GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray

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".

This document is part of an archive of postings on Greenie Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permant record of what I have written. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.

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

Note: Some entries below are erroneously labelled as from 2018. All are in fact from 2019

28 February, 2019

Does a "green" environment prevent mental illness?

Articles claiming all sorts of health benefits from living in a leafy environment pop up from time to time. The latest one is below. And I don't doubt that a green environment can have a quite strong soothing effect on some people -- perhaps to the point of alleviating neurotic symptoms. But what is the general effect and how strong is it?

For a start, the effects in the study below were very weak, with odds ratios all just above 1.00. Ratios that low are conventionally held to be incapable of supporting causative inferences. Such ratios in the epidemiological literature are often greeted with war whoops and general jubilation but the fact of the matter is that they are verging on non-existence and are unlikely to replicate. Non-replication is in fact the bane of medical research so the chance of a marginal effect replicating is vanishingly small. So I could terminate my critique right there and say that there was nothing of interest going on in the study concerned.

But what are we to make of claims such as the risk of illness being "55% higher" for people with little greenery around them. It sounds impressive, does it not? An obviously strong effect? However you just have to ask "higher than what?" to see that we are being hornswoggled. If the effect is super weak to start with, a 55% advance on it is not much is it? 55% more than tiny is still tiny. Those percentage claims are the strongest and most impressive claims in the article but are totally deceptive. We are being scammed. It would not be too strong to call the claims "slimy".

I don't know if I should go on but there are other lessons in the article about what not to do. And another fault in the research is something very commmon among epidemiologists: A total lack of curiosity. They take a bit of data and use it without asking how that bit of data arose. In this case they look at the amount of green space kids had around them without asking WHY some kids had more or less green space than others. And that can lead to a total misunderstanding of what was going on in the data.

So why would some kids be growing up in leafier areas? The obvious explanation is $$$$ -- money. Leafier areas tend to be more prestious and hence more expensive to live in. Poorer people live beside the tracks. And we know that richer people are healthier. They tend to live years longer than poor people, for instance. The authors below did control for socio-economic status but income is not normally included in status indices and the two are not substitutable for one-another. See Table 4 here

But income is only one explanation. A factor with strong health correlates that is almost never examined is IQ. Smarter people might be better at or more interested in moving to a leafier area. So it is the better health of high IQ people that was being observed in the study. The effects in the study were so weak that we could have been observing nothing but the better health of high IQ people.

So good try but no cigar

Residential green space in childhood is associated with lower risk of psychiatric disorders from adolescence into adulthood

Kristine Engemann et al.

Abstract

Urban residence is associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders, but the underlying drivers remain unknown. There is increasing evidence that the level of exposure to natural environments impacts mental health, but few large-scale epidemiological studies have assessed the general existence and importance of such associations. Here, we investigate the prospective association between green space and mental health in the Danish population. Green space presence was assessed at the individual level using high-resolution satellite data to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index within a 210 x 210 m square around each person's place of residence (?1 million people) from birth to the age of 10. We show that high levels of green space presence during childhood are associated with lower risk of a wide spectrum of psychiatric disorders later in life. Risk for subsequent mental illness for those who lived with the lowest level of green space during childhood was up to 55% higher across various disorders compared with those who lived with the highest level of green space. The association remained even after adjusting for urbanization, socioeconomic factors, parental history of mental illness, and parental age. Stronger association of cumulative green space presence during childhood compared with single-year green space presence suggests that presence throughout childhood is important. Our results show that green space during childhood is associated with better mental health, supporting efforts to better integrate natural environments into urban planning and childhood life.

SOURCE

Evidence of humans causing global warming hits 'gold standard'

The coal standard more like it. It does not even pass the basic test of falsifiability. Even the most negative finding is never allowed to count against it and no warmist has ever said what would

Evidence that humans cause global warming has hit the "gold standard" level of confidence, a U.S.-led team of scientists reportedly wrote in a journal article published Monday.

"Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals," the scientists wrote in Nature Climate Change, according to Reuters, citing satellite measurements and rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

The scientists said that confidence in their prediction that humanity is raising the temperature on earth has reached "five-sigma" level, meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that similar data would appear if there was no warming, the news service added.

This "gold standard" has previously been applied for major scientific discoveries, like that of the Higgs boson subatomic particle in 2012, Reuters noted.

Benjamin Santer, lead author of the study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told the news service he hoped the findings would convince the last remaining skeptics.

"The narrative out there that scientists don't know the cause of climate change is wrong," he said. "We do."

There is a vast scientific consensus that humans have causes global warming.

In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put the probability of humans being the main cause of warming since the 1950s at 95 percent

SOURCE

Trump should use trade deal with China to take Green New Deal off the table

As President Donald Trump looks to finalize a trade agreement with China - he tweeted on Feb. 25 that a deal was in its "advanced stages" - one thing he should be sure to gain concessions on is the cost advantage Beijing possesses because of the excessive regulatory environment in Washington, D.C.

U.S. standards for power generation, manufacturing, fuel economy and emissions are above and beyond anything China puts upon itself.

For example, in the Paris climate accords, one of the reasons the U.S. withdrew was because it required next to nothing out of China, which emits 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year and growing, compared with 5 billion by the U.S. And China has only promised to reach peak emissions by 2030, and in the meantime the U.S. was supposed to keep its new and existing power plan regulations in place, increasing the cost of doing business here and hampering growth.

The difference in regulatory structures is already a tremendous reason for the outsourcing of manufacturing to China, as the 2018 trade in goods deficit is set to reach its highest level on record.

And the Green New Deal now under consideration - with its impossible goal of zero net carbon emissions by the U.S. by 2030 - would almost certainly exacerbate that reality, sending more production to China.

One source of pollution by China comes from its shipping, which utilizes heavy bunker oil to send goods to the U.S. While International Maritime Organization regulations currently under consideration would address sulfur content in that fuel, the fact remains that if the U.S. continues to push for manufacturing to China to export its emissions via the Green New Deal, it will become more reliant on shipping from overseas, not less.

That is why President Trump should use the imminent trade deal with China to, as much as possible, take the Green New Deal off the table by pushing Beijing to meet up with U.S. environmental regulations, eliminating China's regulatory cost advantage and defining it as a non-tariff barrier to trade under the new agreement.

This, taken in conjunction with other measures, would set in motion a process of insourcing, to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S., which would mean more jobs here.

It's better than the alternative, which is to make production practically impossible here in the U.S. via the Green New Deal, incentivizing factories and growth elsewhere including China and making Americans even more dependent on imports.

President Trump is doing what was once thought impossible by closing in on a deal with China on trade and for now, he has postponed increasing tariffs while the final terms of the agreement are hammered out. To be successful, however, the agreement must address all of China's cost advantages, including currency, labor costs, China's import controls, intellectual property theft and yes, regulations.

SOURCE

Fighting for energy and human rights equality in Africa

The Congress of Racial Equality Uganda has lost another leader, but the fight continues

Paul Driessen

"She has gone to the Lord," her sister Diana told me a few days ago. And with Fiona Kobusingye's passing, after a courageous battle with cancer, the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda lost another leader.

However, their legacy remains, the battles they began rage on - and Uganda and Africa are clearly and consistently demonstrating their determination to achieve energy, health, human rights and living standards equality with Europe, America and other industrialized economies. They are determined do so using the same fossil fuel and other technologies that those already wealthy nations used in their ascent out of the nasty, brutish, short lives that were all of humanity's lot just a few short centuries ago.

I met Fiona 15 years ago at a Congress of Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner organized by her late husband and my close friend, CORE international affairs director Cyril Boynes, Jr. They got married, Cyril moved to Uganda, and together they launched the human rights and economic development group CORE Uganda. She served as co-chair and with Cyril mentored young people, co-hosted conferences, and fought tirelessly for disease control, energy development, modern agriculture and clean water.

Like Cyril, she was passionate about these issues, including using DDT and other insecticides - what she called "the African equivalent of chemotherapy drugs" - to prevent malaria and other devastating insect-borne diseases. She wrote in a 2006 Washington Times article:

"I have had malaria more than a dozen times. I lost my son, two sisters and three nephews to it. My nephew Noel got malaria at age two and is still four years behind high school boys his age in reading and writing skills, because it affected his mental powers so horribly. My brother Joseph used to help in an office and with complex farming tasks, but his mind no longer works well because of cerebral malaria.

"We need to calculate the value of those lives affected by being sick with malaria for weeks every year . of mental capacity lost due to malaria . of 1.5 million African lives lost every year. Even at $1,000 to $10,000 per life, the impact of malaria - and the value of DDT - is monumental.

"This month, another malaria outbreak hit the Kabale district in southern Uganda. More than 6,000 people were admitted to clinics in just one week. A spraying program with Icon (a pyrethroid also used in agriculture, and which thus can quickly breed mosquito resistance) resulted in the deaths of two students. That is terrible, but last year 70,000 Ugandans died from malaria. In 65 years, DDT never killed anyone.

"Should we stop spraying, to prevent more deaths from Icon or possible learning delays from using DDT - and sacrifice another 70,000 Ugandans again this year?

"Yes, there are risks in using DDT - or other anti-malaria weapons. But the risk of not using them is infinitely greater. One-sided studies and news stories frighten people into not using the most effective weapons in our arsenal - and millions pay the ultimate price. That is unconscionable."

After Cyril died in 2015, Fiona moved to New York City to help care for Diana's autistic son and earn money to provide for her adopted children in Uganda. Even after being diagnosed with incurable cancer, Fiona retained her humor, indomitable spirit and deep belief in God throughout her difficult illness and treatment, right up until she passed away.

She is survived by a daughter, five sisters, eleven brothers, two grandchildren, five adopted children, and many nieces, nephews and other relatives. She remains beloved by all who knew her. Readers wishing to honor her legacy, bury her in Uganda and help support her family can go to her GoFundMe page.

Fiona got emotional when she wrote about environmentalist groups and US, EU, World Bank, WHO and other rich country bureaucrats who she believed were using Africans as test subjects in "energy, malaria and agricultural experiments that perpetuate poverty, disease, malnutrition and death in the name of protecting the environment."

"China and India put up with this immoral eco-colonialism for decades," she wrote. "Finally, they had enough. They refused to be the environmentalists' experimental pawns any longer. They took charge of their own destinies, charted their own future, financed their own projects, and refused to be stopped again by anti-development green policies, politicians and pressure groups.

"Uganda, the Great Lakes Region [around Lake Victoria] and all of Africa need to do the same thing. We have the land and natural resources, the bright and hard-working people.

"Let us be brave and bold!" Fiona exhorted. "Let us become prosperous and healthy together."

Her beloved Cyril shared and stoked her passions. He too wrote articles and spoke to Ugandan officials, journalists and students on these topics. A biotechnology conference he organized at the United Nations featured experts like Norman Borlaug, father of the first Green Revolution. The audience included scores of high school students, many UN staffers and people from all over New York City.

Cyril also served as executive producer for a documentary film about the ways modern genetically modified crops dramatically reduce the need for poor African farmers to hand-spray crops with pesticides, while preventing pest damage, increasing crop yields many times over, and bringing hope and much improved living standards to African farm families.

He too dreamed of a prosperous modern Africa and described how he, a devout Christian, was deeply inspired by a Jew (business professor, economist and author Julian Simon) and a Muslim (banker-economist Muhammad Yunus). He pilloried the Rainforest Action Network for its incessant human rights violations: its campaigns to prevent Africa from using DDT or other insecticides, fossil fuels or even expanded hydroelectric power.

Cyril brought me to Uganda, to see firsthand what they were accomplishing. The three of us spent tow frenzied weeks speaking to government, radio, television, high school and university audiences on these subjects. Thanks to George Mason University, we were able to give soccer balls, shoes, shin guards and uniforms to grade school boys who previously had to play barefoot with rags rolled and tied into a ball.

Fiona and Cyril aided her extended family and mentored scores of promising young people. One of them, Steven Lyazi, steadily improved his writing skills and published many articles online, before he was tragically killed in a horrific bus accident in 2017.

"Calls for us to live `sustainably,' use wind and solar and biofuel power, and never use fossil fuels, are a demand that we accept prolonged starvation and death in our poor countries," Steven wrote in one article. "They mean desperate people will do horrible things to survive, even just another day."

In another column, he pointed out that wind and solar power are far better than wood and animal dung fires. But in reality they are nothing more than "short-term solutions to serious, immediate problems. They do not equal real economic development or really improved living standards. Our cities need abundant, reliable electricity, and for faraway villages wind and solar must be only temporary, to meet basic needs until they can be connected to transmission lines and a grid."

When will the day come, Steven wondered - echoing what Fiona and Cyril had been saying for over a decade - when politicians and activists, who say their care about the world's poor, "stop worrying about global warming, pesticides and GMO crops - and start helping us get the energy, food, medical facilities, technologies, jobs and economic growth we need to improve our lives?"

Fiona, Cyril and Steven live on in their eloquent, passionate articles. Their long battle for equality and human rights, through access to modern technologies, will continue - bringing their dream of a free, prosperous, healthy, vibrant Uganda and Africa ever closer to reality.

Via email

Australia: How a Channel Seven weather presenter is subtly pushing a climate change message - and you didn't even notice

It's not so much what she says that is the problem -- so much as what she leaves out -- like the really extreme weather events of the 1930's -- dustbowls etc

A Channel Seven weather presenter is subtly pushing a climate change message in her nightly bulletins. Melbourne meteorologist Jane Bunn has managed to sell the idea to her viewers without explicitly referring to the concept.

Instead, the weather woman has been pointing out significant changes in weathers trends and highlighting the increase of warmer temperatures to her viewers, The Age reported.

In a May weather report, which saw temperatures reach just over 14C, Bunn called attention to how the overall trend that month 'since the late 70s is warmer than the long-term average.' 'Overall, our temperatures are moving upwards,' she said.

She described a July day as 'cold, wet and windy' despite the fact that the month's rainfall was less than half the July average.

She then reported there was a 'trend toward less July days with significant rain' over the past 75 years.

But the meteorologist, who was has been working with Climate Communicators in a program run by Monash University's Climate Change Communication Research Hub, has insisted that she is just telling viewers 'exactly what is happening.'

'Personally, I don't like to yell at people,' she told the outlet. 'Anything that is forcefully put across, I don't like to put any political spin on anything either. I just want the facts, quietly put through in a straightforward way that people can understand.'

The research hub supplies the presenters with graphics on the trends, which she says viewers have always been fascinated with.

The program, which is the counterpart of an American movement, has signed up more than 500 weather presenters across the US.

Stephanie Hall, the research hub's communication manager told The Age that weather presenters 'trusted', 'apolitical' and skilled communicators. She said the idea of climate change has become 'hyper-political.'

Bunn says there has been no backlash to her subtle advocacy for climate change. 'It's a couple of graphs which go up on the screen which are telling what is happening. And there shouldn't be any backlash about that, if you think about it. We're just telling exactly what is happening.'

Bunn's reporting appears to have been well-received, according to social media users. 'This is excellent!! Jane Bunn is planting the seeds of change in viewers' minds. We all feel it and noticie it, on some level, but she's tying the past to present in an easy to follow fashion. Nice work!! Thank you,' one Twitter user said.

'Jane Bunn isn't just a weather girl. She's a meteorologist and she's not "subtly selling" anything - she is simply stating facts,' another said.

A Channel Seven spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that Bunn is a meteorologist, not a political campaigner, and that there is no climate change spin to her reports.

The network said Bunn's reporting is based on her expertise and the best available weather data, reflecting exactly what happened over a period of time - regardless of whether it was hot, cold or wet.

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

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

27 February, 2019

Jordan Peterson in Sydney on global warming

Go here to see the relevant section of a panel show in which he was challenged on whether his values and methods would cure climate change

He basically says that to arrive at a useful opinion about such issues, you first have to grow up and solve your personal problems. He is basically saying that concern about climate change is immature and puerile attention-seeking

His best answer of the evening was simply "No"

Stop scaring kids stiff about climate change

Adults should dispel children’s worst fears, not encourage them

Last week, thousands of children in the UK went on ‘strike’, bunking off school to call on the government to declare a ‘climate emergency’. The inspiration for the strike was 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg, who refused to attend school and protested for weeks outside the Swedish parliament over climate change.

Thunberg has since been feted by the great and the good. At a recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Katowice, Poland, she admonished the politicians in attendance: ‘You are not mature enough to tell it like it is… You say you love your children above all else. And yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.’

This view was echoed last week by the British strikers’ self-appointed spokesperson, Lottie Tellyn. ‘If we don’t strike now, then we are getting educated for a future that we don’t know is going to exist’, she told the BBC. ‘Our core message is that we want politicians to start listening to what we need as a generation… we’re going to be left with the problems they’ve created.’

In 1992, when I was still at school, 13-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki read almost the same script to the UN’s Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. She claimed to be fighting for future generations. Twenty-seven years on, Cullis-Suzuki and I are now part of the generation of grown-ups who are said to have failed the young.

But have we really failed them? Nine per cent of children born in 1992 did not reach their fifth birthday. By 2015, that number had halved: approximately 10,000 fewer infants die per day than in the 1990s. The average child born in the world in 1992 had a life expectancy of 64.5. Children born in 2015 have a life expectancy of 71.43. The world is improving for future generations on almost every conceivable measure. And this is largely thanks to the very economic development that is held responsible for climate change and therefore for endangering these children’s futures.

