel-loving Europeans could be consuming up to 11,000 microplastics in a year.

Mr Silverwood said the 10 items being banned in Europe were also regularly found during clean-up activities in Australia, although the container deposit scheme was helping to reduce the number of beverage containers.

He said Australia should introduce measures similar to the European Union, to tackle other types of single-use plastics.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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30 December, 2018

Trump Administration Distorts the Facts On Climate Report

Below is the opening salvo from a "fact check" report.  The big trouble is what they accept as facts.  In prophecy there are no facts, only opinions, and the claim that we can know what the climate will be like in a hundred years is a delusion and a fantasy.  Paranoid schizophrenics have been locked up for less.

So what do they describe as facts?  Basically, anything that Warmists say -- including the output of models with no known predictive skill. The article is in other words an opinion check, not a fact check

Since the National Climate Assessment dropped on Black Friday, members of the Trump administration have inaccurately attacked the report for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario. The EPA has also suggested — without evidence — that the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario.”

The report — which is the product of 13 federal agencies and more than 300 governmental and non-governmental experts — is legally required to be produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP, which issued its first assessment in 2000. It details how climate change is already affecting the country, from increased temperatures and flooding to more frequent hurricanes and large wildfires. It also looks at potential future consequences on the environment, infrastructure, human health and the economy.

President Donald Trump has largely dismissed the report. When asked about the assessment, the president has minimized the impact of human activity on climate change and made unrelated claims regarding the cleanliness of U.S. air and water, as we’ve written previously.

But more specific critiques came from administration officials and White House representatives.

For example, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters released a statement to us that downplayed the report by claiming it “is largely based on the most extreme scenario,” adding, “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections.” She also noted that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Many of these talking points were reprised by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders during a White House briefing on Nov. 27, when she said the report “is based on the most extreme modeled scenario,” is “not based on facts” and is “not data-driven.” Instead, she said, the report is “based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”

In an interview with the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 27, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also referenced the scenarios, saying “it appears they took the worst scenarios and they built predictions upon that.” He added, “It should be more probability.”

Zinke, who has since resigned, also said “there is some concern within the USGS” about the climate report, referring to the U.S. Geological Survey, without providing any evidence. 

Finally, acting Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler said at a Washington Post Live event on Nov. 28 that he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors, ‘Take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’” The EPA press office then doubled down on Wheeler’s speculation, issuing a press release that said the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario'” and citing the Daily Caller’s reporting as proof of such manipulation.

These claims, however, are false, exaggerated or unsubstantiated:

SOURCE   






Democrats’ ‘Green Raw Deal’ Will Deliver Only Socialism And Misery

wind turbine energyDemocrats will try to flex their new-found electoral muscle in Congress by pushing for what has been described as the “largest expansion of government in decades.”

It’s called the Green New Deal, and it promises to be a major economic disaster if it ever becomes American law.

Those who think the Green New Deal is just a political ploy or a Democratic Party marketing gimmick for hipster millennials are in bad need of a wakeup call.

The Democrats’ plans will deliver soaring federal spending, a near doubling of U.S. taxes, declining standards of living, and even more debt on top of the already-massive $21 trillion we’ve piled up.

As The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch reports, “More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the ‘Green New Deal’ as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as ‘economic, social and racial justice.'” No doubt more will sign on in the coming weeks.

The scary thing is that the public, which knows next to nothing about the details of this plan, like it.

A poll conducted by Yale’s Program on Climate Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication this month shows that 92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans backed the plan.

But calling it a Green New Deal is really a misnomer. It’s really a starter package for turning our mostly free-market economy socialist. And no, that’s not hyperbole.

Green New Deal = Socialism

The GND starts with moving the energy grid to 100% renewable energy, something that will take highly efficient fossil fuels and replace them with highly inefficient “renewables” at a cost of about $5.2 trillion over 20 years.

But that’s not all. Not by a long shot.

The plan also wants job guarantees for those who lose their jobs due to the Green New Deal. That will be a lot of people. No estimate on that, but its cost too could go into the trillions.

But those who push this plan also seek a guaranteed minimum income and universal health care. Although those have nothing to do with “green” anything, it merely reveals that the real goal isn’t “green” at all — it’s socialism.

It turns out some have already researched the issue and made estimates of the costs.

The Mercatus Center last July looked at socialist Sen. and Venezuela admirer Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, which the Democratic Party seems on its way to supporting.

It would cost just under $33 trillion over a decade, in addition to what we already pay for health care. The sums involved are staggering.

An Enormous Price Tag

Meanwhile, hedge fund manager and guru Ray Dalio estimates that a guaranteed minimum income of just $12,000 a year would cost $3.8 trillion.

So let’s do the basic math. Those two programs alone would cost $7.1 trillion a year. That compares with total federal spending in 2018 of $4.2 trillion.

That means at current levels spending would have to increase by 170%. So would taxes, by the way.

We wonder, are all those people who think a Green New Deal is a really nifty idea understand that?

Speaking of taxes, one of the favorite ways to fund this green socialist scheme is through a national carbon tax, which Democrats have already introduced in Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a $25 per ton carbon tax would be a $1.1 trillion per year tax increase. “The carbon tax bill is a massive and continually ratcheting national energy tax,” reported the nonpartisan Americans for Tax Reform.

Not only would it be economically destabilizing and create massive inefficiencies in our economy, costing us hundreds of billions in output a year, but it also would expand the federal government’s reach into every private pocketbook and every American business.

We’d be Greece, without the charming ancient ruins.

That the main political force behind this fiscally insane plan is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the just-elected, extreme-far-left New York congresswoman, shows just how foolish it is.

She hasn’t served a single day in Congress, and yet desperate Democrats have lined up to follow her lead. It only shows how utterly bereft of common-sense the party has become.

Once the party of the middle-class and working Americans, it is now a party of academic elites, faux revolutionaries, and billionaires. It’s completely out of touch with real people and the real economy.

A ‘Green Raw Deal’

We repeat: Don’t be fooled. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the environment, and everything to do with socialism. Ocasio-Cortaz says the Green New Deal is about “social and racial justice.”

No, it isn’t. It’s a Green Raw Deal that will impoverish millions, destroy businesses and jobs, and end individual rights as we now know them.

Simply put, the socialism at the heart of this “new deal” amounts to centralized control of the economy and the people who work in it.

For the record, countries that adopt socialist policies have a knack for suddenly finding themselves in an unexpected run of “bad luck” that lasts decades. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Cuba all come to mind.

Sure, we know it will go nowhere in the GOP-dominated Senate. But what about after 2020? Americans better think long and hard before taking this hard left turn. It’s a road that leads to nowhere.

SOURCE   






Weather Forecasters Warn of Impending Danger as US Climate Skeptics Upend UN Climate Summit

KATOWICE, Poland—TV weather forecasters who understand the potential dangers of climate change are well-positioned to educate the public and spur them to take action, participants said in a panel discussion at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held here earlier this month.

A major theme at the conference—widely known as COP24—was that severe remedial measures are needed to mitigate rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions before severe weather conditions can take hold.

The meeting, which ran from Dec. 2 to Dec. 14, took its inspiration from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which released a new report in October that concluded limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—rather than 2 degrees Celsius—between now and 2030 would be beneficial to human populations and ecosystems.

But the report’s Summary for Policymakers also said that “rapid,” “far-reaching,” and “unprecedented” changes would be needed across society to achieve this reduction in the rate of increase in temperature.

Enter Climate Without Borders, an organization founded in 2017, which brings together about 140 weather presenters (as the forecasters are commonly referred to outside the U.S.) from 110 countries.

Jill Peeters, a Belgian weather presenter, started the group when she placed all her weather contacts into a WhatsApp group. From there, it grew into an organization devoted to sounding the alarm about extreme weather and climate change.

Peeters, who took part in the panel discussion on Dec. 4, told her audience that science is on the side of weather presenters who are willing to engage the public about emerging dangers associated with climate change that’s already in motion.

“TV weather presenters are seen as a trusted source,” she said. “We are backed up by science, and this is the basis of our communications.”

The weather forecasters who helped found Climate Without Borders have the ability to reach about 375,000,000 people, according to the group’s website.

The Daily Signal asked Peeters during the question-and-answer session whether she had any reaction to the so-called “yellow vest” protests that first erupted in Paris prior to the start of the COP24 meeting. The yellow vest protests are directed at French President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon tax policies, which have raised the cost of fuel across the country.

“I’m in Belgium, so I could see this up close, and it is a tough situation,” she said. “It can be a challenge to reach people, but that’s what we are trying to do as weather presenters. We are trying to be climate communicators.”

The aim of Climate Without Borders is mostly to try to identify and communicate what the problem is, rather than advancing specific policy proposals, Chi-Ming Peng, a weather presenter from Taiwan, explained during the panel.

Jaroslaw Kret, a weather presenter in Poland, discussed the challenges of communicating with different audiences.

“Some countries have more ‘deniers.’ Some countries have less ‘deniers,’” he said. “Some countries are more educated. Some countries are less educated.”

COP24 participants were widely critical of President Donald Trump and his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated at the COP21 meeting in Paris and adopted in December 2015.

Trump critics in attendance included the U.S. Climate Action Center, which operates under the #WeAreStillIn hashtag that was prominently displayed in the COP24 exhibit hall. The center draws from a coalition of cities, counties, tribes, faith groups, and colleges and universities that support the Paris Agreement, which calls on participating countries to curb their carbon emissions.

But Craig Rucker, the president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit based in Washington that favors free-market solutions to energy policy, told The Daily Signal that Trump “made the right call” in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

He also pointed to updated scientific research from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change challenging the findings of the U.N. report, which was released at a media event in Katowice during the COP24 conference.

“The only consensus on climate change that exists is among those in the ‘climate alarmism’ movement,” Rucker said. “There are a growing number of scientists from across the global who point to natural influences as what drives climate, and not human activity.

“The policies that the U.N. is pushing in the name of climate change would be very harmful to average people. That much is made evident by the protests in France,” he added.

Marc Morano, publisher of the Climate Depot website, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, called on Poland and other countries to follow Trump’s lead and withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

“Poland should get out of this treaty and stand up to the United Nations and the European Union,” Morano said in an interview. “Poland could start a movement that begins to unravel this treaty, which will do nothing for the climate, while raising energy prices across the board.”

Morano, the author of the “Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” described Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement as a form of “daring diplomacy” that should be emulated.

The Daily Signal contacted the media spokesperson for the COP24 presidency seeking comment on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change’s report and the position of U.S. climate change skeptics but did not receive a response.

In many respects, climate skeptics operate at a disadvantage, Rucker said, because they are up against the media, Hollywood, and a public education system that advance what he calls “alarmist theories” on climate.

Although 195 countries that are parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the language of the climate change agreement during the December 2015 COP21 meeting in Paris, the agreement has not been fully implemented.

At the conclusion of the COP24 meeting, almost 200 countries agreed on a rulebook for curtailing global warming that would lead to full implementation of the agreement.

Chile is set to host the COP25 meeting in late 2019. Brazil had initially been selected as the host country, but incoming President Jair Bolsonaro has said he may withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement.

SOURCE   






2018 The First Year Ever With No Violent Tornadoes In The US

Despite dire predictions of a necessary increase in severe weather events due to climate change, 2018 is poised to become the first year on record with no violent tornadoes in the United States, the Washington Post reported.

According to Post weather writer Ian Livingston, while record-breaking, 2018 is not altogether exceptional, since “there have been downtrends in violent tornado numbers both across the entire modern period and when looking at just the period since Doppler radar was fully implemented across the country in the mid-1990s.”

The year will not only set a record for zero “violent” tornadoes — those ranked EF4 or EF5 on a 5-point scale — but will likely also set a record for the fewest “intense” tornadoes (F/EF3+). With just three days to go, 2018 has seen only 12 intense tornadoes in the U.S., three fewer than the record-holding year of 1987, which had 15.

Unsurprisingly, the number of tornado deaths in 2018 is also remarkably low at ten and could also turn out to be a record.

Climate alarmists will have to scramble to explain to the public how the declining number of intense tornadoes is really caused by global warming, which they will undoubtedly do.

In past years, everything from cold winters to warm summers was blamed on climate change — everyone’s favorite whipping boy — and this latest phenomenon should prove no different.

In 2015, Susan Rice suggested that climate change was partially responsible for the war in Syria and Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed government-imposed energy rations on climate change as well.

In 2017, extremely cold temperatures in vineyards of western New York state were attributed to climate change, while in 2018 Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration argued that “climate change” is the driving force behind the massacre of thousands of predominantly Christian farmers at the hands of Fulani herdsmen.

In September, climate prophet Al Gore told fans in San Francisco that watching the nightly news “is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation” as severe climate events become a daily affair.

Not to be outdone, California Gov. Jerry Brown, an “evangelist” for global warming, blamed climate change for California wildfires, adding that climate skeptics were responsible for the deaths of California residents.

“Managing the forests in every way we can does not stop climate change,” he said. “And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years.”

SOURCE   






Australia, get ready to sweat your way through the weekend as extreme heatwave sets in

"Extreme heatwave"??? This is utter BS.  The BoM have been pushing out these warnings for most of December but all we are having is a normal summer.  The normal mid-afternoon summer temperature where I live in Brisbane is 34C and we are not even up to that.  It is 31C at the time of writing at 3pm on Saturday 29th.


Australia will experience a sweltering close to the year, with temperatures soaring above 40C throughout the nation over the coming days.

The post-Christmas heatwave shows no signs of easing, with warnings in place across parts of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

If the heat’s getting you down, we have some bad news: the relief could be more than a week away.

“We’re in the middle of a heatwave at the moment in much of Australia,” Sky News’ Chief Meteorologist Tom Saunders told news.com.au. “Today is day five of the heatwave and there’s no sign of a cool change before New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Day will be day nine of that heatwave.

“We won’t see a cool change until the middle of next week — it could be after that or another full week.”

Severe to extreme heat conditions are expected to extend through South Australia, as well as southeast NSW, eastern Victoria and parts of central Queensland.

Up to 70 per cent of NSW will experience high fire dangers, from the southern half of the state up to the Queensland border.

The Bureau of Meteorology has also issued strong wind warnings from the Batemans Coast up to the Macquarie region over the next two days.

Sydneysiders may as well camp out on the beach over the next few days, with tops of 30C today, 31C on Saturday and 34C on Sunday.

The city’s Greater Western region is in for an even more brutal time, with tops of 42C in Penrith tomorrow and 41C on Sunday.

Brisbane will see tops of 30C over the weekend, with very little chance of rain — which means it’s the ideal time to head to the water.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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24  December, 2018

Is skiing dead due to global warming?

What America-centred rubbish below!  America is not the globe.  Switzerland last year had record snowfall and 89 Swiss ski resorts are already open this year.  And in the winter just past Australian ski resorts got the best snow depths for 14 years.  There is NO global trend to less snow


Last winter’s low snow year and unseasonably warm temperatures across much of the American West meant a bad year for business for some ski resorts, and also left many of us wondering whether skiing would even be possible in the warmer world we’re getting as we continue to pump out greenhouse gases.

“Our recent modeling suggests that under a high emissions scenario, skiing could be very limited to non-existent in parts of the country by the end of this century, particularly in lower elevations — such as the northeast, Midwest and lower mountains around the West,” says Cameron Wobus, lead author on a 2017 study projecting climate change impacts on skiing across the U.S. “Things look better mid-century, so this dire future for skiing isn’t imminent — and things also look much better under a more aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation scenario, so this future also isn't inevitable.”

According to Wobus’ research, ski resorts in the Pacific Northwest have the most to fear, with predicted losses of 80 percent or more of the ski season. Ski resorts in the Northeast also won’t fare well as we warm. The relatively good news is that the ski resorts in the intermountain west should face “less severe losses” due to their higher elevations.

SOURCE 






It Was 10 Years Ago Al Gore Predicted The North Polar ice Will Disappear In 5 years: Guess What?

Gore made the prediction to a German audience on December 13, 2008. Al warned them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”

The Gateway Pundit reports:

This wasn’t the only time Al Gore made his ice-free prediction. Gore had been predicting dire scenario since 2007. That means that the North Pole should have melted completely five years ago today.

Former Vice President Al Gore references computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose virtually all of its ice within the next seven years. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” said Gore.

In January 2006, Al Gore pushed the theory that “within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return” and “a true planetary emergency” due to global warming.

Of course, this turned out to be nothing more than a lunatic conspiracy.

At least 8 Dire Predictions from the movie never happened – not even close.

SOURCE 







Unrealism on top of unrealism

Unrealism both about global warming and the prevalence of criticism of it.  Christiane Amanpour interviews a tired-looking Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian.  On video here:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/12/21/amanpour-rusbridger-breaking-news.cnn/video/playlists/amanpour/

Towards the end of the interview --- around the 16:45 mark -- they get to climate change.

AMANPOUR:  . . MSM is failing on Climate . .

RUSBRIDGER: Well it's obviously the biggest story of our times. This is an existential threat to our species. There's no story that's bigger than that. And, it's a rather urgent story. And yet you don't see it very often on the front pages or on the bulletins. And even even when you do see it often dripped with skepticism about the evidence. So that's the failure of journalism. And the reason why it's so dangerous you've sort of seen on the streets of Paris. Political leaders are going to have to do uncomfortable things, and if the population have not been in any way prepared for that story, or worse, has been told to disbelieve it, that's the kind of disaster for democracy and the species. And so, I think that journalism has to step to the plate and take this story more seriously.

He must not be reading, and reading about, the same major MSM media outlets that we're familiar with; Global warming is front page all the time, and any skepticism is simply not allowed. Need to tie them both to a chair in front of their desktop (film it) and ask them to show us where the MSM is 'dripping skepticism."  That would be a great clip to play .






Parachutes do NOT save the lives of people who jump from aeroplanes, claim sarcastic scientists in a study designed to reveal how flawed 'research' can be

Parachutes do not save the lives of people who jump from aeroplanes, or so a study suggests. In a trial of 23 volunteers, all participants somehow survived being hurtled out of a plane - even those without parachutes.

But the sarcastic scientists didn't mention until 16 paragraphs into the study how the volunteers jumped a mere 0.6m off a stationary aircraft.  The scientists argued their lighthearted trial highlights how misleading research can be.

Writing in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, they added accurate interpretation requires a 'complete and critical appraisal of the study'.

The 'Look Before You Leap' study was carried out by scientists at Harvard and led by associate professor of medicine Dr Robert Wayne Yeh.

Although written in good fun, the scientists hope their findings will prompt people to read studies in full rather than taking a 'cursory reading of the abstract'.  

To carry out the study, the scientists approached adult passengers on a commercial plane mid-flight to ask if they would be willing to parachute in the future.

The researchers admitted they found it tricky trying to find people willing to hurtle thousands of feet through the air without a parachute.

In response, they allowed 11 of the volunteers - which they opened up to their friends and family - without protection to jump just 0.6m, which the researchers called a 'minor caveat' in their study design.

They wore an empty North Face or other branded rucksack, while the 12 other participants were given parachutes.

The jumps were carried out at either the Yankee Air Museum in Belleville in Michigan or Katama Airfield in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

None of the study's participants - whether they wore a parachute or not - died or were injured within five minutes or 30 days of the jump.

'This largely resulted from our ability to only recruit participants jumping from stationary aircraft on the ground,' the scientists wrote.

The researchers revealed the parachute did not deploy for all 12 of the volunteers because of the 'short duration and altitude of falls'. 

They sarcastically described their study as groundbreaking'.

And they added it 'should give momentary pause to experts who advocate for routine use of parachutes for jumps from aircraft in recreational or military settings'.

They wrote in the BMJ that, should the results be reproduced in future trials, it could save the global economy billions of dollars spent annually on parachutes to 'prevent injuries related to gravitational challenge'.

When pointing out flaws in the research, the scientists accepted there 'could have been a lower risk of death or major trauma because they jumped from an average altitude of 0.6m on aircraft moving at an average of 0 km/h.

But they wrote: 'It will be up to the reader to determine the relevance of these findings in the real world.'

They later added the results 'might not be generalisable to the use of parachutes in aircraft traveling at a higher altitude or velocity'. 

The researchers also wrote: 'The PARACHUTE trial satirically highlights some of the limitations of randomized controlled trials.

'Nevertheless, we believe that such trials remain the gold standard for the evaluation of most new treatments.

'The PARACHUTE trial does suggest, however, that their accurate interpretation requires more than a cursory reading of the abstract.'

SOURCE 





Coal is Australia’s most valuable export in 2018

Coal will replace iron ore as Australia’s most valuable export this financial year as supply concerns lead to a steep price rise for the core commodity.

The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s latest Resources and Energy Quarterly report said thermal and coking coal export values would reach $67 billion in total in 2018-19, slightly higher than iron ore's $61 billion in value.

Coal leapt over iron ore as supply concerns ratcheted up the price. It is the first time coal has overtaken iron ore in value since the mining boom five years ago.

Australia is also expected to overtake Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2019, buoyed by increasing export values, which grew from $31 billion in 2017-18 to $50 billion this financial year.

The Department was more optimistic in its forecasts than its reports released earlier this year, broadly lifting earnings expectations across most commodities for 2018-19.

It increased total export earnings by about $12.1 billion compared to the previous quarter’s forecasts and tipped earnings to reach a record high of more than $264 billion in 2018-19.

“The weaker Australian dollar, high coal prices and rapid growth in LNG exports are driving the strong figures,” it said. The weak exchange rate added about $7.4 billion to export values, “while higher-than-expected coking coal and iron ore prices account for the rest of the gain", the report said.

Coal's rise comes despite growing public opinion against the mineral, particularly for thermal coal which is used in power generation. There has been less opposition to coking coal as it is used to make steel.

Indian miner Adani has faced a massive backlash from the public and the Queensland state government as it attempts to develop the Carmichael thermal coal mega-mine in Queensland, while many Australian banks are now refusing to provide loans to develop new thermal coal mines in Australia.

Despite achieving a record year, lower demand from China would see earnings fall in 2019-2020 to $241 billion, although this would still be the second highest year on record.

Chief economist Mark Cully warned the ongoing trade war ignited by US President Donald Trump against China posed a threat to export growth. “The world is nine years into the post-GFC recovery, and the peak of the current cycle has clearly passed,” Mr Cully said. “Trade tensions between the US and China are magnifying economic risks. “The key risk to the commodity outlook thus lies in the ‘double whammy’: the potential dual impact of growing trade tensions and a slowdown in economic activity.”

Mr Cully said the rate of decline depends if China could maintain a steady rate of growth.

Coal and iron ore’s growth is forecast to come to an end in 2019-20, although LNG will remain relatively flat.

Coking coal values will drop about $10 billion, falling from a record high of $41 billion this year down to $30 billion next year. Supply disruptions had pushed the price up to $US220 a tonne in the last quarter of the year, well above the 2018 average price of $US207 a tonne. This average price is forecast to fall sharply next year to $US145 a tonne.

Thermal coal will see a less dramatic fall, slipping about $5 billion from $26 billion down to $20 billion in value. Declining Chinese demand will see the price fall from around $US105 a tonne in 2018 down to $US74 a tonne in 2019.

Iron ore prices are expected to slide from $US57 a tonne this year down to $US53 next year before stabilising at about $US51 a tonne in 2020. This is due to declining Chinese demand coupled with an oversupplied market. This will drive down export earnings from $61 billion this year down to $57 billion next year.

LNG will stay flat, dropping from $50 billion down to $49 billion in value. The decline will be driven by falling prices, despite export levels rising from 62 million tonnes in 2017-18 to 78 million tonnes in 2019-20.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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23 December, 2018

Progressive House Democrats Warn Colleagues Not To Stand In The Way Of A ‘Green New Deal’

The progressive bloc of House Democrats supporting a “Green New Deal” have a warning for their more moderate colleagues: Don’t get in the way of creating a “strong” climate committee.

“I think it’s in the political self-interest of people like Frank Pallone to be supporting a strong select committee,” said Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna, Politico reported Thursday.

“If I were looking at the politics and the movement and how strong the movement is, I’d be out there cheerleading for creating a strong committee and saying I look forward to working in partnership with that committee,” Khanna said.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone and other top Democrats oppose creating a House climate change committee, preferring to shepherd any related legislation through the existing committee structure. Global warming wasn’t a top issue in the 2018 elections, but liberal Democrats are pushing for the House to put a major emphasis on the issue in 2019.

Khanna and Democrats supporting the so-called “Green New Deal” want a House climate committee that’s just as strong as others, meaning subpoena power and the authority to introduce bills

The “Green New Deal” being pushed by incoming New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is backed by more than 40 Democrats. The plan calls for a House committee to draft “Green New Deal” legislation to move the U.S. to 100 percent green energy.

Pallone will chair the Committee on Energy and Commerce in 2019. He and other incoming committee chairs plan to hold hearings and introduce their own bills on global warming when they take the gavel next year. These incoming chairs don’t see the reason to create a whole new committee on the matter.

“In part, I think it may actually delay what the progressives are trying to achieve,” Pallone said in November.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supports reviving a House climate panel, but indications are so far that it would likely lack subpoena power. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t seem to mind the panel not having subpoena power, but environmental activists weren’t satisfied.

Activists with the Sunrise Movement at least twice protested in Pelosi’s Capitol Hill office in support of the “Green New Deal.” Ocasio-Cortez joined activists occupying Pelosi’s office in November, but still supports Pelosi’s bid for speaker next year.

Khanna, a “Green New Deal” supporter, said empowering a House climate committee with subpoena powers would help other committees.

“We’ve got to get the committees to realize that they are winners by empowering a new committee — not losers — and stop the Washington mindset of hanging onto turf,” Khanna said.

Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who is set to chair the Committee on Rules next year, told reporters the exact makeup of the committee is still up in the air. McGovern supports the “Green New Deal.”

“I’ve got until January 3,” McGovern said. “There are ways to achieve all the goals that have been put out there within the existing structures.”

SOURCE 






City Al Gore Featured in Movie Is Losing Millions After Going 100% Green Energy

The city of Georgetown, Texas, was praised by the left for switching to green energy, but they paid the price by losing millions of dollars.

Georgetown began powering its city on green energy in April 2017 and budgeted $45 million to fund it, according to the Statesman.

Unfortunately for Georgetown, their renewable energy bill ended up being $53.6 million, according to City Manager David Morgan.

The city was able to reduce the $8.6 million extra to $6.8 million through savings but was forced to pay the rest through reserves in the city’s energy fund.

Former Vice President Al Gore had praised Georgetown and featured the city in his 2017 film, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” The Daily Caller reported.

During Gore’s visit to Georgetown in 2016, he said that the city was demonstrating how “affordable” and “predictable” renewable energy is.

“And one thing that Georgetown demonstrates to these other places that are just beginning to think about it is that the power supply is not only more affordable the cost is predictable for at least 25 years into the future and really beyond that,” Gore said.

So much for predictable. If that was the case, Georgetown wouldn’t have lost millions of dollars in unanticipated costs.

“It’s costing them big time,” vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Bill Peacock, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “This doesn’t appear to be the first time they’ve lost money, just the first time it was big enough to have to go public with it.”

As a result of the extra costs, Georgetown is now seeking to renegotiate their wind and solar contracts.

However, one Georgetown resident, Richard Gottlieb, brought up a good point: Energy companies might not be willing to negotiate a new deal considering the amount of money they’re making from the contracts. “Why would you negotiate? You have the city over a barrel,” Gottlieb told the Statesman.

Georgetown’s renewable energy mistake highlights one of the major problems with wind and solar energy: It’s not affordable, despite what Gore says.

One example of this is California, which will require solar panels on all homes built after 2020.

The state’s solar panel requirement will increase the cost of building homes in California by $10,000.

A solar panel can add thousands of dollars to the cost of a home, but the California Energy Commission says it all pays off in the long run.

Another example can be found in Virgina, where newly-built wind turbines will cost taxpayers $300 million.

Without extremely generous government subsidies, solar companies would struggle to even stay afloat.

It looks as though Gore might have been wrong about renewable energy’s affordability and predictability.

SOURCE 





                                                                                                                                                                                

Germany's green transition has hit a brick wall

Even worse, its growing problems with wind and solar spell trouble all over the globe

Oddvar Lundseng, Hans Johnsen and Stein Bergsmark

More people are finally beginning to realize that supplying the world with sufficient, stable energy solely from sun and wind power will be impossible.

Germany took on that challenge, to show the world how to build a society based entirely on “green, renewable” energy. It has now hit a brick wall. Despite huge investments in wind, solar and biofuel energy production capacity, Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families.

Germany has installed solar and wind power to such an extent that it should theoretically be able to satisfy the power requirement on any day that provides sufficient sunshine and wind. However, since sun and wind are often lacking – in Germany even more so than in other countries like Italy or Greece – the country only manages to produce around 27% of its annual power needs from these sources.

Equally problematical, when solar and wind production are at their maximum, the wind turbines and solar panels often overproduce – that is, they generate more electricity than Germany needs at that time – creating major problems in equalizing production and consumption. If the electric power system’s frequency is to be kept close to 50Hz (50 cycles per second), it is no longer possible to increase the amount of solar and wind production in Germany without additional, costly measures.

Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to major energy losses and forced power exports to neighboring countries (“load shedding”) at negative electricity prices, below the cost of generating the power.

In 2017 about half of Germany’s wind-based electricity production was exported. Neighboring countries typically do not want this often unexpected power, and the German power companies must therefore pay them to get rid of the excess. German customers have to pick up the bill.

If solar and wind power plants are disconnected from actual need in this manner, wind and solar facility owners are paid as if they had produced 90% of rated output. The bill is also sent to customers.

When wind and solar generation declines, and there is insufficient electricity for everyone who needs it, Germany’s utility companies also have to disconnect large power consumers – who then want to be compensated for having to shut down operations. That bill also goes to customers all over the nation.

Power production from the sun and wind is often quite low and sometimes totally absent. This might take place over periods from one day to ten days, especially during the winter months. Conventional power plants (coal, natural gas and nuclear) must then step in and deliver according to customer needs. Hydroelectric and biofuel power can also help, but they are only able to deliver about 10% of the often very high demand, especially if it is really cold.

Alternatively, Germany may import nuclear power from France, oil-fired power from Austria or coal power from Poland.

In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants.

Furthermore, if the AC frequency is allowed to drift too high or too low, the risk of extensive blackouts becomes significant. That was clearly demonstrated by South Australia, which also relies heavily on solar and wind power, and suffered extensive blackouts that shut down factories and cost the state billions of dollars.

The dream of supplying Germany with mainly green energy from sunshine and wind turns out to be nothing but a fading illusion. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world.

However, the Germans are not yet planning to end this quest for utopian energy. They want to change the entire energy system and include electricity, heat and transportation sectors in their plans. This will require a dramatic increase in electrical energy and much more renewable energy, primarily wind.

To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy. Germany might import some of this balancing power, but even then the scale of this endeavor is enormous.

Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels. This is simply not sustainable or ecological.

Construction of solar and wind “farms” has already caused massive devastation to Germany’s wildlife habitats, farmlands, ancient forests and historic villages. Even today, the northern part of Germany looks like a single enormous wind farm. Multiplying today's wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.

In reality, it is virtually impossible to increase production by a factor of 15, as promised by the plans.

The cost of Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) is enormous: some 200 billion euros by 2015 – and yet with minimal reduction in CO2 emission. In fact, coal consumption and CO2 emissions have been stable or risen slightly the last seven to ten years. In the absence of a miracle, Germany will not be able to fulfill its self-imposed climate commitments, not by 2020, nor by 2030.

What applies to Germany also applies to other countries that now produce their electricity primarily with fossil or nuclear power plants. To reach development comparable to Germany’s, such countries will be able to replace only about one quarter of their fossil and nuclear power, because these power plants must remain in operation to ensure frequency regulation, balance and back-up power.

Back-up power plants will have to run idle (on “spinning reserve”) during periods of high output of renewable energy, while still consuming fuel almost like during normal operation. They always have to be able to step up to full power, because over the next few hours or days solar or wind power might fail. So they power up and down many times per day and week.

The prospects for reductions in CO2 emissions are thus nearly non-existent! Indeed, the backup coal or gas plants must operate so inefficiently in this up-and-down mode that they often consume more fuel and emit more (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide than if they were simply operating at full power all the time, and there were no wind or solar installations.

There is no indication that world consumption of coal will decline in the next decades. Large countries in Asia and Africa continue to build coal-fired power plants, and more than 1,500 coal-fired power plants are in planning or under construction.

This will provide affordable electricity 24/7/365 to 1.3 billion people who still do not have access to electricity today. Electricity is essential for the improved health, living standards and life spans that these people expect and are entitled to. To tell them fears of climate change are a more pressing matter is a violation of their most basic human rights.

Via email






Fraud In The National Climate Assessment (Part 2)








Ruinous Australian energy policy is all pain with no gain

The Liberal Party has torn itself apart for a decade on climate and energy policy, and it is going to continue to do that next year as it battles crucial state and federal elections. The NSW moderates, who have taken over the state branch with an insidious brand of factionalism and patronage, are like the Blob from the 1950s sci-fi movie: spineless, pointless and smothering everything in their path. No one knows what the moderates stand for; most adroit at targeting those in Liberal ranks who espouse conservative values and policies, they echo Labor and leftist attacks on the Coalition and shrink from debate except against their own.