Then there is the charge that politicians are ‘doing nothing’ in the face of crisis. One striker, 12-year-old Theo, told Sky News that, ‘There are people in that building [parliament] going week in, week out, ignoring the fact that our world is dying out’.

But politicians are doing a lot in response to climate change. Thunberg, for instance, delivered her famous address to the UNFCCC’s 24th annual Committee of Parties (COP) meeting, where the UK and EU have long sought ‘ambitious’ global reductions in CO2 emissions. For all of the school strikers’ lives, the UK parliament has been dominated by a cross-party consensus on climate change, which has led to the creation of the Climate Change Act. The Act is likely the most expensive piece of legislation in British history – it is estimated to cost us a total of £319 billion.

And what about the strikers’ fears of a climate apocalypse? The truth is that science has yet to detect any statistical increase in the kinds of floods, wildfires, droughts and storms that these kids believe will rip civilisation from its foundations. Extreme weather today kills barely two per cent of the number of people it claimed in the early 1900s, despite the global population increasing from 1.65 billion to 7.7 billion. And thanks to economic development, even if natural disasters were to multiply in the way that certain doomsayers predict, far fewer people would be exposed to them. It is therefore highly unlikely that any of the strikers, their children or even their great-great-great-grandchildren will ever experience climate-change-related devastation.

It would be moving to see children organising themselves spontaneously for a political goal. But children do not rise to global prominence under the steam of movements of their own creation. Last week’s day of protest was trailed all over the news media before the event. And it was NGOs, not children, who organised the spectacle and its PR, booking children of green activists for media appearances and interviews. Even government ministers tweeted their support and ‘solidarity’.

Children’s perception of the world should, of course, be taken seriously by the adults in their lives (if not necessarily by the wider public). But it is not science that has put this apocalyptic understanding of climate change into these children’s heads. Adults should challenge children’s fears about the future in the same way they would their fears of ghosts and monsters. Instead, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, academics, politicians and even scientists have told them that they are going to die horribly and that they have no future. At the same time, they have abolished any semblance of perspective or debate on climate change from the airwaves, textbooks and the public sphere.

These children aren’t ‘engaged’ – they are scared stiff.

SOURCE

Scientists: CO2 the 'miracle molecule' key to feeding, saving the world

By Paul Bedard

If you like to eat, then you should be cheering global warming.

That's the claim in a new scientific report that counters global warming fanatics like former Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and offers proof that CO2 added to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is nature's Miracle-Gro.

In what some are calling the counter to the liberals' "Green New Deal," the new report provided to Secrets said that instead of fighting over the stalemated global warming debate, the world should take advantage of increased CO2 levels by growing plants and food that thrive on it.

"Fortunately, carbon dioxide, a non-polluting gas that is created when fossil fuels are converted into energy, has proved to be a powerful plant food," said the report from the CO2 Coalition of scientists who reject claims it will end the world in 12 years.

That group has produced President Trump's new leader of an advisory committee looking into climate change, William Happer, an NSC senior director and a physicist who headed the CO2 Coalition.

The benefits are easy to explain, said the white paper's principal researcher, Craig D. Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and a member of the CO2 Coalition.
He said plants thrive when there is more CO2, which is why growers pump it into greenhouses.

"The modern rise in atmospheric CO2 is proving to be a powerful ally in staving off regional food shortages that are projected to occur just a few decades from now. The unique characteristics of this miracle molecule are helping to raise crop yields per unit of land area, per unit of nutrients applied, and per unit of water used," said the report titled, What Rising CO2 Means for Global Food Security.

Its release this week comes as the White House is trying to shift the climate change debate to one that looks at how to take advantage of the slightly warming temperatures.

Idso's report tackled the apocalyptic warnings of global warming computer models, noting, for example, that despite a slight rise in temperatures over the past century, cities have not flooded.
His report has a de facto bottom line which his that CO2 is here to stay so deal with it and use it to the advantage of mankind.

And he challenged other reports that suggested CO2 will hurt the nutrition in plants.

"The researchers themselves acknowledge that plant breeding, fertilizers, and new growing methods can reverse any nutritional decline. However, they unrealistically decided to freeze wealth, diets, and agricultural methods at today's levels in their computer model's predictions of the future. That is what generated these dramatic but unfounded claims about 'millions being harmed,'" said Idso.

His is certainly a contrarian view to the climate change alarmism in the Democrats' "Green New Deal," but Idso warned that their calls to rid fossil fuels will end up starving the world.

"A continuation of the current upward trend in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration is essential for securing future food security. Any efforts to slow it because of the risks of predicted climate changes must also consider the risks of limiting its benefits to agricultural, nature and humanity," said the report.

SOURCE

The Uninhabited Mind of David Wallace-Wells

David Wallace-Wells shook up a lot of people with a “horrifying 2017 essay in New York magazine about climate change. It was an attempt to paint a very real picture of our not-too-distant future, a future filled with famines, political chaos, economic collapse, fierce resource competition, and a sun that ‘cooks us.’”

Now he’s got a book out that builds on that article, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, which Vox describes as “a brutal read,” “more terrifying” than the “terrifying essay.”

What makes it terrifying is that Wallace-Wells insists that the most likely scenario is that human-driven global warming will raise global average temperature by about 4.3C by the end of the century, and all his predictions about knock-on effects assume that.

But 4.3C is toward the upper end of the range the United Nations Intergovernmental on Panel Change (IPCC) offers based on its computer models: 1.5–4.5C. Furthermore, this is predicted to happen not by the end of this century but after all climate feedbacks have responded to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration from pre-industrial times, i.e., rising from 280 to 560 parts per million. That process, termed “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS), is expected to take about 200 years, not just to the end of this century.

More important yet, the IPCC’s computer models consistently predict 2 to 3 times the warming actually observed over the relevant period, and since the global temperature has risen and fallen cyclically throughout geologic history, there’s no way to know how much of that to blame on anthropogenic CO2 versus how much to blame on natural causes.

That’s why empirical studies — as opposed to modeling studies, which are just hypotheses that must be tested against observations — point toward ECS of around 1.7C, which is near the bottom end of the IPCC’s 1.5–4.5C range. Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer discussed the paper behind that figure in a blog post last year.

Wallace-Wells’s article and book are filled with claims drawn from the upper extremes even of the scenarios of the IPCC, let alone the estimates of more empirically driven studies. It’s also filled with factual claims that just don’t stand up to the data. Take this paragraph quoting him in Vox’s article:

"Last year in the summer of 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere you had this unprecedented heat wave that killed people all around the world. You had the crazy hurricane season. In California, wildfires burned more than a million acres. And we’re really only just beginning to see these sorts of effects. We’ll take those claims one at a time".

First, a heat wave is weather, not climate, and the 2018 heat wave didn’t even match the 2003 heat wave that killed 35,000 people in Europe alone. But it’s also significant that, on average, cold snaps kill 10 times as many people per day as heat waves. So if global warming does raise the frequency and intensity of heat waves, since it will also reduce the frequency and intensity of cold snaps, we should see a net reduction in temperature-related deaths.

Second, the “crazy hurricane season” was actually pretty normal by historical standards.

Let me start with some hard numbers for the Atlantic basin, the most familiar to Americans. In 2018, there were 15 tropical storms and 7 hurricanes — 2 of them Category 3 or above — resulting in 144 deaths. In 2005, there were 28 tropical storms (almost twice as many) and 15 hurricanes (more than twice as many) — 7 of them Category 3 or above (more than 3 times as many) — resulting in 2,280 or more deaths (almost 16 times as many). So 2018 doesn’t even beat 2005, and there have been lots of other years worse than 2018 as well. One doesn’t have to be a hurricane expert to get this information — Wikipedia has the numbers.

As Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow and University of Alabama climate scientist Roy W. Spencer, whose Ph.D. focused on hurricanes, explains in his recent books Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People and An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy, both available from our online store, there has been no significant upward trend, when accounting for the magnitude of annual variation, in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones in any part of the world through the modern warm period. Spencer says,

"In the U.S., there is evidence from Gulf of Mexico coastal lake bottom sediments of super-hurricane storm surges 1,000 to 3,800 years ago that have not been rivaled in the modern historical record. The strongest hurricane to strike New England occurred on August 25, 1635, only fifteen years after the Mayflower arrived and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established, with 14 to 22 feet of storm surge".

Paul Homewood summarizes the data in a paper released by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Raw data without much discussion are at hurricane specialist Ryan N. Maue’s “Global Tropical Cyclone Activity” page.

As for wildfires, the annual number of wildfires in the U.S. fell drastically in the early 1980s in response to widespread campaigns against carelessness with campfires, cigarettes, etc. It hasn’t changed much since then. Total area burned by wildfires fall drastically from the 1920s through the 1980s and began rising in the late 1990s, not because of warmer or drier weather but because of changed forest management of two kinds. First, by diminishing the number of fires, we allowed forests and their underbrush to grow more dense. Second, we stopped a lot of the logging that previously thinned forests and removed underbrush. Both of these meant leaving lots more fuel to burn. The result are fires that are hotter and grow faster than before. The increased average size of fires doesn’t correlate positively with global average temperature.

If you’re looking for standard sci-fi thriller like those in the 1950s that conjured giant tarantulas as a result of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing, The Uninhabitable Earth might be just the ticket. If you’re looking for credible science — well, go elsewhere, say, to climatologist Dr. Tim Ball's Human Caused Global Warming: The Biggest Deception in History — The Why, What, Where, When, and How It Was Achieved.

SOURCE

Ocasio-Cortez: People Maybe Shouldn’t Reproduce Due To Climate Change

For once I heartily agree with AOC. May she convince all Warmists not to have children. The benefit to the gene pool would be enormous

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested on Sunday night that people should consider not having children due to climate change because there is a "scientific consensus" that life will be hard for kids.

"Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don't turn this ship around and so it's basically like, there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult," Ocasio-Cortez said while chopping up food in her kitchen during an Instagram live video. "And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, 'Is it okay to still have children?'"

Ocasio-Cortez then took a shot at Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) over an incident that happened in Feinstein's office on Friday when a far-left fringe group tried to pressure Feinstein into supporting the Green New Deal.

"You know what’s interesting about this group?" Feinstein told the group on Friday, in response to the group storming into her office. "I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing."

"You come in here, and you say it has to be my way or the highway. I don’t respond to that," Feinstein continued. "I’ve gotten elected, I just ran. I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality. And I know what I’m doing. So you know, maybe people should listen a little bit."

Ocasio-Cortez said Feinstein's response was "like not good enough" because the legislation that the Democrats support is "frankly going to kill us."

"This idea that 'I've been working on this for x-amount of years,' um, it's like not good enough," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Like, we need a universal sense of urgency, and people are like trying to introduce watered-down proposals that are frankly going to kill us. A lack of urgency is going to kill us."

"The issue has gotten worse," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "So I don't think that working on an issue for 30 years alone is what qualifies as, as what someone qualified to solve an issue."

"That said, there are a lot of people that have been doing this work for decades that have proposed ambitious solutions for years and have not been listened to," Ocasio-Cortez added. "So it's not just, 'I've been doing this for 30 years,' so we need to listen to them because frankly people have been failing at the same things for 30 or 40 years. What we need to do is say, 'What solutions have not been tried yet? And what ambitious scale have we not shot at yet.' And let's do it."

Ocasio-Cortez has often used alarmist language when discussing climate change, repeatedly comparing fighting climate change to fighting Nazi Germany. Ocasio-Cortez has gone as far as to claim that the world is going to end in 12 years if her far-left policies are not implemented.

"I think the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change," Ocasio-Cortez said during a Martin Luther King forum in New York City in January. "And your biggest issue, your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it? — and like this is the war, this is our World War II."

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

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

26 February, 2019

Greening of the Earth Enhanced by ... India and China?

As they modernize

Over the last two decades, the earth has seen a big increase in area covered by green leaves.

China and India take a lot of flak for their heavy carbon footprints. However, NASA Ames reports, “A new study shows that the two emerging countries with the world’s biggest populations are leading the increase in greening on land.” What explains this dichotomy? The journal Nature Sustainability relays some specifics:

Recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change.

Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area.

NASA Ames adds, “Taken all together, the greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rainforests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000s — a 5% increase.”

Researcher Chi Chen noted, “China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9% of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation — a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation.”

And according to Ames Research Center’s Rama Nemani, “Once people realize there’s a problem, they tend to fix it. In the 70s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss wasn’t good; in the 90s, people realized it; and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That’s what we see in the satellite data.” This is a salient point that reinforces the pertinence of adaptation. What’s causing climate change remains obscure, despite the mainstream narrative. Moreover, CO2 isn’t a pollutant. And crops, as demonstrated above, thrive on it — which is a good thing.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this greening would likely be less so without fossil fuels. As Joseph L. Bast and Peter Ferrara wrote in The Wall Street Journal last June, “Fossil-fuel emissions create additional benefits, contributing to the greening of the Earth. A 2017 study published in Nature magazine found that the global mass of land plants grew 31% during the 20th century. African deserts are blooming thanks to fossil fuels.”

SOURCE

Trump should end political junk science regulations by restoring scientific transparency to regulatory process

By Rick Manning

Earlier this week I joined about twenty of my conservative colleagues in Washington, D.C. and around the country in signing a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to sign an Executive Order mandating “full transparency of all scientific data and studies used to justify all pending or new regulations in the federal rulemaking process.”

During the election campaign of 2016, then-President Barack Obama rhetorically questioned the ability of candidate Trump to restore America’s manufacturing sector claiming it would take a “magic wand” to bring those jobs back.

Well, two years and a half million more manufacturing jobs later, President Trump’s “magic wand” turned out to be scissors. Scissors which cut the highest corporate tax rates in the world to incentivize bringing factories back to America. Scissors applied to bad trade deals and unfair low tariffs for countries like China who have engaged in economic warfare against America’s manufacturing sector. And maybe even more importantly, scissors to the mountains of bureaucratic red tape that had been choking out plans for new factories and production facilities while encouraging the gutting of existing ones and shipping them overseas.

President Trump’s first two years have been an economic tour d’ force bringing about 1.4 million Americans who had been left behind back into the workforce, increasing real wages minus inflation by 1.3 percent and creating an environment where record low unemployment rates have been reached for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and people with disabilities.

But on the regulatory front, there is an important step that remains to be taken. Previous administrations have used junk science to justify radical agendas designed to shut down America’s economy. Individual agencies cannot be depended upon to implement rules that prevent a recurrence of pre-determined scientific conclusions being created in order to justify politically unfeasible regulatory activity.

Quite simply, Americans deserve and need to know that the science used to justify regulatory actions is sound, and the only way to ensure this is for the scientists to be forced to show their work. In fact, the essential element of the scientific method is reproducibility of results. The reason we know that the boiling point of water at sea level is 212 degrees Fahrenheit is because anyone can test whether that is true or not. Similarly, making the methodology of scientific reports available for scrutiny will make certain policy makers do not pursue damaging regulatory fixes based upon false or erroneous conclusions.

David Randall, the director of research at the National Association of Scholars recently wrote in The Hill that, “America is suffering from a crisis of irreproducible science. In 2012 the biotechnology firm Amgen tried to reproduce 53 ‘landmark’ studies in hematology and oncology, but could only replicate six. That same year Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the FDA, ‘estimated that as much as 75 percent of published biomarker associations are not replicable.’”

Randall continued, “The federal government bears some blame. According to a 2015 study, government funds two-thirds of preclinical research in America and half of that research is irreproducible. Of the $28 billion our country wastes each year in irreproducible preclinical research, the government share is $19 billion.

“The federal government makes policy based on research that can’t [be] reproduce[d]. The EPA used the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to justify many costly regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan. When Dr. James Enstrom acquired the original data and conducted an independent re-analysis, he ‘found that there was no significant relationship between PM2.5 and death from all causes.’”

The bottom line is that President Trump can bring sanity back into the scientific method by restoring it when agencies are determining regulatory actions. The only people who could possibly object would be those who have made it an industry to push agenda motivated science to create public policy. Getting regulations right through transparent, reproducible science rather than continuing to rely upon politically correct pseudo-science is just plain common sense.

It is time for President Trump to act by signing an Executive Order which re-establishes scientific integrity throughout our government.

SOURCE

Mueller’s ‘Foreign Agent’ Prosecutions May Lead to Probes of Green Groups

Some of them really do get support from Russia

By invoking a law regulating foreign agents to pursue prosecution of former Trump campaign officials, special counsel Robert Mueller opened the door to more intense scrutiny of some U.S. environmental groups, according to legal analysts who say China and Russia use such groups to influence America’s energy policy.

But these legal analysts said they also see a danger that Mueller’s Russia investigation could set a precedent for the Justice Department to “selectively enforce” the Foreign Agents Registration Act in a manner that undermines the rule of law and potentially jeopardizes national security.

The Trump administration, they say, should closely examine the relationship between environmental advocacy groups and foreign governments that are considered strategic competitors of the U.S.

“If the Mueller probe has any real benefit, it is that it opened the door for the Justice Department to employ FARA as a basis to investigate green groups that are undermining our country and aiding socialist/communist regimes,” lawyer Mark Fitzgibbons told The Daily Signal.