Their electoral legacy is there to behold: a minority federal government wallowing in the polls, a Victorian opposition trounced by a hard-left Labor government shrouded in scandal, and a NSW government facing the prospect of defeat despite presiding over an economy and infrastructure agenda that is the envy of the nation.

Federally, the 2016 electoral ­result tells the story. The Coalition has not been usurped by a rampant Labor Party. Rather, the right of centre has fractured, with One Nation and other minor parties and independents reaping the benefits. Labor has benefited from this mainly through preferences rather than a boosted primary vote — until the open warfare in Liberal ranks after the knifing of Malcolm Turnbull. Bill Shorten is the luckiest Australian since Steven Bradbury; he looks set to take a political victory that is the equivalent of winning the crucial last set of a Wimbledon final by receiving four double faults.

Don Harwin is the latest so-called moderate to display political and economic ineptitude, undercutting the re-election chances of his own team and the Morrison government, such as they are. As NSW Energy Minister, he proposes zero net emissions for his state by 2050 and accuses the Morrison government of ­refusing to build this target into national policy because of the federal Liberal Party’s “climate wars”.

Needless to say, he is portrayed as a hero by Labor, the Greens, the ABC, much of the Canberra press gallery and the vested corporate interests of the energy sector.

Harwin is unlikely ever to be asked, let alone answer, the obvious questions. Why would NSW reduce emissions to net zero? How could this benefit the planet when global emissions are rising? What would it cost? Who would pay? Has he commissioned a cost-benefit analysis? Why does NSW export cheap energy to the world in the form of coal but baulk at further use of this resource itself? Will his policy reduce or curtail global temperatures? What science and technology will be available to deal with these issues in 2050? How will people on fixed and low incomes deal with higher electricity prices? How will the reliability of supply be guaranteed? And, if voters really wanted to pursue such futile, risky and expensive climate gestures, why wouldn’t they just vote Labor or Greens?

It is difficult to grasp why Liberals would not focus on price and reliability to protect jobs, support families and underpin economic opportunity. This should be core business for those interested in mainstream politics.

If Harwin, Turnbull or anyone else could point to a looming crisis that could be averted by compromising our energy needs, then it might be worth considering. But they have to do better than the familiar mantra, seldom interrogated, that climate change is real and we must do something about it now. Those who claim to back a scientific approach often lack ­rational arguments. It seems silly to have to go through the basics but perhaps we should. Most of this debate is stuck in a superficial reverb about a dire crisis and a proposed response without justification of either.

As we know, the effect of global warming is a matter of considerable ongoing research, assessment and contention. Average temperatures have risen by about a ­degree during the past century but the climate stubbornly has refused to behave in accordance with the alarming models produced by most scientists. We have no control sample; we don’t know whether the planet would have warmed, cooled or hovered like a wine fridge were it not for the emissions we have produced, mainly in the second half of that 100 years.

While scientific consensus tells us increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to produce greater warming, there is legitimate debate about the extent, detrimental effects, benefits and the relative role of other variables in a changeable climate system.

Appropriate responses based on science and economics range from business as usual to ­abandoning mitigation in favour of adaptation. Technological ­developments are bound to play a major role in everything from cutting emissions to adapting to a warmer world.

Given bureaucrats and politicians have decided through the Kyoto and Paris processes that emissions reduction is the goal, there should be detailed debate about what policies can best deliver that outcome. When it comes to fixed power generation, this is a dilemma where there actually is a silver bullet — if we decided we ­urgently needed emissions-free, reliable electricity, we know how to get it. The fact nuclear energy is largely ignored in this debate tells us much about the agenda and real urgency, or lack thereof.

In this newspaper on Thursday, Bjorn Lomborg, a lonely voice of sanity in this debate, offered one of the pithiest and most important observations about global warming. “It is not the end of the world,” he said. It is funny because it is true and is at odds with the zeitgeist of catastrophism. From Al Gore to Tim Flannery, from last week’s Carols Against Coal to Shorten and Harwin, there is a never-ending procession of Chicken Littles to frighten our kids, poison our politics and burden our economies. Yet no scheme to make Australian households and businesses pay more for power will enhance the planet’s future. These policies exist primarily to trumpet the fashionable sensibilities of their spruikers.

Because we share one atmosphere, no nation sensibly would take a policy decision without considering what is happening in the rest of the world. This is where the overzealous activism of people such as Harwin, Shorten and the Greens is exposed as foolish and debilitating. We have turned our advantage of cheap and abundant energy into a competitive disadvantage. Power prices have increased an average of 70 per cent in real terms across the past decade, and low-income households now spend 10 per cent or more of their income on electricity.

Prices have been driven largely by the cross-subsidisation of renewables, leading to duplicated generation, additional transmission and mothballing of cheap power generation. Additional costs hit taxpayers directly from budget expenditure on grants and rebates for renewable schemes.

The Renew Economy website has estimated the additional investment at $60 billion. Some of this would have been required to replace or upgrade existing plants to increase capacity, but most was unnecessary except to promote renewables and reduce emissions.

Resultant financial pressure on families, businesses and industry has stifled spending and investment. Direct job losses have come from closure of coal-fired generators in South Australia, Victoria and NSW, and there have been indirect job losses in manufacturing, aluminium and steel plants where power costs have been a factor.

Reliability has been compromised too — South Australia left itself so reliant on interstate dispatchable generation that when its interconnector to Victoria was tripped, the entire state was blacked out for the first time in its history. The direct hit on its economy was calculated at $367 million and it triggered an extra $500m in state government spending on diesel generators and batteries to protect against future vulnerability.

Balanced against these costs are the benefits. So far, they amount to nil. The latest international data has global carbon emissions growing at 2.7 per cent annually, or by more than twice the total annual emissions from Australia. So, the amount of emissions we aim to cut annually by 2030 are being added by the rest of the world (mainly China and India) every four weeks.

For all our pain, there has been precisely no gain. Those countries that have reduced emissions are mainly those enjoying side benefits from economic decisions — switching to gas, using abundant hydro or nuclear. While dumping Paris, the US has lowered emissions from power generation by using fracked gas.

Other nations increase emissions as they lift people out of poverty. In Asia, the subcontinent and Africa, hundreds of millions of people only now are starting to enjoy the improvements in quality of life, longevity and prosperity that flow from abundant and ­affordable energy.

Australia alone has turned climate and energy policy into an economic millstone and political suicide bomb. Harwin, with the assent of Premier Gladys Berejik­lian, seeks escalation of economic hardship while driving wedges into the single largest and most damaging policy schism in the Coalition. Genius.

The NSW moderates think they will appeal to the enlightened denizens of their state and reap political benefits, wrongly interpreting the Wentworth by-election and Victorian election results as demands for a green-left consensus. The Coalition exists to be a beacon of economic good sense and pragmatism. It came into office in the 2013 landslide on the back of Tony Abbott’s campaign to axe the carbon tax and lower electricity prices. It forgot its mission after the Blob elimin­ated Abbott.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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21 December, 2018

Another attempt to kill the "Pause"

It is perfectly proper to re-analyse an existing body of data, though the analysis is likely to be of interrest only if all steps in the reanalysis are revealed. Revising the data itself, however, is an intrinsically dubious enterprise -- particularly if each revision to the data leads to a result more satisfactory to  theory in circumstances where the original data were not in line with theory

But that is the situation with Warmism. The actual climate data conflict strongly with the global warming theory.  Particularly pesky was the apparent stasis in temperature during the first 14 years of C21.  CO2 levels rose but global temperatures did not. And that is a fatal flaw.  CO2 molecules don't have a little timer in them that tells them when to reflect heat.  They just start reflecting whatever heat they are going to heat immediately they arrive in the atmosphere. So C21 temperatures should have reflected rising CO2 levels but did not.

So the C21 pause is basically quite fatal to Warmism.  But that doesn't dent the beliefs of Warmists of course.  They set about finding a way around the problem.  And data revision is one possibility.  Reanalysing the existing data is harder but is also sometimes attempted.

The first such data revision was by Thomas Karl, the former head of a major NOAA technical center.  He noted that the data on ocean temperature was pretty wobbly and applied "corrections" to it which tended to show that the "missing" C21 heat was still generated but had been swallowed up by the oceans. Why the oceans started doing that only at the turn of the century was unexplained.

There were however enough infelicities in Karl's work to disturb  even a lot of Warmists.  It was a too obvious "fix" with too little attention to all the data.  The work was, in a word, too open to derision.  So some prominent Warmists, including Michael Mann got together as co-authors of the Fyfe paper, which re-admitted a C21 temperature slowdown.  The Fyfe paper was however a ramble rather than a proper scientific report and ended up admitting that they did not know why the slowdown occurred, though various theoretical explanations were suggested.  They spoke of "the EMBRYONIC field of decadal climate prediction" in their conclusions.

But now a gaggle of the old hands have tried again in an article headed by Risbey and including in its co-authrs Stefan Rahmstorf, who believes that temperature changes of thousandths of one degree are significant. The paper claims that "pauses" in warming are common and the early C21 pause is therefore wrongly focused.  They present analyses that give results very different from results presented in hundreds of other papers.

An obvious reason why they get different results is that they use data "through 2016", where 2016 was the height of the El Nino effect. So they include natural warming into CO2-based warming, a handy conflation but a completely illegitimate one

In a second article by Lewandowsky, Michael Mann and others, much the same gaggle of authors rely on a fresh lot of data from the Arctic.  But that is very suspect. There is furious volcanic activity under the Arctic sea-ice, particularly along the Gakkel ridge -- so attributing warming there to atmospheric influences is very tendentious.  The fact that the Arctic warms irregularly and is often out of sync with temperatures elsewhere is in fact pretty clear evidence that temperatures there are not part of anything global.  Incorporating Arctic data into atmospheric climate models is therefore simply unscientific.

Below is a credulous presentation of the latest shenanigans


The United Nations panel of climate science experts mentioned it in a 2013 report, scientists have published more than 200 papers analyzing it, and climate deniers said it was proof that climate change didn't exist, but in reality the global warming "pause" or "hiatus" never occurred.

That is the conclusion of a pair of studies, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, based on statistical reassessments of a recent 10-year period that appeared at the time to evince a flattened warming curve.

These are the latest of several assessments to caution that the hiatus theory has no real significance either for climate science or for science-based policy. Even so, they seem unlikely to stamp out the discussion, which has become a deeply embedded meme in some circles.

"In hindsight, with current GMST [Global Mean Surface Temperature] datasets, there is no statistical evidence for a 'pause,'" concluded one of the two studies, which reassessed temperature monitoring from the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

The second study, which focused on what appeared to be a difference in observed temperatures and earlier projections from climate models, reached a similar conclusion.

"There was a natural slowdown in the rate of warming during roughly the decade of the 2000s due to a combination of volcanic influences and internal climate variability, but there was no actual 'hiatus' or 'pause' in warming," Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and an author of the climate modeling study, said.

A Lack of Arctic Data

The notion of a pause in warming from approximately 1998 to 2012, was fueled in part by incomplete data and erroneous projections that have since been corrected, the studies conclude.

It's long been obvious that if there had been any blip in the trends it was temporary. The years that followed have hit new temperature records. And new evidence has made clear why some were fooled.

Scientists know, for example, that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the planet as a whole, but there weren't enough temperature observations from the Arctic in the early 2000s to accurately measure the changes that were occurring there. As a result, data sets on global temperature tended to omit the Arctic until recently, when researchers came up with a better way to extrapolate data from the region.

"We simply didn't have all the information available at the time," Stephan Lewandowsky, a researcher at the University of Bristol and lead author of the climate modeling report said.

Natural phenomena, including increased volcanic activity and decreased solar activity, also masked human-caused warming during the late '90s and early 2000s, seemingly deviating from what climate models had projected, Lewandowsky said.

SOURCE   






Call for Human Self-Extinction

I heartily support this call -- as long as the deed is voluntary.  In which case only those who believe in it will discontinue themselves -- thus ridding us a of a pack of nuisances

As the world's 2.2 billion Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah sent by God the Father to save mankind from sin and death, The New York Times has published an article calling for mankind to be eradicated from the earth.

In a piece entitled "Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?", Clemson philosophy professor Todd May argues that humanity is a scourge of the planet, and the world would be better without us. He's seemingly taking his cue from Marvel's "Infinity War" and its villain Thanos, who [spoiler alert] wipes out half of all life in the universe for the same reasons May expounds.

What horrific crimes has humanity committed making us worthy of self-extinction? According to May, humans are (1) responsible for the "climate change" that is "devastating ecosystems," (2) increasing population encroaching on the ecosystems of animals, and (3) factory farming animals, causing them "nothing but suffering and misery" before they are slaughtered for food.

In summary, "Humanity, then, is the source of devastation of the lives of conscious animals on a scale that is difficult to comprehend."

Interestingly, May never mentions man's inhumanity to man, as with the Holocaust, or genocide in places like Rwanda, as a cause for concern. No, only cruelty to cows, chickens, and pigs warrants his sympathy, and displacement of the snail darter his wrath. Apparently, the thought of inadvertently impacting a species through our development of the earth's resources for human use, or exercising dominion over animals for human good (i.e., for food or labor) is repulsive to May. But the thought of the global extermination of humanity in order to return the earth to its natural state is perfectly acceptable.

May acknowledges that "nature itself is hardly a Valhalla of peace and harmony," noting, "Animals kill other animals regularly, often in ways that we (although not they) would consider cruel." But he then argues the predatory nature of humans is far worse than any other species. That is, however, a subjective judgment that only humans possess the intelligence to make.

After a philosophical exercise in the relative worth of a human soul, in which he highlights the positive contributions of humanity (an advanced level of reasoning, our ability to create art, literature, music, etc.), he contemplates whether it would be worth saving humanity to perpetuate its positive attributes ... before concluding it would not.

May argues, "Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals. There is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger."

Unless we believe that there is a profound moral gap? Yes, that is exactly what we believe!

Of course, quite hypocritically, May is not quite ready to sacrifice himself to the cause. Instead, he argues that existing humans should take steps to prevent any more humans from coming into the world.

This twisted philosophy finds a welcomed home in the hearts of modern progressives, who have long argued for population control through methods like sterilization and abortion. They paint a bleak, hopeless picture of humanity's future.

In the 1970s, they warned of a "coming Ice Age" that would kill off most of humanity, followed by the dark specter of apocalyptic "climate change," coercing us into abandoning the abundant energy and higher standard of living that comes with industrialization. Harvard biologist George Wald declared in 1970 that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years." Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, argued that due to scarce food supplies "the death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." Ehrlich also insisted that by 1980 "urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution," and he proclaimed "the life expectancy of a man would plummet to just 42 years."

Since then, the global population has more than doubled from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion, yet rapid advances in technology allow us to grow vastly more food on far less land and with fewer resources, drastically reducing world hunger and poverty. Life expectancy has mostly lengthened, not plummeted. Technology has resulted in cleaner air and water in advanced societies, indicating human ingenuity is the solution, not the problem.

Sadly, it is this contempt for the worth of human life, deeply rooted in the death cult of progressivism, which has truly resulted in unfathomable human (and animal) suffering over the last century. The variants of totalitarian socialism (in which the state is god) have resulted not only in the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust, but in the brutal deaths of more than 100 million people whose communist governments deemed them of no value beyond their labor.

America alone has seen 60 million unborn children slaughtered in abortion clinics since 1973. Around the world, Down Syndrome children are being aborted into extinction, and throughout Europe thousands of the sick, elderly, and mentally ill are being euthanized without their consent.

This is the inevitable result when humans no longer believe human life has intrinsic value. Ironically, those who share May's nihilistic view of humanity bring about the greatest suffering.

Though flawed, mankind is also capable of goodness and self-sacrifice. In our absence, animals would be no less predatory, and nature no more forgiving. With humanity, the earth is capable of breathtaking beauty, kindness, and progress. We think we'll stick around.

SOURCE   






Trump EPA Rolls Back Another Obama Power Grab

Navigable waters is now clearly defined so as not to be Obama's overly broad power grab.  

Once again under President Donald Trump, some semblance of common sense and sane definitional language returned to the U.S. government. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its proposal for replacing Barack Obama’s 2015 power-grabbing redefinition of the Waters of the United States rule.

Under Obama, the EPA widely expanded the Clean Water Act’s definition of navigable waters to include pretty much every conceivable form of surface water — even irrigation ditches and rain-filled potholes. It was a clear and outrageous case of government overreach.

In announcing the change, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained, “Our proposal would replace the Obama EPA’s 2015 definition with one that respects the limits of the Clean Water Act and provides states and landowners the certainty they need to manage their natural resources and grow local economies. For the first time, we are clearly defining the difference between federally protected waterways and state protected waterways. Our simpler and clearer definition would help landowners understand whether a project on their property will require a federal permit or not, without spending thousands of dollars on engineering and legal professionals.”

Predictably, Democrats and environmentalists were quick to misrepresent the definitional change, calling it a “sickening gift to polluters,” the “dirty water rule,” or as Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) laughably insisted, “nothing short of senseless.” In reality, it was the 2015 EPA’s redefinition of “navigable waters” that was senseless.

The announcement garnered high praise from Republicans, however. “The 2015 rule was an expansion of federal power that used bureaucrat-speak to strip landowners of their rights and local governments of their ability to manage waters within their borders,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). “This new approach is the product of doing it the right way — openly, with the input of the American people.”

It should be normal to have clearly written rules with consistently limited definitions that any member of the public can understand without a lawyer. Regulations that are so overly broad that they prevent individuals from knowing if they are in compliance or not are bad, as they have the potential for abuse of power written all over them. Thankfully, the Trump EPA is seeking to clean things up.

SOURCE   






Vatican Wants All Nations To Decarbonize, Stop Using Fossil Fuels

Will they be the first to turn off their lights?

The Vatican has called for the “decarbonization of the current fossil fuel-based economy” in its hard-hitting final declaration for the U.N. climate summit in Katowice, Poland, Wednesday.

Climate change, the declaration states, “is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

The Vatican praised global leaders who “struggled to find the will to set aside their short-term economic and political interests and work for the common good,” finding consensus in a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015.

The summit and its agreements are an example of “multilateral dialogue,” which is critical for combatting climate change, the Vatican stated.

Unfortunately, it continued, the rulebook does not adequately reflect the “urgency necessary to tackle climate change,” which represents “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

Advancing “the dignity of the human person, alleviating poverty by the promotion of integral human development, and easing the impact of climate change through responsible mitigation and adaptation measures go hand in hand,” it said.

The Vatican also called for a reasonable “transition period,” presumably reflecting the time necessary to move from fossil fuels to alternative forms of energy.

Using the language of vocation, the Vatican text says that we are “called” to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

It also urged “much greater ambition” in anti-CO2 programs in order to achieve “the decarbonization of the current fossil fuel-based economy,” which will demand “lifestyle changes.”

When U.S. presidential adviser Wells Griffith spoke on the benefits of clean-burning fossil fuels in a panel discussion on the side of the Katowice summit, he was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers.

“We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability,” Griffith said.

The panel underscored the importance of cheap fossil fuels as a means for developing nations to emerge from poverty.

SOURCE   







Stop Wasting Australia's Dam Water

by Viv Forbes,

The Saltbush Club today accused state and federal governments of wasting water often desperately needed everywhere west of Australia’s Great Dividing Range. The “Saltbush Water Watch” has been established to monitor government action and inaction and report on priorities.

The Executive Director of the new and growing Saltbush Club, Mr Viv Forbes, said “From Adelaide to Longreach we have allowed green subversives to prevent new dam construction and to dictate the waste of water caught in existing dams.”

“Without water conservation the Murray River would turn back into a string of disconnected waterholes every big drought. More reliable fresh water has benefitted humans and nature all along the river.

“Luckily (and predictably), Tim Flannery’s climate alarm forecasts of endless drought has proved wrong, or this area of Australia would now be depopulated.

“The green activists behind the water waste are not pro-environment – they are anti-human. Humans are part of the environment.

“The Saltbush Club is in the process of setting up several “Watch Groups” to investigate, monitor and report on this political war on human activity. It has appointed Mr Ron Pike, “A Bushie from the Back of Barellan” to lead the Saltbush Water Watch.

“Ron has a lifetime of experience of farming, irrigation and politics in the Murray Darling Basin. He was the first farmer to use water from the Snowy Scheme to irrigate his farm in 1961.

Ron says:

“The food we eat, the water we drink and the power we use for most of our endeavours, are available only because previous generations invested their know-how and money for the future. “It is time this generation did the same.”

Via email

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************






20 December, 2018

Academic freedom at UW

A few days ago on this site (scroll down) I put up an article about the persecution of Cliff Mass, a climate scientist at the University of Washington who believes  in global warming to a degree but objects to it becoming a honeypot for its disciples. The persecution seems to have amplified since then so Don Easterbrook has written in support of him. The support is in the form of a letter sent to the UW president, dean, and faculty secretary. Easterbrook is a UW grad. He is incensed about the blatant violation of the official UW policy on academic freedom.  The letter is below:

The most precious aspect of a university is academic freedom, providing a forum for free and open discussion of any subject. I have always taken for granted that a university is a place where open exchange of ideas and debate was encouraged, not suppressed. But as a UW grad (PhD)and long-time financial contributor to the UW, I am totally disgusted by the way the academic freedom of Cliff Mass of the Atmospheric Sciences Dept is being trashed by department chairman Dale Durran. Prof Mass posted a blog stating why he thought I-1631 was not a good bill. Chairman Dale Durran then called a department meeting about the blog post Mass wrote, with the event billed as ‘controversy.’ An ombudsperson was enlisted to run the meeting, but chairman Durran took over the meeting, serving as inquisitor and critic. He prevented Mass from finishing his opening comments and harassed Mass throughout the meeting. Professor Mass was the subject of insulting, personal, inappropriate remarks. An attack on his academic freedom is an attack on the academic freedom of all faculty.

This treatment of a UW faculty member is totally against the UW official policy of academic freedom (Section 4-33), which states “Academic freedom is the freedom to discuss all relevant matters in teaching, to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to speak or write without institutional discipline or restraint on matters of public concern as well as on matters related to shared governance and the general welfare of the University. Faculty members have the right to academic freedom and the right to examine and communicate ideas by any lawful means even should such activities generate hostility or pressure against the faculty member or the University. Their exercise of constitutionally protected freedom of association, assembly, and expression, including participation in political activities, does not constitute a violation of duties to the University, to their profession, or to students and may not result in disciplinary action or adverse merit evaluation.”

Chairman Durran has clearly violated this official UW policy. May I therefore ask if you intend to discipline him, and what do you intend to do to restore Professor Mass’s academic freedom?

Email from Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University






Environmental Protection Agency Gives $45,000 Grant to Help Non-Profit Build Sea Turtle-Shaped Trash Can

The movement to crack down on plastic straws is finally getting a little financial help from the federal government, which last week announced that it would be spending tens of thousands of dollars to help build a see-through mesh trash receptacle shaped like a sea turtle.

On December 4, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $2.57 million in grants to environmental nonprofit groups in New York and Connecticut working to clean up Long Island Sound. The recipients include the Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE), whose "Going Strawless to Save the Sea Turtle" campaign received $45,000 in federal cash.

The EPA's press release announcing the awards says CCE will use that money to "conduct comprehensive public education to reduce the use of plastic." As part of this campaign, CCE will collect up to 500 pledges from people promising to use less plastic, and organize a beach clean-up involving roughly 200 volunteers.

CCE's Executive Director Adrienne Esposito told Newsday that refuse from beach clean-ups will be deposited in a mesh sea turtle statue which is also being funded by the federal grant.

According to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a Congressionally-chartered organization responsible for administering the EPA's Long Island Sound clean-up grants, the sea turtle trash statue portion of the project serves an important educational role.

"The waste receptacle is viewed as a creative and targeted strategy [to] educate the general public, and especially youth about the negative impact of plastic debris on the living resources and recreational uses of Long Island Sound," the NFWF said in a statement to Reason.

It's not clear how much of the $45,000 in federal grants will be eaten up by the trash turtle statue. CCE did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The environmental group's federal grant is being supplemented by $45,000 in non-federal matching funds.

Needless to say, $45,000 in federal spending is not going to break the bank. And while I am critical of the focus on plastic straws, CCE's plans for a voluntary coastal clean up are laudable. Nevertheless, federal taxpayers should not be on the hook for such projects.

SOURCE 






Follow the (Climate Change) Money
    
The first iron rule of American politics is: Follow the money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.

Shortly after the latest “Chicken Little” climate change report was published last month, I noted on CNN that one reason so many hundreds of scientists are persuaded that the sky is falling is that they are paid handsomely to do so.

I said, “In America and around the globe governments have created a multibillion dollar climate change industrial complex.” And then I added: “A lot of people are getting really, really rich off of the climate change industry.” According to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Federal funding for climate change research, technology, international assistance, and adaptation has increased from $2.4 billion in 1993 to $11.6 billion in 2014, with an additional $26.1 billion for climate change programs and activities provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009.”

This doesn’t mean that the planet isn’t warming. But the tidal wave of funding does reveal a powerful financial motive for scientists to conclude that the apocalypse is upon us. No one hires a fireman if there are no fires. No one hires a climate scientist (there are thousands of them now) if there is no catastrophic change in the weather. Why doesn’t anyone in the media ever mention this?

But when I lifted this hood, it incited more hate mail than from anything I’ve said on TV or written. Could it be that this rhetorical missile hit way too close to home?

How dare I impugn the integrity of scientists and left-wing think tanks by suggesting that their findings are perverted by hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer handouts. The irony of this indignation is that any academic whose research dares question the “settled science” of the climate change complex is instantly accused of being a shill for the oil and gas industry or the Koch brothers.

Apparently, if you take money from the private sector to fund research, your work is inherently biased, but if you get multimillion-dollar grants from Uncle Sam, you are as pure as the freshly fallen snow.

How big is the climate change industrial complex today? Surprisingly, no one seems to be keeping track of all the channels of funding. A few years ago, Forbes magazine went through the federal budget and estimated about $150 billion in spending on climate change and green energy subsidies during President Obama’s first term.

That didn’t include the tax subsidies that provide a 30 percent tax credit for wind and solar power — so add to those numbers about $8 billion to $10 billion a year. Then add billions more in costs attributable to the 29 states with renewable energy mandates that require utilities to buy expensive “green” energy.

Worldwide the numbers are gargantuan. Five years ago, a leftist group called the Climate Policy Initiative issued a study that found that “global investment in climate change” reached $359 billion that year. Then to give you a sense of how money-hungry these planet-saviors are, the CPI moaned that this spending “falls far short of what’s needed” a number estimated at $5 trillion.

For $5 trillion we could feed everyone on the planet, end malaria, and provide clean water and reliable electricity to every remote village in Africa. And we would probably have enough money left over to find a cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s.

The entire Apollo project to put a man on the moon cost less than $200 billion. We are spending twice that much every year on climate change.

This tsunami of government money distorts science in hidden ways that even the scientists who are corrupted often don’t appreciate. If you are a young eager-beaver researcher who decides to devote your life to the study of global warming, you’re probably not going to do your career any good or get famous by publishing research that the crisis isn’t happening.

But if you’ve built bogus models that predict the crisis is getting worse by the day, then step right up and get a multimillion-dollar grant.

Now here’s the real scandal of the near trillion dollars that governments have stolen from taxpayers to fund climate change hysteria and research. By the industry’s own admission, there has been almost no progress worldwide in combatting climate change. The latest reports by the U.S. government and the United Nations say the problem is getting worse, and we have not delayed the apocalypse by a single day.

Has there ever been such a massive government expenditure that has had such miniscule returns on investment? After three decades of “research” the only “solution” is for the world to stop using fossil fuels, which is like saying that we should stop growing food.

Really? The greatest minds of the world entrusted with hundreds of billions of dollars can only come up with a solution that would entail the largest government power grab in world history, shutting down industrial production (just look at the catastrophe in Germany when they went all in for green energy), and throwing perhaps billions of human beings into poverty? If that’s the remedy, I will take my chances on a warming planet.

President Donald Trump should tell these so-called scientists that “you’re fired.” And we taxpayers should demand our money back.

SOURCE 






How Can We Address Climate Change? Here Are Three Ideas

A social media challenge that went around not long ago asked people “what three things will you do to combat climate change?” If you google the phrase, you get tons of results. Here are three suggestions--they are by no means an exhaustive list, but I think these would all be positive steps.

1. Get out of the way of nuclear energy. The climate is changing because we’re turning carbon dioxide currently stored underground into carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even advances like electric cars aren’t going to do that much because they just move the emissions from the tailpipes of the cars on the road to the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.

We could avoid a lot of these emissions by removing barriers to more widespread adoption of nuclear energy. Technological advances have made reactors far safer and, importantly, have made it easy to store waste safely, as well. Nuclear is also far safer per unit of energy generated: the number of deaths per kilowatt of nuclear energy is a fraction of a fraction of the number of deaths per kilowatt of other energy sources, particularly coal.

2. Stop encouraging and subsidizing rural living. In his 2011 book Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, and Happier, the economist Edward Glaeser asks people to consider who lived more sustainably: urbanites or Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond (see also his 2011 article “New Land of Opportunity” here)? Compared to the urban Bostonian Thoreau’s adventures in the rural idyll were an environmental disaster (in part because he burned a ton of forestland). Urban environmental footprints are far smaller than rural environmental footprints for a whole host of reasons, and by using tax and regulatory policy to encourage people to move to or stay in rural areas we are actually subsidizing climate change rather than fighting it. Policy should be aimed at moving under-served populations to services like health care, transportation, and high-speed internet rather than moving these services to under-served populations. If someone wants to live next to Walden Pond or in rural Alabama, I certainly won’t object; however, I will expect them to bear the full cost of their lifestyle choices. And that brings us to the last suggestion.

3. Stop discouraging new development—especially of housing—in urban areas, and really especially in places with moderate temperatures.Regulations making it prohibitively expensive to build new housing in places like the Bay Area and the northeast corridor are turning these regions into private enclaves for the rich and powerful. The climate effect is that we get less density and considerable misallocation of land that would be better used for residential, industrial, and commercial purposes. Urban growth boundaries and greenbelts and strict regulations might look environmentally friendly, but I think this is an illusion. “Greenbelts” around cities that are there to preserve farm and forest lands have the unintended consequences of raising housing prices within the green belt and potentially pushing commuters beyond the greenbelt where they then drive farther—from Guelph to Toronto, for example. When you make something more expensive, people search for substitutes, and as Glaeser points out, housing in cities like Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta where air conditioning is practically a necessity is a substitute for housing in cities like San Francisco where people regularly do without it. NIMBY--Not In My Back Yard--has persisted for far too long. Let’s say “YIMBY” instead.

SOURCE   






Australian Big Green can afford to buy what it wants

Climate change is already shaping up to be a major election issue and a $495,000 donation to GetUp spells trouble for the beleaguered Adani coal mine.

Environmental group The Sunrise Project is providing the money to support its efforts to make climate change the number one issue at the next federal election.

Former Greenpeace activist John Hepburn, who is the founder and executive director of The Sunrise Project, said people had lost faith in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s capacity to effectively tackle climate change.

“The community is crying out for political leaders who will stand up to multinational corporations like Adani which wants to force through its climate-wrecking projects, putting at risk Queensland’s precious water resources and adding fuel to the fire, cooking an already distressed Great Barrier Reef,” Mr Hepburn said.

“Political leadership is what’s needed to put a stop to Adani’s controversial coal mine. The world just can’t afford to mine and burn the coal from the Galilee Basin which is one of the largest untapped coal reserves in the world. If we do we will see even more dangerous climate change and extreme weather events in Australia such as fires, storms and droughts.”

The Sunrise Project has been lobbying for the transition away from fossil fuels and previously campaigned to stop Adani’s Carmichael coal mine from going ahead. It generally keeps a low profile, working to co-ordinate efforts between different groups.

The organisation gets part of its funding from the US-based charitable trust, the Sandler Foundation, which has led to it being criticised for being part of a co-ordinated push against coal.

Its $495,000 donation will be used to lobby for action on climate change and will be a significant contribution to GetUp’s election war chest.

In the past year GetUp has received $10 million in donations but national director Paul Oosting said most of its funding came from everyday people who pay on average $17 or less. He said last financial year more than 104,905 individuals donated to GetUp.

“This support will help supercharge the great work GetUp members are already doing to make climate action a reality,” Mr Oosting said. “For politicians standing in the way of climate action, this summer promises to be unbearable.”

The collaboration is an ominous sign for climate change deniers as GetUp has shown itself to be an effective campaigner.

GetUp helped to make climate change an issue in the Wentworth by-election, contributing to the win by independent Dr Kerryn Phelps in the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s seat.

About 78 per cent of Wentworth voters surveyed in an exit poll commissioned by The Australia Institute said climate change had some influence on their vote.

In the four weeks leading up the poll GetUp members made more than 90,000 phone calls to voters in the electorate and more than 300 volunteers handed out how to vote cards.

The donation also puts Adani on notice that protests about its proposed Carmichael coal mine will continue, despite it announcing a scaled-back project.

GetUp believes the public don’t want Adani to go ahead.

Mr Oosting pointed to a recent ReachTel poll of 2345 Australians commissioned by the Stop Adani Alliance that found 40 per cent “strongly agreed” that digging new coal mines in Australia was no longer in the national interest as it was making climate change worse. Overall the poll conducted on December 4 found 56.3 per cent agreed and 27.7 per cent didn’t agree.

Mr Oosting said Australia was recently ranked the fifth worst performing country in the world when it came to climate action.

The 2018 Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia 55 out of 60 countries for climate change action, putting it in the same group as the United States and Saudi Arabia.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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19 December, 2018

Jo Nova - How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Electricity Grid in Three Easy Steps







Trump was right

President Donald Trump claims the fuel-tax riots in France justify his decision to yank the United States out of the “fatally flawed” Paris climate deal.

“I am glad that my friend @EmmanuelMacron and the protestors in Paris have agreed with the conclusion I reached two years ago,” Trump tweeted. “The Paris Agreement is fatally flawed because it raises the price of energy for responsible countries while whitewashing some of the worst polluters in the world.”

Trump added he has been “making great strides in improving America’s environment,” but suggested the Paris agreement put the burden for environmentally friendly policies on American taxpayers.

The tweet came after France delayed plans to implement steep taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline as part of Macron’s effort to reduce emissions.

SOURCE   






Ecofascism









The Long Road to Energy Independence

For the first time in 75 years, the U.S. is a net exporter of oil. That's great news.

America’s energy outlook is changing significantly for the better, which is obviously welcome news … that you’re unlikely to hear from the mainstream media.

Last week, the United States officially became a net oil exporter, a dramatic shift for the country’s energy sector. It’s been 75 years since we could say that we ship out more oil than we take in.

Increased oil production in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania are responsible in part for this new state of affairs. And a recently discovered oil and natural gas reserve in Texas and New Mexico should keep the pumps going for years to come. The massive reservoir contains 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 46.3 billion barrels of oil. It’s the largest such resource ever assessed and is enough to fuel the United States alone for up to seven years.

President Donald Trump campaigned on American energy independence, and since taking office, Trump has initiated several steps to move toward that goal. Those include relaxed federal restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration and drilling, and lifting draconian Barack Obama-era restrictions designed to bring an end to coal production in the U.S.

True energy independence has been a stated goal of every president since Richard Nixon, but no one ever went about it correctly or whole-heartedly. Several Republican and Democrat presidents embraced a policy concoction of more regulation, a reliance on “alternative” energy sources, and austerity measures to manage America’s energy needs. Not surprisingly, all fell short of energy independence.

Meeting America’s energy needs means producing more energy (a.k.a. supply-side economics) — it’s as simple as that. Our last president, who laughably insists he is responsible for America’s current energy boom, was in favor of driving up energy costs for consumers to force less usage (a.k.a. demand-side economics.) The Obama administration was also in favor of betting the ranch on unproven clean-energy technologies that were prohibitively expensive and not all that efficient or clean.

The energy boom that we are currently experiencing makes us less reliant on foreign energy producers, which in turn improves our national security. It also means more jobs to produce energy here at home, and that means a strengthened economy. Good news all around. Well, except for the climate doomsayers.

At the recent climate conference in Poland, alarmists continued their tirade against CO2 emissions, claiming that the world has just 10 years to lower those emissions before we reach the point of no return on rising surface temperatures. They also literally mocked the Trump administration’s efforts to tout fossil fuels.

Many nations at the conference unquestioningly accepted the UN’s latest report, which calls for unspecified drastic changes to industrial emissions. The United States, joined by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, challenged the report’s findings, with each nation saying they would only note the report rather than accept it.

The U.S. also refused to reaffirm the Paris climate deal at November’s G20 summit, much to the consternation of ecofascists. Yet by following its own policies, the U.S. has lowered emissions during seven out of the last 10 years — something that none of the nations supporting the Paris accords can say. That proves as much as anything that Paris emissions-control standards are about control, not emissions.

Climate change is a ruse to hide a leftist takeover of the economy. America’s rising energy production, and the vigorous economy that comes with it, stands in the way of that goal. So expect leftists to continue targeting Trump’s energy policy and to continue screaming hyperbolic claims that he is destroying the Earth.

SOURCE   






The sky is falling?!?

Ridiculous report claims humans have killed more than half the world’s wildlife in past 48 years

Greg Walcher

A recent World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report claims humans have killed more than half of all the wildlife in the world since 1970. The report attracted media mass attention, even though the actual 145-page essay doesn’t really say that, much less prove it.

More ironic, the political focus is mostly on countries where the declining wildlife populations do not live, and the solution suggested is so vague it couldn’t possibly address the issue.

The hype about the document, an annual harangue called the “Living Planet Report,” is not surprising, considering the source. This is the same organization that told us a decade ago we would all have to abandon Planet Earth.

“Earth's population will be forced to colonize two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a… study by the WWF. [The study] warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. The report… reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades.”

That was a remarkable conclusion, especially considering that 71% of the Earth’s surface is water. That means humans would have to have destroyed virtually every square inch of land on Earth for the report to be credible. So it’s incredible that the WWF and its annual report continue to attract media attention.

This year’s diatribe claims almost 60% of all the fish, birds and animals on Earth have been killed by people in two generations. It proposes “a new global deal for nature,” a companion for the Paris Climate treaty. Except unlike Paris, the proposed “new deal for nature” has no numbers and no specific goals. In fact, there is no definition of what the agreement might entail.

Rather, it includes vague suggestions that we’re not locking up enough land from public access, nor creating enough national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and other “unpeopled” places. For the United States, that means the WWF is not satisfied that laws, regulations and other actions have already prohibited mining, drilling, timber harvesting and other human activities on 427 million acres of federal land. That’s the size of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined, and it does not include state and private lands that have also been closed to most human activity.

The report’s language is decidedly European and American, using policy terms common to the western environmental industry. For example, it discusses the “progress” in removing dams in the USA – levying special criticism on agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley – and approvingly cites efforts to designate more wild and scenic rivers.

It continues the ongoing criticism of western mining, timber production and “unsustainable agriculture,” accusations with which we’re all too familiar. In truth, these people simply want to stop most human uses of land, water and other resources of the American West.

There is another major problem with using this report to further that goal. The wildlife it laments do not live in the American West. Many are found in countries where energy-deprived, jobless, hungry, desperate people cut down forest habitats for fuel, eat wildlife to survive, and kill other species to sell their ivory, horns or meat for a few dollars.

Also, keep in mind that the reported declines in wildlife populations are based on computer modeling, not actual counting of actual animals. Still, even if you give such a report the benefit of the doubt, as many will, the dangers cited are from “warming oceans choked with plastic,” allegedly toppled rain forests, and supposedly dying coral reefs. Thus, populations are said to be tanking worst in the oceans and tropics, including an 89% decrease in South and Central America.

But make no mistake – the U.S. is nonetheless at fault. The report claims “crop failures brought on by climate change” are the reason caravans of Central Americans stream to the United States illegally. That’s why we must “urgently transition to a net carbon-neutral society and halt and reverse nature loss – through green finance and shifting to clean energy and environmentally friendly food production.”

How those terms are defined or implemented in a truly ecological, sustainable manner (more vague, malleable, politicized terms), the report does not say.

In a way, the details in this report may actually disprove its own conclusions. The U.S. and Canada are among the countries that use the most natural resources. Yet the worst wildlife declines are in the tropics, not in North America. The prime examples cited are African elephants, whale sharks, orangutans in Borneo, wandering albatross near Antarctica, jaguars in South America, gharial crocodiles in India and Nepal, and giant salamanders in China.

To note just one example where the WWF gets its “green finance” and “clean energy” facts completely upside down, a major reason orangutans are disappearing is that their habitats are being cleared to make room for palm oil biofuel plantations. How that is ecological or sustainable the WWF does not say.

The World Wildlife Fund is not the only Chicken Little constantly warning of a dire future. A similar article, published in the National Academy of Sciences journal last spring, was even more shocking. It claimed that since the dawn of civilization, humans have caused the loss of 83% of all mammals and half of all plants on Earth.

That’s because, WWF says, “the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life.” However, the WWF and many other environmental industry groups, also oppose modern mechanized farming practices and seeds that significantly increase yields, allowing farmers to feed more people from less land. Still more ironies and non sequiturs.

So while you stop driving cars and heating your homes, you might also need to stop eating – while you pack for the trip to some other planet.

If we are not Chicken Little, is the sky still falling?

Via email

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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18 December, 2018

PURPA should be modernized or repealed

By Robert Romano

At the height of 1970s inflation and in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Congress passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) of 1978. The legislation requires electric utilities to purchase energy from small renewable generators.

It has also outlived its usefulness. Since that time, wind, solar and other renewables, excluding hydroelectric, have grown to almost 10 percent of U.S. electricity generation according to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Back in 1978, it was 0.14 percent.

Obviously, a lot can change in 40 years. Fortunately, in 2005, Congress amended PURPA in order to take stock of rapid changes in the utility marketplace. In 2018, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced it was considering changes and reforms to the program, including which entities ought to be excluded from PURPA’s mandatory purchase of renewable energy requirement.

One argument is that the renewable generators have a large enough market footprint to compete on their own without compelling utilities to use the renewable energy. Each local market is different, whereas in some areas, the additional generation can offset potential brownouts and might be desirable, in other areas with more abundant supplies, it’s simply a wealth transfer from the utility to the small generator as the additional renewable electricity adds little benefit to consumers and instead drives up costs higher than they might otherwise be.

In one comment to FERC, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners noted that some states already require competition, making PURPA redundant. The association urged that utilities that “are subject to state competitive solicitation requirements and other best practices that ensure all technologies access to the market” ought to be exempt.

It’s a reasonable comment. In states where consumers already get to choose where to purchase their electricity, what is the sense in compelling competing utilities to subsidize one another? Shouldn’t they be allowed to compete price and benefit consumers?

The real question is whether FERC and Congress are going to let states develop their own energy grids and their own requirements for how competition ought to take place on these modern grids. One size does not fit all, and depending on supplies and abundance, the current requirements could be discouraging some potential utilities from coming online if subsidizing smaller generators is a cost that must be taken into account.

Going even further is S. 2776 by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), which would eliminate the mandatory purchase requirements by utilities altogether. And maybe it’s time.

In the least Congress should take into consideration what FERC comes up with to modernize PURPA and the electric grid based on industry comments, and potentially act accordingly if it is found that PURPA’s mandates are no longer necessary to support the renewable electricity industry. PURPA should be modernized or if it is no longer needed, repealed.

SOURCE   





There Is No Economic Reason to Continue Federal Tax Credit for Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles are the darlings of the automobile industry. In addition to Tesla, all of the traditional automakers – both here and abroad – have been pouring billions of dollars into developing new EVs while slowly abandoning the production of gasoline-powered vehicles.

But while EVs may be innovative technological marvels, old-fashioned subsidies continue to drive the industry. The federal government provides a tax credit to EV purchasers of $7,500 for the first 200,000 vehicles sold by any individual manufacturer. Once an EV manufacturer reaches that sales milestone, the tax credit is gradually decreased over the subsequent 15 or so months. Individual states have sweetened the subsidy pot further, offering rebates up to $5,000, along with subsidies for installing home and business charging stations, subsidies for installing home and business solar panels, “free” charging stations along major highways, and even preferred access to carpool lanes. And just to make sure EVs are adopted, some states have implemented mandates that require increasing percentages of new vehicles sold to be EVs.

Now, two bills introduced in the Senate propose radically different paths for the EV industry. Senator John Barrasso’s (R-WY) legislation (S. 3559, the “Fairness for Every Driver Act”) would eliminate the federal tax credit for EVs immediately and impose a user fee on EV owners to compensate for their not paying the gasoline taxes that are used to maintain the federal highway system. Senator Dean Heller’s (R-NV) bill (S. 3582), on the other hand, would expand the federal tax credit by eliminating the 200,000 vehicle cap, but then would phase out subsidies beginning in 2022.

Subsidies, however, are like powerfully addictive drugs: once started, they are a difficult habit to kick. The production tax credit for wind generators, for example, was supposed to have ended years ago. Instead, it has been extended numerous times. And, while it is now slated to end with wind turbines built next year, there are moves in Congress to extend it yet again. Thus, Senator Barrasso’s bill, while noble in its economic intent, will likely to face fierce opposition from automobile manufacturers and states who believe EVs will help “solve” climate change.

Because of the allure of subsidies, Senator Heller’s bill may become a fiscal nightmare. For example, if EV sales increase to one million per year – a relatively small percentage compared to the 16 million or so annual sales of gasoline-powered vehicles – the tax credit alone would cost $7.5 billion each year. And as EV sales increase – helped by the continued Federal tax credit – the loss of revenues to the Highway Trust fund that maintains the federal highway system will accelerate. For example, an EV owner who would otherwise purchase 500 gallons of gasoline per year in a similar gasoline-powered vehicle avoids about $95 per year in federal gasoline taxes (to say nothing of lost state gasoline taxes). As EV sales increase, the annual loss in gasoline tax revenues will grow rapidly. If an additional one million EVs are sold each year, the tax loss would increase at a rate of $100 million dollars per year.

With massive investment in EVs by automobile manufacturers, there is simply no economic reason to continue the federal tax credit, much less expand it as Senator Heller’s bill would. Nor is there any reason to subsidize EV owners who use federal highways, but do not pay the gasoline taxes needed to maintain them.

Yet, EV subsidies have an even more pernicious impact owing to their inequality. As my recent Manhattan Institute report on EVs discussed, EV subsidies have primarily benefitted the wealthy. A 2017 nationwide survey found that over half of EV buyers had annual household incomes of at least $100,000, and almost one-fifth had household incomes above $200,000. These subsidies, therefore, come at the expense of lower-income consumers, many of whom cannot afford to purchase new vehicles of any kind, much less EVs that are, on average, costlier. Moreover, these lower-income drivers of gasoline-powered vehicles will shoulder an increasing burden of highway maintenance costs.

Senator Barrasso’s bill would address this fundamental inequality and introduce sorely needed economic and fiscal sanity to the EV gravy train. In contrast, Senator Heller’s bil would make things even worse.

SOURCE   






As France Burns Over Fuel Tax, Democrats In The US Call For A ‘Green New Deal’

As the worst unrest to grip France in 50 years rages on, triggered by a pending climate change fuel tax (since postponed), President Macron announced a slate of measures designed to appease the masses. Included in the government giveaways: a minimum wage hike of about $1.75 an hour, no taxes on overtime pay and reforming pension benefits for low-wage earners.

Macron said in a national address, “I know I’ve hurt some of you with my words” and then declared “an economic and social state of emergency.” But perhaps that state of emergency is due to the protesters viewing the proposed “green” fuel tax increase is a little more harmful than words.

Meanwhile, the unrest in France appears to be spreading elsewhere in Europe.

Here in America, will Democratic members of Congress and their climate activist allies learn the lessons of France?

If France can erupt into riots over what amounted to a 25 cent per gallon tax hike on gas — 10 cents on diesel — on top of fuel prices of a little more than $7 per gallon, imagine the electoral drubbing that awaits a party that enacts far higher fuel taxes. But more on that in a moment.

Of course, prior to enacting any ambitious program of tax hikes, carbon dioxide emission restrictions, mandates, subsidies, and a large government R&D push, the stage must be set. These ideas must gain public acceptance.

With only 45 percent of Americans seeing global warming as a serious threat in their lifetimes, more work has to be done to convince U.S. voters to accept actions that will cause their standards of living to fall.

That’s where climate change studies, with their temperature models and allied economic assumptions come in. It’s also where things start to get hinky. The global temperature predictions published by the latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say the planet is likely going to be another 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer sometime between 2030 and 2052.

To prevent that 0.5-degree increase from going higher, the U.N. experts estimate that there will have to be some sort of global tax on carbon dioxide equivalents of something in the range of $157 to $7,018 per ton by 2030 (in current dollars).

Since each gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of CO2 when it’s burned, the U.N. recommended carbon tax on gas could range from $1.41 per gallon all the way up to $63.66 (revised up from $49 per gallon in 2010 dollars in the U.N. climate report draft released in October).

This is a pretty wide range for both the projected rate of warming and the costs estimated to combat it.

So here’s an analogy. As a homeowner, you suspect your roof may leak in bad weather. But you’re not sure if there’s really a leak, or how bad it may be. You do know that the weather forecast says a category 5 hurricane may hit in a week or so (and it may not), and that weather event could include tornados and lightning. You’re understandably worried, so you call a roofer for a repair estimate.

But when that estimate comes back, it’s anywhere from $1,570 to $70,180. And the roofer warns you that if the worst-case scenario happens, your house will be flattened anyway, so the roof won’t matter.

With such big unknowns for the weather and no firm cost—or real guarantee—for the roof repair, no one would blame you for putting off the repair, until you were sure there’s a leak in the first place.

In the same way, we have no firm costs and no real guarantees with carbon taxes. Those unelected U.N. report-writers may be comfortable calling for climate change gas taxes as high as $64 per gallon — or just $1.41 per gallon — but the actual elected politicians in France are about to be turned out of office for daring to impose a 25-cent-per-gallon tax.

American climate activists are trying to be a little more subtle about it, and this is where the “Green New Deal” comes in. As Representative-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez describes it, “This is going to be the New Deal, the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation.”

Rather than raise taxes directly on energy — something that would be transparent, honest and efficient economically (while being deadly at the ballot box) — the Green New Deal aims to seize control of the economy by promising a “green” job to every American who wants one.

The promised employment would include things like building electric cars and installing wind turbines and solar panels. And of course, the jobs would be union jobs (with the added bonus that 99.9 percent of the dues money would go to Democrats).

This massive intervention in the American economy would end up costing voters the equivalent of $1.41 to $64 dollars per gallon in indirect costs brought about by government intervention. It’s just that the costs would be hidden. The cost of living — for fuel, food, electricity — would soar, but direct taxes on the consumer would be obscured.

The funny thing about the Green New Deal is how much it looks like standard, old-school progressive politics from the 1930s, just dusted off and given a new, urgent patina to address the threat of climate change.

The Green New Deal isn’t green, it isn’t new, and it’s not a deal.

SOURCE   






“We are still in” totalitarians flunk basic reality

They raged against energy and climate realists in Katowice, but should serve time for fraud

Paul Driessen

The 30,000 alarmists gathered in Katowice, Poland expected to slam-dunk their report proclaiming a planet-threatening climate crisis, finalize rules for implementing the Paris accords, redistribute infinite billions of dollars from industrialized nations to “climate victim” countries, and solidify their control over people’s energy, jobs, living standards and liberties. It didn’t work out quite that way.

They got blindsided by millions of French citizens angrily denouncing their government’s plans to carbon-tax them into worse poverty and joblessness. They were furious that the US exhibit profiled the benefits of fossil fuels – and outraged that the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were willing to “note” the climate report and express appreciation to the scientists who developed it, but not to “welcome” it or “accept” its assertions about climate cataclysms and the need to slash fossil fuel use.

They were appalled that countries the world over are using more and more fossil fuels every year.

One of the more amusing “climate chaos” exhibits at the IPCC gabfest targeted President Trump’s decision to take the USA out of the Paris not-a-treaty. It proudly declared “We are still IN” – and asserted that its “movement” represents “thousands” of American cities, states, businesses, universities and other entities that “have taken up the mantle of climate leadership.”

Climatologist David Legates and I wrote about this fatuous, fraudulent, hypocritical outfit a year ago. But it’s useful to reexamine the various ways it actually is (or is not) “still IN.”

* We are still IN and committed to the restrictive, punitive, anti-hydrocarbon Paris regime – except when it comes to benefitting ourselves from coal, oil and natural gas … to fly or drive to Poland; heat and light our homes, offices, hotel rooms and exhibits; eat well; dress in synthetic fibers, or in cotton or woolen garments made possible by fossil fuels; and utilize hydrocarbons for cell phones, computers, cosmetics, chairs and display boards at our exhibits, eyeglasses, wind turbine blades and countless other products.

Despite their interminable moral preening, does anyone really think they will ever give any of this up?

* We are still INtransigent in our demands, our refusal to civilly debate any climate or energy issues – and our determination to ignore the horrendous ecological impacts of our ideas, and the even worse impacts that our demands have on other people’s jobs and living standards. And especially how our demands ensure that African and Asian parents and children have energy-deprived, impoverished, malnourished, diseased, brutally short lives.

In fact, instead of acknowledging any of this, the “still IN” crowd – the arrogant, callous, totalitarian ruling elites … and renewable energy crony corporatists allied with them – simply double down on their demands and plans. The new crop of “progressive” Democrat-Socialists coming to the US House of Representatives in 2019 intends to emphasize “dangerous manmade global warming and climate change” in numerous hearings, policies and bills.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-S–NY) and colleagues have already proposed a separate House global warming committee, a Green New Deal – and 100% wind, solar and biofuel power by 2030!

* We are still IN contempt of what poor, middle class, blue collar and Third World families so desperately need: affordable, reliable energy – and the well-paying jobs and affordable goods, services and healthcare that come with it. We will “allow” them to improve their lives, but only as far as may be possible with limited, unreliable, weather-dependent, expensive “renewable” energy.

It’s no wonder 200 prominent Golden State civil rights leaders have sued the California Air Resources Board, claiming its greenhouse gas policies are “racist” and disproportionately raise electricity, housing, transportation, food and hiring costs for Latino and African-Americans, for no environmental benefits. Poor countries should consider bringing similar human rights lawsuits in US, EU and international courts.

* We are still IN denial – of the negative impacts that our eco-imperialist, carbon-colonialist policies have on rural, poor, minority and working class families in the United States, and on billions of people in Africa, Asia, Latin America and former Soviet/Eastern Bloc nations. We are also IN denial of the failed predictions of climate models – and IN denial of scientific evidence that contradicts our assertions that Earth is warming rapidly, bringing unprecedented chaos and cataclysms.

As I have pointed out in numerous articles – and as websites like WattsUpWithThat, ClimateDepot and DrRoySpencer discuss in readily understandable language – there is no valid, replicable, scientific evidence that humans or fossil fuel emissions have replaced the powerful natural forces that have always governed Earth’s complex, frequently changing climate and weather systems.

There is no evidence that humans can control those systems by tweaking the concentration of molecules that together represent roughly 0.042% of Earth’s atmosphere. There is no evidence that expensive, unpredictable, pseudo-renewable energy can replace the 80% fossil fuel energy that currently powers the US and world economies – certainly not without severe consequences for people and planet. Computer models, hype, hysteria, headlines and zealotry are no substitute for honest, fact-based, replicable science.

* We are IN cahoots with the IPCC, far-left politicians, Climate-Industrial Complex companies, the “mainstream” media, and social media behemoths like Google, You Tube, Face Book and Twitter. Together, we control what people are able to find, see, hear, think, say and do about these issues.

Climate realists are fighting back, and true free speech alternatives to Twitter & Comrades are arising.

* We are INtolerant of any views that contradict our own. We not only refuse to debate. We refuse to allow debate. We are contemptuous of “civil society” norms for civil discourse. We will always resort to totalitarian power, mob rule and the sheer weight of equally closed-minded, ill-informed intellectuals, students, urban voters and ruling elites … to impose our climate, energy and economic ideologies.

In one of the most egregious cases ever, the UN and IPCC gave their explicit permission, encouragement and blessing to radical protesters at the Katowice COP-24 conference. They let the INtolerants disrupt and shut down the official US “innovative fossil fuel technologies” and “economic dynamism” presentation. The UN pre-authorized and pre-planned the loud interruptions, officially gave rabid protesters over seven minutes to rant and chant “Keep them in the ground” (fossil fuels, that is), and let them harass CFACT and other climate realists attending the event.

When UK author and policy analyst Rupert Darwall challenged the obnoxious hecklers, UN security guards immediately restrained Darwall and told him to shut up or be thrown out of the conference!

Why the United States should tolerate any of this – much less pay for it – is hard to fathom.

* The climate-obsessed IN-crowd is INsatiable in its hunger for global power – but INcapable of dealing with reality and INsane for endlessly repeating the same tired tropes, ignoring evidence that contradicts its claims, vilifying scientists who disagree with them, and ignoring the enormous benefits of fossil fuels.

Amid virtually all their politicized campaigns, these groups appear to be engaged in climate science and energy fraud. Whether it’s global temperatures, changing weather patterns, Arctic, Antarctic or Greenland ice, hurricanes and tornados, wildfires, floods or droughts – or the need for and viability of renewable energy – deception, misrepresentation, disinformation and even fabrication are their stock in trade.

Those tactics would bring small armies of regulators (perhaps accompanied by armed SWAT teams) swarming into the offices of almost any other companies or organizations.

It’s depressing that politicians and tax-exempt pressure groups are generally exempt from such “inquiries.” But the dishonest, profiteering companies that ally with climate alarmists may not be. Perhaps a few enterprising AGs, FBI offices, public interest law firms, or SEC and FTC investigators will be inspired to examine some of these ethics, securities and truth-in-advertising issues.

Via email






Australia: Anti-coal protestors interrupt Labor Party leader's keynote address

Bill Shorten’s keynote speech at Labor’s National Conference this morning got off to an awkward start as he was ambushed by protesters.

The audience of 400 delegates and 1000 observers at the Adelaide Convention Centre had been thoroughly warmed up by Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, national president Wayne Swan and South Australian opposition leader Peter Malinauskas when Mr Shorten finally strolled onto the stage.

A protester, 25-year-old Isaac Astill, quickly appeared next to him. As Mr Shorten took his position behind the lecturn, Mr Astill stood beside him and unfurled a banner bearing the words “Stop Adani”.

“Will you please stop the Adani coal mine? There are bushfires across Queensland, heat records are tumbling, the Great Barrier Reef is heading for a third bleaching event, we have to stop the Adani coal mine,” he said.

“Oh mate. Alright,” Mr Shorten said, before letting Mr Astill make his point.

“Thanks for making that statement. Do I get to keep the flag?” he asked. “You can keep the flag if you like, absolutely, of course,” the protester replied.

“Good on you mate, cheers. See ya,” Mr Shorten said.

“Really appreciate it Mr Shorten. It’s going to be so important you do that. Thank you, catch you later. I really hope you come out with a commitment to stop the mine.”

“No it’s all good. Thank you very much, I appreciate you making your point.”

At that point, Mr Swan intervened, and a security guard removed Mr Astill from the stage.

“I think our visitor should leave the stage now,” Mr Swan said. “Show him the way out, thank you.”

But the fiasco continued, as more protesters appeared at Mr Shorten’s other shoulder.

“OK. Which one’s this?” he quipped.

“We’ll call for the escorts,” Mr Swan interjected.

“We’re Australia’s oldest political party. We have a proud history of democracy, we all understand the right to protest. But that doesn’t include the right to drown out the leader of the opposition. So could you please leave the stage?”

When he finally got some clear air, Mr Shorten addressed the crowd. “I know these people are well-intentioned, but the only people they’re helping is the current government of Australia,” he said.

“I’ve waited for the next election for five years and if I’ve got to wait a couple more minutes, I just will. “People have got a right to protest, but you’ve got to ask yourself when you see these protests — who’s the winner? It’s the Coalition. “We’ve already had two protests and goodness knows what the current Prime Minister will do to try to upstage them.”

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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17 December, 2018

A climate passport?

A prominent researcher is proposing establishing a "climate passport" for people driven from their homes by the impact of global warming.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said Thursday the passport could be modeled on a similar certificate given to refugees of Russia's civil war in the 1920s.

The so-called Nansen passport was later extended to other people who were made stateless after their citizenships were revoked. It helped hundreds of thousands of people to find refuge elsewhere in the world.

Schellnhuber's proposal, made on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Poland, is likely to face resistance from rich countries concerned about the possibility of millions of refugees heading their way in the coming decades.

SOURCE   

Climate Depot's Morano Responds: "On the contrary, it is time for 'climate passports' to be issued to French citizens and others who wish to flee climate change driven policies that skyrocket energy prices. It is the victims of 'climate change' policies, taxes, and regulations that need passports to escape their leaders who are trying to control the weather through higher fuel costs. Climate passports should be issued to all the French citizens who wish to escape from Pres. Macron's climate policies!"






Ocasio-Cortez backs green policies that would hurt the poor and cripple our economy

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promises that going green – removing all fossil fuels from our energy mix – will “establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States.”

In fact, her proposal would cripple our economy and hurt our poorest citizens.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has admirable passion, but needs some schooling in energy economics. The cost of renewable energy is dropping fast, but is still more expensive in many applications than traditional fossil fuels like coal or oil. That’s one reason that adoption of wind and solar power has been slow, and that many countries, including the United States, underwrite renewables with subsidies and tax credits. The International Energy Agency predicts in its 2018 report that “the share of renewables in meeting global energy demand is expected to grow by one-fifth in the next five years to reach 12.4% in 2023.”

The share of renewables remains low because wind and sun power are effective in producing electricity but not, for instance, in powering automobiles or airplanes. Renewables will generate nearly 30 percent of global electricity in 2023, a big jump from 24 percent in 2017, but will still account for only 3.8 percent of transportation fuel, compared to 3.4 percent in 2018.

More important, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez should know that lower-income and minority communities in the U.S. are disproportionately disadvantaged by higher energy costs. A 2016 study by the National Research Defense Council found that low income households “spend, on average, 7.2 percent of their income on utility bills…That is more than triple the 2.3 percent spent by higher-income households for electricity, heating and cooling.”  Were we to ditch coal, natural gas and oil in favor of higher-cost renewables, electricity prices would soar, especially harming just those folks whom the young progressive says she wants to help.

Evidence of the staggering costs imposed by green policies is provided by other IEA data, which compares electricity costs in different countries. In the United States, the cost of electricity for households earlier this year was $129 per megawatt. In Germany, a country that leapt into renewables with enthusiasm, and imposed hefty taxes to squelch demand for fossil fuels, the cost is $343.59. Does Ms. Ocasio-Cortez really want to impose a near-tripling of electricity costs on Americans?

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez might want to visit France, a sympathetic left-leaning country, which is currently convulsed by people who are really, really angry over recently-enacted green policies of the kind that she might embrace.  President Emmanuel Macron raised taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline, hoping to make driving more expensive and thereby discourage fossil fuel use, setting off the worst rioting that country has seen in a generation.

The lesson for Macron, for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other policy makers is that people may be concerned about global warming and increasing emissions, but they are considerably more worried about making ends meet.

It is not the high-income elites who are taking to the streets, breaking store windows and burning cars – it is middle class and blue collar people who think Macron has no sympathy for their travails, for their ever-higher cost of living and, in particular, for the cost of their commute.

Note that 70 percent of the French people support the protests, while at the same time 79 percent of the country, according to a poll conducted last year, fret about climate change.

The lesson for Macron, for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other policy makers is that people may be concerned about global warming and increasing emissions, but they are considerably more worried about making ends meet.

Polling on the subject bears this out. While a global Pew study found that 54 percent of people in 40 countries thought that climate change was a “very serious problem,” a survey conducted by the UN at about the same time, which elicited almost 7 million responses, showed people ranking climate change the least of their concerns. Global warming came in dead last behind better education, better health care, better job opportunities and thirteen other issues.

Even in the U.S., where 6 of 10 respondents to the Pew poll say their community is already being impacted by climate change, the issue ranks 17th in a list of policy priorities.

Why this disconnect? One reason is that the extreme alarmism from environmentalists has numbed us to the perils of rising emissions. If you are endlessly lectured about how eating meat or driving your Chevy will cause entire populations to be swept away by rising sea levels, it becomes overwhelming. People tune out.

It is also true that some of the wilder predictions of disaster have failed to materialize, leading to profound skepticism. Al Gore’s doomed polar bears, for instance, seem to actually be thriving. According to one source, their numbers are increasing except in one location, where in fact they are challenged by too much sea ice, as opposed to too little.

Because of abundant natural gas displacing coal, the United States is the only major country in which emissions have been dropping over the past decade. We are not the problem. It is China, whose carbon output is already nearly twice that of the U.S. A recent report from the Global Carbon Project blames a predicted rise in worldwide emissions this year on “a rise in coal consumption in China, which accounts for more than 46% of the projected increase in industrial CO2 emissions in 2018.”

The U.S. is blessed with abundant energy, an important competitive advantage. The Trump White House pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord because the demands of that agreement would have destroyed that advantage and hobbled our growth, while demanding virtually no commitments from China.

Americans are sensible people. We want clean air and water, and we want to curtail the carbon emissions that appear a danger to our world. But, we do not want to sacrifice our economic wellbeing on the altar of climate dogma. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be careful before promoting policies that would build a cleaner planet on the backs of American workers.

SOURCE   






The Green New Deal: eco pastiche

Despite the often unhinged and naked fearmongering of environmentalists, climate change has remained the preoccupation of very narrow sections of society: certain political activists, remote bureaucrats, disoriented journalists and disconnected politicians – groups that many people might rightly identify as a bigger problem for society, and the future, than global warming. Thus, the movements that urge us to flush the toilet less frequently and not to take unnecessary journeys has had to recycle moments from history in order to try to stir political passions.