Because these same environmental groups persistently lobby for policy changes to restrict U.S. energy use and the projection of U.S. military power, the groups may operate at the direction and encouragement of hostile foreign actors, Fitzgibbons and other reform proponents argue.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, which predates World War II, requires anyone who acts as an agent of foreign principals “in a political or quasi-political capacity” to disclose that relationship periodically, as well as “activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of those activities,” according to the Justice Department.

But because FARA has not been strictly enforced, little case history and precedent exist for investigations into the actions of possible foreign agents who decline to disclose their activities, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit government watchdog, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Americans and their elected representatives have been deprived of the openness and transparency they need to evaluate the political activism and legal tactics of environmental advocacy groups, Fitton said.

‘Selectively Enforced’

The disclosure requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act explicitly state that information made available through registration would help ensure that citizens and officials can get the specifics they need to evaluate the activities of anyone who registers “in light of their function as foreign agents.”

But Fitton expressed concern that the law could be misused and misapplied to advance a political agenda detached from its stated purpose.

“We already know the law has been selectively enforced,” Fitton said of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “Violations of FARA have typically been handled administratively. If you didn’t file paperwork, you were told to file it. But the Mueller special counsel operation, desperate for prosecutions, started criminally prosecuting FARA regulations where they had never been criminally prosecuted before.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel on May 17, 2017, to investigate allegations that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller, a former FBI director, also is probing allegations that the Trump presidential campaign coordinated with Russian operatives in its efforts to win the election.

So far, the Mueller investigation has resulted in dozens of indictments and eight guilty pleas, none of which involves coordination or collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign. An updated list of charges, pleas, and resulting convictions is available here.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman for two months, pleaded guilty in September to charges that he violated FARA because he failed to disclose to the Justice Department that he worked as an agent of Ukraine’s government and as a lobbyist for pro-Russian political forces in that country.

Richard Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and business associate of Manafort’s, also pleaded guilty to FARA violations in connection with his lobbying efforts in Ukraine.

No Comment From Special Counsel

Mueller has pointed to potential violations of foreign agent registration rules in his prosecution of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies accused of trying to manipulate the 2016 election through internet and social media campaigns.

Fitton favors counterintelligence investigations into the actions of groups and individuals who appear to skirt registration requirements, but has expressed concern with how the law has been applied against Trump campaign officials.

“In my view, the Mueller team has been manufacturing dubious FARA charges against Trump campaign people,” Fitton told The Daily Signal. “In the case of Manafort, he was really working for political parties, not a foreign government. So this is a pretty dramatic expansion of FARA.”

The Daily Signal sought comment from the Special Counsel’s Office on concerns that the law might be “selectively” or “unevenly” applied in a manner that enables some environmental activists to escape scrutiny.

“We will decline to comment,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr replied in an email Tuesday morning.

During a December hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Fitton commented on how some actions of nonprofit advocacy groups and their relationships with foreign governments could activate requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In response to questions from Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Fitton said that if advocacy groups are found to be “taking orders from a foreign government” or “beholden to them financially,” they probably should be required to register under the law.

During his exchange with Fitton, Gosar said environmental advocacy groups that oppose natural gas development and the process of hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) have received millions of dollars in grant money that congressional investigators traced back to the Russian government.

Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council “have undermined the energy sector in the United States and even got fracking banned in the cash-strapped state of New York,” Gosar said.

‘Cozy’ With the Chinese

If there is genuine concern on the part of Mueller, the media, and other members of Congress about Russian meddling in American affairs, the Arizona Republican said, then environmental advocacy groups working to disrupt American energy while receiving financial support from the Russian government should be subjected to investigations.

Gosar, who also sits on the House Natural Resources Committee, took the opportunity to focus attention on the relationship between environmental activists and China’s communist government. In 2018, the Natural Resources Committee sent letters to several environmental groups, inquiring about their relationship with government entities in China and Japan.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, has “gotten cozy with the environmentally unfriendly Chinese government while suing the U.S. government whenever it can,” Gosar said during his exchange with Fitton.

He suggested that the environmental group’s lawsuits against the Navy and its “weapons development programs” could work to the strategic advantage of China’s communist government.

SOURCE

Open Buckets of Uranium Ore Found at Grand Canyon not a problem, Experts Say

For nearly 20 years, a trio of 5-gallon (19 liters) paint buckets sat near the taxidermy exhibit at Grand Canyon National Park's museum collections building. Those buckets, it turns out, weren't holding paint — they were actually loaded up with uranium ore, a naturally occurring rock rich in uranium that gives off potentially dangerous radiation.

Elston "Swede" Stephenson, a health and wellness manager at the park's South Rim, recently described the uranium find and subsequent "cover-up" in a series of email blasts to Congress, his fellow National Park Service employees and the staff of The Arizona Republic newspaper. [Soviets Hid Nuclear Bunkers in Poland's Forests (Photos)]

Stephenson warned that thousands of employees, tourists and school groups who visited the exhibit between 2000 and 2018 were likely "exposed" to dangerous amounts of radiation, especially groups of kids who sat for 30-minute presentations in the uranium's vicinity. These children may have been exposed to roughly 1,400 times the safe radiation dosage allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Stephenson wrote. Scary stuff, if true.

However, several experts told Live Science that Stephenson's assessment may be unfounded.

"If the time spent near the ore was short, there is likely little cause for concern," Bill Field, a professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa, told Live Science in an email.

Safe ore not safe?

Over time, uranium can break down into radioactive materials like radium and release harmful gas like radon. Studies of uranium miners have shown that prolonged exposure to uranium's decay products can increase the chances of getting cancer — However, Field said, "The risk from a few buckets of the uranium ore is quite different than a career in uranium mining."

According to F. Ward Whicker, a radioecology expert and professor emeritus at Colorado State University, uranium ore chiefly emits gamma particles — the least dangerous type of radiation.

"The amounts of radiation exposure from natural terrestrial sources and galactic cosmic rays to people living anywhere is far higher than most realize," Whicker told Live Science in an email. "Life flourishes in this constant radiation environment because DNA repair mechanisms operate efficiently and rapidly in cells — provided that intensity of radiation exposure is within certain levels."

The danger, if any, from the Grand Canyon ore buckets depends on a long list of factors, Whicker said, including an individual's distance from the ore, the length of their exposure, the quantity of ore in the buckets, the amount of uranium in that ore, and the amount of shielding provided by the rocky parts of the ore itself and the container.

In this case, the plastic paint buckets may have provided a powerful enough shield against the ore's radiation. Modi Wetzler, a chemistry professor at Clemson University who studies nuclear waste told The Arizona Republic that, while gamma rays can be dangerous if inhaled, they are easily absorbed and rendered harmless by just a few inches of air, or even a person's outer layer of dead skin.

The ore's relative harmlessness is reflected in a report from the Parks Service, which Stephenson referenced in his emails.

After a teenager with a Geiger counter accidentally discovered the ore buckets in the museum in March 2018, the Parks Service launched a brief investigation to test radiation levels in and around the building. According to their report (which Stephenson quoted to The Arizona Republic), direct contact with the ore resulted in radiation levels at roughly twice the safe annual dosage allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — however, readings taken just 5 feet (1.5 meters) away from the bucket showed zero radiation.

The next steps

The uranium ore has since been disposed of in a nearby uranium mine. Meanwhile, the Parks Service, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Bureau of Radiation Control are now investigating the museum and its premises. According to Emily Davis, Grand Canyon National Park Public Affairs Officer, radiation levels at the site are normal and safe.

"A recent survey of the Grand Canyon National Park's museum collection facility found radiation levels at background levels — the amount always present in the environment — and below levels of concern for public health and safety," Davis told NPR. "There is no current risk to the public or park employees. The museum collection facility is open and work routines have continued as normal."

Any long-term effects caused by the ore's 18-year stint in the museum remain to be identified. While it might be negligible, the ore likely did increase the radon levels in the building somewhat, Field told Live Science.

"The facility should have radon testing performed," Field said. "Over the long term, however, the potential exposure from radon from natural sources in the soil and rock under the facility would likely be the greatest source of radiation to the public and workers."

SOURCE

Out-of-touch Leftist politician says it 'could be a GOOD thing' if Australia's $25billion coal industry collapsed leaving thousands of people unemployed

The Scott Morrison government has pounced on a Labor MP who suggested a decline in the $25billion coal market is a 'good thing'.

Labor frontbencher Richard Marles told Sky News on Wednesday the world market for thermal coal - Australia's top export industry - had collapsed.

'At one level that's a good thing because what that implies is the world is acting in relation to climate change,' Mr Marles said.

Mr Morrison and his Liberal colleagues slammed Mr Marles and accused him of suggesting a supposed decline was 'wonderful'.

'He might think it's wonderful... we don't think it's wonderful. In all of those places [people] who depend on those jobs don't think it's wonderful,' the prime minister told Parliament.

Queensland-based federal minister Steve Ciobo reiterated the 'wonderful' line, telling parliament thermal coal produced $25 billion in export income for Australia and thousands of jobs each year.

'The Australian Labor Party thinks it is a wonderful thing that they get to junk-pile 55,000 jobs in the resources sector,' he told parliament.

Mr Marles later clarified his position and said he didn't properly articulate his point.

Coal clearly has an important and enduring role to play, even as we transition to more renewables, and I should have made that clear,' he said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this month showed coal export sales rose nearly 16 per cent in 2018.

Mr Marles earlier reiterated Labor's position that no money should be spent on the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.

'There are lots of ways in which you can generate employment, but the important statement here is that no public money is going to be spent on it,' he told Sky.

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

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

25 February, 2019

Greenies getting ever more Fascistic

They even have a Hitler Youth these days

Greenpeace and Amnesty International unite in push for greater civil disobedience.

Two of the world’s largest nonprofits are joining forces to spark a new wave of civil disobedience to intensify pressure on governments and business leaders to avert a climate catastrophe.

Greenpeace International, which has traditionally focused on environmental issues, and Amnesty International, which has concentrated on human rights, are co-launching a Summit for Human Survival later this year to encourage nonviolent protests and other interventions that force greater action on climate change. The event is expected to include NGOs, grassroots activist groups, as well as arts and cultural organizations from across the world.

Kumi Naidoo, secretary-general of Amnesty, said it is essential for organizations across different sectors to join forces rather than seeing issues such as the environment, human rights and international development as separate. An important aim of the upcoming summit, Naidoo said, is to mobilize non-environmental communities to recognize the seriousness of climate change.

“One of our errors has been to see climate change only as an environmental issue,” he told HuffPost at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which hosts business, political and economic leaders. “We should never have framed it that way, and I hope we have not left it too late to create that intersectionality.”

In its report published last October, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the world has only 12 years left to avoid catastrophic climate change. Both Greenpeace and Amnesty believe that direct action is essential to wake people up to the immediacy of the problem.

Jennifer Morgan, head of Greenpeace International, told HuffPost that it is important for people to rise up and engage in nonviolent direct action to bring the urgency of this message to corporate leaders in a different way. She highlighted that this week more than 30,000 school students went on strike in Belgium seeking greater action on climate change and children in Berlin took to the streets calling for an early coal phase-out.

“The youth are demanding to be heard. The question is, why isn’t the Davos elite responding with the scale and pace required?” she said. “We have no time to waste.”

Naidoo, who was Morgan’s predecessor at Greenpeace International, believes one focus for direct action should be to push for an end to financial investments in the most polluting industries. That should include going after the big banks, he said, as they continue to fund the fossil fuel industry and are more sensitive to consumer pressure.

The idea of the Summit, said Naidoo, is not for it to dictate or try to coordinate centralized actions but rather to unite individuals and organizations so that they can collaborate in pushing for change. He pointed to new forms of protest such as the Extinction Rebellion movement, one of the many youth-driven civil disobedience movements focused on climate change. It began in the U.K. and is now launching chapters across the globe, including in the United States. Naidoo added that big international NGOs aren’t organizing this mobilization and that this sort of decentralization should be encouraged.

Both Naidoo and Morgan used the end of the WEF to lambast the politicians and business leaders present for not recognizing the planetary emergency we face. Naidoo criticized the leaders present and accused them of only caring about maintaining the status quo, pointing to their failure to act in the wake of the 2008 global financial collapse and the Asian financial crisis a decade earlier. Discussions about the need to scrap fossil fuel subsidies and address tax havens after the last global financial crisis had taken place, he said, but nothing significant had materialized.

“We need to fundamentally rethink what structural and systemic changes are needed in the economy to make sure we address climate and dangerous inequality, which is leading to massive social tensions. Instead, all we have seen is system recovery, system maintenance and system protection.”

As the world tinkers on the brink of a climate catastrophe, Morgan said, “it is deeply disturbing that … avoiding further temperature rise is not at the very center of all of the meetings of CEOs and world leaders.”

SOURCE

A New Study About Roundup and Cancer Doesn't Say What You Probably Think It Does

Is this just another example of epidemiologists torturing the data until they confess to a spurious but headline-grabbing statistical significance?

California school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson was awarded $286 million in damages last August in his lawsuit alleging that his use of the popular weedkiller glyphosate (sold as Roundup by Monsanto, now a division of A.G. Bayer) had caused him to fall ill with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). A judge later cut the award to only $78 million. The company reportedly faces 9,300 other plaintiffs alleging that the herbicide caused their illnesses.

"Glyphosate has a more than 40-year history of safe use. Over those four decades, researchers have conducted more than 800 scientific studies and reviews that support the safe use of glyphosate," asserted a statement from the company after the trial. "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) both recently reaffirmed glyphosate does not cause cancer. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory authorities in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, Korea, and elsewhere routinely review all approved pesticide products and have consistently reaffirmed that glyphosate does not cause cancer."

Who should you believe?

On its face, a new study published last week finding that exposure to glyphosate does increase the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in humans by 41 percent seems like a gift to the plaintiffs and their attorneys and a confirmation of their claims. The researchers obtained their result by conducting a meta-analysis of previous studies. This finding stands in contrast with the results of the 2017 Agricultural Health Study (AHS) in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which found "no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes." (The AHS has been monitoring the health of thousands of pesticide applicators for a couple of decades now.)

Forty-one percent sounds pretty bad, but let's put in context. About 20 new cases of NHL are diagnosed per 100,000 men and women each year. Assuming that 41 percent figure is right, that would suggest that 8 additional new NHL cases would be expected each year for every 100,000 exposed to glyphosate. Interestingly, the incidence rate of NHL has remained essentially flat even after the advent of herbicide resistant biotech crops encouraged the rising use of glyphosate. Keep in mind that your lifetime risk of developing or dying from cancer if you are male is 40 and 22 percent respectively. If female, the odds are 38 and 19 percent.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat takes the new study apart and suggests that its findings are badly flawed. The main problem, he argues, is that the researchers combine the results from five case-control studies and one large cohort study which happens to be the one reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute cited above. Case-control studies are notoriously susceptible to the effects of bias, which may be introduced as a result of a poor study design or during the collection of exposure and outcome data.

Kabat points out that the authors of the new meta-analysis combined findings from low quality case-control studies with those of the much higher quality AHS cohort study. Kabat then persuasively argues that in order to drag their meta-analytic results over the finish line to statistical significance, the authors of the new study picked only the highest relative risk ratio figure for NHL from the AHS study. If they had chosen any of the other three AHS risk ratios reported for NHL Kabat suggests that their "overall result would likely not have been statistically significant."

"One can't escape the impression that the motivation behind what presents itself as a disinterested academic study was to include a selected and unrepresentative result from the highly-respected AHS in their meta-analysis and use the far inferior case-control studies to jack up the summary relative risk to obtain a statistically-significant finding," concludes Kabat.

Time will tell if this new study is just another example of broken science in which epidemiologists keep torturing the data until they confess to a spurious but headline-grabbing statistical significance.

SOURCE

Business Leaders Care Even Less About Climate Change Than They Did Last Year

With all the evidence of a coming climate catastrophe, which threatens the very future of civilization, one would expect humanity to put every effort into solving the crisis. But time and again, we see how difficult it is for the majority of people to rise to the challenge.

This is particularly true of the business community, which in the West is built largely on ensuring that the next quarter’s profits roll in to keep shareholders happy and result in executive bonuses.

A telling piece of evidence presented at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week in Davos is hidden away in a flagship survey of 1,378 chief executives from more than 90 countries. It shows that concerns about climate change and environmental damage have sharply fallen over the past year.

In 2018, the annual poll by professional services provider PwC showed a rather paltry 31 percent of chief executives were “extremely concerned” by climate change. The problem then barely squeezed into the top 10 perceived threats, below issues such as increasing tax burdens and the availability of key skills.

But this year, with rising alarm over trade threats and populism, only 19 percent of business leaders highlighted the risks of climate change, which fell to 13th place on their list of priorities.

“I am rather shocked by this,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International, visibly shaken when I showed her the PwC results. “By focusing on short term profits, they are missing this moment in history. For me, we are at a moment where we need to step back and look deeply into ourselves and how we stand as a species and internalize the state of emergency and then decide if we want to be on the right side of history or not.

“The fact that CEOs’ biggest concern in the PwC report is overregulation tells me they do not understand and have not read the IPPC report on climate change.” The report, published in October by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that the world is rapidly running out of time for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

Many CEOs believe in their minds that if they are talking about climate change and creating some initiatives around it, then they are taking care of it, Morgan said. But because they have not faced up to the issue for so long, she added, “we need a whole different approach with all hands on deck. There is a point of no return where we cannot turn back the impacts and the world can be overrun by runaway climate change.”