Climate activists have dressed themselves up as Suffragettes and rushed parliament to demand ‘deeds not words’ from MPs. Politicians have compared their own projects with the civil-rights movement. Senior technocrats and scientists have compared the task ahead of them with the Moon landing and the Manhattan Project, and demanded budgets accordingly. Environmentalism is like an astronomically expensive, but dire, costume drama.

The latest example of such historical plagiarism is in the United States. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has backed a so-called Green New Deal, aimed at creating a new green industry that she says will guarantee every American a job. Her pitch is full of the usual naff pastiche: ‘This is going to be the New Deal, the Great Society, the Moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation.’

The US green left is making some huge promises. Ocasio-Cortez says this proposal, to make 100 per cent of US electricity renewable and phase out fossil fuels, will also eliminate structural inequalities, racism and social injustices of all kinds. Her vision of the Green New Deal leaves virtually no part of American society unmodified.

But the idea that one can simply summon up the ghost of Roosevelt to solve contemporary political crises is misplaced. To do so misses the complexity of the present. It assumes that everything wrong with the world is merely the consequence of fossil fuels, and that everything can be righted by building enough wind turbines. Going by Ocasio-Cortez’s statements, you’d think all we have to do is make every victim of social injustice a unionised wind-power engineer in a green-energy cooperative, and voila! What’s more, the idea of a Green New Deal is not new, and its history may shed some light on its future.

In 2007, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times about his desire for ‘a new unifying political movement for the 21st century’. Green ideology, he said, ‘has the power to mobilise liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward’. In his vision for a ‘Green New Deal’, government would be ‘seeding basic research, providing loan guarantees where needed and setting standards, taxes and incentives’. That people did not immediately leap to the streets to demand it must have been a great surprise to Friedman.

The following year, in the UK, a group of prominent environmentalists from the Green Party, Friends of the Earth and the Guardian, based out of the New Economics Foundation, drafted their own proposals for a ‘Green New Deal’ to tackle what they called the ‘Triple Crunch’: ‘A combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by encroaching peak oil.’ It was a time of much green policy innovation; the UK’s Climate Change Bill was being debated in parliament.

In 2009, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) launched its own ‘Global Green New Deal’ under its Green Economy initiative. According to a UNEP policy brief, a fiscal stimulus of a mere $750 billion – one per cent of global GDP – could begin to transform the ailing and ‘unsustainable’ ‘brown’ economy into a vibrant green one. Arriving in the wake of the financial crisis, it argued for stimulus into sanitation, housing and energy, rather than bank bailouts. Which might have connected with people at the time. But the UN’s proposals were still downbeat, with the people at the bottom offered ‘sustainable development’ rather than a meaningfully better life.

Indeed, to compare these green schemes to something like the New Deal is more than a little disingenuous. Economic prosperity and jobs are not the primary concerns of climate activism – ‘saving the planet’ is. And the UK experience would suggest that ordinary people do not feel the benefit of these grand plans.

In April 2009, the Labour government announced that the crisis-ridden British economy would be saved by creating 400,000 new ‘green jobs’. ‘The huge industrial revolution that is unfolding, in converting our economy to low carbon, is going to present huge business and employment opportunities’, said then business secretary Peter Mandelson. But it didn’t. Domestic energy prices doubled, and much of the profit went to wealthy landowners on whose estates the ‘revolution’ was installed, in the form of wind turbines, solar panels and biofuel crops. The revolution soon began to look a lot like feudalism.

Greens like to talk about making the world a better place, but their indifference to ordinary working people has been plain for decades. Hence climate change has not been a vote-winner. Anywhere. Ever. Despite Friedman’s optimism for a new ecological political consensus, environmentalism has only ever united political elites. What’s more, climate change has become synonymous with the tendency towards ‘globalism’, at the expense of national political agendas. Brexit, Trump and now the gilets jaunes have shown that the era of international, consensus-driven politics is over. The retreat to Roosevelt’s mega-Keynesianism is thus an attempt to give climate activism a new political context, off the back of absurd promises.

Historians are divided on whether it was Roosevelt’s programme or the Second World War that ultimately saved Americans from the economic torpor of the 1930s. Either way, searching 1930s America for answers to America’s problems today is facile. Climate-change activists seem compelled to re-enact the past because they are so unpopular in the present.

SOURCE   






Document Details the Eye-Popping Amount Attorneys Stand To Make from Climate Crusades

One of the law firms involved in a trove of California lawsuits targeting ExxonMobil and other energy companies is poised to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars from their climate crusades.

Sher Edling LLP could capitalize on a big payday if San Francisco’s lawsuit against the oil company, according to documents obtained Wednesday by Climate Litigation Watch. The contract between the firm, San Francisco and the county is complex and lays out a multi-tiered payment method for Sher Edling.

The California-based firm pay is dependent on the amount of the settlement. If the city secures a $100 million settlement, then Sher Edling takes roughly $25 million; if the settlement is over $100 million, then it gets $32.5 million; and the firm receives roughly $36.5 for anything above $150 million. These payments are per city, meaning the firm is looking for a big payout.

Oakland is also working with Sher Edling on a lawsuit against the Texas-based company, but refused to provide copies of its settlement, CLW noted in a press statement Wednesday. San Francisco and Oakland had previously employed Hagens Berman to represent them in their legal pursuits.

Hagens Berman’s fee was pegged at 23.5 percent of any winnings from its cases with San Francisco and Oakland before the two cities switched firms. Hagens Berman represents King County and New York City in their separate lawsuits demanding Exxon pay for its supposed role contributing to global warming.

Manufacturers’ groups have consistently criticized the lawsuits. Linda Kelly, senior vice president and general counsel for National Association of Manufacturers, blasted the settlement in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“In case anyone thought this litigation was motivated by a desire to actually address climate change, this agreement between San Francisco and its new outside counsel should put that notion to rest,” Kelly said. “It is astounding that Sher Edling managed to undercut Hagens Berman and still anticipates receiving a cut worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The contracts come shortly after TheDCNF reported in November that attorneys Vic Sher and Matt Pawa got into a multi-million-dollar legal dispute in 2014 stemming from a lawsuit they both worked on against ExxonMobil. Sher, who founded Sher Edling, alleged Pawa’s group, Pawa Law Group, failed to distribute money from a settlement in the case. Pawa, who is now with Hagens Berman, argued in a lawsuit that Sher was the one cheating him out of millions of dollars.

Sher eventually paid Pawa about $6 million for the retributions, court documents show. The disagreement stems from a lawsuit New Hampshire filed in 2013 alleging Exxon negligently contaminated the state’s waterways with 2 billion gallons of MTBE, a gas additive experts believe poisons drinking water. The intrigue comes amid growing bad blood between the two sides.

SOURCE   






Good show! Australia’s carbon emissions highest on record

Good for crops

Australia’s carbon emissions are again the highest on record, according to new data from the emissions-tracking organisation Ndevr Environmental.

Ndevr replicates the federal government’s national greenhouse gas inventory (NGGI) quarterly reports but releases them months ahead of the official data.

Data it has produced for the year up to September 2018 shows Australia is still on track to miss its Paris target of a 26%-28% cut to emissions on 2005 levels by 2030.

Matt Drum, the managing director of Ndevr, said if emissions continued at their current rate, Australia would miss the target by a cumulative 1.1bn tonnes.

Electricity sector emissions were stable, but fugitive emissions, and emissions from stationary energy and transport are all still trending sharply upwards.

Both the Coalition government and Labor have not ruled out using controversial carryover credits from the Kyoto protocol to help meet Australia’s obligations under the Paris agreement.

Labor has promised that if it wins the election it will increase Australia’s target to 45% on 2005 levels, in line with recommendations from the independent Climate Change Authority.

Ndevr’s analysis said this would require a reduction of 197.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent based on current emissions levels, which would be equal to taking 75m cars off the road for a year.

In comparison, the Coalition’s emission reduction target would require an 80.8m tonne reduction.

Breaking up Labor’s target across sectors, Ndever suggests a range of reductions will be necessary in several industries, including 61.2m tonnes from the electricity sector, 33.4m tonnes from the stationary energy sector, 23.7m tonnes from agriculture and 34.2m tonnes from transport.

“If Labor come into government we can’t afford a policy vacuum,” Drum said. “It’s looking grim. We need policy levers and we need them quickly.” Drum said the need for action was so urgent there would be no time for a full redesign of policy if there was a change of government. Instead, he said existing policies, such as the safeguard mechanism, should be amended.

“They need to utilise existing policy like the safeguard mechanism and tweak it so it achieves what it is intended to achieve, which is reduce emissions,” he said.

On Thursday, the Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said Australia was using “creative emissions accounting” to try to meet its Paris targets. “Counting Kyoto credit towards Paris cheats our environment and the rest of the world,” she said.

“Our emissions are going up, yet our environment minister is telling the world we are doing our bit to meet our Paris targets.”

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************





16 December, 2018

Hack journalism at the NYT

The NYT article below is standard Warmist talking points. The author accepts as gospel, claims and findings that are very much under challenge.  It is a very "free" version of the original academic article.  That article is "Increased Occurrence of Record?wet and Record?dry Months Reflect Changes in Mean Rainfall"

Despite working at the fanatically Warmist Potsdam Institute  lead-author Jascha Lehmann puts out a lot of careful research and the present article is pretty good, though not beyond criticism.  I think I should reproduce the abstract here:

Climate change alters the hydrological cycle which is *expected* to increase the risk of heavy rainfall events and prolonged droughts. Sparse rainfall data, however, have made it difficult to answer the question of whether robust changes can already be seen in the short observational time period. Here, we use a comprehensive statistical tool to quantify changes in record?breaking wet and dry months. The global?mean number of record?wet months has significantly increased over the recent decades and is now nearly 20% higher than would be expected in a stationary climate with no long?term trends. This signal primarily comes from pronounced changes in the northern mid to high latitudes where the occurrence of record?wet months has increased by up to 37% regionally. The tropics have seen opposing trends: More record?wet months in Southeast Asia in contrast to more record?dry months in Africa. These changes are broadly consistent with observed trends in mean rainfall.

So where the NYT reproduces the standard absurd Warmist claim that global warming produces both  floods and drought, Lehmann finds differently.  He finds what basic physics would tell you: That a warmer world is a WETTER world. I have highlighted the key sentence. 

He finds an unusual incidence of drought in Africa only, which is well established.  But WHY much of Africa has been suffering a lot of drought in recent years is quite unknown.  Some weather system peculiar to Africa would have to be the explanation but nobody can figure out what it is.  Since global warming causes MORE rain, attributing it to global warming is absurd

So there is nothing that need disturb anybody in the Lehmann findings.  All that he found is that we have been getting more rain in the period from 1980 to 2013, which is well in accord with what we would expect given the roughly one degree C of gradual warming that we have had over the last century or so


More records for both wet and dry weather are being set around the globe, often with disastrous consequences for the people facing such extremes, according to *a study published Wednesday* that offered new evidence of climate change’s impacts in the here and now.

Extreme rainfall, and the extreme lack of it, affects untold numbers of people, taxing economies, disrupting food production, creating unrest and prompting migrations. So, factors that push regions of the world to exceptional levels of flooding and drought can shape the fate of nations.

“Climate change will likely continue to alter the occurrence of record-breaking wet and dry months in the future,” the study predicts, “with severe consequences for agricultural production and food security.”

Heavy rainfall events, with severe flooding, are occurring more often in the central and Eastern United States, Northern Europe and northern Asia. The number of months with record-high rainfall increased in the central and Eastern United States by more than 25 percent between 1980 and 2013.

In those regions, intense rainfall from hurricanes can be ruinously costly. Munich Re, the reinsurance giant, said that the 2018 hurricane season caused $51 billion in losses in the United States, well over the long-term annual average of $34 billion. In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria contributed to a total of $306 billion in damage from extreme weather events in the United States.

Parts of Africa, on the other hand, are experiencing more months with a pronounced lack of rain. The number of record-setting dry months increased by nearly 50 percent in sub-Saharan Africa during the study period.

Jascha Lehmann, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the lead author of the study, compared extreme weather events to a high roll of a die. “On average, one out of six times you get a six,” he said. “But by injecting huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humankind has loaded the dice. In many regions, we throw sixes much more often with severe impacts for society and the environment.”

While much climate research relies on complex models to make projections, this new work interprets already-observed monthly rainfall data from 50,000 weather stations around the world. “That’s not to say models are not good,” Dr. Lehmann said in an interview, but his observational data “fits what we expect from physics and what models also show.”

Climate models have long predicted that because of the greenhouse gases human activity has pumped into the atmosphere and the warming that results, the world’s wet regions are likely to grow wetter. Warmer air causes greater evaporation from oceans and waterways, and warmer air can hold more moisture.

There is also evidence that changes in atmospheric circulation in summer have caused some weather systems to stall. The combination of such factors can lead to torrential rains like those that inundated the Houston area during Hurricane Harvey last year, and Baton Rouge during the floods of 2016.

Regions that tend to be dry, by contrast, are expected to grow even more parched as higher temperatures dry the soil and air. “Climate change drives both wet and dry extremes,” Dr. Lehmann said.

To conduct the study, which appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Dr. Lehmann’s team searched the databases of an authoritative repository of rainfall measurement, the Global Precipitation Climatology Center in Germany. Given natural weather variability, some extreme weather events were to be expected, so the researchers tried to determine how many events would have occurred without the influence of global warming.

The researchers determined that one-third of the record-dry months recorded in the African regions under study would not have occurred without the influence of climate change.

SOURCE 







More holes in the National Climate Assessment

The most predictable thing about the climate these days is the sensationalism we see in the headlines.

“The weather of Washington’s future: Hellish heat and high water,” The Washington Post wrote after the National Climate Assessment was released. “New U.S. climate assessment forecasts dire effects on economy, health,” said NPR. And not to be outdone, CBS News claimed, “Mass deaths and mayhem: National Climate Assessment’s most shocking warnings.”

It’s not a new trend, but it’s worth pointing out again. Headlines often overstate the actual content of the report, and the report itself often overstates the data.

Let’s take those “mass deaths” (leaving aside the mayhem for the moment). What does the report actually say?

“The health and well-being of Americans are already affected by climate change, with the adverse health consequences projected to worsen with additional climate change,” the National Climate Assessment reads.

More specifically, “In 49 large cities in the United States, changes in extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures are projected to result in more than 9,000 additional premature deaths per year under a higher scenario by the end of the century, although this number would be lower if considering acclimatization or other adaptations (for example, increased use of air conditioning).”

That estimate is based on a 2016 study that applies mortality data to climate models that predict more and more intense heatwaves. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find there’s some real uncertainty about those numbers.

That study references a research letter published in 2016 by the American Geophysical Union.

“These probabilities are typically computed using ensembles of climate simulations whose simulated probabilities are known to be imperfect,” the letter reads. “ … Climate model ensembles tend to be overconfident in their representation of the climate variability which leads to systematic increase in the attributable risk to an extreme event.”

As for heatwaves, the reality is that far more people die from extreme cold than extreme heat.

Even those deaths are difficult to pin on extreme temperatures. Rather, scientists say pre-existing conditions can often be exacerbated by extremes. Making projections 50 years out is difficult, and far from “settled science.”

Still, we know what prevents many of those deaths—from both extreme cold and extreme heat. It’s affordable, reliable energy. People cool and heat their homes when they can afford to. Misguided policies like the carbon tax, designed to curb energy usage, would send electricity bills soaring and would achieve the opposite of the National Climate Assessment’s goals.

Energy poverty is deadly, as the European Union is learning. Just last year it established a commission to address the problem.

“More than 50 million households in the European Union are struggling to attain adequate warmth, pay their utility bills on time, and live in homes free of damp and mold,” the EU says. “Awareness of energy poverty is rising in Europe and has been identified as a policy priority by a number of EU institutions, most notably in the European Commission’s ‘Clean Energy for All Europeans’ legislative package.”

But back to the U.S.’ National Climate Assessment.

The report also presents some scary predictions for the economy. A highly quoted headline cites that the economic damages from climate change could amount to 10 percent of annual U.S. gross domestic product in 2090. The obvious criticism is that this headline uses the highest estimate of a model where the average cost estimate is around 3 percent.

But digging deeper, there are other questions to be posed about how these economic impacts are calculated.

Premature deaths from extreme temperature (9,300 per year) are said to amount to $140 billion in annual losses. How is it that each premature death is given an economic cost of more than $15 million? Is it reasonable to place an economic value on a theoretical loss of life due to climate change, similar to the way we estimate property damage?

These questions must be asked before we take these “projected costs” at face value.

There’s a real danger here, and that’s in responding to the National Climate Assessment in a way that will make things worse, not better. Already, a carbon tax bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would make energy more expensive for American families.

The other danger is in responding to the headlines, not the data. We know the National Climate Assessment is good for frightening news stories. But public policy must be based on solid information, not scary interpretations.

SOURCE   






The Truth Behind the Plastic ‘Crisis’

There is evidence that some climate activists are seeking to elevate the plastic ‘crisis’ above the climate ‘crisis.’ Former Vice President Al Gore’s producer of his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth,”  — Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David — has been test-marketing the plastic eco-scare.

David has touted the plastic crisis over man-made climate fears. “Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming,” David wrote in 2009.

“The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote.

“This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”

But Greenpeace founding member and Ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore — who has turned against the organization —  responds to the plastics scare:

“What I don’t get is why it is assumed that a bit of plastic in your digestive tract is probably ‘harmful.’ This is the same plastic nearly all our food is packaged, transported, stored, and often served in. It is essentially inert and with the main exception of PVC, which contains chlorine, is made of 100% carbon and hydrogen. And because it is so inert it goes right through us like a small pebble or the cellulose in a kernel of corn.

Now the ‘sea of plastic garbage’ is the ‘size of Alaska.’  Last month it was ‘the size of Texas’ yet no satellite photo has been presented because the sea of plastic is a fiction. The ultimate in Fake News.”

The new report finds that “Greenpeace is deliberately misleading the public by fabricating a fictional ‘crisis.’ and “the infamous ‘oceanic garbage patches’ are not nearly as dramatic as people think.”

“It is making people feel guilty and worried about a ‘crisis’ which isn’t actually real,” the new report notes.

The report finds: “The Greenpeace narrative is largely fabricated, and is based on cherry-picked distortions of the scientific literature.”

“Some scientists are genuinely concerned about the fact that concentrations of ‘microplastics’ in some parts of the oceans are relatively high. However, the concentrations that they are talking about are relatively modest, e.g., a few hundred fragments per square mile in the worst regions,” the report concludes. “Also, the average sizes of these plastic fragments are very small, e.g., less than 1/16 inches in diameter…

Despite this, Greenpeace has been actively misleading the public to create the perception that there are massive floating ‘islands’ filled with plastic bottles, plastic bags and other plastic debris,” the report notes. “They are deliberately misleading the public by fabricating a fictional ‘crisis’ and trying to turn it into an excuse to abandon ‘single use plastics.”

Greenpeace has been hyping the alleged plastic “crisis” and are using it as “an excellent excuse to blame the western world for their ‘overconsumption,’” according to the new report. “They decided to start campaigning for ‘Zero Waste’ and insisting that we needed to completely stop using ‘single use plastics’ to protect the oceans.”

“Where exactly the plastic is coming from. Greenpeace and others are implying that the developed world is to blame (particularly Europe and North America), but several studies have now confirmed that the problem lies almost entirely with certain developing nations – chiefly in Asia.”

Greenpeace, some media channels, and other environmental activist groups (and to be fair, some scientists too) have used these alarming-sounding names to ridiculously exaggerate the phenomenon, and create the completely false impression that there are these horrendous floating “islands” of our plastic waste somewhere “out there”…

Greenpeace’s latest campaign on “the plastics crisis” is having the following effects:

* It is making people feel guilty and worried about a “crisis” which isn’t actually real.

* It is prompting people, governments and businesses to implement radical reforms without thinking through the consequences.

* It is hampering efforts to evaluate and deal with the genuine “ocean plastic pollution” concern.

In addition, “despite Greenpeace’s repeated claims, we now know that the ingestion of plastic particles by seabirds doesn’t seem to be having any ill effects on the birds,” the report notes.

This new report examines whether or not the Earth is experiencing a plastic “crisis” and the scientific finding is a resounding ‘No’.

SOURCE   






Climatologist Rebuts Rising Sea Level Narrative

Not that you'll hear about it from the press, which is preoccupied with alarm.

It’s often observed that those with the shrillest voices garner the most attention. Unsurprisingly therefore, the climate debate is overwhelmed by alarmist drivel. Just this week NBC News pilloried the Trump administration under the intentionally perturbing headline, “Trump team advocates burning fossil fuels, even as U.S. scientists sound alarm on melting Arctic.”

Such antics are unfortunate. They are routine only because other distinguished scientists, whose work supplies necessary context and counterarguments, are being drowned out, overlooked, or even ignored. Climatologist Judith Curry is one of those scientists whose work is often snubbed. Why? Here’s one reason: By her estimation, the ramifications of rising ocean levels are greatly exaggerated. She says, “Projections of extreme, alarming impacts are very weakly justified to borderline impossible.”

In February 2017, The Patriot Post documented the meager rise in sea levels in part by including this citation from NOAA: “Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch (3.2 mm) per year, due to a combination of melting glaciers and ice sheets, and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms.”

If that sounds just as underwhelming to you as it does to us, you’re not alone. In a recent report, Curry addresses the alarm over the supposed cataclysmic consequences of rising sea levels. She points out, “For reference, 3 mm is the height of two stacked pennies.” She provides several additional points, including:

“Rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. It is concluded that recent change is within the range of natural sea level variability over the past several thousand years.”

“Identifying a potential human fingerprint on recent sea level rise is confounded by the large magnitude of natural internal variability associated with ocean circulation patterns. There is not yet any convincing evidence of such a fingerprint on sea level rise associated with human-caused global warming.”

“In many of the most vulnerable coastal locations, the dominant causes of local sea level rise problems are natural oceanic and geologic processes and land use practices. Land use and coastal engineering in the major coastal cities have brought on many of the worst local problems, notably landfilling in coastal wetland areas and groundwater extraction.”

“Local sea level in many regions will continue to rise in the 21st century — independent of global climate change. There are numerous reasons to think that projections of 21st century sea level rise from human-caused global warming are too high, and some of the worst-case scenarios strain credulity.”

Curry provided supplementary commentary to The Daily Caller, noting: “With regards to 21st century climate projections, we are dealing with deep uncertainty, and we should not be basing our policies based on the assumption that the climate will actually evolve as per predicted. Climate variability and change is a lot more complex than ‘CO2 as control knob.’ No one wants to hear this, or actually spend time understanding things.”

The only proof you need is demonstrated by the fact her report won’t appear in any mainstream media outlets.

SOURCE   







Carols turn green as some Australian Christians sing out to save the planet

Hundreds of Christians in church choirs across the country will be singing Christmas carols with ­lyrics altered to protest about the burning of coal in a bid to change federal government policy on renewable energy.

The community organisation Australian Religious Response to Climate Change has facilitated the rewriting of 16 traditional Christmas carols — including We Wish You A Steady Climate and ­Silent Night, Smoky Night — and is encouraging community groups and choirs to sing them.

Darebin Council in Melbourne’s north, which has four Greens councillors among its nine members, hosted an event last week featuring many of the Carols Against Coal, and the Pitt Street Uniting Church Choir in Sydney has recently sung the altered Joy To The World — “Cool down the world, the time has come, for targets tight and fair”.

The ARRCC intends to upload a video of groups singing the carols to social media today ahead of tomorrow’s opening of the ALP’s national conference.

“We believe the Liberal Party has been in a long-term relationship with coal but we have slightly more hope that the Labor Party will be encouraged to take a bolder stance,” said ARRCC community organiser Tejopala Rawls.

“We want them to step down off the fence and gain the moral courage to do something about climate change.”

A dozen carollers from St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane will take to Brisbane Square today to sing the carols, led by Dean Peter Catt. “It shows that there’s a broad cross-section of the community that have concern for the environment,” Dean Catt said.

He said it was not anti-­Christian to politicise Christmas, nor would this detract from the spirit of the season. “Life is political and the gospel itself is political,” he said.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************







14 December, 2018

The Long Dry: Why the world's water supplies are shrinking (?)

Uni NSW has now released a slightly more scholarly version -- in part below -- of their implausible claim that the world is drying out.  But it still makes no sense.  They now admit that it sounds crazy to say a warmer world would be dryer amid increased rainfall but still say it will be. 

Their basic datum is reduced flows in many rivers and they say that is because the soils are sucking up more of the rain than they used to.  That's still pretty crazy.  They are saying that soils will be dryer in a rainier world.  There's a bridge in Brooklyn they might like to buy.

There's a blindingly obvious explanation for reduced river flows: Diversion of water for human and animal use, particularly irrigation. Farmers worldwide are always putting in dams and diversions. Prof. Sharma sounds Indian so let me tell him how it's done in Australia.

When rains are good and river flows are up, farmers lucky enough to have a river nearby dig a big hole in their land and cut a channel from the river to that hole.  The hole fills up, the channel is blocked and that hole becomes a dam which can supply water next year when the rains fail.  There are dams like that all along Australia's inland rivers.  See Cubbie station for a large scale example.

And every one of those dams will reduce river flow.  They really will!  Need I go on?   


A global study has found a paradox: our water supplies are shrinking at the same time as climate change is generating more intense rain. And the culprit is the drying of soils, say researchers, pointing to a world where drought-like conditions will become the new normal, especially in regions that are already dry.

The study – the most exhaustive global analysis of rainfall and rivers – was conducted by a team led by Prof Ashish Sharma at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. It relied on actual data from 43,000 rainfall stations and 5,300 river monitoring sites in 160 countries, instead of basing its findings on model simulations of a future climate, which can be uncertain and at times questionable.

Large rivers drying out

“This is something that has been missed,” said Sharma, an ARC Future Fellow at UNSW’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We expected rainfall to increase, since warmer air stores more moisture – and that is what climate models predicted too. What we did not expect is that, despite all the extra rain everywhere in the world, is that the large rivers are drying out.

“We believe the cause is the drying of soils in our catchments. Where once these were moist before a storm event – allowing excess rainfall to run-off into rivers – they are now drier and soak up more of the rain, so less water makes it as flow.

“Less water into our rivers means less water for cities and farms. And drier soils means farmers need more water to grow the same crops. Worse, this pattern is repeated all over the world, assuming serious proportions in places that were already dry. It is extremely concerning,” he added.

'Blue water' vs 'green water'

For every 100 raindrops that fall on land, only 36 drops are ‘blue water’ – the rainfall that enters lakes, rivers and aquifers – and therefore, all the water extracted for human needs. The remaining two thirds of rainfall is mostly retained as soil moisture – known as ‘green water’ – and used by the landscape and the ecosystem.

As warming temperatures cause more water to evaporate from soils, those dry soils are absorbing more of the rainfall when it does occur – leaving less ‘blue water’ for human use.

“It’s a double whammy,” said Sharma. “Less water is ending up where we can store it for later use. At the same time, more rain is overwhelming drainage infrastructure in towns and cities, leading to more urban flooding.”

Media release: CONTACT Prof Ashish Sharma  +61 425 332 304 | a.sharma@unsw.edu.au






Spotsylvania, Va., Residents Outraged Over Massive Solar Plant Proposal, About Half the Size of Manhattan

More than 300 residents of rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia gathered at the Spotsylvania Courthouse on Dec. 5 to protest plans for a massive solar energy plant – half the size of Manhattan -- which would be built close to residential areas and the historic sites of three Civil War battlefields.

The public hearing at the Spotsylvania Courthouse, where Utah-based solar power company sPower attempted to secure permit approval for its 500-megawatt facility, lasted several hours due to a flood of comments from the community.

Kevin McCarthy, a resident of Spotsylvania and member of the grassroots group Concerned Citizens of Spotsylvania County (Concerned Citizens), which opposes the proposal, said the plant is “extraordinarily incompatible” with the county’s “aura and history.”

“The biggest objection we have to this thing is that it’s totally out of character for this county, whose comprehensive plan calls for maintaining the rural, agricultural, and residential nature of this county,” McCarthy said. “Yet this proposal is going to consume the largest tract of designated forest in the entire county.”

“They call it a solar ‘farm,’” he said. “That’s real smart marketing because it’s not a farm. It is a massive industrial-scale power plant.”

At about 10 square miles, or roughly half the area of Manhattan, the facility would be the fifth largest solar plant in the United States. It would require the clearing of 6,500 acres of forest to make way for 1.8 million solar panels that would help power Microsoft, Apple, and the University of Richmond.

It would also be the only U.S. solar plant located close to residential areas or farmlands; according to McCarthy, the distance of the plant from some residents’ yards would only be 50 feet, while the average distance of most other large U.S. solar plants from residential areas is eight miles.

According to sPower, the project would benefit the county and the State of Virginia by creating “green” jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, generating electricity through “clean, renewable technology,” increasing tax revenues, and stimulating the local economy during the project’s construction.

“This is the future,” said Charlie Payne, an attorney for sPower, in an interview with NBC4. “And look who our partners are at the table. It’s Microsoft. It’s Apple. There’s some real opportunity for this area, for Spotsylvania County, and I’m looking forward to seeing it happen.”

Many Spotsylvania residents, however, have serious reservations about the plant. On its website, Concerned Citizens says taxes and the price of electricity would go up, and property values would go down if the plant is built.

In addition, none of the energy from the plant would go to the Spotsylvania community.

Residents are also worried that the plant’s construction could seriously damage the aquifer that supplies water to their homes. The clearing of forested land could cause soil erosion and runoff that could “devastate” streams and wetlands in the area, and the potential leakage of cadmium, a carcinogen, from solar panels could increase health problems among residents.

The Spotsylvania County Planning Commission will hold a follow-up hearing on the proposal on January 2.

SOURCE 







University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass pushes against attacks from faculty and students

Climate scientist Cliff Mass is speaking out against “academic political bullying” from University of Washington faculty and students, stemming from Mass’s rejection of a carbon tax initiative favored by activists.

“Science can only flourish when there is tolerance for a diversity of viewpoints and ideas,” Mass told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Name calling and politicization of science are toxic to the scientific enterprise, and undermines our credibility in the general community.”

“I am hopeful that the exposure of such intolerance will lead to an improved working environment in my department and among others in my discipline,” Mass said via email Wednesday.

Climate scientist Judith Curry detailed in a blog post Wednesday the actions UW and student activists have taken against Mass in recent months. Curry said Mass was a “victim of academic political bullying.”

There are clearly UW faculty “that don’t like Cliff Mass,” including, his department chair, and “most fundamentally, they seem to dislike that his blog is getting in the way of their own political advocacy,” Curry wrote.

Mass joined UW’s Atmospheric Sciences Department in 1982 where he specializes in numerical weather modeling and weather patterns in the Pacific Northwest. Mass also publishes a science blog and has a popular weekly radio show.

Mass is no global warming “denier” as many critics try to label him. Mass has repeatedly called global warming a serious threat and supported policies, including carbon taxes, to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Despite his agreement with the climate consensus, Mass has increasingly come under fire from activists for not toeing the alarmist line when it comes to blaming extreme weather events on global warming.

What seems to have driven Mass’s critics over the edge this time was the atmospheric scientist’s public opposition to a Washington state carbon tax ballot initiative, called I-1631. In particular, critics went after a blog post Mass wrote in mid-October detailing why he opposed I-1631. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the carbon tax measure in November, despite support from Gov. Jay Inslee and other Democrats.

“I-1631 will be a trough of billions of dollars of cash for left-leaning social action and ‘progressive’ groups, and dealing with climate change will be a secondary priority,” Mass wrote in a blog post with a picture of pigs feeding at a trough. The picture has since been removed.

The imagery of pigs feeding at a trough has long been used to describe special interest groups trying to syphon off government spending. State spending seen as wasteful or geared toward a special interest is often called “pork” or “pork barrel” spending. However, UW students and climate activists claimed it was “racist.”

I-1631 campaigner Izzy Goodman tweeted in October that “this alone proves that he is a blatant racist (which is probably why his climate policies are too!).” She later added, “[UW] you going to stand for this?”

When Mass tried to reason with her, UW philosophy Ph.D. candidate Alex Lenferna tweeted, “Calling you racist for saying racist things is not name calling, it’s an accurate description.” The post showed Mass’s “small [government], racist, anti-working class view,” tweeted Lenferna, who also campaigned for I-1631.

Student activists didn’t stop at Twitter insults. Curry, who spoke at length with Mass about the events, wrote, “The attacks ramped up when a group of students complained to the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”

Curry said the students accused Mass of “deception, being on the payroll of oil companies, purposely obfuscating with multiple twitter accounts, racism, misogyny, tokenism, Trumpism.”

“Rather than meet with Cliff Mass to discuss, the Assistant Dean sent a mass email to the faculty of the Atmospheric Sciences Department” echoing student complaints,” Curry wrote. The assistant dean’s email claimed the blog had “imagery and text that was racially insensitive and caused offense to a significant number of members in the departmental community.”

The assistant dean made no attempt to contact Mass or try to “understand that there was no racism evident or intended, and that the image in question was quickly removed from the blog post,” Curry wrote.

The matter didn’t end there, however, and Atmospheric Sciences Department Chair Dale Durran “sent a mass email to the Department faculty including the link to Lenferna’s post, and voicing concern about Mass’ behavior and ‘racism,'” Curry noted.

Durran held a faculty-wide meeting on Dec. 4. Durran reportedly took control of the meeting and even prevented Mass from finishing his opening remarks.

Durran “hectored Mass throughout the meeting,” Curry wrote. “The activist students were true to form, hurling all kinds of insulting, personal and inappropriate remarks” as Mass sat through the inquisition.

Duran was an ardent supporter of I-1631. Durran got 21 of his colleagues to sign a public letter, published in The Seattle Times in late October, endorsing the carbon tax ballot measure.

“Now is the time to take a big step to kick our carbon habit,” Durran and his colleagues wrote. However, Curry reported that “several faculty members felt uncomfortable signing this,” including one who told her they actually voted against the measure.

SOURCE 






Calif. bureaucacy Fails To Enforce New Law That Could Have Prevented Wildfires

A new report revealed that incompetent state regulators in California failed to implement plans required by state law that could have prevented the devastating California wildfires.

Senate Bill 1028 required the three big California power companies, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, to provide detailed strategies for reducing fire threats, according to The San Diego Tribune.

The California Public Utilities Commission was responsible for reviewing the filings, making comments on the material and ensuring that the plans were being followed.

Well, it turns out the government regulators completely failed to issue directives to the power companies, and it’s been more than two years since the law was passed.

The government agency’s utter incompetence is finally getting attention now that dozens of lives have been lost and an entire town has been completely destroyed in the wildfires.

A spokesman for Edison, one of the power companies, put the blame on the regulators. “At the time SB 901 was enacted, no CPUC rulemaking on prior legislation had been established,” the spokesman said.

“While the commission delayed enforcing the new law, wildfires suspected of being caused by overhead powerlines and other utility equipment killed at least 125 people,” the Tribune reported. “They also destroyed 18,000 buildings and charred hundreds of square miles of the California landscape.”

State Sen. Jerry Hill, the San Mateo Democrat who introduced SB 1028, expressed frustration with the government utility regulators. “They have done absolutely nothing in those two years,” Hill said.

Hill also admitted that state lawmakers should have given the regulators a deadline. “The unfortunate thing is we gave them that authority but we did not put a timeline on it,” Hill said.

This situation is just another example in a long list of government failure and incompetence.

“We assumed it would be prioritized, but sadly it takes a tragedy to realign priorities — and that’s what we’ve seen — tragedy and devastation,” Hill said.

Some believe the wildfires could have been prevented through proper forest management, but California’s state government failed on that front as well.

In August, Zinke said the “overload of dead and diseased timber in the forests makes the fires worse and more deadly.”

If the government is unable to follow through to prevent the loss of life and destruction of property from wildfires, why would anybody want the government to have control over something like health care?

When the government is in charge of something, it typically ends in disaster.

SOURCE 






Are the Australian Greens a party of sex pests and predators?

Internal chaos has struck the NSW Greens after upper house MP Jeremy Buckingham was asked to step down by the party’s state delegate council in light of claims made by Greens MP Jenny Leong in NSW parliament accusing him of committing an “act of sexual violence” against party aide Ella Buckland in 2011.

Buckingham responded, accusing the Greens of being “corrupt and rotten” while fellow Greens MP Cate Faehrmann declared herself “beyond appalled” and described the vote as being the result of her party having been “infiltrated by extreme left forces”.

This is only the latest in a long line of embarrassing revelations for what is widely seen as one of Australia’s most pro-feminist political parties. In the recent Victorian State election it was revealed one candidate Angus McAlpine seemed to have endorsed date rape, drink spiking and domestic violence while another candidate Dominic Phillips was stood down over an actual accusation of rape.

In NSW self-proclaimed Anarchist, power broker for the Left Renewal faction and candidate for the inner city seat of Summer Hill Tom Raue had to try and explain exactly why he endorsed, and even campaigned for the legalisation of bestiality and necrophilia. He said it was a lark from his student days, which considering that his student days also included getting banned from campus for attacking Julie Bishop and getting sued for $50,000 by the very board of the student council that he was Vice President of seems scarily plausible.

That came only months after it was revealed that former Victorian Greens leader Greg Barber paid out a $56,000 settlement with a female staff member over sexual discrimination and bullying allegations, and that he quit politics two days after the claims were aired within his party. Mr Barber was also alleged to have regularly referred to female left wing activists as “hairy-legged feminists” and “fat, hairy lesbians” behind their backs.

Less hilariously and slightly more seriously it was also suggested that the incident was kept as quiet as possible due to Barber’s status as brother-in-law of Federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale.

Similar allegations of cover up, “victim blaming” and a complete unwillingness to take seriously the complaints of female staffers and volunteers about the inappropriate and sometimes criminal behaviour of elected male representatives and staff members have been made in Victoria, NSW and the ACT.

The ABC reported that Lawyer Rory Markham is suing the party on behalf of a former Greens volunteer who alleges she was sexually assaulted by another volunteer in the back of a car in Canberra on the night of the 2016 federal election campaign. She has asked not to be identified.

“That perpetrator cornered her, forced her, by placing his hands on her shoulders into the side of the car and whispered into her ear that he hated her and then started to digitally penetrate her,” Mr Markham said.

“She was speechless. She couldn’t scream out. She immediately got out of the car and was shaking.”

Holly Brooke also a member of the extremist “Left Renewal” faction also says the party ignored her complaints after a male party member tried to force his hand down her pants against her wishes while she was co-convenor of the NSW Young Greens in 2017.

Journalist Lauren Ingram claims she was violently raped by a Greens staffer in 2015 after he invited her over to his apartment in Sydney’s eastern suburbs for pizza. The photos of her bruises and the story she tells are horrific. In her case the Greens party apparatus faced with such an obvious wrongdoing leapt into action (after around six months)… and suspended the member in question.

That’ll show him.

If this was happening inside any party on the right, if this was happening inside the Liberals, One Nation, the Australian Conservatives or the Katter Australia Party then that party would not only be a public laughing stock but would probably (in the case of the minor parties) have been driven out of politics. There would be endless jeers from the commentariat, endless cartoons in the newspapers, endless stand-up routines poking fun at any party of the right that so publicly preaches virtue while privately covering up vice. Hell even the ALP would have trouble escaping the smell of repeated revelations such as these.

But the Greens? Well they’re the party overwhelmingly favoured by the people who write for the newspapers, the people who book the stand-up comedy acts, the people who produce the programs for the ABC and SBS. They’re the feminist party, the progressive party, the party that preaches every moral virtue dictated by the pulpits of modern academia.

They’re the “good” guys. Except it seems some of the guys aren’t so good.

Funny that.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************





13 December, 2018

Sea rise scenarios barely possible, says climate scientist Judith Curry

A catastrophic rise in sea levels is unlikely this century, with ­recent experience falling within the range of natural variability over the past several thousand years, according to a report on peer-­reviewed studies by US climate scientist Judith Curry.

Writing in The Australian today, Dr Curry says predictions of a 21st-century sea level rise of more than 60cm are increasingly difficult to justify, even if the predicted amount of global warming is correct.

“Predictions of higher than 1.6m require a cascade of ­extremely unlikely to impossible events using overly simplistic models of poorly understood processes,” Dr Curry says.

The review coincides with ­debate about whether some warnings about climate change relied too heavily on worst-case scenarios.

Dr Curry, a professor emeritus form Georgia Institute of Technology, said extreme, barely possible values of sea level rise were driving policies and local ­adaptation plans. She said an ­additional sea level rise of 60cm or less over a century could be a relatively minor problem if it was managed appropriately.

She said there was not yet any convincing evidence of a human fingerprint on global sea level rise because of the large changes driven by natural variability. “An increase in the rate of global sea level rise since 1995 is being caused by ice loss from Greenland,” she said. “Greenland ice loss was larger during the 1930s, which was also associated with the warm phase of the Atlantic Ocean circulation pattern.”

Dr Curry said predictions of sea level rise depended on climate models to predict the correct amount of warming.

Based on current greenhouse gas emissions, temperature rises to 2100 have been predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to be 3C.

However, there were reasons to think the climate models were predicting too much warming. She said observed warming for the past two decades was smaller than the average warming predicted by climate models.

When compared with observations over the past 150 years, climate models produced too much warming in response to increasing atmospheric carbon ­dioxide, she said.

The latest IPCC report on 1.5C warming said there was a medium confidence that sea level rise would be about 10cm less by the end of the 21st century in a 1.5C compared to a 2C warmer world. Projections for a 1.5C and 2C global warming cover the ­ranges of 20cm to 80cm and 30cm to 100cm respectively.

There was high confidence in the IPCC report that sea level rise would continue well beyond 2100.

“Marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could result in multi-metre rise in sea level over hundreds to thousands of years,” the IPCC report said. “These instabilities could be triggered at around 1.5C to 2C of global warming (medium confidence).”

SOURCE 






Trump EPA takes aim at Obama-era clean water rules, prompting outcry from environmentalists

The Trump administration is moving forward with a significant rollback of an Obama-era clean water regulation that has become a rallying cry for farmers and property-rights activists opposed to federal overreach.

The new proposal, unveiled Tuesday morning by acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and other administration officials, would ease Washington's oversight of small bodies of water, undoing a regulation President Donald Trump has called "a massive power grab."

The new rule would replace an Obama administration regulation, known as the "Waters of the United States" rule that expanded federal protections to smaller rivers and streams.

Environmental advocates warn the proposed rule could remove pollution and development protections from most U.S. waterways and pose far-reaching effects on the safety of the nation's tap water for more than 100 million Americans.

“Even a child understands that small streams flow into large streams and lakes – which provide drinking water for so many Americans,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources for the Environmental Working Group. “By removing safeguards and allowing industry to dump pollutants into these water sources, Trump’s EPA is ensuring more contamination challenges for utilities and dirtier water for their customers.”

But opponents of the Obama-era WOTUS rule say it unduly prevents property owners from being able to fully use their land because the rule's overly broad definition regulates ditches that temporarily flood as federally protected waterways.

“The old rule put Washington in control of ponds, puddles, and prairie potholes," said Wyoming GOP Sen. Tom Barrasso, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee. "The regulation was so confusing that property owners and businesses could not determine when permits were needed."

The crux of the rollback is a change in how "navigable waterways" are defined under the Clean Water Act.

The 2015 definition crafted under President Barack Obama would narrow considerably under Trump, a move that Wheeler told reporters would make it "clearer and easier to understand ... that will result in significant cost savings, protect the nation's navigable waterways, and reduce barriers to important economic and environmental projects."

Wheeler cited the Missouri Farm Bureau, which launched a "Ditch the Rule" campaign opposing the 2015 proposal because it was concerned the Obama-era definition was so broad it could apply to almost every acre in the state.

The Obama administration "claimed it was in the interest of water quality but it was really about power, power in the hands of the federal government over landowners," Wheeler said.

It's also confusing because the rule is enforced in only 22 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories.

Under Trump's proposed rule, federal protections would remain for major waterways, rivers, tributaries, wetlands adjacent to federally protected waterways, certain lakes and ponds, reservoirs, and ditches used for navigation or affected by the tide.

States would oversee most ditches, terrain that fills with water during or in response to rainfall, certain wetlands that have been used to grow crops, stormwater control ponds, and water and wastewater treatment systems. Additionally, groundwater would not be federally protected, an exclusion Wheeler said that was never supposed to be included.

Wheeler disputed claims by environmental groups that the rule would remove federal oversight from at least 60 percent of the nation's waterways. But EPA officials also could not say what percentage would lose those protections.

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the rollback would send the country back to a time when environmental protections were few and far between.

"Back then, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, was so polluted that it actually caught on fire. Polluters were allowed to dump toxic waste into our waterways without consequence. Garbage littered our shores," Carper said. "It isn’t just a coincidence that this is no longer the reality in our country."

In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed an executive order in February 2017 to undo the clean water rule and instructed the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a new approach.

In a Roosevelt Room ceremony with farmers and lawmakers at the time, Trump called the rule "one of the worst examples of federal regulation."

The debate over the water rule was part of a larger political flashpoint over environmental issues during the 2016 presidential campaign as Trump tried to appeal to rural Americans exasperated by federal regulations and the loss of property rights.

While the broader debate centered on climate change and clean air rules, the waters rule was nearly as polarizing because its broad application could affect farming, construction and other activities near federally regulated waters.

The issue has often come down to the definition of "navigable waters" under the Clean Water Act.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 makes it illegal to pollute "navigable" waters. Over the decades, disputes arose over the government's changing definition of "navigable" with opponents complaining the definition was too broad.

Two Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 came down on the side of landowners, ruling that ponds at the bottom of a gravel pit and a marsh miles from any lake or river were not navigable and thus not subject to the act.

Wheeler said he wants the rule to reflect the court rulings.

SOURCE   






Protests erupt as Trump team pushes fossil fuels at climate talks
     
KATOWICE, Poland — Trump administration officials at high-stakes climate talks here offered an unapologetic defense of fossil fuels Monday, arguing that a rapid retreat from coal, oil, and gas was unrealistic.

While that stance brought scorn from environmentalists and countries that favor stronger action to fight global warming, there are signs that the administration is finding a receptive audience among other major fossil-fuel producers, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.

President Trump’s international energy and climate adviser, Wells Griffith, hosted a panel discussion on fossil fuels at the United Nations conference, arguing that the developing world would be heavily reliant on coal, oil, and gas for some time and that it was in the world’s interest to find more efficient ways of developing and burning those fuels.

Midway through, the panel was interrupted by scores of noisy protesters, who chanted, “Shame on you!” and “Keep it in the ground!” Griffith responded that the administration’s policy on fossil fuels like coal “is not to keep it in the ground, it’s to use it in a way that is clean and efficient.”

Also on the panel was Patrick Suckling, Australia’s ambassador for the environment, who agreed that “fossil fuels are projected to be a major source of energy for a significant time to come.” He spoke in favor of technology for capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants and burying it, and noted that such technology could be exported.

The public endorsement of fossil fuels came just days after the Trump administration helped to block the UN climate conference from embracing the findings of a major scientific report on global warming.

The United States — along with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia — refused to allow a collective statement that would “welcome” the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which detailed a variety of strategies for cutting global fossil-fuel emissions roughly in half by 2030 in order to avoid many dangerous climate impacts.

Instead, the countries, all major oil and gas exporters, demanded the conference only “note” the existence of the report and thank the scientists for their work.

SOURCE   






Trump was right about “raking” Finnish forests



Heavy machinery “rakes” Finland’s forest floors after tree cutting, greatly reducing fire risks

Mikko Paunio

President Donald Trump was recently ridiculed for telling California Governor Jerry Brown that the Golden State should do as my country does. Trump critics laughed at what some called his “bizarre” claim that foresters in Finland “rake” areas that have been thinned or clear-cut, to remove leaves and other debris that could otherwise start conflagrations like the recent tragic fires in California.

The Washington Post spread similar misinformation. The Los Angeles Times carried an article by Finnish “green” journalist Anu Partanen. “Finland to President Trump: We don’t rake the forest floor, but we do other things you should emulate,” the headline read. Late night talk show hosts had more fun at the President’s expense.

Ironically, all this happened at just about the time that Finland’s own forest specialists declared that Mr. Trump was correct about what he told Governor Brown. The foresters disseminated that information widely to the Finnish media and public.

As a result, much of Finland’s mainstream news media began ridiculing Finns who posted photos of garden rakes with the hashtag #RakingAmericaGreatAgain. Now the media are saying the self-styled comic activists were wrong to laugh at the President.

Of course, that too is ironic, since many of that same, very green Finnish mainstream media had actively questioned and ridiculed Mr. Trump just days earlier.

Back in America, not surprisingly, the exoneration story has been largely ignored. The media, pundits and late-night comedians had already made up their minds, don’t want to be confused by the facts – and don’t want their audiences confused by facts, either. Here’s the rest of the story: the missing facts, anyway.

One of the most pressing ecological problems today is preservationist forestry principles. This ideological approach prevents harvesting mature (or even any) trees, thinning out dense stands of timber to remove excess biomass (and thus allowing remaining trees to grow better, faster, thicker and taller), or even removing dense underbrush. This leads to an over-accumulation of biomass in trees and on forest floors. It makes forests vulnerable to raging and fast moving forest fires, especially during dry seasons, even more so when winds are blowing.

If these policies are accompanied by active suppression of forest fires over long periods of time – or by policies of not dousing “natural” fires until they become really big and dangerous – any ignition can lead to catastrophic events that cause tragic loss of property and human lives.

The “confusion” over what President Trump said unfortunately came initially from the Finnish side, as even our media thought “raking” meant only light removal of leaves, pine cones and other debris from forest floors. Even Finnish president Sauli Niinistö did not understand that the practice really involves “raking” with heavy machinery that removes extensive amounts of combustible material. Mr. Niinistö simply told Mr. Trump he could rely on advice from Finland to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

In Finland, after clear-cutting a forest area, crews use heavy machinery (similar to what is used in this video) to “rake” or gather tree harvesting residues, tree roots and other material into huge piles. The biomass is then chipped onsite after it has dried up sufficiently, and chips are hauled to local heat-producing plants to generate warmth for local residents.

In addition, throughout the clear-cut area, crews heavily till the soil so that a fire cannot move easily into or through the clear-cut area. This harvesting policy is motivated by the idea that clear-cutting mimics wildfires in pristine forests. Wildfires start a new succession: a new generation of trees in forests. Cutting does too, but without destroying soils and soil organisms the way raging fires do.

When the new succession has started in the previously clear-cut forest, Finnish law requires thinning operations around the best remaining trees, and accumulating biomass is again removed from time to time from these young forests. This again lessens the probability of uncontrolled wild fires, while allowing the strongest, healthiest trees to grow more fully in less confined spaces and with improved access to water, sunlight and nutrients.

There was some sense in Washington Post writer Rick Noack’s suggestion that forest roads can help prevent fires from spreading. They help fire brigades gain rapid access to fires before they get too big to control. They also provide open areas (“fire breaks”) that stop fires at their perimeters, if the fires aren’t too big.

Finland is about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. It has an extensive forest road network (120 thousand kilometers, or 75,000 miles!) – and significantly more trees than 100 years ago, despite clear-cutting being at the center of our wood harvesting policy.

However, Mr. Noack also said, “The forest service in Finland does carry out controlled burns of the forest floor, mostly to clear away underbrush and also promote new saplings.” This is misleading, because it makes controlled burns seem more important than they actually are.

As a recent Finnish morning television program pointed out, the yearly acreage of controlled forest fires is only 200-300 hectares (500-750 acres), which is next to nothing. Moreover, these controlled burns are apparently performed on state lands only to symbolically please environmentalists.

Finland’s last “large” forest fire took place in 1997. It burned 250 hectares (625 acres) of forest in Southern Finland – a tiny fraction of what many U.S. fires burn every year.

The catastrophic fires seen in California and elsewhere are not due to climate change – natural or manmade – although warmer, drier, windier weather can certainly be a major contributing factor. The important point is that foresters must adapt to both weather and climate change, and revise past practices that are now known to cause serious problems. They must manage forests better, more scientifically and more responsibly, with special attention to areas where large populations of people reside.

Governments could also implement new standards for homes built in or near forests. Homes should have fire-resistant roofs and walls, and people should be required to keep brush and debris from accumulating.

Governor Brown and others seem to cite climate change as a way to absolve them of responsibility for ideological or incompetent decisions that help create or perpetuate conditions that spawn horrific, deadly infernos. This must not continue.

One final point regarding climate change. Finland’s official forest studies estimate that climate change (warmer temperatures and more atmospheric carbon dioxide) will help increase annual timber growth from the current 102 million cubic meters (m3) to 130 million m3 by 2050. The current wood harvesting rate is around 72 million m3, and the government announced recently that annual growth increased by five million m3 to a staggering 107 million in 2018.

Finland manages theses forests for timber, wildlife, controlled fires – and protection of nearby homes and people. Its lessons can and should be applied elsewhere. President Trump understands that. His incomplete grasp of Finnish “raking” and other practices led to confusion and ridicule, but should not result in these principles and practices being rejected out of hand.

Via email






What are they Plotting in Poland?

By Viv Forbes, Secretary of the Saltbush Club

The Saltbush Club today called on the Morrison Government to come clean on what additional burdens for Australians are being discussed at COP24, the UN climate jamboree now taking place in Poland.

The Secretary of The Saltbush Club, Mr Viv Forbes of Australia, said that Australia will suffer badly from the destructive energy policies being promoted by the UN’s war on cheap, reliable hydro-carbon fuels.

“Like the Trump supporters in USA, Brexit in Britain, Solidarity in Poland, the Yellow Vests in France and the new Brazilian government we do not support the UN energy plans and we fear their hidden agenda.

“Australia’s backbone industries were built on cheap reliable power. We have huge overheads in the bureaucracy, academia and the welfare state which must be supported by real industry - mining and smelting, farming, fishing, forestry, processing, transport and manufacturing. These industries rely on hydro-carbon energy – coal, gas, oil, diesel and petrol.

“Because Australia has no nuclear or geothermal power, limited hydro potential, an aging fleet of coal generators and several bans on gas exploration, we are very vulnerable to the UN’s war on hydro-carbons.

“PM Morrison must answer three specific questions:

“Who represents Australia at COP24?

“What instructions have they been given?

“When will he report to the Australian people?

“Australia should sign nothing, agree to nothing and signal its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

“COP24 will produce zero benefits for Earth’s climate, but their goals are economically irresponsible for those selected to pay the bills.

“The Paris Agreement they seek to enforce is negative for the Australian people, and for everyone not on the climate gravy train.”

Via email

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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12 December, 2018

No dissent allowed

A skeptical event during the big global warming conference in Poland was shut down by U.N. officials

KATOWICE — The United Nations gave its blessing to a massive climate protest during the Trump administration’s pro-energy event today at the climate summit (COP24) in Poland, according to the U.S. delegation. The UN pre-authorized and pre-planned the wide-scale interruption that shut down the Trump White House’s pro-fossil fuel event.

Officials from the U.S. delegation told Climate Depot on Monday that the UN informed the U.S.  that the environmental activists would be authorized by the UN  to disrupt the U.S. event for at least “7 minutes” and the green protesters would be granted the floor, halt the event and give speeches during the U.S. event.

Like clockwork, when U.S. Special Advisor the to President, P. Wells Griffith of the Energy Department was speaking, the protesters began to laugh and chant about how the Trump administration was “funny” because they did not want to keep coal, oil and gas “in the ground.”

The protesters chanted “keep it in the ground” (fossil fuel energy which accounts for over 80% of world energy) to both the Trump administration officials as well as the climate skeptics who were seated in the front row.

The UN-supported protesters verbally targeted “climate deniers” Marc Morano of CFACT’s Climate Depot and author of the new skeptical book, and CFACT’s Craig Rucker and Adam Houser as well as author and writer Rupert Darwall, all of whom were sitting in the front row.

Climate protesters yelled at the climate skeptics, calling them “deniers” and “profiteers” and they also declared that “nuclear energy is genocide.”

CFACT president Craig Rucker commented, “It almost seems like the UN, by giving its stamp of approval to the protesters, it trying to punish President Trump for withdrawing from the UN Paris climate pact.”

When the “skeptic” Darwall responded to the protesters “rubbish,” there were calls to remove him immediately. “It tells you everything you need to know about their utter artificiality,” Darwall said.  “The one thing you can’t do at UN climate conference is heckle the hecklers. Instead, people are forced to listen to their childish ranting and be prevented from hearing what serious people on the platform had to say,” Darwall added.

“There should be an open and vigorous debate and it doesn’t help of the U.N. appears to have a dog in the race,” Kevin Mooney, an investigative journalist from Washington D.C. told Climate Depot.  Mooney added that instead of taking sides, the UN should hold a “detached, dispassionate position where protests are concerned.”

SOURCE   






Extreme Fraud In The National Climate Assessment

People from President Trump down have mocked the recent National Climate Assessment as extreme scaremongering.  Climate historian Tony Heller has however gone one further and had a close look at their figures.  What he has found can only reasonably be described as fraud.  His posts are too extensive and too detailed for me to reproduce but go here for a detailed expose of this concoction of lies. Video version below








Subsidies for 'Renewables' on Chopping Block?

“As a matter of our policy, we want to end all of those subsidies.” That warning shot was given this week by Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, regarding the future of electric vehicles. Currently, EV purchasers can take advantage of a hefty tax credit of up to $7,500. However, that tax credit is, at least notionally, slated for nullification. Kudlow added, “And by the way, other subsidies that were imposed during the Obama administration, we are ending, whether it’s for renewables and so forth.”

According to Reuters, “The tax credits are capped by Congress at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer, after which the subsidy phases out. … Experts say the White House cannot change the cap unilaterally.” In other words, subsidy repeal should have been addressed long before Republicans lose their majority in the House next month. Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s position is salient.

Investor’s Business Daily opines that the eradication of subsidies “would be a major victory on the road to energy freedom.” The editors add, “No doubt there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth within the Green Movement. How will electric cars survive without government’s guiding hand? The answer is, most won’t. Otherwise, the federal government wouldn’t need to subsidize them.”

At its core the government is aggrandizing certain products above others, which is antithetical to and a mockery of free enterprise. “Moreover,” Investor’s notes, “the dirty little secret of the electric-car industry is that electric cars are dirty, too, and not necessarily cleaner than regular cars. … A big reason for this is the electric cars’ batteries, the heart of the industry. Many of the batteries are built in high-pollution countries like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland, all of which depend heavily on coal for their energy. So the CO2 produced just in making the electric cars is far greater than for a regular, gasoline-powered car.”

Consider also the primary source from which these batteries are charged — fossil fuels. Or as Investor’s put it, “It’s like someone dumping their garbage on the lawn of a neighbor down the street, while defending their own yard as pristine.” And as far as slashing emissions? Economist Jonathan Lesser says, “The net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions between 2018 and 2050 would be only about one-half of 1 percent of total forecast U.S. energy-related carbon emissions.”

Finally, just like with state and local tax deductions, electric vehicle subsidies principally assist more wealthy individuals due to the bloated costs of EVs that make them unaffordable to most of the middle class. “Wind, solar and other ‘alternative’ energies are near-perfect examples of political cronyism at its worst,” Investor’s concludes. “They produce electricity at outrageously high cost. They aren’t necessarily cleaner or better for the environment than fossil fuels. And they require subsidies to privileged, politically connected groups to exist.”

For these reasons, Trump should pursue subsidy repeal, even if that means waiting until the next election. Now if only we could get him to see the similarities with King Corn…

SOURCE   






Climate Change Alarmism Is the World's Leading Cause of Hot Gas
    
Even as anti-gas tax riots raged in France this week, naturalist David Attenborough warned a crowd at a United Nations climate change summit in Poland that “the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” U.N. General Assembly President Maria Espinosa told the media that “mankind” is “in danger of disappearing” if climate change is allowed to progress at its current rate.

Speakers, who flew in to swap doomsday stories, advocated radical changes to avoid this imminent environmental apocalypse. These days, “the point of no return” is almost always in view yet always just out of reach.

Sorry, but by now, this rhetoric is familiar. You can go back to 1970, when Harvard biologist George Wald, riding a wave of popular environmental panic during the decade, estimated, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Or you can go back to 1977, when Barack Obama’s future science “czar,” John Holdren, co-authored a book with Paul R. Ehrlich predicting that global warming could lead to the deaths of 1 billion starving people by 2020. (The authors theorized, “Population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution.”)

Or you can go back to 2006, when Al Gore warned in his Oscar-winning documentary that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” The producers even offered chilling depictions of cities underwater. Gore was only off by 20 feet or so. Anyway, South Beach is still with us.

The problem for alarmists is that warming is now here — allegedly the cause of an untold number of disasters, small and large — yet somehow humanity slogs onward, living longer, safer, richer lives. People internalize this reality, no matter what they tell pollsters.

At a big 2005 conference of concerned climate scientists and politicians in London, attendees warned that the world had as little as 10 years before it would reach “the point of no return on global warming.” They warned that humans would soon be grappling with “widespread agricultural failure,” “major droughts,” “increased disease,” “the death of forests” and the “switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream,” among many other terrible calamities.

Who knows? Maybe one day, humanity will be ravaged by new diseases because of a rise in temperature. Right now, though, we are on the cusp of eradicating such diseases as polio, measles and syphilis.

There is new hope that all mosquito-borne diseases will be eradicated someday, that a cure for AIDS is within reach and that a vaccine will be able to cut Alzheimer’s disease cases in half. Cancer survival rates have soared.

So perhaps in some far-flung era, humans will be toiling in a dystopian world of “widespread agricultural failure” as alarmists have been warning for many decades, but trends do not look promising for the Chicken Littles. Since 2005, humans have seen a spike in the use of genetically modified crops, as well as advances in heat-resistant crops, leading to booming yields in agriculture. According to the U.N., there were 200 million fewer hungry people in 2015 than there were in 1990.

Although not so big as the massive spike in climate change hysterics since 2005, there also has been a spike in fossil fuel consumption among nations that are slowly embracing the most effective poverty-killing program ever invented by man. And capitalism, even its worst iterations, runs best on cheap energy. This reality has produced a giant reduction in poverty, the extreme variety being cut in half around the world, according to the World Bank. The less poverty there is the more cars we will see and the less the U.S. and Europe can do about it.

Fortunately, Attenborough, Gore and the 22,000 delegates attending the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change can’t begin to contemplate the staggering number of advancements in productivity and science that await humans.

Of course, simply because Malthusians have been completely wrong about human ingenuity and adaptability for more than 100 years doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong now. On the other hand, at no point in history has a massive top-down social engineering project ever worked as intended. It’s worth noting, for example, that the 10 worst famines of the 20th century were caused not by the excesses of capitalism or by environmental disasters but by collectivists trying to control human nature.

Trade-offs, ignored by doomsdayers since the beginning of history, are something people intuitively understand. That’s why the fearmongering hasn’t worked and probably never will.

SOURCE   






There are none so blind as those who will not see

World’s water supplies are shrinking, says the Australian guff below. How Warmists arrive at that absurdity time after time is a wonder.  Basic physics tell us that in a warmer world the oceans will evaporate off more and so MORE rain will fall.  And it is uncontested that the world has warmed by about one degree Celsius over the last century or so. 

And CO2 levels have also risen a lot, though not in synchrony with the warming.  And high CO2 makes plants drought-tolerant, a result we see  in the greening of the Sahel, for instance.  The people behind the conference may be religious fanatics but they are not scientists.  They spit in the face of science


Climate change results of global significance, collected over the past few years by researchers at the University of New South Wales, will be discussed at a news conference in Sydney.

The research will show evidence that drought-like conditions are becoming more commonplace, and likely worsen in the years ahead. The research has identified the localised mechanisms driving this effect, and a way to predict how this global drying will unfold as the climate warms.

Evidence will also be shown that global warming has caused storms to change behaviour, leading to more intense downpours that quickly overwhelm stormwater infrastructure and create flooding in urban areas.

To cope, major investments will need to be made to re-engineer farms and cities – in some places, similar in scope to the Snowy Mountain Scheme. The researchers will call for a national conversation on the implications for Australia.

The results of these global studies, the most exhaustive ever undertaken, rely on actual data rather than climate modelling. They show that both of these effects – driven by global warming – will have serious consequences for cities and rural areas in Australia and around the world.

When:      9:00 am – 9.45 am, Thursday 13 December 2018
Where:     Theatre 8, Level 6, UNSW City Centre Campus

Media release. Contact: Wilson da Silva | w.dasilva@unsw.edu.au

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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11 December, 2018

Greenland is losing ice at fastest rate in 350 years (?)

Is anybody bothered that the researchers examined meltwater that did NOT run off into the sea to estimate how much meltwater DID run off into the sea?  A large question about the validity of their measuring instrument there, I think. That one type of melting estimates the other is just an assumption and not a terribly plausible one.  Processes in the two areas are known to be different in one way so why are there not differences in other ways?

And they used results from a few icecores in one part of Greenland to estimate what has happened in the whole of Greenland.  How did they accomplish that vast feat of overgeneralization?  By running models.  But you can get whatever you want out of models.  I am betting that there were a few "adjustments" before a final model run was accepted

Too many assumptions there for any firm conclusions.  Different methods could yield different conclusions

Vast ice sheet's dramatic transformation revealed by ice cores, satellite data and climate models.

Ice melt across Greenland is accelerating, and the volume of meltwater running into the ocean has reached levels that are probably unprecedented in seven or eight millennia. The findings, drawn from ice cores stretching back almost 350 years, show a sharp spike in melting over the past two decades.

Previous studies have shown record melting on parts of Greenland's ice, but the latest analysis includes the first estimate of historical runoff across the entire ice sheet. The results, published on 5 December in Nature, show that the runoff rate over the past two decades was 33% higher than the twentieth-century average, and 50% higher than in the pre-industrial era.

“The melting is not just increasing — it’s accelerating,” says lead author Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “And that’s a key concern for the future.”