Morgan called for young people to rise up and engage in nonviolent direct action “to bring this message to corporate leaders in a different way.”

Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris climate agreement and now the convener of Mission 2020, a global initiative to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, said she was hugely disappointed CEOs failed to see the gravity of the situation. Especially, she added, when there are enormous opportunities from tackling climate change.

“Businesses are in the position they are as a result of a focus on quarterly profit statements. If you plan corporate strategy around this, then this is the result you get,” Figueres said.

Business leaders are not alone in failing to focus on longer-term dangers at the expense of what is currently in their face, Figueres added. “We all do this. We tend to focus on the exceedingly urgent short term rather than the much larger consequences over the longer term.”

Figueres used the metaphor of a doctor telling someone they may suffer a heart attack in the future unless they start now to exercise more and eat healthier food. Despite this, the patient often ignores the advice and focuses on more immediate obligations.

This interpretation is supported by the research of Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University, who found that humans are not wired to deal effectively with long-term problems.

In an interview with NPR, Gilbert said we are much more likely to take alarm at terrorism. Global warming, he said, is “not something that threatens us this afternoon, but rather something that threatens us in the ensuing decades.”

SOURCE

A dumb idea

Aiken Pitchmen below thinks he breathes out pollution

The sudden usage of the term climate change over global warming is no coincidence. While a distinction between the terms does exist, most politicians use them interchangeably. Yet since 1995, the term climate change has surpassed in usage. This change in language was influenced by the facetious response ‘global warming’ received. After being proved false by the existence of snowballs, climate scientists and reasonable politicians realized that their language matters.

The importance of political terminology has been noted by both Democratic and Republican politicians repeatedly. In the early 2000’s, Republicans realized they couldn’t be anit-homosexual. The phrase pro traditional marriage was adopted instead. When the Affordable Care Act was released, the same party took advantage of the nickname Obamacare. Among Mr. Obama’s critics the act was easy to confuse and demonize. The strategy worked as was demonstrated in the ironic 2017 town hall meetings. A no different approach has been taken by the Democratic party and climate change supporters.

The term climate change has failed and become a partisan issue. The G.O.P has adopted it as another point of ridicule. Senator McConnel recently teased the Green New Deal, a resolution popularize by Representative Ocasio-Cortez, by stating it will demonstrate how many Democrats support ending “cow farts”. Of course, if you do not have the academic background, it can be difficult to understand how methane from cows is contributing climate change.

The term climate change and solutions for it are simply too vague. Furthermore, the elements that cause climate change are too complex to grasp for the average American. Vague plans with complex problems do not appeal to voters. A new approach needs to be taken.

The Democratic party needs to start advertising climate change as problem that Americans can understand. The simple and fundamental contributor to climate change is pollution. Pollution, unlike climate change, has recognizable private costs.

Pollution comes in many forms. Starting with air pollution. It is well known and documented that running cars and burning coal contributes to dirty air and water acidity. These are numbers that can be clearly measured and observed. The direct impact of these actions can be seen from the accumulation of smog in cities such as Los Angeles and Beijing. Studies by the World Health Organization showed that polluted air can contribute to decrease in life expectancy and other studies showed an increase in birth defects.

Damage to oceans and rivers has additional harmful effects. The impact of dirty energy practices were exemplified by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In addition to demolishing the local ecosystem, the incident stifled the local fishing industry. Shrimp and fish catchers began uncovering mutated sea life. The pollution of water bodies brings troubles on land as well. Farmers and communities that depend on irrigation can bring in contaminated water that damages crops and poisons wells. Communities, such as Woeburn, Massachusetts, are already familiar what can happen when industry is not properly curtailed in their waste practices. In the 1980’s the town suffered multiple child deaths to Leukemia due to heavy metals disposed in local wells by companies.

The argument can continue with plastic pollution. Plastic is poorly managed, often clumping up in clusters of litter across the United States. Plastics do not easily or quickly decompose. Recent studies have demonstrated that the ubiquity of plastic has resulted in the presence of micro-plastics in the ocean. These plastics are consumed inadvertently by sea life. Plastics can climb to the top of the food chain and even make their way onto one’s dinner plate.

The patent platform that can be built off of an emphasis on curbing pollution is hard to fight against. Arguing that such pollution does not exist is silly. Most forms of pollution and their results can be seen and observed, respectively. If the facts are argued to be false today, than a unwise politician is committing political suicide.

To suggest that people’s lives are not at risk, is to ignore clearly recorded data. Much climate change data has been ignored, because the consequences of the phenomenon are unclear. Many predictions are built around models. Models always have error and generate a degree of skepticism, giving critics a platform. Arguments against increase deaths and birth defects are harder to defend.

Once pollution is accepted as a social crisis, the legislation can be pushed to cease it. Alternative technology can be built to reduce pollution. Not surprisingly, much of this progress will be the same as has been proposed for climate change.

SOURCE

Outrage as it's announced one million tonnes of sludge will be dumped in the water surrounding the Great Barrier Reef

The stuff below is very misleading. All that is happening is that mud from one part of the sea bottom will be moved to another part of the sea bottom. It will NOT be dumped onto the reef and there will be no increase in the total amount of mud in the area

One million tonnes of sludge will be dumped in the water surrounding the iconic Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority approved the jettison of the waste through a loophole in the federal laws that are meant to protect the landmark.

The announcement of the dumping comes only a week after floodwaters from Queensland flowed into the reef, with experts saying the dirty water will 'smother' the coral.

The federal laws heavily restrict what can and can't be released into the water surrounding the natural wonder.

But an exploit in the laws means materials generated from port maintenance work can legally be dumped in the reef.

The residue is dredged from the bottom of the sea floor near Hay Point Port - one of the world's largest coal exports.

Larissa Waters, co-deputy leader of the Greens Party, called for change, saying it would be the same as treating the reef like a garbage dump.

'The last thing the reef needs is more sludge dumped on it, after being slammed by the floods recently,' she told the Guardian.

'One million tonnes of dumping dredged sludge into world heritage waters treats our reef like a rubbish tip.'

However, Dr Simon Boxall from the National Oceanography Centre Southampton says the dumping is only the beginning of the problems. 'If they are dumping it over the coral reef itself, it will have quite a devastating effect. The sludge is basically blanketing over the coral,' he told the BBC.

He says the sludge-dumping is a short-term issue, with the Australian summer bringing about 'rapid algae growth'.

He says more funding should be allocated to finding a less environmentally detrimental area to dump waste, but admits the money isn't easy to come by. 'It'll cost more money but that's not the environment's problem - that's the port authorities' problem.'

Last year, Australia pledged half a billion dollars to protect the Great Barrier Reef - which has lost 30 per cent of its coral due to rising sea temperatures. [The coral loss was temporary and it was due to falling sea levels, not temperature variations]

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

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

24 February, 2019

Green New Deal Seeks Virtually Totalitarian Transformation of US

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says America should lead the world – in committing national economic suicide and sending living standards back to 19th century.

29-year old ex-bartender and freshman U.S. Representative (D-NY) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received thunderous environmentalist and media acclaim when she introduced her Green New Deal resolution in the House and Ed Markey (D-MA) submitted it in the Senate. It was quickly endorsed or cosponsored by scores of House and Senate Democrats, including many who want to run against President Donald Trump in 2020.

But within days, the Green New Deal was subjected to rigorous analysis (and ridicule) by energy experts, President Trump, Republicans, conservative pundits and even some Democrats. Their disdain is well-founded.

Asserting yet again that manmade climate change poses an existential threat to people and planet – with only a dozen years before total disaster strikes – the Green New Deal demands that the United States convert to 100 percent “renewable” energy within ten years. It also proclaims an equally urgent need to abandon free enterprise capitalism in favor of socialist economic and “social justice” policies.

In the energy arena, AOC’s Green New Deal requires that fossil fuels, nuclear power and even waste-to-energy and large-scale hydroelectric facilities be eliminated from the U.S. energy mix. Coal, oil and natural gas leasing and development on federally controlled Western lands would be banned, as would exports of those fuels.

Internal combustion cars, trucks, buses, trains and boats would be replaced with electric versions, or eradicated. Airplanes would be replaced by high-speed rail. And every house and building in America would be gutted, rebuilt or retrofitted with “state of the art efficiency” technologies. That’s for starters.

The original “draft” resolution (since replaced on AOC’s website) even called for getting rid of “farting cows” – to prevent methane from increasing above its current minuscule 0.0017 percent of the atmosphere. So “bugs not beef” in our diets – and no more cheese, milk, yogurt or Baskin Robbins.

In the “social justice and fairness” arena, the Cortez-Markey Green New Deal provides that every American would get government-guaranteed jobs, with “family-sustaining” wages and pensions; free college or trade school; “healthy organic” food; “safe, affordable, adequate” and energy-efficient homes; and support for ethnic and economic “communities” that “historically” were harmed “first and most” by “dirty energy.”

Saturday Night Live could not have crafted a better parody of energy, economic and scientific reality.

But Ms. Cortez is determined to have her Green New Deal brought up for a vote in the House, where Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) worries about the spectacle that would ensue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is equally determined to have a vote. Mr. Markey is outraged; he claims Republicans just want to sow discord within the Democratic Party, portray Democrats as favoring extremist policies and sabotage the plan.

Meanwhile, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) threatened to call police on a reporter who was “harassing” him merely by asking for his views about the Green New Deal.

Ms. Cortez has no such qualms. When asked whether implementing her Green New Deal would require “massive government intervention,” she replied: “It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that.” Moreover, she added, we shouldn’t point fingers and say China or India or Russia isn’t doing anything like this. We shouldn’t “hold ourselves to a lower bar.” We should “choose to lead” the world in this transition.

Lead the world in economic suicide, environmental degradation, plummeting living standards, shorter life spans and societal upheaval would be a more accurate description of her Green New Deal.

But at least Democrats and environmentalists have now made clear what they will do to America’s energy, economy, jobs, transportation, infrastructure and society if they regain control of the House, Senate, White House, Deep State and courts.

What they are not doing, discussing or even thinking about is how they intend to achieve their energy-climate-socialist nirvana … how many trillions of dollars it would cost … how many millions of good jobs would be eliminated before their promised job-creation programs theoretically kick in … and exactly how they plan to deal with the enormous human and environmental impacts.

AOC says don’t worry about the price tag. Just tax the rich more and borrow trillions more. Whether the cost is $1 trillion per year or $40 to $100 trillion in total, that is an ignorant, cavalier response. Either way, she must provide the numbers, calculations and wherewithal – transparently and with full debate.

But on environmental matters, Ms. Cortez and her cosponsors have no clue what they are talking about.

America has over a century of coal, oil and natural gas that we should use. We have vast quantities of limestone, copper, iron, and rare earth and other strategic metals that would be essential for the wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel operations, massive backup battery arrays, and thousands of miles of new electricity transmission lines that their Green New Deal envisions. Is there a snowball’s chance in Hell that they would open highly mineralized Western and Alaskan lands for exploration and mining?

Their intransigence on those resources means giving up bonuses, rents, royalties, taxes and millions of high-paying jobs. Billions of dollars in revenues to government will be replaced by billions of dollars in subsidies from government. America won’t even be able to manufacture Green New Deal energy systems because we will not have either the reliable, affordable fuels to operate factories nor the necessary raw materials.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue to use fossil fuels, emit greenhouse gases, surge ahead of us economically – and sell us trillions of dollars of Green New Deal energy systems. Those that come from China might even have grid-hacker-friendly portals built right into their motherboards.

Shuttering nuclear and hydro power plants – and converting our transportation and shipping systems from gasoline and diesel – would mean the USA will need twice as much electricity as it generates today. Closing waste-to-energy facilities would add to those demands – and to landfill requirements.

Energy journalist Ron Bailey estimates that the Green New Deal would require installing some 154,000 offshore wind turbines, 335,000 onshore wind turbines, 75 million residential photovoltaic systems, 2.75 million commercial solar systems, and 46,000 utility-scale solar facilities sprawling across millions of acres. My guess is that it would require a lot more than that – plus millions of Tesla-style battery arrays.

Manufacturing and installing all those units … and the transmission lines to connect them … would require removing hundreds of billions of tons of rock, to reach and extract tens of billions of tons of ores, to create billions of tons of metals, concrete and other materials. That would be expensive, fossil fuel-intensive and habitat destructive. If it is done overseas, as most of it is today, it would involve virtually no health, safety, environmental, human rights, child labor or fair-pay protections. That is not acceptable.

One would hope their commitment to environmental protection and “social justice” would make Green New Deal supporters stalwart advocates for reform. Amendments to the Green New Deal or stand-alone bills should require that all future wind turbine, solar panel and battery components and raw materials be “responsibly sourced” under tough U.S. standards addressing all these issues – or we don’t import them.

There’s more. Contrary to claims by Green New Deal advocates, electricity rates would likely skyrocket – to at least the 38¢ per kWh families and businesses are already paying in Germany and Denmark. That’s four times as much as Americans now pay in states where coal, gas, nuclear and hydro generate most of the electricity. Those rates are job killers for factories, hospitals, schools and businesses.

They also literally kill people, by making it hard for poor families and pensioners to afford adequate heat in wintertime. And just imagine countless stranded electric cars, trucks and buses clogging highways, especially during snow storms, as their batteries go dead … and hundreds of people die of exposure.

Green New Deal advocates seek a total, virtually totalitarian transformation of the U.S. energy and transportation system, economy, buildings, industries, employment base, living standards and individual freedoms. They are using American citizens as guinea pigs in this grand experiment.

They need to tell us what resources will be required … how and where they will get them … how this scheme will work. That’s not likely to happen – because they don’t have a clue, and don’t care. They also can’t prove climate fluctuations and weather events are unprecedented and caused by fossil fuels.

So let’s have those House and Senate votes on the Green New Deal. Let’s see who stands where on this.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of articles and books on energy, environmental and human r

Dem Senator Unfiltered on Green New Deal: ‘What in the Heck Is This?’

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin shared his views on the “Green New Deal” on Wednesday, saying he doesn’t know what it is or whether he would vote for it after reading the legislation.

Durbin was asked Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about the plan introduced by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and if he would be supporting it after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he would be bringing the legislation to the floor for a vote to put lawmakers on the record.

The Illinois Democrat said although he has read the legislation, he does not know “what in the heck” it is and would not say if he would vote for it.

“At this point, I can’t tell you. I have read it and I have reread it. And I asked Ed Markey, what in the heck is this?” he said, referring to his Democratic colleague from Massachusetts.

“He says, ‘It is an aspiration.’ It’s a resolution aspiration,” Durbin said.

“What we’re going to do is ask the Republican leader, ‘What’s your position on global warming,’ while we’re at it. Shouldn’t you come out on the record and say if human activity is having an impact on the environment? Let’s get on the record on both sides,” Durbin said.

When asked if he would vote for the Green New Deal in its current form, Durbin responded by saying he was still looking at the legislation. “It’s long,” he said.

The Green New Deal has sown division among Democratic senators, many of whom question the practicality of the resolution.

The proposed legislation aims to tackle climate change and other environmental concerns, but it comes at an expense.

Enacting the bill would require significant financial resources, which has caused concern for a number of Democratic senators, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

“At this stage, I am not a supporter of it because it’s been looked at very cursorily and if you read the language, it’s a very big program with a huge governmental cost,” Feinstein said to TheDCNF on Feb. 13. “None of that’s been looked at.”

When asked if the legislation was likely to pass the Senate, McConnell told TheDCNF, “I hope not!”

SOURCE

100 Percent Renewable Cities – Is Your Mayor Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Mayors in more than 100 U.S. cities have announced plans to transition their electrical power systems to 100 percent renewable by 2050. They propose replacement of traditional coal, natural gas, and nuclear-generating stations with wind, solar and wood-fired stations. But none of these mayors have a plausible idea of how to meet their commitment.

In December, Cincinnati became the 100th U.S. city to commit to 100 percent electricity from renewable sources, with a target to achieve this goal by 2035. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said, “It has become clear that cities will lead the global effort to fight climate change, and Cincinnati is on the front lines.” Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson also pledged to reach 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050 as part of the city’s 2018 Climate Action Plan.

But these announcements appear to be a folk tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm. In 2018, renewables provided less than 3 percent of Ohio’s electricity, which came 47 percent from coal, 35 percent from natural gas and 15 percent from nuclear generators. Mayors Cranley and Jackson appear to have failed to consider the cost or scale of their energy change commitments.

As part of the effort, the Ohio Power Siting Board approved the Icebreaker Wind Facility last July. The Icebreaker project would initially construct six 3.5-gigawatt wind turbines in Lake Erie, ten miles off the coast of Cleveland, at an estimated cost of $126 million. The project would annually produce only about 75 gigawatt-hours of electricity, but plans call for an expansion to over 1,000 offshore wind towers.