Centuries of ice

A team led by Trusel drilled a series of ice cores, the biggest 140 metres long, in central West Greenland in 2014 and 2015. There, snow that melts in the summer later refreezes, rather than running off into the ocean — creating an annual record of ice melt. The researchers compared data from these ice cores, and an older core from the same area, with satellite observations of melting across Greenland, and estimates of melt and runoff from a regional climate model.

The team’s analysis suggested that the rate of melting at its drilling sites is representative of trends across Greenland. Armed with this knowledge, the researchers used the ice-core data as a proxy to estimate runoff rates going back centuries — before satellites and climate models existed.

The findings bolster a study published in March that found that West Greenland is melting faster than it has in at least 450 years2. “What this paper does nicely is expand that record to the whole ice sheet,” says Erich Osterberg, a climatologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a co-author of the March study.

SOURCE   

Journal Abstract:

Nonlinear rise in Greenland runoff in response to post-industrial Arctic warming

Luke D. Trusel et al.

Abstract

The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is a growing contributor to global sea-level rise1, with recent ice mass loss dominated by surface meltwater runoff2,3. Satellite observations reveal positive trends in GrIS surface melt extent4, but melt variability, intensity and runoff remain uncertain before the satellite era. Here we present the first continuous, multi-century and observationally constrained record of GrIS surface melt intensity and runoff, revealing that the magnitude of recent GrIS melting is exceptional over at least the last 350 years. We develop this record through stratigraphic analysis of central west Greenland ice cores, and demonstrate that measurements of refrozen melt layers in percolation zone ice cores can be used to quantifiably, and reproducibly, reconstruct past melt rates. We show significant (P?<?0.01) and spatially extensive correlations between these ice-core-derived melt records and modelled melt rates5,6 and satellite-derived melt duration4 across Greenland more broadly, enabling the reconstruction of past ice-sheet-scale surface melt intensity and runoff. We find that the initiation of increases in GrIS melting closely follow the onset of industrial-era Arctic warming in the mid-1800s, but that the magnitude of GrIS melting has only recently emerged beyond the range of natural variability. Owing to a nonlinear response of surface melting to increasing summer air temperatures, continued atmospheric warming will lead to rapid increases in GrIS runoff and sea-level contributions.

Nature volume 564, pages104–108 (2018)






Climate lunacy takes center stage in Poland

IPCC Poland conference presents fictional climate chaos and fake renewable energy salvation

Paul Driessen

The unwritten rule seems to be that each successive climate report and news release must be more scarifying than any predecessors, especially during the run-up to international conferences.

Thus Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report 15 claims governments worldwide must make “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” spend $40 trillion by 2035 on renewable energy, and impose carbon taxes that climb to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030. Or temperatures could climb another 1 degree F (0.5 C) and bring utter cataclysm to human civilization and our planet.

Not to be outdone, the 1,700-page 2018 US National Climate Assessment wailed that failure to eliminate fossil fuels and roll back American industry and living standards would send global temperatures soaring 15 degrees F by 2100! Chaos and food shortages would ensue; US economic growth would plummet.

The hyperbole continues in Katowice, Poland – where 30,000 activists and bureaucrats (and a few scientists) are meeting to finalize regulations to implement the 2015 Paris climate treaty and compel wealthy nations to give trillions of dollars in “adaptation, mitigation and compensation” money to poor countries that have been “victimized” by climate change, even as the rich nations de-industrialize.

All of this certainly plays well with those who orchestrated these reports and programs, are ideologically opposed to fossil fuels, or get paid to advance climate chaos and renewable energy narratives. However, a very different response among other audiences is increasingly evident around the world.

People look out their windows and realize the “unprecedented climate and weather chaos” isn’t actually happening, is little different from what they and previous generations experienced, and cannot possibly be attributed solely to fossil fuel use. They know the sun and other powerful natural forces have driven frequent climate changes throughout history, and play equally important roles today.

They understand that the scary headlines are the product of “scenarios” conjured up by computer models that blame climate change on greenhouse gases. They see the boy who cried “fifty 20-foot-tall wolves” far too often. They don’t buy the notion that today’s incredibly wealthy, high-tech, energy-rich societies are somehow less able to deal with climate change than those that lived through the Little Ice Age, for example. They typically put climate change at the bottom of any list of pressing concerns.

More and more people understand that fossil fuels provide 80% of US and global energy – and are essential to lifting billions more people out of crushing poverty. They see Asian and African countries building thousands of new coal- and gas-fired electrical generating plants, and making and driving millions of new cars. They know even Germany and Japan are burning more coal, as they realize that wind and solar subsidies and facilities raise energy costs, kill jobs and hurt poor families the most.

People resent being scammed and get angry when they realize their taxes and energy payments often line the pockets of climate activists, scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, and wind, solar and biofuel cronies.

Above all, a growing number see the proposed solutions as far worse than the wildly exaggerated and even fabricated climate disasters. They won’t tolerate having their livelihoods and living standards disrupted or destroyed by carbon taxes, even higher energy prices or fossil fuel bans – especially when the antipathy toward those fuels is combined with plans to terminate nuclear and even hydroelectric power.

In recent weeks, millions of mostly poor, working class and rural French citizens have joined the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement, protesting and even rioting against President Macron’s proposed carbon tax hikes on their driving and living standards. Even a French police union has sided with the protesters. A shaken Macron finally postponed the tax for six months, then scrapped the plan entirely.

The protests are the first serious backlash against international eco-imperialism. They won’t be the last.

In Africa alone, twice as many people as live in the USA still do not have electricity, or have it only rarely and unpredictably. Can you imagine your life without electricity? And yet they are told by the EU, environmentalists, the World Bank and others that they must restrict their ambitions to what is possible with wind, solar and biofuel energy. Would you accept such carbon colonialism? Can actual, real-world climate risks possibly be worse than the horrid poverty, deprivation and disease that afflicts them now?

The World Bank recently said it would kindly give poor countries $200 billion during its FY2021-25 cycle, for “adaptation and resilience” in the face of manmade climate change. But still nothing for fossil fuel or nuclear power. The White House should read it the riot act, especially if US money is involved.

Poor countries don’t need climate cash. They need to develop: energy, infrastructure, factories, jobs, health, living standards. They need to do what rich countries did to become rich – not what (some) rich countries are doing (or at least saying) now that they are rich. Thankfully, many are doing exactly that.

Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, motor fuels and factory power creates its own prosperity; its own ability to improve roads, hospitals, schools, homes and so on; its own “drop dead money” to tell carbon colonialists to take a hike. “Green” energy is insufficient, unsustainable and ecologically harmful.

With America likely being joined soon by Brazil in rejecting the Paris climate trap, poor nations are on firm ground. Ontario (Canada), Poland. Australia, China, India and other countries have also rejected carbon taxes and coal use restrictions. The Paris deal is fast becoming a climate Potemkin Village.

But what about that National Climate Assessment? Wasn’t that a Trump White House document? It certainly needed some adult supervision, to ride herd on the 1,000 Deep State scientists and bureaucrats who prepared it. However, the White House let them prove how loony climate alarmism has become.

Indeed, as Nick Loris, Roger Pielke, Jr. and other experts have pointed out, the NCA was based on absurd assumptions (eg, vastly increased coal use and no energy technology advances over the next 70 years) and a ridiculous worst-case global temperature increase of 15 degrees F by 2100. That’s twice as high as even the IPCC’s worst-case projections, and far worse than Garbage In-Garbage Out climate models are predicting. It’s more than 15 times the total warming our Earth has experienced since 1820!

The NCA is also based on rampant cherry-picking of data, to wildly inflate climate risks; an almost total failure to factor in the incalculable benefits of fossil fuels; and a refusal to consider the plant-fertilizing benefits of more atmospheric carbon dioxide. It just depicts the CO2 we exhale solely as a dangerous climate-changing pollutant. The NCA also ignored the fact that actual observations show no increases in drought, no increases in the frequency or magnitude of floods, no trends in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. It didn’t mention the 12-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes making US landfall.

Just as egregious, the Deep State NCA claimed continued fossil fuel use would hit the United States with $500 billion in annual climate related costs by 2090. That’s more than twice the percentage lost during the Great Depression. It’s 10% of the US economy in 1971. Even with modest economic growth, it’s likely to be a trivial 0.6% of America’s GDP in 2090. The NCA bogeyman is a little stuffed bear.

But based on IPCC and NCA fear mongering, America and the world are supposed to keep their fossil fuels in the ground – including what the US Geological Survey says is the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed!!” Over 46 billion barrels of oil, 280 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids in just part of the Texas-New Mexico Permian Basin.

No one denies that the climate changes, or even that human activities have some effects on climate and weather. But there is no real-world evidence that human CO2 emissions have replaced the sun and other natural forces; that another degree of warming would be cataclysmic; or that humans can control climate changes and weather events by tweaking the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Via email





US Leads the World in Cutting CO2 Emissions While Most Countries Go the Opposite Way

The United Nations is urging countries to pursue more aggressive emissions-cutting policies to keep post-Industrial Revolution global warming under 2 degrees Celsius.

The U.N. released a report Tuesday that says the world must revamp efforts several times what they are currently to avoid climate change's worst effects.

The United States leads developed countries in cutting emissions. President Donald Trump ignited a furor in the environmental community when he announced he would pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The agreement outlined strategies and goals for combatting climate change, but the deal, without an enforcement mechanism, has done little to reduce the world's carbon output.

Most countries continue to increase their carbon emissions.

China, the largest contributor to increasing emissions, has said it will continue to increase emissions for several more years before peaking and focusing on reducing emissions.

India will continue to develop and increase its fossil fuel use.

European countries increased emissions by 1.5 percent in 2017 on average, according to an annual report by British Petroleum.

Germany and France, both attempting to ratchet up environmental policies, increased emissions by 0.1 and 2 percent, respectively.

"The science is clear; for all the ambitious climate action we've seen - governments need to move faster and with greater urgency. We're feeding this fire while the means to extinguish it are within reach," U.N. Environment Deputy Executive Director Joyce Msuya said in a statement.

The U.N. blames the climate accord's failure on world leaders' reluctance to act. Most of the world's electricity and standard of living is propped up by fossil fuels, but recent reports have claimed that unchecked climate change will devastate the Earth with extreme heat, flooding and rampant poverty.

"The missing link here is leadership," U.N. Environment program officer Philip Drost told The Wall Street Journal.

"It's a matter of countries not yet wanting to take those bold steps. It is, of course, an incredibly difficult task to move from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a carbon-free economy."

The United States's emissions hit a near-seven decade low in 2017. The U.S. power sector has cut emissions by roughly 28 percent since 2005.

SOURCE 






Even Accelerated Energy Transition Can't Keep Global Warming Below 2 Degrees

Even an accelerated clean energy transition will fall short of the effort required to limit global warming to 2 degrees.

That's the headline finding of a new report by international energy market research firm Wood Mackenzie looking at electricity, mobility, energy efficiency and ongoing demand for oil.

The study compares a base case and a "Carbon-constrained" scenario. Even in a world where 100% of new vehicles in the U.S., EU and China are all electric by 2040, WoodMac forecasts that 2 degrees is beyond reach.

The 2 degrees figure is considered the global average warming that the world's societies, and economies, could reasonably bear. There were calls for this to set at 1.5. The target is a cornerstone of the UN's climate process which begins its latest round of negotiations in Katowice, Poland next week.

"The global energy transition will continue to progress, led in large part to technologies and decarbonization trends we're already seeing in the marketplace - the rise of renewables, growth in electric vehicles, electrification of end-use demand, increasing efficiency," said David Brown, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

That growth in renewables for Wood Mac's Carbon-constrained scenario is 11% annually until 2035. That leaves wind and solar with a 40% share of electricity production compared to 7% today.

The more ambitious scenarios brings forward the research firm's Peak Oil date by five years to 2031.

The report flags renewables as the big winner under the more ambitious conditions with coal the unrivaled loser. WoodMac predicts a global halving of demand by 2040, even with an effective carbon pricing mechanism.

The more ambitious scenario relies on certain assumptions and when matched against today's political reality a lack of urgency is exposed.

Brown adds:

Our carbon-constrained scenario pushes the boundaries of our base-case view to illustrate a world where these trends join, and potentially outstrip, policy as a key force behind decarbonisation.

Even with an accelerated pace of change, a `2 degree world' remains out of reach in our accelerated scenario. Much more needs to happen around lowering non-power sector emissions to achieve such an outcome. Political momentum will be crucial and at present climate leadership is lacking."

A report earlier this week from the German insurance giant Allianz found the U.S. to be sliding down the clean energy rankings among its G20 peers. It dropped to ninth position after cuts to Federal support for wind and solar. Investment for 2017 was $57 billion, one-third of the total needed to align with the commitments set out in the Paris Agreement.

France, Germany and the U.K. took the top three spots respectively.

SOURCE 






Cold Hard Facts for Climate Change Alarmists: Civilization Isn’t Ending – Not in 1985 and Not in 2100

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Sounds dire. A reaction to the National Climate Assessment published the day after Thanksgiving? No. Harvard biologist George Wald made that claim in 1970.

So if Wald had been correct, just about everything would have crumbled to ruin sometime between 1985 and 2000.

Wald, however, wasn’t alone. He and others came up with some incredibly over-the-top predictions as the 1960s came to a close.

“Earth Day” founder Denis Hayes, for example, didn’t hedge his bets: “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” Or take Paul Ehrlich (please). The author of 1968’s “The Population Bomb” was another gloom-and-doom prophet who made so many failed predictions over the years that it’s almost hard to keep count.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” he said in a 1970 interview. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.”

Off by about 180 degrees. Food production spiked in the ensuing years. And starvation on such a massive scale never materialized, thank God.

Many other examples could be cited (I haven’t even touched on predictions by global-warming luminaries such as Al Gore), but I hope the point is clear: Take sky-is-falling claims with a large grain of salt.

Particularly because they never seem to go out of style. You’d think, given the track record I’ve just referred to, that doomsayers would learn to temper their warnings, at least a little bit. But no. We see the same trend at work with the National Climate Assessment.

“Global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century,” we read in the 1,700-page report.

How substantial? As The New York Times noted: “All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.”

Sounds awful, to put it mildly. Then again, so did the first Earth Day predictions. And these latest claims are just as plausible, according to climate expert Nicolas Loris.

“The study … calculates these costs on the assumption that the world will be 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer,” he writes. “That temperature projection is even higher than the worst-case scenario predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“In other words, it is completely unrealistic.”

So where do these Chicken Little claims come from? In the report, climatologists lay out four possible future trajectories for the environment. Alarmists seized on the worst one.

It’s also the least likely. It assumes a combination of bad factors will somehow coincide – that global population will climb at the fastest-possible rate (about double the current amount), that technology will develop at the slowest-possible rate, and that world poverty will increase massively, along with energy use and emissions.

Would it be responsible to assume the best-case scenario? Of course not. But assuming the worst-case is no better. In fact, considering the policy changes that believers wind up pushing as a result – such as huge carbon taxes and giant subsidies for dubious “green” projects – it’s even less responsible.

Not that the alarmists need an excuse like the National Climate Assessment to make bad recommendations. Even before it came out, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had proposed a tax of between $135 and $5,500 per ton of carbon emissions by the year 2030.

“An energy tax of that magnitude would bankrupt families and businesses, and undoubtedly catapult the world into economic despair,” Loris writes.

If the doomsayers want to spread pessimism, that’s their business. But the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for it.

It’s time for the global-warming crowd to realize, once and for all, that civilization isn’t ending – not in 1985 and not in 2100. And those are the cold facts.

SOURCE   

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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10 December, 2018

Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018

Half the story again, in the usual Leftist way.  I have yet to see them give the whole story on anything.  They can't afford to. Reality is solidly against their dreams.

I am not for a minute going to challenge their claim of maximal CO2 levels this year.  CO2 has been rising fairly steadily for many years now.  But why does that matter?  CO2 is referred to only because of its supposed influence on the global temperature.  So it is the temperature that is the real issue. It is the temperature that is the important part of the story.  Warmist theory does say that as CO2 levels go up so will temperatures.  So were the temperatures in fact higher in 2018? 

We can check that.  Anyone can check that. Go here for the official GISS monthly temperature record.  You will see that in all months but one the 2018 temperatures were LOWER than 2016.  If we can take just one year as informative -- which Warmists regularly do -- the temperature is in fact FALLING!


Global emissions of carbon dioxide have reached the highest levels on record, scientists projected Wednesday, in the latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for combating climate change and what countries are actually doing.

Between 2014 and 2016, emissions remained largely flat, leading to hopes that the world was beginning to turn a corner. Those hopes have been dashed. In 2017, global emissions grew 1.6 percent. The rise in 2018 is projected to be 2.7 percent.

The expected increase, which would bring fossil fuel and industrial emissions to a record high of 37.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, is being driven by nearly 5 percent emissions growth in China and more than 6 percent in India, researchers estimated, along with growth in many other nations throughout the world. Emissions by the United States grew 2.5 percent, while emissions by the European Union declined by just under 1 percent.

As nations are gathered for climate talks in Poland, the message of Wednesday’s report was unambiguous: When it comes to promises to begin cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change, the world remains well off target.

‘‘We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change,’’ United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said this week at the opening of the 24th annual UN climate conference, where countries will wrestle with the ambitious goals they need to meet to sharply reduce carbon emissions in coming years.

‘‘It is hard to overstate the urgency of our situation,’’ he added. ‘‘Even as we witness devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption.’’

Guterres was not commenting specifically on Wednesday’s findings, which were released in a trio of scientific papers by researchers with the Global Carbon Project. But his words came amid a litany of grim news in the fall in which scientists have warned that the effects of climate change are no longer distant and hypothetical, and that the impacts of global warming will only intensify in the absence of aggressive international action.

Scientists have said that annual carbon dioxide emissions need to plunge almost by half by the year 2030 if the world wants to hit the most stringent — and safest — climate change target. That would be either keeping the Earth’s warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius — when it is already at 1 degrees — or only briefly ‘‘overshooting’’ that temperature.

More HERE 





Brendan Clark is a sad soul.  He is brimming over with hate

Brendan Clark [b.clark.ma@gmail.com] sent the following message to Marc Morano.  Most of the Left cannot argue.  Abuse is all they have.  It must be very uncomfortable to be so full of rage

Messaging you to let you know how much of a horrible person I believe you to be. The propaganda you spread is horrifying. I cannot wait for the day you die and are sent straight to hell, in fact I pray for it every day. From now on you will receive an email from me once a day until you are dead. Dont try to block me as I will just make a new email.
Go fuck your mother





America turned into a net oil exporter last week, breaking 75 years of continued dependence on foreign oil

The shift to net exports is the dramatic result of an unprecedented boom in American oil production, with thousands of wells pumping from the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico to the Bakken in North Dakota to the Marcellus in Pennsylvania.

While the country has been heading in that direction for years, this week’s dramatic shift came as data showed a sharp drop in imports and a jump in exports to a record high. Given the volatility in weekly data, the U.S. will likely remain a small net importer most of the time.

“We are becoming the dominant energy power in the world,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “But, because the change is gradual over time, I don’t think it’s going to cause a huge revolution, but you do have to think that OPEC is going to have to take that into account when they think about cutting.”

The shale revolution has transformed oil wildcatters into billionaires and the U.S. into the world’s largest petroleum producer, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. The power of OPEC has been diminished, undercutting one of the major geopolitical forces of the last half century. The cartel and its allies are meeting in Vienna this week, trying to make a tough choice to cut output and support prices, risking the loss of more market share to the U.S.

The U.S. sold overseas last week a net 211,000 barrels a day of crude and refined products such as gasoline and diesel, compared to net imports of about 3 million barrels a day on average so far in 2018, and an annual peak of more than 12 million barrels a day in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The EIA said the U.S. has been a net oil importer in weekly data going back to 1991 and monthly data starting in 1973. Oil historians that have compiled even older annual data using statistics from the American Petroleum Institute said the country has been a net oil importer since 1949, when Harry Truman was at the White House.


The massive Permian may be even bigger than previously thought. The Delaware Basin, the less drilled part of the field, holds more than twice the amount of crude as its sister, the Midland Basin, the U.S. Geological Service said Thursday.

While the net balance shows the U.S. is selling more petroleum than buying, American refiners continue to buy millions of barrels each day of overseas crude and fuel. The U.S. imports more than 7 million barrels a day of crude from all over the globe to help feed its refineries, which consume more than 17 million barrels each day. In turn, the U.S. has become the world’s top fuel supplier.

“The U.S. is now a major player in the export market,” said Brian Kessens, who helps manage $16 billion at Tortoise in Leawood, Kansas. “We continue to re-tool our export infrastructure along the Gulf Coast to expand capacity, and you continue to see strong demand globally for crude oil.”

On paper, the shift to net oil imports means that the U.S. is today energy independent, achieving a rhetorical aspiration for generations of American politicians, from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. Yet, it’s a paper tiger achievement: In reality, the U.S. remains exposed to global energy prices, still affected by the old geopolitics of the Middle East.

U.S. crude exports are poised to rise even further, with new pipelines from the Permian in the works and at least nine terminals planned that will be capable of loading supertankers. The only facility currently able to load the largest ships, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, is on pace to load more oil in December than it has in any other month.

SOURCE   






SCOTUS Rejects Ecofascist Challenge to Border Wall

President Trump gets an all-too-rare immigration win in the courts

A gaggle of three ecofascist groups just saw their hopes of preventing President Donald Trump from constructing a border wall based upon their environmental “concerns” rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices refused to take up the case in which California Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel had ruled in February in favor of Trump. Curiel determined that the president had not exceeded his powers and had the legal authority to waive environmental laws based upon a 1996 law that was designed to stem illegal immigration.

In his ruling, Curiel quoted Chief Justice John Roberts: “Court(s) are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgements. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” That was Roberts’s opinion in upholding ObamaCare despite clear constitutional reasons to strike it down, so Curiel’s choice of a quote was … interesting.

It’s important to note that it takes the approval of only four justices for a case to be heard before the High Court. Thus, the fact that not even four justices agreed to hear arguments sends the message that this case — obviously aimed at stymying Trump’s immigration-enforcement agenda — didn’t meet muster even for the Court’s left wing.

This is a clear win for Trump. It’s also ironic given that it originated with Curiel, a judge Trump previously criticized in a 2016 lawsuit regarding his now-defunct Trump University. At the time, Trump accused Curiel of being biased due to his Mexican heritage. But Curiel acted as any good judge should — upon the merits of the case as it relates to the law and not upon personal animus or bias.

Whether Trump gets congressional funding to build the wall is another matter entirely, but at least this roadblock cooked up by anti-Trump ecofascists has been removed.

SOURCE   






Barmaid Sandy declares climate change 'the civil rights movement of our generation'

It's just a political football

Liberal Democrats and environmental groups are urging the next Congress to do more to push back against the effects of climate change after watching the issue get sidelined over the first two years of the Trump administration.

Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont hosted a town hall Monday where he and other “climate justice” warriors, including Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, warned that the longer President Trump and elected leaders refuse to address the “great crisis,” the more that people, the planet and the economy will be hurt.

“The time is late,” Mr. Sanders said. “Countries all over the world are going to have to stand up [and] take on the fossil fuel industry if we are going to leave our kids and our grandchildren a planet that is habitable.

“This is a crisis situation,” he said. “It is unprecedented and we have got to act in an unprecedented way.”

The town hall event coincided with the start of the United Nations climate change summit in Poland and came about a month after Democrats took control of the House — leaving activists excited about the role that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other activists turned politicians could play in focusing more attention on the issue.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez highlighted her push for a “Green New Deal” that calls for a select committee to put together a plan to combat climate change by 2020.

“This is going to be the great society, the moon shot, the civil rights movement of our generation,” she said.

The calls for action on climate change spiked last month after 13 federal agencies released a report — the Fourth National Climate Change Assessment — that provided stark warnings about how rising temperatures could lead to more drought, fires and flooding, and devastate the economy and people’s health.

Mr. Trump, who has rolled back regulation targeting carbon emissions, dismissed the findings and GOP lawmakers have basically followed suit.

Likely contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination have pounced on the report, and the issue. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is slated on Tuesday to be in Iowa to screen a new documentary called “Paris to Pittsburgh” that highlights the impact of climate change and what people are doing to address the problem.

The title of the documentary, which Mr. Bloomberg helped finance, alludes to Mr. Trump’s announcement last year that he was pulling the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement because, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

“Iowans understand what too many leaders in Washington don’t: Fighting climate change is good for our health and our economy,” Mr. Bloomberg said Monday in a Des Moines Register op-ed.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, another likely 2020 contender introduced legislation this year that would mandate public companies disclose more information about their exposure to climate-related risks. Half the bill’s eight co-sponsors — Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Kamala D. Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — are thought to be lining up presidential bids.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, has called on her caucus to revive a select committee on climate change that was defunded when Republicans took over the chamber, and others have vowed to tackle the issue in congressional hearings.

It remains to be seen how much could change legislatively in Washington next year — particularly with Republicans calling the shots in the Senate.

What is clear is that climate is poised to get more of a look in the Democrat-controlled House, where lawmakers already are laying out plans to hold a series of congressional hearings on the subject early next year.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez helped thrust the issue into the headlines last month when she joined grass-roots activists protesting outside Mrs. Pelosi’s office last month demanding more action on climate change.

“I believe that the progressive movement is the only movement that has answers right now,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said Monday.

SOURCE   






The Climate Change Ignorance Of Millenials

If the hair doesn’t go up on the back of your neck when reading this sort of thing, it damn well should.

It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.

Oh really?

The entire premise rests on the belief that there are exponential tipping points beyond which there is no redemption, ever, when it comes to climate — and we’re driving the Earth’s systems in the direction that will reach them.

Let me point that there is no scientific evidence for that position.  None whatsoever.

There is, however, nearly-irrefutable evidence for the converse.  It rests in the fact that we’re here, today, on this rock.

What am I referring to?  What are known in concert as buffering reactions.

The Earth possesses them as does every living thing on the planet both through physical chemistry and, in the case of living things, biological process. This is irrefutable fact.

You are alive because of such buffering reactions.  One of hundreds in your body, which is a complex biochemical process, deals with respiration.  The process of biochemical reactions that produce energy in your body result in CO2 and other waste products (uric acid, etc) being released.

The CO2 in the blood stream is a dissolved gas and dissolving a gas disassociates the ions in question; the result is a small amount of CH2O3, or carbonic acid, being present in the blood.  That in turn slightly lowers blood pH since acids, by definition, have a lower than neutral pH.

Your body reacts to this by increasing the respiration (breathing) rate.  The CO2 is thus expelled from the body and the carbonic acid is removed, slightly raising the pH of the blood.  Your breathing then slows.

Let me emphasize something here: The change in pH as a result of this process is extremely small; normal blood pH ranges from 7.35 to 7.45 (7.0 is neutral.)

Yet your body, indeed that of every animal that respires, is tuned to these extraordinarily small changes and responds with a buffering reaction that attempts to reverse that change.  It does so automatically and immediately — within seconds.

Most people believe that the body keeps arterial O2 saturation in the blood at almost-100% by direct biochemical measurement.  Not so.  This is why you will suffocate silently and painlessly if you breathe an atmosphere that has no oxygen in it.

Your body doesn’t think anything is wrong because there is no increase in CO2 level nor change in blood pH, there is no respiratory response or distress (breathing faster trying to get what little O2 may exist), you just pass out and die.

Now if you are chronically diseased (such as by smoking for decades) then this reaction will become damaged.  Normally, without a secondary mechanism to regulate respiration, that condition would immediately kill you as your O2 saturation would fall below lethal limits or your blood pH would go out of the required range to support life.

It doesn’t, because the body has a secondary mechanism; it can directly determine O2 saturation to some degree and if your CO2 sensing mechanism is damaged to the point that it doesn’t function properly it is capable of taking over sufficiently to keep you alive.  But that “backup” is much slower, much less-precise and your exercise tolerance is essentially zero if your body is using that mechanism.

The Earth has thousands of such buffering reactions.  The oceans, specifically and just as one of these reactions, have an utterly enormous amount of carbonate dissolved in them.  You might recognize that word, and you should, because it’s the same molecule — CO2 — that is dissolved in the blood.

The oceans (indeed, all bodies of water) constantly exchange CO2 with the atmosphere.  This is known.  But what’s not known well at all is exactly what sort of boundaries are on this reaction, where equilibrium points are, what shifts said equilibrium points, or what the shape of the curve looks like in the actual world rather than in a laboratory.

It’s a hell of a lot more-complex than it first appears and there’s a damn good argument to be made that this singular buffering reaction is largely responsible for the possibility of life on this rock.

Throughout the history of the planet some extremely large disruptive events have happened.  Very large volcanic eruptions that make anything experienced in the history books look like firecrackers and asteroid strikes to name two.  We know these happened because they leave behind direct evidence, and we know roughly when they happened.

In the absence of buffering reactions within the larger context of the planet’s chemistry life on this rock would have been extinguished millions of years ago and this would be a lifeless rock.  It wasn’t and isn’t.

Now it is absolutely true that the Earth cannot support unlimited and permanent exponential population growth of any species.

There is no such thing as permanent exponential growth of anything, ever, period.  You must stop such growth voluntarily at some point or you will be forced to stop by a foldback event where you cannot support what you grew.  This is true for populations and it is true for economies.

Governments refuse to accept this and make promises based on the belief they can violate this law of mathematics.  They’re not just “wrong” by accident either — they know they’re lying.

As I pointed out in Leverage behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy.  Energy can neither be created or destroyed; it can be exchanged through nuclear reactions with matter (E = MC^2 and all) but if stored by some process and then released it is inherently dissipated back into the environment. 

Sequestering the product somewhere (again) also requires energy from some other place; CO2 is sequestered into plant material by solar energy as just one example. All chemical reactions have (although often omitted when not being quoted by a chemist or other scientist) an energy term in joules/mol — either liberated or required.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.

While it would be nice to postulate that we will come up with some sort of Star Trek technology improvement before we hit the natural limits and foldback points of exponential expansion, especially of people, that’s not exactly comforting.

Maybe we will and maybe we won’t, but history suggests it will be won’t and we’ll get the nasty.  Nature has a way of doing that, and the “nasty” is frequently something like the plague that kills off a material percentage of the population!

In point of fact warming and higher CO2 levels are, on a planetary scale, beneficial.  Higher atmospheric CO2 levels make plants grow faster, which is good if you need them to either feed people directly or feed animals that then feed people.  In addition while warmer temperatures will shift crop production they too are beneficial in that longer growing seasons also improve crop yields.

While it is absolutely true that severe warming would inundate certain areas that’s a local issue, not a global one.  On a global — not local — basis if you are interested in trying to sustain an exponential population growth pattern for a longer period of time you want more CO2 in the atmosphere and you want a warmer climate — period.

This is a function of math, not politics.

If you could stop warming and CO2 emission then you need to also not only stop population growth you must kill off a material percentage of the people already here.  Those screamers who are hollering “emergency!” are in fact intending to do exactly that as it is the only way to get where they want to go.  What they won’t discuss is exactly who and how they intend to murder.  May I remind you that at least Hitler was quite clear in who he intended to (and did) target?

But for the globull-warming screamers as I noted recently in this column the more-likely scenario — by far — is that we’re setting up for a Maunder Minimum sort of event and there is nothing we can do about it since the source is that nuclear-fusion-based flaming ball in the sky commonly called “the Sun.”

If if in fact we are at the entry to a prolonged period of much less solar sunspot activity then the decrease in radiation absorbed by the planet will produce not warming but cooling which will utterly decimate global crop production and kill a couple of billion people.

Most of those who die won’t be in the “developed” world; the United States and Europe are capable of producing sufficient food, even with crop yields well below current levels, to avoid a famine-style problem.  Other parts of the world have managed to survive exponential population growth by importing food from places like the United States and if a Maunder Minimum style event comes to pass that source will be cut off because we will need that food here.

Thinking though the implications of that sort of thing ought to sober you up fast.  See, starving people do desperate things, and in a world where advanced, mass-destructive weaponry is not only fairly common it can be stolen and “proliferated” if you think such an event is going to take place without at least some of the starving trying to take what they need by force you also need to become a better student of history.

SOURCE   

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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9 December, 2018

Sir David Attenborough: Climate change 'our greatest threat'

What drives this nonagenarian  propagandist?  For a start, he has always been a Greenie.  His lifelong work of documenting the natural world predisposes him to that.  The natural world is obviously his love. So any apparent threat to the natural world has him come out fighting.  

But it is worse than that.  Being in favour of the natural world has also made him  a misanthrope.  His love of nature seems to have made him an enemy of people.  He has repeatedly said that there are too many of us and he supports just about every measure that would put a lid on the human population.

But to do that you need control and global warming is the main hope of controlling people in democratic societies.  So he pushes that gospel relentlessly.

He obviously hopes that his acclaim as a naturalist might cause him to be seen as an authority. But taking pictures of interesting animals does not make you a scientist.  And he obviously knows nothing of the science of the matter. He could not be so sweeping if he did.  Note for example the much discussed paper by Fyfe et al in which a large group  of Warmist scientists discuss the fact that temperatures did not rise as they should in the early 21st century.  It was about as UNsweeping as you can get.  In its conclusiion it speaks of "the EMBRYONIC field of decadal climate prediction".  The way Attenborough talks has nothing in common with the rightfully cautious way scientists talk.