Renewable energy is fashionable, but also expensive. The Icebreaker wind turbines cost $21 million each, or about six times the U.S. market price for wind turbines, which is about $1 million per megawatt. The cost of expansion to 1,000 turbines would approach $20 billion. These renewable system costs will be in addition to existing power generation plants, 90 percent of which must be maintained to provide security of electricity supply when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

In 2017, Ohio residents consumed 119,000 gigawatt-hours of electrical power. If completed, the 1,000 wind turbines of the expanded $20 billion Icebreaker project would deliver about 12,000 gigawatt-hours, or only about 10 percent of Ohio’s electricity need.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter pledged their cities to 100 percent renewables by 2030. Major wind system build-outs during the last five years boosted Minnesota to the 8th-leading wind energy state in the United States. Renewables now provide about 27 percent of the state’s electricity. But Minnesota residents are paying for it. Over the last nine years, Minnesota power prices increased 34 percent, compared to the US average price rise of 7 percent.

In Wisconsin, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin announced last July the city’s commitment to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050. But Wisconsin is not exactly the sun belt. Traditional generating stations provide 92 percent of the state’s electrical power and Wisconsin is a poor location for both wind and solar.

Not to be deterred, the City of Madison announced in 2017, a contract for five “utility-scale” solar arrays that would deliver 20 megawatt-hours of electricity per year. But Wisconsin consumes 65,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity each year. More than three million such “utility-scale” solar projects would be needed to supply just one percent of Wisconsin’s electricity.

City officials in Atlanta pledged to reach 100 percent renewables by 2035, but have been honest about the fact that they don’t know how to do it. Only about 6 percent of Atlanta’s electricity comes from renewable sources, about the same amount as the state of Georgia. So, Atlanta proposes purchasing large amounts of renewable energy credits from wind and solar generators in other states, so that they can claim their green energy status.

Energy does not have color. No one can tell whether the electricity from their wall outlet is green or provided by a coal-fired plant. Purchasing renewable credits from other locations is the sleight-of-hand method that allows city mayors to claim 100 percent renewable status.

Maybe these mayors have learned a way to spin climate change straw into gold. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Atlanta and several other cities will receive $2.5 million grants from the Bloomberg Philanthropies group of billionaire Michael Bloomberg for their efforts to “fight climate change.” Unfortunately, these grants will only be a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in additional electricity costs that citizens will pay for renewable electricity programs.

California is the center of the 100-percent-renewables fable. More than 30 California cities have committed to 100 percent renewable electricity, including San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose, as well as the state of California itself. The state is doing a great job of boosting electricity prices. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, California 2017 residential electricity prices were 18.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, about 50 percent higher than any other state in the West. Look for California rates to double in the next two decades, driven by efforts to achieve high penetration of renewables.

So is your mayor smarter than a fifth grader? When it comes to energy policy, maybe not.

SOURCE

‘Green’ Ambitions Already Being Cut Back Amid Taxpayer Concerns

Democrats’ Green New Deal legislation envisions a U.S that eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions through a massive expansion of government control, which includes a green grid, electrified mass transit and high-speed rail

However, cities and states actually trying to implement these policies are often finding it difficult to overcome political and economic realities.

In the past year, for example, Washington state voters rejected — for a second time — a proposal to tax carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon tax opponents successfully framed the proposal as an energy tax that would raises prices and do nothing for future global warming. The tax was backed by Democrats, Governor Jay Inslee, who is also mulling a 2020 presidential run.

Inslee, who styles himself as the Democratic “climate candidate,” has also failed to push major climate policies through the legislature and using his own executive authority.

“It shows you how ineffective he’s been even in a state like Washington, Todd Myers, environmental policy director at the Washington Policy Center, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a recent interview.

“We’re doing it whether people want it or not,” Myers said of Inslee’s attempts to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.

The Inslee-backed carbon tax would have cost households an extra $230 per year in 2020, according to the Washington Policy Center. Energy bills, including gasoline prices, will increase because of the tax.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey recently introduced highly-anticipated resolutions for a Green New Deal. Those bills called for the entire U.S. to be powered by “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” within 10 years.

The bill also calls for “dramatically expanding and upgrading existing renewable power sources” as part of Green New Deal supporters’ climate crusade.

Even at the local level, however, efforts to decarbonize the grid are easier said than done — and not just for political reasons.

Georgetown, Texas is one of the biggest U.S. cities to claim to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs with solar and wind power. In 2012, the city began to switch to solar and wind, and Republican Mayor Dale Ross quickly became a poster-child for environmentalism.

The city was even featured in former Vice President Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which was released in 2017. Gore called the city a “trailblazer” in the fight against global warming.

Georgetown’s green energy ambitions, however, have cost the city roughly $30 million over the past five years. The loss is driven by the long-term wind and solar energy contracts the city entered into, betting that fossil fueled-electricity prices would rise.

The opposite happened, and Georgetown’s municipal utility announced in late January it would increase customers’ bills about $13 a month to recover its bad bets. City officials are currently trying to renegotiate their long-term green energy contracts.

What about high-speed rail? The Green New Deal calls for investments in high-speed rail and other forms of mass transit to make airplanes, indeed the internal combustion engine itself, obsolete.

However, California put the brakes on its controversial high-speed rail project that voters approved in 2008 to shuttle passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The project, dubbed the “train to nowhere” by critics, was estimated to cost $77 billion to complete.

“Let’s level about the high-speed rail,” Newsom said in his State of the State address in February, announcing most of the project would be halted.

“Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were,” Newsom said.

Newsom said the state would complete the small, 119-mile section of high-speed rail between Merced and Bakersfield in the Central Valley. Though, that line is not expected to be finished until 2022 at a cost of $89 million per mile.

Even electrified mass transit is proving difficult, at least in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday the city canceled its $133 million plan for an all-electric bus line through downtown.

Massive construction in downtown Albuquerque hurt local businesses, modernized bus stops were vandalized and the electric buses themselves were found to have flaws that made them unusable.

The city has sued the Chinese-owned electric vehicle manufacturer and contracted with another company for diesel buses, according to The Times.

SOURCE

Sea levels in and around Sydney Harbour 1886 to 2018

Below is just the Abstract of a very extensive study

by Dr G M Derrick, Brisbane, Australia, geoffd@powerup.com.au February 2019

Executive Summary

1. There has been NO significant sea level rise in the harbour for the past 120 years, and what little there has been is about the height of a matchbox over a century.

2. Along the northern beaches of Sydney, at Collaroy there has been no suggestion of any sea level rise there for the past 140 years. Casual observations from Bondi Beach 1875 to the present also suggest the same benign situation.

3. A rush to judgement by local councils and State Governments by legislating harsh laws and building covenants along our coastlines now seems misplaced.

4.The falsehoods and mendacity of the IPCC and climate alarmists should be rejected out of hand, and efforts be made to ensure that science, not propaganda, defines our school curricula in matters of climate and sea levels

More HERE

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

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

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

22 February, 2019

Climate Change ‘Heat Records’ Are a Huge Data Manipulation

The idea that climate change is producing heat records across the Earth is among the most egregious manipulations of data in the absurd global warming debate.

Americans receive a daily barrage from the fake news media and climate “experts” reporting that each and every day, week, month or year is the hottest on record due to global warming. On Feb. 7, several major newspapers carried stories of the declaration by NASA and NOAA that the past five years have been the warmest on record. Sadly, these supposed experts use mathematical equations that do not jive with reality over the past 140 years.

The same climate experts warn that record heat is just the tip of the iceberg. We are constantly told that global warming is the root cause behind any and all weather events that are extreme, destructive, unusual or uncomfortable. Many of these fear mongers also say we should stop burning fossil fuels that are causing this mayhem.

Is the Earth truly experiencing the hottest weather on record? Absolutely not.

After examining actual weather records over the past 100 years, there is no correlation between rising carbon dioxide levels and local temperatures.

However, climate change alarmists always find somewhere on Earth where temperatures are hotter than ever. The focus is always on isolated temperatures that have reached all-time highs while ignoring reports of all-time record lows. These zealots would like you to believe that due to fossil fuel emissions, summers are now longer and hotter while winters are shorter and milder.

Yet, the actual temperature records tell a very different story. Did the Earth experience its hottest temperature ever this year? The answer is no. The highest record temperature ever reported was 136 degrees Fahrenheit in Libya in 1922. The record high temperature for the United States was 134 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley, California in 1913. Fossil fuel emissions in 1913 and 1922 were negligible compared to today.

The coldest temperature ever reported was minus 129 degrees Fahrenheit in Vostok, Antarctica, in 1983 when Carbon dioxide emissions were five times higher than in 1913. The coldest temperature in the lower 48 states (excluding Alaska) of minus 64 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in 1996 in Embarass, Minnesota. Did the media and climate scientists warn that this low temperature indicated that we are headed for another Ice Age?

The maximum reported difference between high and low temperatures at a single location is 188 degrees Fahrenheit (from minus 90F to plus 98F) in Verhoyansk, Siberia. In fact, record changes of highs and lows have occurred in 22 U.S. cities on a single day. For example, in 1989 the temperature in Alamosa, Colorado, varied between a low of 35F and a high of 91F for a temperature swing of 56 degrees F.

We hope these examples, right out of the weather record books, compiled by C.C. Burt in his book Extreme Weather Changes, will help you to understand the scams alarmists are trying to pull. These examples all illustrate that cherry picking record high temperatures in isolated locations tells absolutely nothing about the Earth’s climate.

The strongest heat wave ever recorded occurred in July 1936, generating high temperatures in half of America’s 50 states. In 1935, fossil fuel emissions were 25 times lower than today. America’s coldest year occurred in 1899, when temperatures dropped below 0 F in all 50 states.

Interesting that the figure above shows the most severe historic cold wave during the past century took place in 1936, which was the same year when the strongest heat wave took place. In terms of general behavior, the global warming alarmist prediction is that as time progresses and fossil fuel emissions increase, the number of record highs should increase and record lows should decrease. However, these trends do not exist and the data dispels, rather than supports, the global warming hypothesis.

Concurrently a compilation of all days since 1915 when temperatures exceeded 90F shows them decreasing with time rather than increasing in Figure 2.

The heat wave experienced in the 1930s and 1950s are clearly evident here. Once again, the data does not support the claim that the United States is hotter than ever as a result of rising Carbon dioxide levels.

From 1970 until 1998 there was a warming period that raised temperatures by about 0.7 F that helped spawn the global warming alarmist movement. However, since 1998, little warming has occurred while carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase. This is totally consistent with variations in the amount of heat the Earth receives from the Sun.

These facts are completely supported by 4,000 ocean floats which measure ocean temperatures at a variety of depths. This data at argo.ucsd.edu measures the oceans where climate-induced temperatures occur.

Isn’t it time to start ignoring the calamitous annual claims that this is the hottest year on record? It just ain’t so.

SOURCE

US Forests Are Burning Up in an‘Epidemic,’ Experts Say We Must Act

The basic problem with America's wildfire epidemic is Greenie interference with professional forest management

Forests are an iconic feature of the western U.S.’s dry, rugged landscape, but the risk of massive wildfires on these lands is growing because of decades of poor management.

It turns out western forests have too many trees. The answer to this problem, somewhat paradoxically, is more logging, according to experts.

“Forests have to be actively managed — logging, road maintenance, tree planting, weeding, animal control, thinning, salvage — in order to avoid these events,” Bob Zybach, a forestry expert, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Logging in government-controlled forests is probably one of the most contentious environmental policy debates. However, one expert recently told Congress that one way we deal with massive wildfires is by harvesting trees.

“It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but we cut more trees,” Elaine Oneil, a forestry management consultant, told the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing Wednesday.

“What we are seeing in the western U.S. is an epidemic — of insects and disease and wildfires — brought on in large part by an epidemic of too many trees,” Oneil testified before Congress.

Federal wildfire statistics show the average number of acres burned every year since 2000 is double what it was the preceding four decades.

The hearing was meant to highlight the supposed impacts of global warming on public lands and forests, including increased wildfire risks. However, Oneil’s testimony shined a light on what may need to be done in order to reverse decades of forest mismanagement.

Democrats tend to oppose increased logging, but megafires that devastate up millions of acres of forests and chaparral lands threaten their crusade to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Indeed, Democrats and some scientists argue global warming is behind the recent rise in western wildfires — though, that point is hotly debated. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to blame bigger wildfires on poor land management and environmental litigation.

In most cases, healthy forests sequester carbon dioxide, which scientists blame for global warming. However, Oneil said tree mortality in some states is at the point where forests emit more carbon dioxide than they sequester.

California’s devastating 2018 wildfire season, for example, emitted just as much carbon dioxide as producing the entire state’s electricity needs for an entire year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Not all of these emissions, however, come from burning forests.

The Rim Fire that started near Yosemite National Park in 2013 reportedly emitted up to four times more carbon dioxide emissions as California reduced that year to meet its global warming goals.

For many Republicans, however, carbon sequestration is an ancillary benefit to what is otherwise just commonsense land management policy. Zybach said active forest management can also be an economic engine for rural America.

“Active management has the additional benefit of producing tax-paying jobs rather than follow the recent model of using taxpayer monies to ‘battle’ these things and ‘mitigate’ the results,” Zybach said in an email.

Wildfire experts say California’s wildfire woes will only get worse if tree mortality continues unchecked. Oneil said not only do diseased and dead trees need to be removed, but the number of trees needs to be reduced, especially in the dry, western states.

The overcrowding in California’s forests is stark. Some forests in California have more than 1,000 trees per acre instead of the more ideal 40 to 60 per acre, according to forestry experts.

U.S. forestry officials reported 27 million trees died in California in the 12 months running up to December 2017. Since 2010, 129 million trees died in state, federal and private California forests, according to a 2018 report by the Little Hoover Commission.

LHC, which investigates California policies, recommended officials “use more prescribed fire to reinvigorate forests, inhibit firestorms and help protect air and water quality.”

“Tree mortality is related to the number of living trees,” David South, professor emeritus of forestry at Auburn University, told TheDCNF.

South pointed out that wildfires were likely worse in the early 20th century, especially during the 1930s, but agreed with Oneil that fires were getting worse because not enough trees were being harvested, along with a lack of active forest management.

“At one time, the U.S. Forest Service was harvesting about 10 billion board feet of timber per year,” South said. “My guess is this rate would make a difference in the risk of crown fires” in the coming decades, he added.

Active management of forests — thinning and prescribed burns — seems to have gained bipartisan support in the wake of California’s 2018 wildfire season. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, proposed spending $305 million to remove debris from state forests and expand wildfire response capabilities.

President Donald Trump is also pushing for more forest maintenance but went a step further and signed an executive order in December allowing more than 4 billion board feet of timber to be logged from federal lands.

Trump also signed legislation in 2018 that included provisions allowing foresters to more quickly remove dead and diseased trees.

Trump’s order allowed for a big boost in federal timber harvests, however, it’s still well below what South and other experts say is needed to bring wildfires back under control.

Congress would also likely need to act in order to greenlight more timber harvesting, though South was doubtful that would happen.

“As long as the public owns the lands, there will be trees dying due to overcrowding,” South said.

SOURCE

Critics: The Green New Deal Isn’t Just About Energy, It’s Also About Controlling What You Eat

The Green New Deal isn’t just a climate change manifesto targeting U.S. energy production, it also looks to drastically change how food is produced and, ultimately, what Americans eat.

“I think it’s pretty clear they want to change people’s consumption habits,” Nic Loris, an energy economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey introduced highly anticipated Green New Deal bills in early February, calling for “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years through a radical transformation of America.

The bills also call for a slew of new social justice and welfare programs totally unrelated to global warming.

The original “frequently asked questions” material about the Green New Deal contained a reference to “farty cows” THAT sent ranchers into a panic, fearing Democrats were taking aim at their livelihoods.

Environmentalists have targeted the beef industry for years, and concern over methane only gave activists more ammunition.

“Livestock will be banned,” Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso, who represents lots of cattle ranchers, warned on the Senate floor after the Green New Deal was introduced. “Say goodbye to dairy, to beef, to family farms, to ranches.”

“Farty” was eventually deleted — in fact, most of the methane cows emit is from burping, not farting. The entire gaffe-riddled FAQ was eventually taken offline by Ocasio-Cortez’s staff amid national ridicule.

Even so, the legislation itself is no less radical than its gaffes. The bill calls for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers … to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible.”

“It’s technologically feasible to shut down factories and farms,” Loris told TheDCNF in an interview. “It can happen today.”

Loris’ point is that the seemingly benign language in the Green New Deal resolution is worryingly broad. Technological feasibility is an open-ended phrase the government has used to crush industries in the past.

The Obama administration, in fact, used a similar rationale to impose a de facto ban on new coal plants. The Obama Environmental Protection Agency essentially ruled the best way to reduce emissions from coal plants was to, well, use natural gas or renewables.

Loris said the Green New Deal seems to endorse the long-held disdain for industrial agriculture harbored by the environmental left, especially when it comes to beef and dairy operations. The resolution even calls for policies to encourage small-scale, “sustainable” farming. Does that mean they want the whole country to go local and organic?

Ted Nordhaus, director of research at the eco-modernist Breakthrough Institute, said the bill seemed to push so-called “regenerative agriculture” policies that often include implementing grazing methods to sequester carbon dioxide in the ground.

Proponents of “regenerative agriculture” say it would benefit farmers and ranchers. However, claiming that these methods can make beef operations carbon neutral is dubious, Nordhaus said.

Cows and other ruminant animals are a major source of methane — a byproduct of their unique digestive system. Livestock and their manure cause about 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. agricultural sector, according to Breakthrough’s senior agricultural analyst Dan Blaustein-Rejto.

So any effort to cut U.S. agriculture emissions would necessitate dealing with cattle and dairy operations. With Ocasio-Cortez claiming humanity only had 12 years before catastrophe, what wouldn’t a concerned climate activist be willing to do?

In fact, the 2018 United Nations report behind Ocasio-Cortez’s 12-year-to-apocalypse deadline said “dietary shifts away from emissions-intensive livestock products” as one of the societal changes needed to keep future warming under 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

EPA data show U.S. agriculture emissions on the rise since 1990 while the country as a whole has cut emissions largely because of the natural gas boom. Agricultural emissions are mostly increasing because of methane from livestock manure management.

Per capita beef consumption peaked in the 1970s, Nordhaus said, declining mostly because of health concerns and industry innovations that brought down chicken and pork prices. Norhaus said continuing that trend was necessary to further limit emissions.

“A Green New Deal that was serious about reducing greenhouse gases from the U.S. agriculture sector would focus on supporting more, not less, intensification and improving the environmental performance of intensive systems through better cattle breeding, medical care, and then dealing with manure ponds and similar,” Norhaus told TheDCNF.

However, the Green New Deal resolution seems to suggest the opposite and reflects the environmental movement’s general opposition to industrial farming operations that provide Americans with affordable, abundant food.

The resolution calls for “supporting family farming,” “investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health” and “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.”

Democrats and environmentalists who endorse the Green New Deal — every Democratic senator running for president in 2020 co-sponsored the bill — tend to oppose large-scale industrial livestock operations.

The Organic Consumers Association, which also backs the Green New Deal, calls concentrated animal feeding operations “a disaster for the environment and our health.” The group also seems to oppose industrial-scale agriculture that currently feeds billions of people.

“We need stop the industrial overproduction of food—the root cause of agricultural pollution, food waste and greenhouse gas emissions,” Eric Holt-Gimenez, executive director of Food First, told the food news website Civil Eats.

Likewise, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who’s running for the party’s nomination for 2020, railed against “the industrial animal agriculture industry” and its supposedly “devastating” impacts on the environment in a recent interview.

“The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact,” said Booker, a vegan. “It’s just not possible.”

However, research by Virginia Tech and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that eliminating the livestock industry would only reduce emissions 2.6 percent domestically, but that shift also came with a host of different health concerns.

That 2017 study found that eliminating livestock would deprive Americans of key nutrients and animal proteins, including calcium, vitamins A and B12 and some fatty acids. In fact, consumers would need higher-calorie diets to make up the nutrient loss.

Given everything else about the Green New Deal, including its democratic socialist overtones, it’s got many ranchers worried the resolution is more about changing people’s lifestyles and not just about reducing emissions.

Could we see a carbon tax on meat? What about policies against feedlots and other large-scale beef operations? Or what about incentives to eat less beef and more poultry and pork? Pro-vegetarian tax credits?

“A carbon tax on meat and dairy would have a hard time making it from economics textbooks into law,” environmental economist Richard Tol said in an email.

“I can see them nudging people through tax credits and mandates like they do with energy systems,” Loris said, referring to policies like tax credits for wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficiency upgrades.

“When you decide to incentivize one product over another, that’s effectively a tax,” Loris said.

Rejto was skeptical of some sort of meat tax as well, but said the government could incentivize “practices like feeding cattle algae or giving them drugs that reduce methane emissions could further reduce emissions.”

USDA could also “direct its research into cell-based meat and other next-gen meat alternatives,” Rejto added. “This could lower the cost of high-quality beef alternatives, and reduce meat consumption through market forces.”

SOURCE

Germany Echoes Ocasio-Cortez in Killing the Coal Industry

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s draft “Green New Deal” produced anger, confusion and outright laughter across the nation this week, effectively proposing to eradicate the health insurance, nuclear energy and fossil fuel industries overnight, in addition to providing “economic security” to those “unable or unwilling to work.”

While Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals cater to leftist, radical environmentalists, and are utterly ludicrous in an economic sense, causing even CNN’s Jake Tapper to balk at the $40 trillion price tag, it appears that other nations are leaping headfirst into similar proposals that invite economic destruction.

Germany grabbed headlines across the globe in late February by proposing a complete government ban on utilizing coal for energy by 2038, effectively signing the industry’s death warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly slammed Germany for the country’s immense trade surplus with the United States, however, if the German government continues to cave to the demands of green energy extremists, Berlin’s robust economy will be a thing of the past.

The German Coal Commission’s plan involves Germany phasing out coal as early as 2035, a timeline which a number of senior lawmakers have denounced as unrealistic. The proposal would see billions spent to help deal with the economic effects of such a dramatic shift, while the country’s power system will be forced to make a sharp turn to the left.

Moreover, as is often the case for ideologically-motivated policy, German taxpayers will be left footing the bill, sacrificing Germany’s future as an industrial powerhouse in the process.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has made the Energiewende, or energy transition, a key part of her legacy. The Wall Street Journal offered a particularly damning verdict on the coal commission’s proposal, referring to it as “the world’s dumbest energy policy” — which will heighten dependence on Russian gas, sap the country’s coffers, and yet barely make a dent in global coal consumption.

Simply put, phasing out coal and nuclear at the same time in a country of 82 million would be utterly disastrous.

According to the plan, taxpayers can expect to be hit with a 35 billion aid bill to four coal-dependent regions by 2028 as the country closes its last remaining 120 coal stations. The same stations, that is, that supplied more than a third of Germany’s electricity last year — and which neighboring France relies on to meet peak demand in winter.

By some reports, this aid is already a “definite underestimate” of what is actually required to support these soon-to-be-destitute swathes of German industry.

“The faster Germany pulls out of coal, the more expensive it’s going to be and we’re not talking about negligible costs,” says Lars Ruzic, spokesman of the IGBCE miners, chemical and electrical workers’ union, “the phase-out is an immense disruption for utilities, the coal regions, jobs and the broader economy.”

Worse still, Berlin’s entirely avoidable phase-out aid bill is just a side dish to the 500 billion already spent on switching off the lights at Germany’s biggest power plants, a move intrinsically tied to the fact that Germans are already paying more for electricity than anyone else in Europe. Most leaders would think this markup is bad enough, but Merkel’s plan to squash coal will likely cause price swings across the power, natural gas and carbon allowance markets.

Currently, coal still provides nearly 40 percent of Germany’s electricity. In comparison, even under the pro-coal Trump administration, the U.S. only gets 29 percent of its electricity from fossil fuel. The percentage is even lower in other Western nations — only 5 percent of the UK’s electricity comes from coal, for example. Berlin’s newfound vexation towards coal, then, sets the country up at a massive competitive disadvantage if Germany’s ambition is not matched by its peers.

Everyday German workers are likely to immediately feel the impact of the hasty coal exit. Parallels can be drawn to historic mining regions like West Virginia in the United States, which have had the rug pulled out from under them by politicians eager to baselessly crack down on the coal industry without offering up alternatives.

Likewise, Germany is full of regions which depend heavily on coal mining, with no other industries capable of absorbing the thousands of job losses heralded by hardline environmentalists. “Everyone has something to lose: industry, the regions, workers and the electricity producers themselves,” says Holger Lösch, deputy director-general of Germany’s BDI industry federation. “Who is going to pay for all this?”

Supporters of the measure don’t seem to grasp the impending economic fallout. Stefanie Langkamp from the Climate Alliance Germany network goes so far as to claim, “the coal phase-out should have been much more ambitious.”

Radical environmentalists like Langkamp may not yet have grasped the disastrous effects of the policy they are championing, but it seems Merkel, at least, is wizening up to the catastrophe. Speaking at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last month, the so-called “Climate Chancellor” herself admitted that “without being able to assure a baseload in our energy generation, we will not be able to survive.”

Ironically, less than two months ago, the German Environment Minister chastised Trump for claiming that the United States is saving trillions of dollars by pulling out of the Paris Agreement. She would be better off focusing on the billions her policies are likely to cost German workers.

SOURCE

Australia: Experts claim power bills could surge by 50% under Labor's carbon emissions plan that would see workers lose $9,000 a year

Electricity bills would soar by 50 per cent, 336,000 full-time jobs would be lost and the average full-time wage would drop by $9,000 a year under federal Labor's plans to slash carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, experts have claimed.

New independent modelling has revealed the predicted economic impacts of the alternative climate change policy approaches proposed by the two major political parties in lead up to the federal election in May.

There would also be wages cuts and jobs losses under the federal Coalition's plan to cut emissions by 26-28 per cent drop over the next decade as part of the Paris Agreement.

Authored by former Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics head Brian Fisher, the BAEconomics report released on Thursday states Australian climate policy is at a cross-road.

The average full-time wage is projected to be around $2,000 lower under the federal Coalition's 26-28 per cent emissions reduction target.

'At the same time this scenario is projected to result in an economy with around 78000 fewer full-time jobs,' the BAEconomics report states.

'With a 45 per cent reduction target the projected fall in real annual wages is around $9,000 per year by 2030 together with a loss of around 336000 full-time jobs, illustrating the extent of the economic adjustment required by the economy to reach the more stringent target.'

Labor's plans would result in economic losses of $472billion over the decade, with GDP $144billion a year lower by 2030.

'Meeting a 26-28 per cent reduction target is projected to mean that by 2030 the Australian economy would be around $19bn smaller in terms of GDP than it otherwise would have been,' the report states.

Wholesale electricity prices would also skyrocket under both policy scenarios.

'Under the reference case the wholesale electricity price is projected to be $81/MWh in 2030. This is projected to rise to $93/MWh under the 26-28 per cent scenario and to $128/MWh under the 45 per cent scenario,' the report states.

A former chief advisor on climate policy for both sides of government, Dr Fisher accused both sides of politics of dishonest debate.

'I still get frustrated about how deficient and even outright dishonest the climate debate continues to be … regardless of the approach Australia adopts to reduce emissions, there is an inevitable cost to our economy as more emissions-intensive activities make way for less intensive industries,' Dr Fisher told The Australian.

He also described a recent ANU report which stated Australia could meet its Paris commitment by as early as 2025 without cost and using reductions in the electricity sector as 'appallingly' inaccurate.

The BAEconomics research is ongoing and will be updated as policy options become clearer.

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

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

21 February, 2019

First mammal declared extinct as a result of human-induced climate change (?)

This is an old fraud. What is not mentioned below is that Melomys exists in their tens of thousands in neighboring areas -- both on islands and on the coast. And I have not seen even the slightest attempt to show that the Melomys on Bramble Cay is in any way unique. As far as we know it is essentially identical with the Melomys in neigboring locations. So when the say that the Bramble Cay melomys is extinct, it is just a slimy way of saying that Melomys is extinct on Bramble Cay, which of zero importance.

The most probable reason for the extinction is clear enough. the cay is a sand island and some big storms in recent years have washed a lot of sand away, taking the vegetation with it. So there is not now enough vegetation to support even a rat. Any connection to global warming is mere speculation

And the cay is only 34 miles South of New Guinea and New Guineans would undoubtedly eat them. Melanesians are poor but are excellent sailors. They normally have very little animal protein in their diet. There are no grazing animals in New Guinea. They were probably all hunted to extinction thousands of years ago. So now all they have is their pigs and an occasional bird. And they can't feed enough pigs to slaughter one very often. So a Melomys would be a treat.

Also, In the past visitors to the island used to shoot them for sport. So how do we know that someone did not do that recently? It's an isolated area with no record of comings and goings

And if inundations were the cause, how do we know that global warming caused them? Sea levels have been rising steadily ever since the Little Ice Age.

And if the factor was more extreme weather events in the area concerned there is no way global warming can be responsible because extreme weather events have in fact be declining on average world wide. And even the IPCC declined to make a link between warming and extreme weather

And there have been many instances of species being declared extinct only for specimens suddenly to pop up again. This is just opportunistic propaganda

This tiny rodent is the first known mammal to become formally extinct as a consequence of human-induced climate change.

The Morrison government, in Australia, changed the status of the Bramble Cay melomys from endangered to extinct on Monday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Geoff Richardson, an environment department official, told Senate estimates on Monday night that research efforts since 2014 – “including a pretty rushed trip in 2015” – had failed to identify any melomys individuals in their only known location on Bramble Cay, a tiny Torres Strait island near Papua New Guinea.

Declaring its extinction “was not a decision to take lightly,” Mr Richardson said. “There’s always a delay while the evidence is gathered to be absolutely certain.”

The rat-like Bramble Cay melomys has not been spotted in its habitat, which is a sandy island in far northern Australia since a decade

The federal extinction listing comes almost three years after the Queensland government reached a similar conclusion, with a finding that the demise of the melomys “probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change”.

The limited range of the animal, living on a five-hectare island less than three metres high, left it vulnerable to climate change.

However, its 2008 “recovery plan”, drawn up when numbers were likely down to just dozens of individuals, downplayed the risks.

“[T]he likely consequences of climate change, including sea-level rise and increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, are unlikely to have any major impact on the survival of the Bramble Cay melomys in the life of this plan,” the five-year scheme stated.

Leeanne Enoch, Queensland’s Environment Minister, said the animal’s extinction showed “we are living the real effects of climate change right now”.

“We have consistently called on [Prime Minister] Scott Morrison and Melissa Price to show leadership on climate change, instead of burying their heads in the sand.”

Minister Melissa Price said: [It is] incredibly disappointing when any species is formally declared extinct, and everybody has feared the worst for some time, given the Bramble Cay melomys hasn’t been sighted since 2009.

“Our agencies will continue to focus their efforts on protecting species identified as priorities, supported by the Government’s $425 million investment in threatened species programs.”

SOURCE

A Green boondoggle

In the present post, I’ll critically analyze some of the specific policy goals listed in the draft text calling for a creation of a select committee to craft a Green New Deal. The various proposals would waste enormous sums of money in pursuit of impossible goals that would raise energy prices and hurt consumers. Even if one believes that carbon dioxide emissions constitute a “negative externality,” the measures in the proposed Green New Deal would achieve emission reductions at a much higher cost than necessary. And we see once again that the progressive Left does not think a simple “price on carbon” is enough to achieve their agenda. Conservatives and libertarians should therefore be under no illusions when the idea of a “carbon tax deal” is floated.

A Carbon Tax Won’t Satisfy the Green New Dealers

Regarding this last point, consider the following excerpt from the Green New Deal draft text’s Frequently Asked Questions:

[Question:] Why do we need a sweeping Green New Deal investment program? Why can’t we just rely on regulations and taxes alone, such as a carbon tax or an eventual ban on fossil fuels?

Regulations and taxes can, indeed, change some behavior. It’s certainly possible to argue that, if we had put in place targeted regulations and progressively increasing carbon and similar taxes several decades ago, the economy could have transformed itself by now. But whether or not that is true, we did not do that, and now time has run out.

Given the magnitude of the current challenge, the tools of regulation and taxation, used in isolation, will not be enough to quickly and smoothly accomplish the transformation that we need to see.

Simply put, we don’t need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs); we also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment...

We’re not saying that there is no place for regulation and taxes (and these will continue to be important tools); we’re saying we need to add some new tools to the toolkit. [Green New Deal “draft text’]

The above excerpt confirms what I stressed in my Part 1 of this series, in reference to Naomi Klein’s discussion: The proponents of government intervention on the progressive Left have quite definitively rejected the notion that a mere carbon tax would be enough to deal with climate change, in their book.

Don’t get me wrong, they want to impose a stiff tax on carbon dioxide emissions—as well as a 70 percent tax on high income earners, as Ocasio-Cortez revealed in a recent interview. But the point is, no libertarian or conservative should go along with a “deal” that ostensibly gets rid of other energy and transportation regulations in exchange for a carbon tax. The orthodox position among progressives is that such a deal would fall far short of the necessary climate goals to avoid catastrophe. Such a deal wouldn’t be acceptable to them, even in principle, let alone in practice.

A Green New Deal Would Be Incredibly Wasteful

The Green New Dealers’ desire for top-down regulations and massive new spending programs not only shows the futility of a carbon tax deal, it also underscores just how wasteful the program would be. Even if one believed in a “negative externality” from greenhouse gas emissions, there is no reason to suppose that policymakers have the knowledge or the incentives to correctly pick the proper ways in which the economy should adapt.

Especially when we are realistic about the political process, it should be obvious that funneling more than one trillion dollars in green “investment” spending through Washington will involve a gross misallocation of resources. For example, the draft text’s call for “retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient” is a blank check to funnel money into the coffers of politically powerful groups in the construction industry. Anyone who thinks these funds will be spent according to the “social cost of carbon” needs to watch a few episodes of House of Cards.

Stringent Fuel Economy Standards Cause Automobile Fatalities
In his recent endorsement of the Green New Deal, Paul Krugman confirms that “it should emphasize investments and subsidies, not carbon taxes.” Ironically, Krugman and I for once agree that a political deal between conservatives and progressives is a no-go. As he puts it: “[C]laims that a carbon tax high enough to make a meaningful difference would attract significant bipartisan support are a fantasy at best, a fossil-fuel-industry ploy to avoid major action at worst.”

After throwing carbon taxes under the bus, Krugman moves on to argue why top-down regulations and spending programs can achieve significant emission cuts without imposing too much pain on ordinary Americans.