And there is an element of hypocrisy in where Attenborough lives.  He wants us all to live in  some sort of Green Eden But he does not practice what he preaches. He lives in polluted old London despite his proclaimed love of natural environments. He could go much nearer to practicing what he preaches by living in the Southland of New Zealand -- infinitely more pristine and naturally beautiful than London. And they even have good internet access there and speak English. And you can definitely drink the water. He might also discover what fresh food tastes like in New Zealand


The naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said climate change is humanity's greatest threat in thousands of years.

The broadcaster said it could lead to the collapse of civilisations and the extinction of "much of the natural world".

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

The meeting is the most critical on climate change since the 2015 Paris agreement.

Sir David said: "Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.

"If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

The naturalist is taking up the "People's Seat" at the conference, called COP24. He is supposed to act as a link between the public and policy-makers at the meeting.

"The world's people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now," he said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said climate change was already "a matter of life and death" for many countries.

He explained that the world is "nowhere near where it needs to be" on the transition to a low-carbon economy.

But the UN Secretary-General said the conference was an effort to "right the ship" and he would convene a climate summit next year to discuss next steps.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has announced $200bn in funding over five years to support countries taking action against climate change.

SOURCE   






The Green Agenda Burns to Ashes in Paris

Macron has completely backed off his fuel tax increasses

A riot is an ugly thing.

The anarchical mayhem in the streets of Paris in recent days paint a picture of a fractured society with deep-seated problems—a breakdown of the fragile yet essential rule of law.

While we’ve come to expect such things in France, there are specific reasons why these protests have erupted in the last month.

The “climate” agenda, peddled as a means to save the planet and reduce inequality, is being exposed in France as an agenda inherently at odds with the interests of middle- and working-class people.

Last year, a wide range of American and international media, celebrities, and activists excoriated President Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the international Paris climate agreement. Trump said in 2017 that he would put “no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens” and that he would reject an agreement that would force taxpayers to “absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”

Former Vice President and climate change activist Al Gore said at the time that leaving the deal was a “reckless and indefensible action.”

But Americans may in fact have a better grasp of their interests than a tiny elite across the pond and in America’s powerful media institutions. For proof, look to the streets of Paris.

Paris is now burning, and French President Emmanuel Macron, who was once widely praised as a kind of “centrist” savior of the global community, is in hot political waters.

Macron’s approval ratings sit at 23 percent in a recent poll, according to Reuters, a new low for his presidency. The “yellow vest” protesters, as they’ve been called, have forced his administration to back off its proposed new gas and utility taxes.

The protesters appear to come from a vast swath of French society and don’t fit neatly on the ideological spectrum. They’ve rebelled against high taxes while also calling for increases in the minimum wage.

Alas, the consequences of living in a society where the government is involved in every aspect of a person’s life.

“France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike,” read an editorial for The Wall Street Journal. “Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation.”

France’s widespread use of nuclear power has allowed it to move a bit further away from the carbon economy in terms of energy costs, but its transportation sector is still highly reliant on oil, The Wall Street Journal noted.

Nicolas Loris, an economist and regulatory expert at The Heritage Foundation, highlighted the widespread economic harm that’s caused by “green” policies:

Global warming regulations for new and existing power plants will drive electricity bills higher for families and businesses. Fuel efficiency mandates for cars, trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles increase the up-front cost of vehicles by thousands of dollars. Methane regulations on oil and gas would introduce burdensome, complex processes that would likely slow the industry’s current efforts to reduce emissions, which have been falling for decades.

For the average person, the cost of the war on climate change can be severe.

In a country like France, which is already dealing with economic hardship, low growth, and high joblessness rates, you have a recipe for disaster.

Maybe there is something to be said about leaders asserting national self-interest after all.

The shocking images of riots are nevertheless emblematic of the collapse of the green agenda and the animosity it engenders from the people it harms: the forgotten men—squeezed by regulations and taxes—who don’t count themselves among the privileged few who receive generous green energy subsidies.

In France, many see this dysfunctional system as inevitable and unchangeable without extreme recourse.

Certainly, we should deplore the mobs and destruction of property. In America, we’d hope that our differences can be solved through elections, deliberation, and peaceful protest, if necessary.

This is certainly possible as long as we maintain our constitutional system and a cultural respect for the rule of law that the Founding Fathers and generations of Americans blessed us with.

While France’s economy is stagnant, the U.S. economy has been booming—in part due to the flourishing oil industry and the curtailment of regulations that were a hallmark of the Obama era.

Are the conditions in Europe really what we want to replicate in the U.S.?

California is going down this path, and perhaps the new Congress will as well. But the chaos in France should serve as a stern warning of what lies down the road.

SOURCE   






Resources Are Almost 5 Times as Abundant as They Were in 1980

Humanity is enjoying a world of increasingly cheap and ever more abundant mineral, argicultural, forestry and energy resources reports a brilliant new study, the Simon Abundance Index. This analysis by Marian Tupy,* editor of Human Progress at the Cato Institute, and Professor Gale Pooley from Brigham Young University – Hawaii uses data on 50 different commodities to track their price trajectories over the past 37 years from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They find in real price terms their basket of commodities decreased by an average of 36.3 percent between 1980 and 2017.

That's great, but their breakthrough insight is that, since 1980, global real hourly income rate per capita has grown by more than 80 percent, which means that the commodities that took 60 minutes of work to buy in 1980 now take only 21 minutes of labor to buy in 2017. As a result, the "time-price" of their basket of commodities has fallen by 64.7 percent.

Tupy and Pooley also devise a price elasticity of population (PEP) measure that finds that resource abundance increases faster than population does. In economics, they explain, elasticity is a measure of a variable's sensitivity to a change in another variable. They report:

Between 1980 and 2017, the time-price of our basket of commodities declined by 64.7 percent. Over the same time period, the world's population increased from 4.46 billion to 7.55 billion. That's a 69.3 percent increase. The PEP indicates that the time-price of our basket of commodities declined by 0.934 percent for every 1 percent increase in population.

[P]eople often assume that population growth leads to resource depletion. We found the opposite. Over the past 37 years, every additional human being born on our planet appears to have made resources proportionately more plentiful for the rest of us.

Tupy and Pooley combine their findings with regard to time-price and PEP trends to derive the Simon Abundance Index (SAI). The index is named in honor of University of Maryland economist Julian Simon. Simon famously bet Stanford University population bomber Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues that the real prices of a basket of commodities chosen by Ehrlich priced $1,000 would decline between 1980 and 1990. In October 1990, Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07, meaning that the price of the commodities had fallen by more than 50 percent.

The new SAI, explain Tupy and Pooley, represents the ratio of the change in population over the change in the time-price, times 100, with the base year at 1980 and a base value of 100. They report that "between 1980 and 2017, resource availability increased at a compounded annual growth rate of 4.32 percent. That means that the Earth was 379.6 percent more abundant in 2017 than it was in 1980."

They also report that the SAI rose to 479.6 in 2018, meaning the Earth was nearly five times more plentiful with respect to the 50 commodities they track than it it was when Ehrlich and Simon laid their famous wager. What about the future? Tupy and Pooley calculate if current trends continue that "our planet will be 83 percent more abundant in 2054 than it was in 2017."

"The world is a closed system in the way that a piano is a closed system. The instrument has only 88 notes, but those notes can be played in a nearly infinite variety of ways. The same applies to our planet," write the authors. "The Earth's atoms may be fixed, but the possible combinations of those atoms are infinite. What matters, then, is not the physical limits of our planet, but human freedom to experiment and reimagine the use of resources that we have."

The SAI devised by Tupy and Pooley elegantly refutes the primitive zero-sum intuitions peddled by the likes of Ehrlich and his acolytes that afflict so much of popular and policy discourse with respect to population and resource availability trends.

SOURCE   






Electric Vehicle Subsidies Benefit Wealthiest Americans, Produce Next to No Climate Benefit

Frustrated with General Motors Co.’s recent announcement of plant closures and layoffs, President Donald Trump said the administration is now looking at cutting at subsidies to the automaker, including for electric vehicles.

Good. Families should be empowered to purchase the car they want without nudging from Washington and the financial help of their fellow taxpayers.

Electric vehicle handouts subsidize the wealthiest Americans and, despite their being advertised as a more “climate-friendly” option, they produce next to no climate benefit for the planet.

Trump does not quite have the power to cut GM’s current electric vehicles subsidies full stop. But he could play an important role in the future of the targeted tax subsidy.

Both federal and state governments have generous handouts for electric vehicles. The federal tax credit extends up to $7,500 and applies to the first 200,000 electric vehicles per manufacturer, and then a phaseout of the credit begins.

Tesla is in the phaseout period now, and General Motors Co. is close to hitting the 200,000 mark.

Congress is considering a larger package to revive and extend special tax breaks that use the tax code to pick winners and losers.

Some members want to include a permanent extension of the $7,500 tax credit and to lift the 200,000 cap. An unlimited subsidy would be a massively expensive bill for taxpayers and a win for cronyism that awards money based on preferential treatment, rather than the competitive process.

Furthermore, extending the subsidy would continue to take decision rights away from car buyers and leave them in the hands of the federal government.

The federal government uses a number of policy levers to nudge (or force) consumers to use the technology or fuel source of its choice. Whether it’s a mandate to blend corn into our fuel supply or a government-backed loan for an electric vehicle company, each time the government presses its thumbs on the scales to direct investment, it disempowers consumers and impedes innovation.

Rather than extend the tax credit for electric vehicles, Congress should eliminate preferential treatment for all energy sources and technologies. That way, innovative companies will be chasing after the preferences of consumers rather than the next handout from Washington.

Car buyers have a number of different reasons for purchasing a specific car or truck and may have different reason for purchasing alternative-fuel vehicles.

Families will be better served when Washington isn’t telling consumers what type of vehicle to buy and why, especially when politicians, bureaucrats, and other so-called “experts” get those justifications for switching to alternative vehicles flat-out wrong.

For instance, one alleged justification for switching from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric ones is the climate benefit. Earlier this year, The Guardian wrote, “Switching to electric cars is key to fixing America’s ‘critically insufficient’ climate policies.” The Obama administration included the adoption of electric vehicles as a way it was responsibly combating climate change.

But the numbers tell a different story. Jonathan Lesser, an economist and the president of Continental Resources, calculated the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from increased adoption of electric vehicles in a May 2018 study for the Manhattan Institute.

Lesser found that “electric vehicles will reduce them, compared to new internal-combustion vehicles. But based on the [Energy Information Administration’s] projection of the number of new electric vehicles, the net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions between 2018 and 2050 would be only about one-half of 1 percent of total forecast U.S. energy-related carbon emissions. Such a small change will have no impact whatsoever on climate … .”

Similarly, according to recent data compiled by analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, “an electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine’s emissions.” Mining of materials for, and the manufacturing of, lithium-ion batteries is quite carbon dioxide intensive. Plugging into an electric grid powered by coal doesn’t help, either.

The fact that the emissions output is close to a toss-up goes to show how meaningless the climate abatement of switching to electric vehicles is.

January 2019 will bring a divided Congress and plenty of time for disagreement. But one issue that unites the far left and the far right is opposition to corporate cronyism. Electric vehicle subsidies are just that.

The subsidies accrue to carmakers and America’s wealthiest households, which can also afford an electric vehicle without any help from other taxpayers.

A good New Year’s resolution for the outgoing Congress and the new members should be a commitment to end corporate welfare. Not extending bad policies that pick winners and losers is a good place to start.

Nicolas Loris, an economist, focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues as the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

SOURCE   






Another hitchiker on the climate change bandwagon

Advocating for “reproductive rights” is the key to stopping climate change, a hip-hop artist/environmental activist declared at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) climate town hall Monday.

Hip-hop artist and Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez told Sanders’ town hall audience that gender equality, in the form of reproductive rights like abortion and contraception, is “one of the best ways to address our climate crisis”:

“This is the most important issue of our time because it connects every other issue.

“You know, if you care about gender equality, you know, some of the most recent studies, including [author] Paul Hawken in the “Drawdown,” was talking about how one of the best ways to address our climate crisis is to educate women and advocate for their reproductive rights.”

Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced “Shoe-Tez-Caht”) said that reproductive rights and climate change are directly connected because climate change is an “umbrella crisis”:

“That’s a direct line of intersection between these two movements, because climate change is that thing, is that umbrella crisis, that is more than we have ever successfully communicated it to be."

SOURCE   

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************






5 December, 2018

Thank God for President Trump!

By economic historian Martin Hutchinson

This column has on a number of occasions been critical of President Donald Trump; his views on interest rates are especially unenlightened. Yet in two crucial areas, where corporate interests and the intelligentsia had spread a deep fog of deliberate lies to smother intelligent global discourse, Trump has acted as a mighty wind of clarity and illumination. I refer of course to those twin scourges of our times: global warming hysteria and excessive legal and illegal immigration.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) was released last week; it followed three previous NCAs, in 2000, 2009 and 2013, and is issued on behalf of a consortium of 13 government agencies. The process of producing it is thus not subject to proper political review, but merely wastes government money, whatever administration happens to be in power at the time.

Being unconstrained by commercial, political or academic considerations, the authors of the study are free to indulge their wildest fantasies. Every sentence of the language in the Executive Summary is extreme; there is no such thing as a moderate problem, and the study projects a temperature rise by 2100 of 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than even the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, another body whose members all lose their job if the climate change problem is decided to be a modest one.

I am not a climate scientist. But I was in my time a pretty fair mathematician, taking a considerable interest in the early iterations of large mathematical models. I spoke publicly at a 1971 meeting demonstrating the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” model, pointing out that its simulations, run 40 years forward, all included error terms that had exploded exponentially off the page – I had experienced the same phenomenon myself; with the primitive computer science of that time it was difficult to cure. But it meant that, whatever unrealistic improvements in technology they inputted, catastrophe of one kind or another followed within 40 years, according to the model, i.e. around 2012. Needless to say, since the disasters were not even a figment of computer programmers’ imagination but an artifact of sheer random mathematical error, they have failed to occur.

I very much suspect that something similar has gone wrong with NCA4’s model. This could have two possible causes. One would again be exploding error terms (but surely, 47 years later, such eminent people know how to solve that problem by now.) The other would because there is a hidden factor in the model causing the equations to “fall off a cliff,” undergoing a mathematical catastrophe, and the modelers are either hiding this or inserted it by accident.

You see, I don’t have too much problem with NCA4’s “Higher” scenario (RCP 8.5) in which carbon emissions spiral out of control and the planet warms like a meatball in a wok, by 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Yes, that would be catastrophic, and if we see carbon emissions spiraling out of control, we must prevent them from doing so. 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit, NCA4’s “headline” number is probably too high, just because of the way these people operate, but I can’t prove them wrong.

No, the problem I have is with the much lower emission “Lower” scenario, in which emissions drop back somewhat from current levels, and overall average about the same level as they have over the last century. Almost all natural phenomena are approximately linear; indeed it is very difficult to make these models stray far from linearity, and if they do, you have probably done something wrong. So, if the input assumption is that carbon emissions are at the average level of the last century, then the “null hypothesis” output would be warming at the same rate as the last century. We are told that the planet has warmed by 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit between the 1900-60 average and the 1986-2016 average, a period of 70 years between the midpoint of those two intervals (there have been problems with climate scientists fudging temperature measurements in recent years but let that pass.) Hence in the 99 years between 1986-2016 and 2085-2115 (the period centered on 2100) the null hypothesis, given that carbon emissions have not changed, would be warming of 1.2 x 99/70 = 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.95 degrees Celsius. Such a large system will have a high level of hysteresis, so you can be pretty sure that the warming by 2100 would be between say 1.3 and 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.7 to 1.15 degrees Celsius.) A warming of this magnitude would have little effect on our lives; the oceans would rise by at most a foot or so (so put sandbags on the levees) and some Northerly regions would become more fertile (you might consider a flutter in southern Greenland real estate!)

But the NCA4 model says that under the “Lower” scenario assumption, the temperature in 2070-2100 will be 2.8-7.3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today, or somewhere between double and quintuple the linear rate of increase. That is frankly not credible. There is some assumption in the model which makes its output wildly non-linear, or its error term is exploding.

After 30 years, you would think that climate scientists could have devised a model that would operate plausibly and produce output values that a simple mathematical analysis as above could not prove to be invalid. The fact that they haven’t proves that they don’t want to; they are paid very well, at taxpayer expense to produce alarmist results, and they will use the model as a “black box” to do so and alarm the more gullible laymen. 30 years of this nonsense is enough; it is time that the immense expenditure of taxpayer resources and forest of immeasurably expensive climate control regulations were cut right back, or preferably eliminated altogether. An ordinary Republican President, a feeble Bush, McCain or Romney, would not have dared buck the consensus of expensive “experts” and point out that the climate change Emperor has no clothes. President Trump has done so, repeatedly and loudly, and therefore in this area at least we can say: Thank God for President Trump!

SOURCE 






Trump Stands Tall at G-20 Summit, Refuses To Give In to Paris Agreement Pressure

President Donald Trump refused to sign the United States onto a non-binding agreement in support of the Paris agreement on climate change at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

The AP also reported the Trump administration changed the language on trade due to its ongoing tariff battles with other nations.

“Applause rose up in the hall Saturday as the leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, signed off on a final statement at the end of a two-day summit,” the AP reported.

“The statement acknowledges flaws in the world trading system and calls for reforming the World Trade Organization. It doesn’t mention protectionism however, because negotiators said the U.S. had resisted that.

“The statement says 19 of the members reiterated their commitment to the Paris climate accord but the U.S. reiterates its decision to withdraw.”

In terms of tariffs, the G-20 meeting also produced some movement on the trade standoff between the United States and China.

According to a statement issued by the White House, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement under which there would be a ceasefire of sorts in terms of new levies.

“On Trade, President Trump has agreed that on January 1, 2019, he will leave the tariffs on $200 billion worth of product at the 10% rate, and not raise it to 25% at this time,” the statement said.

“China will agree to purchase a not yet agreed upon, but very substantial, amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries.”

In addition, the statement said that the two leaders “have agreed to immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft, services and agriculture.”

Xi also agreed to harsher criminal penalties on the production of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid of which China is a major producer.

On the Paris agreement, however, the Trump administration was going it alone — which should be fine when you consider that the United States reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other nation last year without being a part of the climate change agreement.

The rejection also came on the same week as an interview with The Washington Post in which the president disputed the findings of a government report on climate change.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers” in the impacts of man-made climate change, Trump said.

“You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean. “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it.”

SOURCE 






How the Trump Administration Flubbed the New National Climate Assessment

Last Friday the Trump Administration published the latest in a series of reports mandated by Congress called the National Climate Assessment. Like most anything concerning climate change, the report was primarily political in intent. The report emphasized all the allegedly adverse effects that climate change would supposedly result in and did not examine whether the cost of reducing warming would exceed the benefits of doing so. It was prepared by 13 Federal agencies and was set in motion during the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration claims that it never reviewed the report before it was published and that it represented the views of its bureaucratic authors from 13 different departments and recruited from the outside world. The report has been unusually strongly criticized by climate skeptics as highly inaccurate with false conclusions. This is highly unusual since major reports are normally reviewed with great care before being published for political and other viewpoints. President Trump has since said that he did not believe the report.

There is some indication that the report was not exactly an honest description of what the bureaucracy thought since the staff that prepared it included some climate activists and featured some research that was funded by noted activists like Tom Steyer. This suggests that a significant part of the problem was inattention by the Trump Administration. For this the Trump Administration itself bears the responsibility.

The Administration now has a problem since some Democrats say they will use the report to oppose a number of the Trump Administration’s attempts to weaken a number of the Obama climate regulations that they have proposed, including using the report to persuade courts to reinstate the original Obama Administration regulations. All this was quite foreseeable. So why did the Administration publish the report without reviewing it? Was it because it was not paying attention to what the bureaucracy was doing? This is hard to believe, but appears now to be the case. One obvious possibility is that they wanted to avoid the charge that they had “corrupted” the report writing process. But the costs are likely to be high. Another possibility is that Acting Administrator Wheeler did not want to endure questions about possible intervention at his confirmation hearing. But the evidence appears to suggest inattention by the Trump Administration was the major problem.

The more normal process is for an administration to make sure that major reports exactly correspond to its policy and technical views before publishing it. This is a far better approach in my view. Then there is no confusion as to whether the report really represents the Administration’s views and cannot be used against it. And it does not later have to disown it, as they have already started to do. It clearly would have been worth the extra effort in this case. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump Administration blew it.

SOURCE 






Former Scott Pruitt Aide Cleared of Wrongdoing, But the Democrat Who Accused Her Remains Silent

More Leftist lies

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper has been silent on news that federal investigators could not substantiate allegations he brought against former EPA political appointee Samantha Dravis.

Dravis, however, called the allegations against her “unfounded from the start.” EPA investigators found no support for accusations she skipped work for a three-month period.

“The inspector general process should be used to investigate credible ethical breaches, not smear and destroy political enemies,” Dravis told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“This was an allegation that was completely unfounded from the start, and entirely contradicted by the record,” said Dravis, who served as the EPA’s senior counsel and associate administrator of the policy office.

Carper did not respond to multiple requests for comment, despite being the reason EPA officials investigated Dravis’ attendance while she worked for former Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Carper is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A source close to the matter told TheDCNF that one of Carper’s staffers openly bragged about sparking an investigation into Dravis. That same staffer also asked Dravis’ associates for help accessing her personal photos on social media, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Carper asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General in March to investigate whether Dravis missed three months of work while still collecting a paycheck. Carper’s letter does not reveal his source, but Democrats eventually disclosed it was one among many accusations leveled by whistleblower Kevin Chmielewski.

Chmielewski gave Democrats a laundry list of accusations against Pruitt and his close aides, including Dravis. The former EPA official told Democrats “for a period of weeks, he did not personally see Samantha Dravis” at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Pruitt resigned in July as allegations of ethical misconduct and mismanagement piled up. However, a number of Chmielewski’s claims against Pruitt’s aides didn’t add up under closer scrutiny.

Dravis left the EPA in April while investigators were still investigating claims she was absent from work for three months. For months, Dravis and her family were distressed, and forced to spend thousands on legal fees to deal with the investigation.

However, the OIG could not substantiate Chmielewski’s claim that Dravis was absent for weeks at a time.

“Investigators interviewed witnesses, who stated that the employee was often in the EPA office and attended meetings during that time frame,” OIG wrote in a report submitted to Congress on Thursday.

“Investigators reviewed records, which showed that the employee worked during the time specified,” the OIG reported. “Witnesses also stated that the employee did not have subordinates conduct menial tasks. During an interview, the subject denied both allegations. The allegations were not supported.”

Dravis’ former co-workers took to Twitter to castigate Carper for sparking the investigation.

SOURCE 






Climate Change carbon taxation leading to French Revolution II: Vive la France!

You may not have heard, but anti-government riots are breaking out in Paris, France as a consequence of climate change carbon taxes. That consequence, of course, is higher fuel prices, which have added additional financial burdens to one of Europe’s heavily taxed populations.

France’s socialist government has increased taxes on pensions, elevated estate taxes, and introduced employer income tax withholding.

In Paris, some 300,000 protesters, clad in yellow safety vests, responded by blocking traffic intersections at more than 2,000 locations. But the government in Paris has signaled it intends to continue enforcing its edicts to reduce the carbon footprints of its subjects.

France’s Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, sounding a little like Marie Antoinette, tells a Parisian television station that… “… the course we set is good and we will keep it. It’s not when the wind blows that you change course.”

That’s socialist apparatchik for, “Let them eat cake.”

Hopping mad in Paris

A demonstration in France’s Le Puy-en-Velay turned violent when demonstrators set fire to government offices. Other protesters clashed with police on the fashionable Champs-Élysées. Vandals sprayed graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe, which honors those who fought and died in the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Their message reading,

“Yellow Vests Will Triumph.”

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************



4 December, 2018

Accident Leads to Incredible Discovery, Regrowing Coral Reefs Like Never Before

When you have a task to complete, many times it seems best to hunker down and focus solely on finishing that task until it's done. Whether that's writing a novel, making sales calls or writing lesson plans, putting everything else out of your mind and getting to work is a proven means to accomplish your goals.

When you have blinders or tunnel vision, though, you often forget to stop to smell the roses or see what's going on around you and what valuable lessons or insights you might be missing.

Plenty of scientists have made discoveries by accident, and have found useful inventions or information in their pursuit of something completely different. That's how we've gotten duct tape, super glue and even microwaves.

Now another scientist, Dr. David Vaughan, has made a discovery that could potentially regrow coral reefs in a fraction of the time it would normally take. According to BBC, it started with brokenness.

"Little did I know that one elkhorn coral attached itself to the bottom of the aquarium," Vaughan said. "So when I went to move it, it stuck, and I heard a breaking sound."

"And it had broken into many tiny pieces. They grew back to the same size in just a few weeks that it had taken three years to grow."

Upon realizing what this could mean, he tested it out on more and more species of coral until he confirmed that this fragmentation method worked brilliantly with all of the Florida Keys varieties.

The painstaking process of growing coral has been obliterated by this discovery. Under normal conditions, it can take corals up to seven decades to reach maturity; now, it could take as few as three.

Being able to regrow corals nearly 40 times faster than before means a lot of reefs could be restored.

"Corals the size of a small car could be 200-500 years old, so it might take centuries for it to come back. We now take a coral the size of a golf ball and cut it into 20 to 100 microfragments," Vaughan said.

"Each fragment grows back to that size in as little as a few months, and when they touch each other as they're growing, they recognize each other as themselves and fuse back together."

Vaughan has some big plans for the future and has even stayed on longer so he can see the coral reefs regrown.

"This is now a new discovery that can give real hope for our coral reefs that has never been there before," he told BBC. "So I postponed my retirement until I see a million corals replanted back on the reef."

SOURCE 





Trump's Energy Nominee Is One Step Closer to Confirmation Despite Democratic Opposition

President Donald Trump's pick to serve on the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee passed a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, advancing him to the Senate chamber for a final confirmation vote.

Bernard McNamee's confirmation in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee went quickly. Only Republican Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski and ranking Democrat Maria Cantwell issued statements before members took to a vote. McNamee ultimately passed 13-10, with the vote falling mostly along party lines.

"Based on the conversation I've had with Mr. McNamee, I think that he understands FERC must be an independent agency, it must continue to function as such, and I'm going to take his commitment to maintain FERC's autonomy and take an independent role as a commissioner at face value," Murkowski said.

However, Cantwell channeled almost every Democratic member when she slammed McNamee's nomination. The ranking Democrat on the committee said his past criticism of renewable energy and praise of fossil fuels rendered him unable to serve as an unbiased commissioner.

"I find it hard to believe he will be an impartial reviewer of these issues," Cantwell said.

Democratic members stood opposed to McNamee's nomination - and sought to delay the Tuesday vote - after a controversial video of McNamee in February recently surfaced. McNamee is seen railing against renewable energy in the video.

"Renewables, when they come on and off, it screws up the whole the physics of the grid," McNamee stated at the time. The footage was taken while he led the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. "So when people want to talk about science, they ought to talk about the physics of the grid and know what real science is, and that is how do you keep the lights on?" he added.

In that same speech, McNamee also hit environmental organizations.

"The green movement is always talking about more government control because it's the constant battle between liberty and tyranny," he said. "It's about people who want to say I know what's better for you."

While the video irked Democrats on the committee, Murkowski pointed out that the members offended by McNamee's comments were already opposed to his nomination to begin with. In a previous committee hearing, Democratic members were already hostile because of McNamee's past work with the Energy Department, where he led an attempt to bail out failing coal and nuclear plants.

McNamee has continued to maintain that he would be an independent arbiter while serving on FERC. The nominee told committee members on Nov. 15 that "it's important to look at the law and the facts and make those decision based on that."

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin - who has been very supportive of the White House's energy agenda - was the sole Democrat on the committee to vote in favor of McNamee.

In what would be an odd circumstance for a party that is increasingly hostile toward fossil fuels, Manchin could very well be the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee next year.

McNamee is likely to win his vote in the Senate chamber, where his confirmation will return a GOP majority to FERC, a 5-member federal agency.

SOURCE 





Iowa Farmers Claim Brilliant Victory: Judge Orders Immediate Destruction of Illegal Wind Turbines

Developers who invested $11 million to install three wind turbines in eastern Iowa are tearing them down, after losing a legal battle waged by nearby residents.

It’s only the second time nationally a judge has ordered wind turbines to be torn down and a first in Iowa.

“It’s great. We love it,” said Cheyney Hershey, whose young family lives near the turbines. “You can’t sit outside on the deck and have a conversation without the constant thumping of the blades going round.”

The noise can even be heard inside his home, Hershey said: “There was nowhere to get away from them.”

His family and others watch daily to see what work has been done: Crews have torn down two turbines and are dismantling the third. They have until Dec. 9 to complete the work.

Opponents to the 450-foot turbines believe the legal battle will empower other rural landowners and small towns to take on wind.

Residents in Palo Alto, Black Hawk and other counties are challenging wind projects as well.

“It was a shock that the neighbors and Fairbank could say we didn’t want them” and win, said Ted Vorwald, a Fairbank city council member.

In 2015, the Fayette County Zoning Board provided permits that allowed the wind developers to build the turbines.

Nearby landowners challenged the permits in district court, where a judge agreed with them, saying the permits were “illegal and void.”

Developers appealed the decision, and decided to move ahead with construction.

But the Iowa Court of Appeals this year ruled in the city and residents’ favor. And the Iowa Supreme Court declined to consider the case, forcing the developers to tear down the turbines.

“The system worked,” Vorwald said. “They were put up without the zoning … and the courts upheld the ruling.”

Opponents to the 450-foot turbines believe the legal battle will empower other rural landowners and small towns to take on wind.

Residents in Palo Alto, Black Hawk and other counties are challenging wind projects as well.

“It was a shock that the neighbors and Fairbank could say we didn’t want them” and win, said Ted Vorwald, a Fairbank city council member.

In 2015, the Fayette County Zoning Board provided permits that allowed the wind developers to build the turbines.

Nearby landowners challenged the permits in district court, where a judge agreed with them, saying the permits were “illegal and void.”

Developers appealed the decision, and decided to move ahead with construction.

But the Iowa Court of Appeals this year ruled in the city and residents’ favor. And the Iowa Supreme Court declined to consider the case, forcing the developers to tear down the turbines.

“The system worked,” Vorwald said. “They were put up without the zoning … and the courts upheld the ruling.”

SOURCE 






Democrats' Socialist Energy Policies Would Bring Destruction and They Must Be Stopped

Many Democrats are becoming more open about their socialist inclinations, although they still lie about socialism's ability to make the world a better place.

Socialism kills. From the former Soviet Union to Cuba, from North Korea to Venezuela, everywhere socialism was implemented, it robbed people of their freedom and property, produced economic stagnation and misallocation of resources and resulted in millions of deaths, caused either directly or indirectly.

Despite this fact, in an interview in New York Magazine, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pined for government control over everyone's property -their homes, their businesses, everything, saying, "I think there's a socialistic impulse . if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed." Because that's brought such happiness, prosperity, and better living conditions to the people of Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.

Then we come to the energy socialism being pushed by self-described socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected Democratic Representative from New York, among others. Despite an annual salary topping $174,000, Ocasio-Cortez complained with a straight face after being elected that it will be hard for her to find a place she can afford to rent in Washington, D.C. - a city, by the way, that almost perfectly satisfies de Blasio's desire for all of the property in the city being owned by, its uses directed by, or sharply delimited by various levels of government. I've got a news flash for Ocasio-Cortez: most people, even those in D.C., live on much less.

Despite her struggle to find affordable housing on her taxpayer-funded lavish salary, Ocasio-Cortez has the hubris to believe Congress and federal bureaucracies in D.C. have the wisdom to control and direct peoples energy choices across the nation.

Ocasio-Cortez led protests outside long-time Democratic congressional leader Nancy Pelosi's office last week, demanding the front-runner for speaker of the House push for greater government control over the nation's energy system in the next Congress.

In fact, Ocasio-Cortez has proposed what she calls a "Green New Deal," requiring "the investment of trillions of dollars," to transition the United States to a 100 percent renewable energy system by 2035.

Unfortunately, Ocasio-Cortez is not alone in her distorted economics and history philosophies. Many Democrats now favor energy socialism. Hundreds of Democratic candidates for local, state and federal offices in the 2018 midterm elections signed a pledge to push for the 100 percent renewable energy makeover. Undoubtedly, many of those candidates now sit in positions of power to restrict peoples' use of affordable, reliable fossil fuels and enforce expensive renewable energy mandates on them.

Indeed, after the gains so-called progressive Democrats made in the election, the number of Democratic lawmakers who support the radical, Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act will undoubtedly have grown. Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii introduced the OFF Act with relatively little public notice in September 2017. The OFF Act requires "100 percent renewable energy by 2035 (and 80 percent by 2027), places a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects, bans the export of oil and gas, and also moves our automobile and rail systems to 100 percent renewable energy."

Unattainable energy policies, supported fully by numerous environmental extremists, would destroy millions of jobs and put the United States at a huge disadvantage when competing against other countries, especially China, India, Russia and other nations whose environmental laws are much less stringent.

Energy is the lifeblood of the economy, powering everything we do. Giving government even more control over energy development and use than it already has, including directing or limiting people's fundamental choices over how to move about the country, what kind of electronics they use and how and when they can be charged, how to light, heat, cook in, and exercise climate control in their homes, what types of energy investments they want in their retirement portfolios, and what types of energy sources companies can develop, supply, and use would be catastrophic. Only chaos and misery will result.

Wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy are more expensive and less reliable than traditional energy sources like natural gas and coal, which explains why states that require or subsidize renewable energy sources or tax fossil fuels at high rates have higher electric power and gasoline costs than states with lower gas tax burdens and which don't demand, or subsidize the use of renewables.

The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, built on a power system reliant primarily on relatively inexpensive, reliable fossil fuels. Adopting the kind of energy socialism being pushed by Democrats threatens to impoverish families, cause greater unemployment and bring the power grid and the economy crashing down.

In Europe, which is much further down the road to energy socialism than most of the United States, thousands of people die in winter due to a lack of reliable heat, and during the summer from not having access to reliable air conditioning. These are third-world energy problems brought on by increasing government control over the energy system.

Energy socialism can't fix our problems, but it sure can make things much worse.

SOURCE 







OPINION: It’s Time To Kill Electric Lemons

It’s an old joke but a true one: Whatever liberals don’t like, they ban. Everything else they want to make mandatory.

Nowhere is that truer than in the “green energy” sector. In the lame-duck session of Congress, Republicans have a chance to push back against this when it comes to one of the Democrats’ favorite boondoggles: subsidizing the electric car.

Remember Solyndra? The solar panel company touted as a success by the Obama administration that went out of business soon after a visit from President Obama in which he held them up as an example of success? That politically connected company cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars because while the “green” business model sounds great, it’s simply not ready for prime time.

Now, imagine that on a larger scale. That’s the story of the electric car.

Electric cars are touted as an important part of combating climate change — the idea that human activity is destroying the planet so it must be managed by bureaucrats. But aside from a few devotees, the public wasn’t interested in electric cars. Not because people hate the planet, but because they are expensive and inconvenient.

You can’t just stop at a gas station and charge your batteries like you can fill up with fuel and be on your way; it takes a while to charge batteries. Plus, electric cars are expensive. Batteries large enough to run a car for even a hundred miles cost a lot of money.

That last part — the cost — is something activists have been dealing with for decades. How do you get people to buy something inconvenient and less useful than something much cheaper and more reliable? All things being equal, electric cars would never have sold. But when liberal politicians want people to live a certain way, nothing is equal.

The government does what it always does when they want to “nudge” or control people into living a certain way; they subsidize it. And the subsidies to electric car makers make the Solyndra debacle look like the change found in your couch.

In the current tax code, taxpayers (all of us) are on the hook for billions of dollars in subsidies in the form of tax credits annually for people who buy electric cars. But the people who buy electric cars likely aren’t your neighbors — they’re wealthy liberals who can afford to spend twice as much on a car than the average American. Fully 78 percent of the subsidies go to people with incomes above $100,000.

For all the talk of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, it’s odd to have leftists advocating for a massive wealth transfer from the middle class to the wealthy. Yet that’s what the current system does.

But maybe not for much longer.

The lame-duck Congress has a chance to end this ridiculous tax credit and save all of us billions of dollars going forward.

As Congress scrambles to pass the remaining budget items, one of the pet projects that could be ended is this credit, which subsidizes up to $7,500 of the cost of a new electric car with our money. And they should.

Working Americans shouldn’t be picking up a chunk of the tab of a car for people who make enough money to buy a car themselves. If someone wants an electric car, they’ll buy one.

Even some manufacturers of electric cars want them gone. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, said, according to the New York Times, the company would be better off without them. “Tesla’s competitive advantage improves as the incentives go away,” Musk said.

The market would pick winners and losers without the subsidy, not the government manipulating it. The cars people want would sell, the ones they don’t would go away. Frankly, if a company can’t sell its product without taxpayers helping foot the bill, it should go away. Tesla believes it can survive without it, and some of its competitors can’t. The government should allow that to happen across the entire market like it just did with the Chevy Volt.

General Motors announced this week they were discontinuing the Volt because people weren’t buying it, even with the subsidy. Imagine how the market would look, which other companies and products wouldn’t exist, were it not for the taxpayers cover a large part of the bill.

Part of power, a big part, is control; the ability to manipulate how others act. The tax code is riddled with mechanisms to control the public – do this and you get rewarded, do that and you have to pay. Every opportunity to eliminate that perverse power in the tax code should be taken.

Next week, Congress will have the opportunity to eliminate another piece of that control, to free the American people to make their own decisions and save us billions.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket, but every bucket is full of drops and you have to start somewhere. Getting us off the hook for subsidizing wealthy people’s “feel good” car purchases is as good of a place to start as any.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************






3 December, 2018

Fossil algae reveals past CO2 levels at 1,000 ppm: Proof that the planet is not in jeopardy from present day CO2 emissions.

Earth scientists are able to travel far back in time to reconstruct the geological past and paleoclimate to make better predictions about future climate conditions. Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Utrecht University succeeded in developing a new indicator (proxy) of ancient CO2-levels, using the organic molecule phytane, a debris product of chlorophyll. This new organic proxy not only provides the most continuous record of CO2-concentrations ever, it also breaks a record in its time span, covering half a billion years. The data show the present idea that rises in CO2-levels that used to take millions of years, are now happening in a century. These findings are published in Science Advances on November 28th.

As CO2 increases today, it's vital to understand what impact these changes will have. To better predict the future, we must understand long-term changes in CO2 over geologic history. Direct measurements of past CO2 are available, e.g. bubbles in ice cores containing ancient gases. However, ice cores have a limited time span of one million years. To go farther back in time, earth scientists have developed various indirect measurements of CO2 from proxies e.g. from algae, leaves, ancient soils and chemicals stored in ancient sediments to reconstruct past environmental conditions.

Phytane, a new way to travel in time

A new proxy, using a degradation product of chlorophyll, allows geochemists to infer a continuous record of historic CO2-levels in deep time. Scientists at NIOZ have recently developed phytane as a promising new organic proxy that uncovers half a billion years of CO2-levels in the oceans, from the Cambrian until recent times.

Using the new proxy, they were able to make the most continuous record of ancient carbon dioxide levels ever. "We developed and validated a new way to time travel - going farther back in time and to more places", says NIOZ-scientist Caitlyn Witkowski. "With phytane, we now have the longest CO2-record with one single marine proxy. This new data is invaluable to modelers who can now more accurately make predictions of the future."

Witkowski and colleagues selected more than 300 samples of marine sediments from deep sea cores and oils from all over the globe, reflecting the majority of geological periods in the last 500 million years.

Fossil molecules

Past chemical reactions can be `stored' in fossil molecules, and so they may reflect various ancient environmental conditions. Geochemists are able to `read' these conditions, such as seawater temperature, pH, salinity and CO2-levels. Organic matter, such as phytane, reflects the pressure of CO2 in ocean water or the atmosphere (pCO2).

Little green miracles

Although all organic matter has the potential to reflect CO2, phytane is special. Phytane is the pigment responsible for our green world. Anything that uses photosynthesis to absorb sunlight, including plants, algae, and some species of bacteria, has chlorophyll from which phytane comes. Plants and algae take in CO2 and produce oxygen. Without these little green miracles, our world just wouldn't be the same.

Because chlorophyll is found all around the world, phytane is also everywhere and is a major constituent of decayed and fossilized biomass. "Phytane doesn't chemically change over the course of time, even if it is millions of years old," Witkowski says.

Carbon isotope fractionation

CO2 of the past is estimated from organic matter, such as phytane, through the phenomenon of carbon isotope fractionation during photosynthesis. When taking up CO2, plants and algae prefer the light carbon isotope (12C) over the heavy carbon isotope (13C). They only use the heavy carbon isotope when CO2-levels in the surrounding water or atmosphere are low. The proportion between these two isotopes therefore reflects the level of carbon dioxide in the environment at the moment of growth.

This also explains why Witkowski didn't use terrestrial plants as a source for her research, exclusively using phytane from (fossilized) marine sources. The plant world is divided into so-called C3- and C4-plants, each with their own unique ratio of light-to-heavy carbon. Phytoplankton all have very similar ratios compared to their plant counterparts. Witkowski: "By choosing only marine sources, we could limit uncertainty of the phytane source in the dataset."

"In our data, we see high levels of carbon dioxide, reaching 1000 ppm as opposed to today's 410 ppm. In this respect, present day levels are not unique, but the speed of these changes have never been seen before. Changes that typically take millions of years are now happening in a century. This additional CO2-data may help us understand the future of our planet." In future research, phytane can be used to go even further back in time than the Phanerozoic, the earliest found in two billion-year-old samples.

SOURCE 






Dr. Willie Soon versus the Climate Apocalypse

More honesty and less hubris, more evidence and less dogmatism, would do a world of good

Dr. Jeffrey Foss

"What can I do to correct these crazy, super wrong errors?" Willie Soon asked plaintively in a recent e-chat. "What errors, Willie?" I asked.

"Errors in Total Solar Irradiance," he replied. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change keeps using the wrong numbers! It's making me feel sick to keep seeing this error. I keep telling them - but they keep ignoring their mistake."

Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon really does get sick when he sees scientists veering off their mission: to discover the truth. I've seen his face flush with shock and shame for science when scientists cherry-pick data. It ruins his appetite - a real downer for someone who loves his food as much as Willie does.

You have got to love a guy like that, if you love science - and I do. I'm a philosopher of science, not a scientist, but my love for science runs deep - as does my faith. So I cannot help but admire Willie and his good old-fashioned passion for science.

Willie Soon may one day be a household name. More and more he appears at the pointy end of scientific criticism of Climate Apocalypse. In two recent lawsuits against Big Oil, one by New York City and the other by San Francisco and Oakland, Dr. Soon is named as the "paid agent" of "climate change denialism." As the man who - Gasp! - singlehandedly convinced Big Oil to continue business as usual.

Can you even imagine that? I can't: Big Oil couldn't turn off its taps in big cities even if it wanted to.

Putting such silly lawsuits aside, it is a big honor, historically speaking, for Dr. Soon to be the face of scientific rebuttal of Climate Apocalypse, since feeding the developed world's apocalypse addiction is the main tool of a powerful global political agenda.

The IPCC - along with the United Nations and many environmentalist organizations, politicians, bureaucrats and their followers - desperately want to halt and even roll back development in the industrialized world, and keep Africa and other poor countries permanently undeveloped, while China races ahead. They want Willie silenced. We the people need to make sure he is heard.

Dr. Soon never sought the job of defending us against the slick, computer model-driven, anti-fossil fuel  certainties of Climate Apocalypse. Willie just happened to choose solar science as a career and, like many solar scientists, after nearly three decades of scientific research in his case, came to believe that changes in the sun's brightness, sunspots and energy output, changes in the orbital position of the Earth relative to the sun, and other powerful natural forces drive climate change. In brief, our sun controls our climate.

Even the IPCC initially indicated agreement with him, citing his work approvingly in its second (1996) and third (2001) Assessment Reports. That later changed, significantly. Sure, everyone agrees that the sun caused the waxing and waning of the ice ages, just as solar scientists say. However, the sun had to be played down if carbon dioxide (CO2) was to be played up - an abuse of science that makes Willie sick.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, solar scientists think solar changes also explain Earth's most recent warming period which, they point out, began way back in the 1830s - long before we burned enough fossil fuels to make any difference. They also observed the shrinking of the Martian ice-caps in the 1990s, and their return in the last few years - in perfect time with the waning and waxing of Arctic ice caps here on Earth.

Only the sun - not the CO2 from our fires - could cause that Earth-Mars synchronicity. And surely it is no mere coincidence that a grand maximum in solar brightness (Total Solar Irradiance or TSI) took place in the 1990s as both planets' ice caps shrank, or that the sun cooled (TSI decreased) as both planets' ice caps grew once again. All that brings us back to Dr. Soon's disagreements with the IPCC.

The IPCC now insists that solar variability is so tiny that they can just ignore it, and proclaim CO2 emissions as the driving force behind climate change. But solar researchers long ago discovered unexpected variability in the sun's brightness - variability that is confirmed in other stars of the sun's type. Why does the IPCC ignore these facts? Why does it insist on spoiling Willie's appetite?

It sure looks like the IPCC is hiding the best findings of solar science so that it can trumpet the decreases in planetary warming (the so-called "greenhouse effect") that they embed in the "scenarios" (as they call them) emanating from their computer models. Ignoring the increase in solar brightness over the 80s and 90s, they instead enthusiastically blame the warmth of the 1990s on human production of CO2.

In just such ways they sell us their Climate Apocalypse - along with the roll-back of human energy use, comfort, living standards and progress: sacrifices that the great green gods of Gaia demand of us if we are to avoid existential cataclysms. Thankfully, virgins are still safe - for now.        

Surely Willie and solar scientists are right about the primacy of the sun. Why? Because the observable real world is the final test of science. And the data - actual evidence - shows that global temperatures follow changes in solar brightness on all time-scales, from decades to millions of years. On the other hand, CO2 and temperature have generally gone their own separate ways on these time scales.

Global temperatures stopped going up in the first two decades of this century, even though CO2 has steadily risen. The IPCC blames this global warming "hiatus" on "natural climate variability," meaning something random, something not included in their models, something the IPCC didn't see coming.

This confirms the fact that their models do not add up to a real theory of climate. Otherwise the theory would be falsified by their incorrect predictions. They predicted a continuous increase in temperature, locked to a continuous increase in CO2. But instead, temperature has remained steady over the last two decades, while CO2 climbed even faster than before.

IPCC modelers still insist that the models are nevertheless correct, somehow - that the world would be even colder now if it weren't for this pesky hiatus in CO2-driven warming. Of course, they have to say that - even though they previously insisted the Earth would not be as cool as it is right now.

Still, their politically correct commands stridently persist: stay colder in winter, stay hotter in summer, take cold showers, drive less, make fewer trips, fly less, don't eat foods that aren't "local," bury your loved ones in cardboard boxes, turn off the lights. Their list of diktats is big and continuously growing.

Unlike the IPCC, Willie and I cannot simply ignore the fact that there were multiple ice ages millions of years ago, when CO2 levels were four times higher than now. And even when CO2 and temperature do trend in tandem, as in the famous gigantic graph in Al Gore's movie, the CO2 rises followed temperature increases by a few centuries. That means rising CO2 could not possibly have caused the temperature increases - an inconvenient truth that Gore doesn't care about and studiously ignores.

Unfortunately, through their powerful political and media cadres, the IPCC has created a highly effective propaganda and war-on-fossil-fuels vehicle, to herd public opinion - and marginalize or silence any scientist who dares to disagree with it. For better or worse, richer or poorer, my dear, passionate Dr. Soon is one scientist who is always ready to stand in the path of that tank and face it down: anytime, anywhere.

I'm frightened by the dangers to Willie, his family and his career, due to his daily battles with the Climate Apocalypse industry. I can't get it out of my mind that the university office building of climatologist John Christy - who shares Willie's skepticism of Climate Apocalypse - was shot full of bullet holes last year. But let's not let a spattering of gunfire spoil a friendly scientific debate. Right?

Willie's courage makes me proud to know him, and to be an aficionado of science like he is. When it comes to the long game, my money is on Dr. Willie Soon. We the people hunger for truth, as does science itself. And that hunger will inevitably eclipse our romantic dalliance with the Climate Apocalypse.

Via email





Former Shell President Fires Back After Obama Claims Responsibility for Oil Boom

Former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, said former President Barack Obama had nothing to do with America's increased oil production and actually frustrated many areas of the energy sector.

Obama claimed he was responsible for America's recent oil boom during an event hosted by Rice University's Baker Institute on Tuesday night.

Hofmeister challenged his assessment.

"American energy production - You wouldn't always know it but it went up every year I was president," Obama said. "That whole, suddenly America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas - that was me, people."

"The facts are the facts. And, yes, the production did increase throughout his term," Hofmeister said on "Fox & Friends" Thursday.

"But, frankly, he had nothing to do with it."

"This was production in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado - North Dakota in particular. And these were all state decisions made with industry applications for permits. The federal government had no role."

Hofmeister said Obama opposed the energy industry at every turn with his actions against offshore drilling and his handling of the Keystone Pipeline.

"If anything, he was trying to frustrate the efforts by taking federal lands off of the availability list - Putting them just, no more drilling (sic). He shut down the Gulf of Mexico for a period of six months," he said.

"(He) changed the regulations from an average of 60 to 80 pages per permit to 600 to 800 pages per permit. He also never approved the Keystone XL peep line after dangling all the potential customers for 8 years. And it was in the 8th year when he said no Keystone Pipeline."

"I would say that he was not a leader when it comes to energy," Hofmeister declared.

SOURCE 







EPA Chief Suggests Obama Administration Pushed `Worst-Case Scenario' in US Climate Report

Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested the Obama administration told the authors of the latest National Climate Assessment to emphasize "worst-case" global warming predictions.

"And I don't know this for a fact - I wouldn't be surprised if the Obama administration told the report's authors to take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report," Wheeler told The Washington Post in an interview Wednesday.

Wheeler isn't the first to criticize the NCA's focus on "worst-case" global warming predictions, but his comments sparked a backlash from former President Barack Obama's chief science adviser.

John Holdren, Obama's former science czar, told Politico that's "absolutely false." Holdren said the report considered a wide range of scenarios, and that he had no role in selecting the fourth NCA's authors.

The NCA is produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which includes officials from 13 federal agencies.

"My only instruction was that the USGCRP should continue the distinguished tradition of the first three by drawing on the most current peer-reviewed science to illuminate what climate change is doing and is projected to do across the geographic regions and economic and ecological underpinnings of well-being in the United States," Holdren said.

However, Wheeler does have a point. Holdren did not mention a May 2015 memo from the Subcommittee on Global Change Research's environment committee, which is part of the White House National Science and Technology Council.

The SGCR memo instructs NCA authors to "focus on RCP 8.5 as a high-end scenario and RCP 4.5 as a low-end scenario." The memo says using RCP 8.5 and RCP 4.5 "as core scenarios is generally consistent with the range of emission scenarios used in" the third NCA.

"In addition, using a low-end and a high-end scenario will facilitate communications of assessment findings," reads the memo.

SGCR is made up of executive branch officials and is overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren headed OSTP at the time the memo was issued.

RCP 8.5 is considered a "business as usual" scenario where nothing is done to cut emissions. The latest NCA's dire predictions of future global warming lean heavily on RCP 8.5 - indeed many parts of the report only reference the alarming results of RCP 8.5 modeling.

However, experts have increasingly challenged RCP 8.5 as highly unlikely and unrealistic.

The United Nations climate panel is moving away from focusing on RCP 8.5, and two University of British Columbia researchers published a study last year calling RCP 8.5 "exceptionally unlikely."

The 2017 study found that RCP 8.5 suffered from "systematic errors in fossil production outlooks" and should not be a priority for future scientific research."

University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. criticized the NCA's use of RCP 8.5 as a "business as usual" scenario in order to justify policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

SOURCE 






In defence of coal

Australia’s green zealots are making life harder for the world’s poor

Thermal coal will become an illegal substance in Australia if Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt gets his way. ‘Coal is the next asbestos’, Bandt declared earlier this month. ‘It is toxic and dangerous. We need to stop exporting coal.’

An economic recession induced by the closure of a $20 billion export industry would be barely felt in the inner-city quinoa zone from where the Greens harvest most of their support.

Doctors, teachers, public servants and other professional suppliers of public services do not lose their jobs in a recession. Indeed, they tend to thrive, thanks to politicians who respond to economic downturns with new government programmes of which they are the potential providers.

It will be a different story in the coal-mining regions of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales and parts of Queensland where honest Australians get their hands dirty delivering a third of the world’s coal exports efficiently and cheaply.

The solar-panel-sheltered classes will not notice the dramatic rise in electricity prices. By day they would make a profit selling excess electricity into the grid, and survive mild nights with batteries which the Greens will subsidise.

Residents of working-class western Sydney, on the other hand, where the winter nights are chilly, summer days sweltering and incomes tighter, will feel the brunt of rising electricity prices which, bizarrely in a country with abundant coal and uranium, are already among the highest in the world.

A ban on coal exports would be tough on the world’s poor in general, particularly those in Asia, where the bulk of Australian coal lands.

The billions emerging from poverty thanks to free markets, free trade and stable electricity supplies are not yet prosperous enough to survive an increase in power prices from the short supply of coal. Hope will evaporate for the 750million electricity-starved Asians burning kerosene and cow dung.

Every symbolic crusade needs a totem. For the Prohibition movement a century ago it was the saloon bars. In the early days of the Green movement it was dams, an emblem of humankind’s reckless invasion of the wilderness, and the sub-species that would undoubtedly be driven to extinction by the rising waters.

The epitome of daminisation, the demonisation of reservoir construction, occurred 12 years ago towards the end of a prolonged drought, as the water supply in the Brisbane basin was rapidly running out.

The campaign against the Traveston Crossing Dam pitched the Mary River turtle, giant barred frog, Queensland lungfish and Richmond birdwing butterfly in an equal contest against the people. The result was a triumph for non-sentience.

The spread of global-warming anxiety since the turn of the century prompted a search for a new emblem. Doe-eyed polar bears adrift on ice occupied the slot for a while, until the activists discovered the emotive charm of Queensland’s Barrier Reef and the dark underbelly of coal.

The Barrier Reef is the most protected, pampered coral formation in the world. Billions have been spent to preserve it. The theory that it is being damaged by climate change is far from proven. It has been damaged by farm-water runoff, now controlled and filtered, and the crown-of-thorns starfish, an insidious aquatic vandal that has become the target of a multimillion-dollar cull.

The chance opportunity to put coal and coral together came in 2010 when the Queensland government opened the way for a rail line from the North Galilee Basin to the coast, as a precursor for mining some of the richest untapped coal reserves in the world.

In 2011, an anti-coal axis of environmental activists, including Greenpeace and others, held a secret counsel of war in the New South Wales Blue Mountains to formulate a strategy.

The strategy document that emerged, Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom, proposed a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to change the image of coal from ‘the backbone of the economy’ to ‘a destructive industry’ that ‘corrupts our democracy and threatens the global climate’.

The movement had rich friends, including the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Australian internet entrepreneur Graeme Wood, the founder of the online travel service Wotif and a prominent backer of the Australian digital edition of the Guardian.

Law-fare and corporate activism became their chosen methods. With a campaign strategy that would make Coca-Cola envious and the help of international single-issue campaigners like Avaaz, they turned the fight to stop the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland into a global crusade.

‘They’re trying to put a toxic coal complex in the heart of the magical Great Barrier Reef — it’s a crazy plan, but we’ve got a chance to stop it’, read an email that spread across the world.

‘This is a do-or-die moment for the reef-wrecking coal mine… Let’s stop the reef-killing deal.’

For the record, the Adani mine is 260 miles inland and the reef, at its closest, is 10 miles offshore. To claim it is ‘in the heart of the magical Great Barrier Reef’ is like saying Oxford is at the heart of Lake Windermere.

Yet the campaign has been ruthlessly successful. Adani’s plans to use the blessed reserves of central Queensland to fuel prosperity in India have been delayed, and might never go ahead.

History is unlikely to be kind to the decarbonisation movement. Coercive attempts to stop the use of fossil fuels are delivering the same perverse economic consequences as the attempts to close down American saloon bars in the 1920s.

The consumers pay more for a substance they choose not to live without, while the producers count the profits.

The American fondness for alcohol hardly abated during Prohibition. With demand and supply unequally matched, the price of beer rose by 700 per cent in the US between 1920 and 1933. The price of a bottle of brandy rose by 433 per cent and spirits by 270 per cent. A fourfold increase in deaths from alcohol poisoning and a rise in organised crime were just two unintended consequences. The enrichment of the alcohol companies was another.

A report released this month by international financial analysts Redburn predicts a similar result from the crusade against fossil fuels.

The attempt to starve coal producers of capital has impeded their attempts to build new coal mines, but it hasn’t got in the way of profits. The price of coal has risen to a six-year high, which is good news for the coal business, but bad news if you’re living in, say, India’s Bihar state, where three out of four households don’t have electricity.

If the price of coal rises, says Redburn, ‘the one to two billion people on the planet with zero or unreliable access to modern energy would remain priced out of the market’.

Redburn’s analysts turn the tables on so-called ethical investors by forcing them to confront the consequences of fossil-fuel divestment, a phenomenon that has swept university campuses, shareholder meetings and boardrooms, much as anti-alcohol mania did a century ago.

‘Given the pernicious consequences of energy undersupply, we would go so far as to argue that the socially responsible investor has a duty to ensure capital is available to the fossil fuel industry, for as long as it is needed’, they write.

Unless the supply of coal is increased, the world’s poor will be trapped for even longer in poverty, burning whatever they can get to keep life and limb together. Industrial development will be constrained. Fewer goods and services will be purchased. The smug inner glow of virtue-seeking First World activists will hardly compensate for the global decline in material prosperity.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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December 02, 2018

Obama Touts Climate Change Legacy, Then Takes Credit For US Oil Boom

This has no contact with reality. At the end of Obama's second year unemployment was at 8%. The only thing that restored American jobs was the fracking boom, which Obama had absolutely nothing to do with. He was not even aware of it until the boom became too big to ignore. The work took place on private land and no permits for it were either sought or given

Former President Barack Obama said he was "extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords" before, rather ironically, taking credit for booming U.S. oil and gas production.

"I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords because  --  you know, I know we're in oil country and we need American energy, and by the way, American energy production," Obama said at an event hosted by Rice University's Baker Institute on Tuesday night.

"You wouldn't always know it but it went up every year I was president," Obama said of U.S. oil and gas production. "That whole, suddenly America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas -- that was me, people."

U.S. oil production nearly doubled between 2009, when Obama took office, to 2016. Natural gas production shot up around 50 percent in that time. However, the boom in production almost exclusively took place on state and private lands where the Obama administration had little to no control.

Republicans criticized Obama for lagging oil and gas production on federally-managed lands, which largely stagnated while production elsewhere boomed due to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

Obama did sign legislation in late 2015 ending the decades-old ban on crude oil exports, but at the same time imposed regulations and pursued international policies aiming to move the world away from fossil fuels in the name of fighting global warming.

Obama joined the Paris Agreement in 2016, promising to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent. The Paris accords aimed to keep future global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 through cutting fossil fuel use, including oil.

President Donald Trump plans on leaving the Paris accord as soon as 2020, and his administration has rolled back Obama-era policies seen as restricting oil and gas production.

The oil boom has continued under Trump, with the U.S. producing a record-setting 11.7 million barrels per day in early November. The U.S. is the world's largest oil-producing nation, outpacing both Russia and Saudi Arabia this year.

SOURCE





Vanuatu to sue fossil fuel firms for climate change

Believe it when you see it

It is true that Vanuatu is a chain of islands but they are not coral atolls. Most are of volcanic origin and fourteen of them have surface areas of more than 100 square kilometres

With most of its 82 islands sitting just less than one metre above sea level, the low-lying Pacific nation of Vanuatu faces high risk of becoming inundated by the world's rising seas if drastic measures are not taken to limit global warming.

The island archipelago has therefore announced that it is considering suing fossil fuel companies for their role in driving climate change, as global courtrooms turn into new battlegrounds for climate action.

Speaking via a video statement on the Climate Vulnerable Forum's Virtual Summit on Thursday, Vanuatu's minister of foreign affairs Ralph Regenvanu revealed that the country was exploring ways to take legal action against the "fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly" contribute to the climate crisis and the severe threats faced by Vanuatu as the world struggles to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees celcius.

"I am therefore today putting the fossil fuel industry, and the states that sponsor it, on notice that the climate loss and the damages ravaging Vanuatu will not go unchallenged," said Regenvanu.

The declaration is the latest move from small island nations that have long sought reparations for damages linked to climate change, and the first time a climate-vulnerable country will legally hold to account those most responsible for global carbon emissions. Vanuatu's decision joins a growing list of climate lawsuits raised over recent years from individuals and groups against oil, gas and coal companies and the governments that continue to back the fossil fuel industry.

"Vanuatu has become a poster child for the horrible impacts of climate change and companies should confront the request by its government to address these issues," said Jolene Lin, an associate professor specialising in transnational environmental law and climate change at the National University of Singapore (NUS). "It would be very stupid to play hard ball because it doesn't make good business sense."

SOURCE





Dedicated Greenie helped prepare dire National Climate Assessment

A former Obama administration official with ties to a liberal advocacy group funded by Democratic megadonors George Soros and Tom Steyer helped prepare the Fourth National Climate Assessment, whose dire predictions have since been attacked as overblown.

Andrew Light, who worked on the 2015 Paris accord negotiations as a senior adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change under Secretary of State John F. Kerry, served as a review editor for the assessment, overseeing the pivotal final chapter that concluded under a worst-case scenario that global warming could wipe out as much as 10 percent of the U.S. economy by 2100.

Now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Mr. Light also spent five years as senior fellow and director of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, which was founded and now led by longtime Democratic insider John Podesta. The center is also financed by liberal billionaires such as Mr. Soros and Mr. Steyer.

The involvement of Mr. Light and other figures known for their climate change advocacy has raised questions about the credibility of the report, which has been widely depicted as a politically neutral, scientific document prepared by disinterested specialists from 13 federal agencies.

Roger A. Pielke Jr., University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor, criticized the decision to bring in Mr. Light, as well as the report's reliance for the 10 percent figure on a 2017 study funded in part by Mr. Steyer's Next Generation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

SOURCE




Macron's Energy Policy Speech Fails to Defuse Anger; More Protests Planned

Organizers of fuel price protests that have roiled France for almost a month expressed disappointment and frustration after an energy policy speech by President Emmanuel Macron, saying it failed to address their grievances and vowing to continue demonstrating.

Members of the so-called "yellow vest" campaign are planning another big protest in Paris on Saturday, to demonstrate to Macron that they view his response as unsatisfactory. Labor unions are planning to take part too.

The movement, named for the high-visibility yellow jackets worn by the protesters, is becoming more organized, choosing representatives across the country.

"We expect respect," Laetitia Dewalle, leader of the movement in a region near Paris told French television. "President Macron is too haughty and contemptuous."

The protests were first sparked by a rise in fuel prices – an increase in the tax on petroleum products was announced in September, and further increases are due each year until 2022 – but the campaign has widened to focus on high taxes, a loss of purchasing power, and demands for an increase in the minimum wage (currently around $1,690 a month, for those working a 35-hour week.)

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has offered to meet protest leaders to talk about their grievances but also warned that the government policy, part of a plan to move France away from fossil fuels, would not change.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Macron laid out an energy policy for the next 10 to 20 years designed to transition to renewable energy, but critics said he did not address the issues driving the protest.

One protester in eastern France said on television Macron was sending everyone to sleep by speaking about the environment.

"Everybody is for ecology, who can be against it?" he asked. "But it does not bring any solution for the average classes and the poor."

The protestors were not alone in criticizing Macron's speech, which also drew flak from unions and political parties across the spectrum – including from environmentally-minded groups.

Yannick Jadot, a member of the European Parliament representing a party called Europe Ecology – The Greens, said on Twitter Macron delivers great speeches but very small steps. He said one does not extinguish anger with fine words but without acts of social justice.

Eric Ciotti of the center-right Les R‚publicains said Macron offered no real solution to the problem of poor purchasing power, and all opposition parties said the speech lacked concrete solutions for low-income citizens.

The "yellow vests" movement includes construction and factory workers, temporary workers of all ages, and even retirees. They have been blocking roads and motorway entrances as well as toll booths, service stations and shopping centers.

The protests have come at a time when Macron's approval ratings have been dropping. Opinion polls have found significant support for the protests from the French public.

SOURCE





From "Climate Lessons" blogger

While the rise of climate alarmism and its intrusion into politics, education, and the mass media is a dismal event that would strain anyone's faith in mankind's ability to cope with propaganda and fear-mongering, there are some consolations to be found in the works of people who stand opposed to the flow of nonsense, hyperbole, and half-baked 'science'.

One example is the Cartoons by Josh. His work highlights the conceits, the arrogance, the foolishness and worse of the climate scaremongerers, and it does so with huge amounts of charm, and even compassion for these destructive and ill-informed people.



Josh's Calendar for 2019 is now shipping. When the climate madness subsides into some kind of academic obscurity, and if there is a big effort to understand the collective madness of the CO2 Scare, then these cartoons will be, as they say, collectors' items. I'm certainly going to keep all my copies of past and future calendars as a kind of poor man's collection, one which I hope will be of interest to show just how the whole costly charade was seen through by some as it happened. We were not all duped. We did not all jump on the bandwagon be it for fame or for fortune or merely to get a glow from 'saving the planet'. Plus the cartoons are also just plain funny. Raising a smile or even a laugh in the midst of the madness is quite an achievement. Thank you, Josh.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here.  Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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IN BRIEF


Home (Index page)


Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.



I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.



Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion



Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below


WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.


ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.


SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead


How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.




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