How is this possible? Krugman explains:

The majority of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity generation and transportation. We could cut generation-related emissions by two-thirds or more simply by ending the use of coal and making more use of renewables (whose prices have fallen drastically), without requiring that Americans consume less power. We could almost surely reduce transportation emissions by a comparable amount by raising mileage and increasing the use of electric vehicles, even if we didn’t reduce the number of miles we drive each year.

Krugman is quite flippant in his above quotation with the word “simply,” as if eliminating coal—which in 2017 provided thirty percent of U.S. electricity—is no big deal. Krugman says we can simply “mak[e] more use of renewables,” without telling his readers that in 2017 (non-hydro) renewables accounted for less than 10 percent of electricity.

Regarding fuel economy, the simple fact is that in order for vehicles to achieve more miles to the gallon, automakers must make them more expensive, but also lighter and smaller. That means more Americans dying in car accidents than would otherwise be the case. How big a deal is this? Reputable studies have estimated that CAFE standards have caused anywhere from 40,000 – 125,000 excess vehicle fatalities.

Of course, proponents of stricter CAFE standards could quibble with these numbers, but the more significant point is that neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Krugman even admit that there is a tradeoff. They speak of cranking up mileage standards as if it’s a mere technical problem, without reckoning the tremendous human cost.

Conclusion

A so-called Green New Deal is aptly named, in the sense that the original New Deal was a massive boondoggle that restricted individual liberty and crippled economic growth. Besides revealing their plans for massive spending and inefficient regulations, the discussion of a Green New Deal indicates that there is no room for a “carbon tax deal” with conservatives.

SOURCE

Solar panel plant in Buffalo was a washout

New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s troubles didn’t start with the collapse of the Amazon deal and it isn’t going to end there, either. It was revealed during testimony before state lawmakers last week that Cuomo’s much-vaunted plan to invest $750 million of taxpayer money into a solar panel plant in Buffalo was a washout.

Howard Zemsky, head of the state’s Empire State Development office, testified that the plan, called the Buffalo Billion, would not yield nearly the number of jobs promised. New York State put money up for the state’s Polytechnic Institute to build and equip a solar panel factor that is run by Tesla. Only 700 jobs materialized, and those are by no means secure. Tesla is facing a $42 million fine if it fails to meet the 1,460-job quota by next year.

This is not just another of Cuomo’s get-rich-quick schemes gone bad. Alain Kaloyeros, the head of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for bid rigging in putting the Buffalo Billion deal together.

The scandal has not reached into Cuomo’s office thus far, but it is yet another glimpse into the utter quagmire that is New York State leftist politics. Cuomo, who recently started his third term in Albany, has been trying for eight years to bring business to the ghost towns of upstate New York. He will always fail, though, because he’s going about it all wrong. Ronald Reagan said it best: “You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”

The leftist tax-and-spend policies that Cuomo proudly supported for years — and still supports, despite his recent protests — drove businesses and taxpayers out of the state. But it’s going to take more than giving outside companies dispensation from New York’s tyrannical taxes to bring jobs back. Good business sense would be a start.

Cuomo should have never accepted Kaloyeros as head of the development deal. Kaloyeros is a physicist and a professor. He may be a good one, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he should be the architect of a billion-dollar deal with a global manufacturer.

SOURCE

10 Ways Congress Can Apply The Green New Deal To Itself

Last week, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced their long-anticipated “Green New Deal” legislation. Observers across the political spectrum derided both the legislation, and a summary document associated with same, as an example of big government overreach with goals that neither can nor should be achieved within a ten-year period.

However, if they wish to persist in their socialistic delusions, members of Congress who believe in the Green New Deal should first apply it to themselves. Hence the following list of proposals that GND supporters should insist Congress take, to put Ocasio-Cortez’s vision into practice.

1. Ban Meat in Congressional Cafeterias

The FAQ document says the Green New Deal “set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” [Emphases mine.] But if GND supporters think they can’t fully get rid of “farting cows” within ten years nationwide, that’s no excuse not to eradicate them from Congress immediately. “Freedom Fries,” meet your new companion—the Green New Deal Hamburger!

The House and Senate cafeterias can even rely upon the ghost of Clara Peller to promote this new GND “innovation”!

2. Free Arugula

The GND resolution talks about government’s role to “build a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” To help solve this problem, Congress must make sure that never again should someone like Barack Obama have to complain that Whole Foods is “charging a lot of money” for arugula. Instead, congressional cafeterias can provide arugula free of charge!

3. End Taxpayer-Funded Plane Travel

President Trump had the right idea when he nixed a proposed trip by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to Afghanistan. Just think of the potential carbon emissions! Congress should end members’ taxpayer-funded airplane travel from Washington to their districts. Instead, lawmakers like Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz can take American high-speed rail back and forth from their homes in Hawaii to Washington.

4. Turn Off the A/C

To promote the zero-emissions agenda, Congress should cease using its highly polluting air conditioning systems. Sure, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) didn’t like smelling sweaty tourists in the summertime, but he retired from Congress three years ago!

5. Shut Off the Lights

While they turn off the air conditioning, Congress should also turn out the lights in the Capitol to become emissions free. Better yet, lawmakers could decide to “hold Congress outside” on the National Mall during good weather. After all, it’s not like anyone ever tried to attack Congress in session or anything.

6. Evict Congress from Its Offices

Both the resolution and background document discuss “upgrading all existing buildings” to promote the zero-emissions agenda. Congress should start by throwing itself out of its own offices for some eco-friendly upgrades. Instead of ornate offices with high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and huge desks, Congress can place some trailers out back for members’ offices. You know, in the congressional parking lots that staff will no longer need—because they’ll be banned from driving cars to work.

7. Unionize Congressional Staff

The resolution talks about “strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain.” In that case, why shouldn’t members of Congress promote collective bargaining amongst their own employees? Staff assistants of the world, unite!

8. Welfare for Those ‘Unwilling to Work’

The background document talks of guaranteeing “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.” Members of Congress should ensure that their staff aren’t harassed by an obligation to do actual work, and are instead permitted to do whatever they feel like.

9. Vote to Move the Capitol

The resolution talks of “obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples.” In theory, this language might refer to Native Americans such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). But what about the individuals indigenous to Washington, DC? Did Congress ever ask them whether they want to maintain the Capitol here? Congress should ballot the citizens of Washington to seek their consent for its continued presence. And if District citizens object, then lawmakers have an easy solution:

10. Congress Can Go to Hell

The resolution calls for “repairing historic oppression of…depopulated rural communities,” and what better way to repair such oppression by moving the entire Capitol to one of them! An ideal location: Hell, California, approximately 200 miles east of Los Angeles, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. (Another possible alternative: Hell, Michigan.)

Ocasio-Cortez might think the average 104-degree temperatures in July a perfect way to illustrate the perils of global warming, and I’m sure neither she nor her Democratic colleagues would object to congregating in an area where the nearest Au Bon Pain is a mere three hours away.

Lest any of the above satire leave the wrong impression, this conservative does believe in conserving the environment. But when some members of Congress put forward unrealistic proposals that have no chance of happening, and use very real concerns about climate change to shoehorn in every liberal and socialist agenda item of the last century and this, they not only beclown themselves, they do the same to their cause.

Environmentalism deserves more than the socialist crazies behind the Green New Deal.

SOURCE

Barney Frank: Green New Deal A ‘Loser’ for Democrats

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) called the Green New Deal a “loser” for Democrats on Tuesday, saying that kind of radical change all at once could “destabilize a society.”

“I think the Green New Deal would be a loser. I do not think that people are going to be advocating that whole package,” Frank said on “Squawk Box.” “There’s not a lot in there I disagree with … But there’s an argument that you don’t destabilize a society by doing too much change at once.

“We have people who are skeptical of government, people like me who do want to expand the government role in some areas, need to understand that we have to show how that works. You have to do it in pieces, and then as you show it has worked, you can build on that,” he added.

Known for his work on the Dodd-Frank legislation on financial regulation, Frank weighed in on CNBC about the growing 2020 Democratic field.

He said the American people were “unpredictable” in choosing their presidents so he was reluctant to make predictions.

He said he was worried about the fringes on the right and left who thought their preferences mirrored those of the public.

Frank said he didn’t think democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who officially announced Tuesday he was running for president, could be elected.

All Senate Democrats running for president have come out in support of the radical energy proposal from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) to battle climate change.

The Green New Deal proposal had a rough rollout, with Ocasio-Cortez’s office releasing a derided “FAQ” on the resolution that included details like providing economic security for those “unwilling to work,” putting an end to air travel and getting rid of farting cows.

The proposal itself is wildly ambitious and calls for extensive government intervention in the economy to meet the goal of 100 percent, zero-emission energy sources and the elimination of fossil fuel use.

It also guarantees a “family-sustaining wage” and high-quality health care for all Americans, in addition to calling for actions like upgrading every building in America for energy efficiency and expanding high-speed rail to a point where air travel becomes unnecessary.

Republicans have attacked the Green New Deal for being impractical and pushing the country toward socialism.

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

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

20 February, 2019

Roast dinners are pollution!

I believe every word of what they say below. The interesting thing is that Australia has huge numbers of nonagenarians tottering about (they are why Australia has such a long average lifespan) and most of them had a roast dinner every Sunday for most of their lives. So all that PM2.5 pollution cannot be very bad after all can it? We have evolved to live with a lot of atmospheric pollution.

Cooking a Sunday roast can drive indoor air pollution far above the levels found in the most polluted cities on Earth, scientists have said.

Researchers found that roasting meat and vegetables, and using a gas hob, released a surge of fine particles that could make household air dirtier than that in Delhi.

Fine soot and tiny organic particles from gas flames, vegetables, oils and fat combined to send harmful PM2.5 particulates in the house to levels 13 times higher than those measured in the air in central London. Peak indoor pollution lasted for about an hour.

“We were all surprised at the overall levels of particulate matter in the house,” said Marina Vance, who led the research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She advised people to open windows and use extractor hoods if possible to ventilate the home while cooking.

PM2.5s are particles that are smaller than 2.5 micrometres across. They are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs where they exacerbate respiratory disorders and cardiovascular disease. Smaller particles can spread from the lungs into the bloodstream where they build up in the liver, heart and even the brain, where they may contribute to depression and other mental health issues.

In what Vance described as the most comprehensive investigation yet into chemicals in the home, the researchers cooked a series of meals in a three-bedroom test house fitted with indoor and outdoor pollution monitors. One day they cooked a Thanksgiving dinner with roast turkey, roast Brussels sprouts, boiled sweet potatoes, bread stuffing and cranberry sauce.

During the day of cooking, PM2.5 levels in the house rose to 200 micrograms per cubic metre for one hour, more than the 143 micrograms per cubic metre averaged in Delhi, the sixth most polluted city in the world, and far higher than the central London average of 15 micrograms per cubic metre.

Ranked on the US air quality index, a measure applied to city pollution, the indoor air was either “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy” for nearly two hours. The levels breached World Health Organization guidelines of 10 micrograms per cubic metre for eight-and-a-half-hours. The simple act of making toast sent PM2.5 levels up to 30 micrograms per cubic metre.

While gas flames and charred food churned out fine soot particles, others came from animal fat, cooking oils, and grime in the oven and and on pots and pans used in making the meal. Still more came from tiny particles of skin that the cooks and their guests shed from their clothes.

“We know that inhaling particles, regardless of what they’re made of, is detrimental to health. Is it equally bad as inhaling exhaust from vehicle emissions? That we don’t know that yet,” Vance said. “This compares to a very polluted city, but what’s important to remember is that this was for a short period of time. When you live in a polluted city you’re in it for 24 hours a day.”

Instruments around and inside the test home in Austin, Texas, found that when no one was cooking, the house kept outdoor air pollution out. But during a full day of cooking, the levels of particles indoors rose to about 30 times that outside.

Ian Colbeck, an expert in air pollution at the University of Essex who was not involved in the study, said he had measured particulates in his kitchen for the past 10 Christmases. “PM levels are much higher than in cities in the UK,” he said. “A roast is one of the worst ways of cooking as regards indoor air pollution.”

Vance was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC where researchers highlighted the risks of indoor air pollution from cooking, home furnishings, and household products such as bleach, window sprays and paint. Unlike outdoor pollution, which is regulated, indoor pollution is not, even though people spend as much as 90% of their time indoors, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

In one study, researchers looked for chemical contaminants in the blood and urine of children in 190 families. Some came from homes that had sofas containing flame retardants, and had six times the levels of the chemicals in their blood than other children. When children lived in homes with vinyl flooring, levels of hormone-disrupting phthalates in their urine were 15 times higher than those found in other children.

“As with any pollution there will be more susceptible groups such as the young and elderly,” said Joost de Gouw, another pollution researcher at the University of Colorado. “What’s clear is people spend a lot of time indoors and they are exposed in some cases to much higher levels than what you see outdoors.”

Vance advises people open windows and use kitchen extractors to remove the invisible pollution, but said it was unclear whether fans would help, since they recirculated air without adequately filtering it. “The joke we’ve been telling each other is boil everything, avoid roasting, but it’s too delicious,” she said.

SOURCE

AOC says America should lead the world

In committing national economic suicide and sending living standards back to 19th century

Paul Driessen

29-year old ex-bartender and freshman U.S. Representative (D-NY) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received thunderous environmentalist and media acclaim when she introduced her Green New Deal resolution in the House and Ed Markey (D-MA) submitted it in the Senate. It was quickly endorsed or cosponsored by scores of House and Senate Dems, including many who want to run against President Trump in 2020.

But within days the GND was subjected to rigorous analysis (and ridicule) by energy experts, President Trump, Republicans, conservative pundits and even some Democrats. Their disdain is well-founded.

Asserting yet again that “manmade climate change” poses an “existential threat” to people and planet – with only a dozen years before total disaster strikes – the Green New Deal demands that the United States convert to 100% “renewable” energy within ten years. It also proclaims an equally urgent need to abandon free enterprise capitalism in favor of 100% socialist economic and “social justice” policies.

In the energy arena, AOC’s GND requires that fossil fuels, nuclear power and even waste-to-energy and large-scale hydroelectric facilities be eliminated from the US energy mix. Coal, oil and natural gas leasing and development on federally controlled Western lands would be banned, as would exports of those fuels.

Internal combustion cars, trucks, buses, trains and boats would be replaced with electric versions, or eradicated. Airplanes would be replaced by high-speed rail. And every house and building in America would be gutted, rebuilt or retrofitted with “state of the art efficiency” technologies. That’s for starters.

The original “draft” resolution (since replaced on AOC’s website) even called for getting rid of “farting cows” – to prevent methane from increasing above its current minuscule 0.0017% of the atmosphere. So “bugs not beef” in our diets – and no more cheese, milk, yogurt or Baskin Robbins.

In the “social justice and fairness” arena, the Cortez-Markey GND provides that every American would get government-guaranteed jobs, with “family-sustaining” wages and pensions; free college or trade school; “healthy organic” food; “safe, affordable, adequate” and energy-efficient homes; and support for ethnic and economic “communities” that “historically” were harmed “first and most” by “dirty energy.”

Saturday Night Live could not have crafted a better parody of energy, economic and scientific reality.

But Ms. Cortez is determined to have her GND brought up for a vote in the House, where Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) worries about the spectacle that would ensue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is equally determined to have a vote. Mr. Markey is outraged; he claims Republicans just want to sow discord within the Democratic party, portray Dems as favoring extremist policies and sabotage the plan.

Meanwhile, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) threatened to call police on a reporter who was “harassing” him merely by asking for his views about the Green New Deal.

Ms. Cortez has no such qualms. When asked whether implementing her GND would require “massive government intervention,” she replied: “It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that.” Moreover, she added, we shouldn’t point fingers and say China or India or Russia isn’t doing anything like this. We shouldn’t “hold ourselves to a lower bar.” We should “choose to lead” the world in this transition.

Lead the world in economic suicide, environmental degradation, plummeting living standards, shorter life spans and societal upheaval would be a more accurate description of her GND.

But at least Democrats and environmentalists have now made clear what they will do to America’s energy, economy, jobs, transportation, infrastructure and society if they regain control of the House, Senate, White House, Deep State and courts.

What they are not doing, discussing or even thinking about is how they intend to get achieve their energy-climate-socialist nirvana … how many trillions of dollars it would cost … how many millions of good jobs would be eliminated before their promised job-creation programs theoretically kick in … and exactly how they plan to deal with the enormous human and environmental impacts.

AOC says don’t worry about the price tag. Just tax the rich more and borrow trillions more. Whether the cost is $1 trillion per year or $40 to $100 trillion in total, that is an ignorant, cavalier response. Either way, she must provide the numbers, calculations and wherewithal – transparently and with full debate.

But on environmental matters, Ms. Cortez and her cosponsors have no clue what they are talking about.

America has over a century of coal, oil and natural gas that we should use. We have vast quantities of limestone, copper, iron, and rare earth and other strategic metals that would be essential for the wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel operations, massive backup battery arrays, and thousands of miles of new electricity transmission lines that their Green New Deal envisions. Is there a snowball’s chance in Hell that they would open highly mineralized Western and Alaskan lands for exploration and mining?

Their intransigence on those resources means giving up bonuses, rents, royalties, taxes and millions of high-paying jobs. Billions of dollars in revenues to government will be replaced by billions of dollars in subsidies from government. America won’t even be able to manufacture GND energy systems because we will not have either the reliable, affordable fuels to operate factories nor the necessary raw materials.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue to use fossil fuels, emit greenhouse gases, surge ahead of us economically – and sell us trillions of dollars of Green New Deal energy systems. Those that come from China might even have grid-hacker-friendly portals built right into their motherboards.

Shuttering nuclear and hydro power plants – and converting our transportation and shipping systems from gasoline and diesel – would mean the USA will need twice as much electricity as it generates today. Closing waste-to-energy facilities would add to those demands – and to landfill requirements.

Energy journalist Ron Bailey estimates that the GND would require installing some 154,000 offshore wind turbines, 335,000 onshore wind turbines, 75 million residential photovoltaic systems, 2.75 million commercial solar systems, and 46,000 utility-scale solar facilities sprawling across millions of acres. My guess is that it would require a lot more than that – plus millions of Tesla-style battery arrays.

Manufacturing and installing all those units … and the transmission lines to connect them … would require removing hundreds of billions of tons of rock, to reach and extract tens of billions of tons of ores, to create billions of tons of metals, concrete and other materials. That would be expensive, fossil fuel-intensive and habitat destructive. If it is done overseas, as most of it is today, it would involve virtually no health, safety, environmental, human rights, child labor or fair-pay protections. That is not acceptable.

One would hope their commitment to environmental protection and “social justice” would make GND supporters stalwart advocates for reform. Amendments to the GND or stand-alone bills should require that that all future wind turbine, solar panel and battery components and raw materials be “responsibly sourced” under tough US standards addressing all these issues – or we don’t import them.

There’s more. Contrary to claims by GND advocates, electricity rates would likely skyrocket – to at least the 38¢ per kWh families and businesses are already paying in Germany and Denmark. That’s four times as much as Americans now pay in states where coal, gas, nuclear and hydro generate most of the electricity. Those rates are job killers for factories, hospitals, schools and businesses.

They also literally kill people, by making it hard for poor families and pensioners to afford adequate heat in wintertime. And just imagine countless stranded electric cars, trucks and buses clogging highways, especially during snow storms, as their batteries go dead … and hundreds of people die of exposure.

GND advocates seek a total, virtually totalitarian transformation of the US energy and transportation system, economy, buildings, industries, employment base, living standards and individual freedoms. They are using American citizens as guinea pigs in this grand experiment.

They need to tell us what resources will be required … how and where they will get them … how this scheme will work. That’s not likely to happen – because they don’t have a clue, and don’t care. They also can’t prove climate fluctuations and weather events are unprecedented and caused by fossil fuels.

So let’s have those House and Senate votes on the Green New Deal. Let’s see who stands where on this.

Via email

Cold outbreaks are not caused by global warming

Global cooling – and global totalitarian socialism – are the catastrophes we should fear most

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

What do heat waves, floods, droughts, rising sea levels, forest fires, hurricanes, African wars, mass extinctions, disease outbreaks, and human and animal migrations from South America and the Middle East have in common?

According to climate activists, they are all caused by dangerous man-made global warming. And this, in turn, is supposedly caused by rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels resulting from our use of fossil fuels.

They might as well add alien invasions to the list, because it is all nonsense. Indeed, the climate scare industry has achieved such a level of absurdity that, on February 1, journalist Andrew Revkin reported in a National Geographic article that, “Many stories in recent days highlighted studies concluding that global warming is boosting the odds of cold [weather] outbreaks.”

(As we delve into the realm of absurdity, however, let us not forget that, in 2011, scientists from NASA’s Planetary Science Division and Michael Mann’s Penn State University actually presented a report speculating that extraterrestrial environmentalists could be so appalled by our planet-polluting, climate-changing ways that they could view humans as a threat to the entire intergalactic ecosystem and decide to destroy humanity!)

Among the most absurd of recent climate alarm statements is the one attributing recent cold spells to manmade global warming came from University of Michigan professor emeritus of environment and sustainability Donald Scavia, who said: “In the past there was a very strong gradient of cold air at the poles and warmer air south of the poles. That gradient kept the cold where it is.... As the poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet, that gradient weakens, allowing the cold air currents to dip south."

Dr. Tim Ball, an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, said that Scavia’s statement “is utter rubbish.” Ball explained, “It’s wrong in every aspect, from the basic assumption to the interpretation. In fact, a gradient makes things move. It doesn’t ‘keep the cold where it is.’”

It’s also a mistake to think that, if human-produced CO2 is actually causing global warming, the poles will warm first. “There is no evidence of that; they just are assuming it to be the case,” Dr. Ball emphasized.

And, if the poles did warm first, Ball explained, the reduced temperature difference between the poles and lower latitude regions would reduce extreme weather events, not intensify them, as climate campaigners claim. After all, weather and extreme weather events are driven by the temperature gradient between latitudes. A warming Arctic would result in less intense cold outbreaks and a lesser intrusion of cold artic air colliding with warm moist air in warmer regions. Climate alarmists have their science backwards.

Ball noted that the real cause of the severe cold outbreaks in the United States is a wavy Jet Stream.

The Jet Stream is a thin band of strong winds that flow rapidly around the planet from west to east at approximately 10 km altitude. The Jet Stream divides warm air masses, typically found at low latitudes towards the tropics, from cold air masses, usually found at high latitudes near the poles.

However, a very wavy jet stream, as we are experiencing now (and have many times in the past), allows frigid Arctic air to move south to normally warmer latitudes and warm tropical air to push into Polar latitudes. The result is an increase in extreme weather events, including the cold outbreaks in the USA. It has nothing to do with global warming. In fact, the most common cause of a wavy Jet Stream is global cooling. History shows that severe weather increases with a cooling world, not a warming one.

As to fears of more cold outbreaks due to global warming, Ball laughed, “They’re making it all up!”

Clearly, there is no end to the deceptions that the climate lobby will tell the public in order to deprive the world of reliable, inexpensive fossil fuel-based energy, the foundation of modern living standards. Perhaps the greatest deception of all is what real scientists call cherry picking – highlighting data that advance their theory and agenda, while ignoring data that do not support their politics.

The graph below explains how they do it. The overall trend of the data is obvious: as variable “A” declines, variable “B” increases. But if you choose only a small portion of the data (or just a few years out of 100 or 1,000), you can declare the trend to be anything you want – including having “A” stay the same as “B” increases, and even having “A” increase as “B” increases.

This is the sleight-of-hand used by global warming alarmists who want the public to believe that burning fossil fuels and increasing the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide must be stopped at all costs. They want to run the nation and the world on expensive, inconvenient, unreliable wind and solar energy. They ignore the fact that those energy must be totally backed up by dependable energy sources like fossil fuel or nuclear in order to stop the grid from collapsing. It has been calculated that, were the Midwest to be dependent only on wind and solar power, at least one million people would have died of hypothermia during the recent minus-50 degrees F cold spell.

As demonstrated by Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the latest report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, the impact of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) has been overwhelmingly positive. The report’s Summary for Policymakers states:

“Fossil fuels have benefited humanity by making possible the prosperity that occurred since the first Industrial Revolution…. Fossil fuels also power the technologies that reduce the environmental impact of a growing human population, saving space for wildlife…. Nearly all the impacts of fossil fuel use on human well-being are net positive (benefits minus costs), near zero (no net benefit or cost), or are simply unknown.”

Besides raising living standards across the world, fossil fuel use has helped elevate CO2 in our atmosphere from a level dangerously close to the point at which plants start to die – to where we are today, with the Earth once again “greening,” as crops, forests and grasslands grow faster and better.

The global warming scare has never been about science, or even climate for that matter. The long-term goal of many activists is to unite the world under a single socialistic government in which there is no capitalism, no democracy and no freedom. After all, personal freedom is fueled largely by access to affordable energy.

An intermediate goal of climate alarmism is thus to limit the amount of energy that is available and place it under tight government control. Inexpensive fossil fuels remain an obstacle to their vision, and so must be done away with entirely, climate campaigners maintain. We must not let them succeed.

Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.

Diversity of species living on the planet has NOT increased since the death of the dinosaurs, study of 30,000 sites worldwide reveals

The Green/Left often produce shoddy evidence that various species are dying out but that's just not so it seems

The diversity of species living on the planet has stayed the same for the 60 million years following the extinction of the dinosaurs, new research suggests.

Rapid increases in biodiversity were discovered in the fossil record, followed by plateaus of stability in species' numbers lasting tens of millions of years.

Experts previously thought that biodiversity had steadily increased over time, but researchers now say this is not the case.

Scientists from the University of Birmingham analysed 200 years of finds from 30,000 fossil sites around the globe.

They found the average numbers of land vertebrate species across the planet had not increased for tens of millions of years.

Their results suggest the creation of new species and extinction rates on land find a natural equilibrium that lasts 'tens of millions of years'.

Lead study author Dr Roger Close said: 'Scientists often think that species diversity has been increasing unchecked over millions of years, and that diversity is much greater today than it was in the distant past.

'Our research shows that numbers of species within terrestrial communities are limited over long timescales, which contradicts the results of many experiments in modern ecological communities - now we need to understand why.

'Contrary to what you might expect, the largest increase in diversity within land vertebrate communities came after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

'Within just a few million years, local diversity had increased to two or three times that of pre-extinction levels - driven primarily by the spectacular success of modern mammals.'

Biodiversity describes the rich diversity of life on Earth, from individual species to entire ecosystems.

The term was coined in 1985 – a contraction of 'biological diversity' – but the huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling and quite possibly surpassing climate change.

In the latest study, experts focused on data from land vertebrates dating back to the very earliest appearance of this group nearly 400 million years ago.

They found peaks in biodversity 300, 110 and 15 million years ago, followed by plateaus of stability in species numbers lasting tens of millions of years.

The new findings sheds light on our understanding the effects of falling rates of biodiversity seen across the world today.

The results also suggest that interactions between species, including competition for food and space, limit the overall number of species that can co-exist.

The full findings of the study were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

SOURCE

Climate change farce: How every Australian household contributes $200 a year to those lucky enough to be able to afford to put solar panels on their roof

Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to add almost $200 to power bills across Australia.

The federal Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme together with state rebates - used to pay for subsidies to homeowners for installing solar panels - are set to rise by 45 per cent.

The cost to each household for the subsidy will soar from $134 in 2018 to $195 this year, The Australian reported.

Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to cost almost each home almost $200 (stock image)    +2
Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to cost almost each home almost $200 (stock image)

More than two million Australians use solar energy in their homes, and capacity is growing at 50 per cent each year.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the cost of small-scale technology certificates - used as an incentive for homeowners to install solar panels - made up three per cent of an average power bill.

Small-scale technology certificates are given to consumers installing solar panels and are then bought back by power companies.

Mr Taylor said Australia's biggest electricity retailers such as Origin, AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia were responsible for a bigger part of power bills.

'The big cost is the profits being taken by the big energy companies in the wholesale market, without innovation or new products, and it is time for them to deliver a fairer deal for their customers,' he said.

'According to the Australian Energy Market Commission, the small-scale technology certificate cost is less than three per cent of the bill, whereas 46 per cent is going to the big generator retailers.'

Solar panels are growing in popularity, with state governments offering incentives for installing them.

Victorians can set up solar in their homes for half the usual price under a scheme introduced by Premier Daniel Andrews' government, while in New South Wales Labor plans for 500,000 homes to have renewable energy technology in a capped rebate program.

The average price in Australian capital cities for a 5kW system is $5,100, according to Choice.

It takes from two to seven years for solar panel systems to begin to pay for themselves and allow homeowners to save money.

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

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

19 February, 2019

Internal Contradictions of the Green New Deal

In case some readers don't get it, Marxists were always talking about the supposed internal contradictions in capitalism

In this post, rather than revisiting the serious problems that the Green New Deal proponents would wreak with their plans, instead I want to highlight how several of their claims contradict each other. In other words, the Green New Deal doesn’t even make sense on its own terms.

No Nuclear

After explaining the urgent need to transition humanity away from greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible, the document from Ocasio-Cortez’s office discusses nuclear:

Is nuclear a part of this?

A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants. It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible. No one has put the full 10-year plan together yet, and if it is possible to get to fully 100% renewable in 10 years, we will do that.

And so just like that, nuclear power has been rolled onto the same chopping block timeframe as coal-fired power plants. Inasmuch as nuclear power is zero-emission and doesn’t suffer from the problems of intermittency that plague wind and solar, and can be distributed anywhere geographically unlike hydro, one might have expected that nuclear would be the go-to solution for those truly worried about saving the planet within 12 years. (In 2017, nuclear accounted for 20% of U.S. electricity, while wind and solar combined only 7.6%.)

As I wrote in a previous post, imagine if a strident group of scientists were warning everybody that a killer asteroid was hurtling toward Earth. Then some people proposed using missiles or lasers to knock it off course. In response, the loud activists said, “No we don’t want to do that, because it would interfere with our messaging on gun control.” In that scenario, would you think those activists actually believe their own rhetoric about the killer asteroid?

Likewise, if Ocasio-Cortez and her staff are trying to decommission nuclear plants just as fast as coal- and natural-gas fired power plants, it should tell you this really isn’t about the negative externality from carbon dioxide emissions. This is about transforming society—as they themselves admit.

If It’s So Good for the Economy, Why Is Coercion Necessary?

The Green New Deal outline also tries to reassure us that its measures will help the economy. For example:

This is massive investment in our economy and society, not expenditure.

•We invested 40-50% of GDP into our economy during World War 2 and created the greatest middle class the US has seen.

•The interstate highway system has returned more than $6 in economic productivity for every $1 it cost

•This is massively expanding existing and building new industries at a rapid pace – growing our economy

As an aside, the “middle class” suffered tremendously in economic terms during World War 2. Using conventional government statistics, the per capita output of private-sector GDP was lower during the height of World War 2 than during the depths of the Great Depression, a decade earlier. Real resources were being diverted into tanks, bombers, and bullets, rather than cars, radios, and nylon stockings. One can argue that fighting World War 2 was a necessary expense, but it definitely made Americans poorer than if the U.S. government hadn’t made those expenditures.

Beyond their historical ignorance, the Green New Dealers are missing something pretty basic: If all of this infrastructure spending—which includes not just highways and other government property, but also revamping every single building in the country (!!)—is so economically efficient, then why does the government have to do it? The government doesn’t have real resources of its own. All it can do is transfer purchasing power (through taxing, borrowing, or the printing press) away from the private sector.

Now if the Green New Dealers come back and say, “Well, private business doesn’t take into account climate change,” fine. That’s the mainstream economics view, of someone like William Nordhaus. But at least those economists have the decency to admit that a carbon tax or other measures to limit emissions, will make Americans poorer relative to a scenario where global warming wasn’t a thing.

In contrast, the logic of the Green New Dealers’ rhetoric implies: “Phew! It’s actually a good thing there’s the existential threat of catastrophic climate change, because now we can do all these things that will create millions of jobs and produce social justice.”

Respecting Rights

Finally, I found this statement from the draft legislation to be touching yet contradictory:

(M) obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties an agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;

Why would we allow indigenous peoples to threaten the planet? After all, the Green New Dealers aren’t getting the free, prior, and informed consent from the owners of coal-fired power plants before ruining their way of life. And it’s not merely a matter of “sovereignty” broadly defined—the Green New Dealers want “border tax adjustments” to punish those foreigners who don’t elect governments to do the same policies to themselves as the Green New Dealers want to impose on Americans. Why is it OK to use economic warfare to influence what other governments do in that way, but not when it comes to indigenous peoples here?

The obvious answer is that this has little to do with climate change, but instead is a wish-list of leftist social and economic goals. In their book, indigenous peoples are on the side of the good guys, while business owners and the Chinese people aren’t such a big deal.

Conclusion

In short, not only is the Green New Deal chock-full of economic absurdities and disastrous proposals, it isn’t even internally consistent. This is yet more evidence of the lack of intellectual rigor behind the proposal.

SOURCE

Yes, Indoor Agriculture Can Feed the World. And for many food crops, it already does

So we are not going to run out of food after all!

I recently toured The Netherlands with a delegation from California tasked to collaborate with the Dutch on Climate Smart Agriculture. In the several years that I’ve studied the food system, I’ve heard much about how the Dutch were growing an enormous amount of plants and vegetables in climate controlled indoor environments. In fact, The Netherlands is second only to the United States as the world’s leading agricultural exporter, and 80% of its land under cultivation is inside greenhouses. Many of these exports are vegetables to the EU: tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, blackberries, herbs, and leafy greens.

After seeing first-hand the scale of production and the attention paid to climate and sustainability across the entire value chain of production, it was with great regret that I read Dr. Jonathan Foley’s essay, “No, Vertical Farms Won’t Feed the World.” While it won’t “feed the world” all by itself (no one farming system will), indoor agriculture is hardly “a fad” as Dr. Foley calls it. On the contrary, it has a very important role to play in a food system that makes us resilient to climate change.

Controlled Environment Agriculture Defined

The “vertical farming” that Dr. Foley writes about is only a tiny subset of a much, much larger industry called Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). CEA has existed for more than a century and refers to any attempt to control the growing environment for a crop. It spans the spectrum from plastic hoop houses that protect from sun to glass greenhouses that use ambient light and heat from outside to recreate the perfect growing conditions for a crop. Most recently, it also includes a new kind of indoor growing architecture called “vertical farms.” Vertical farms are fully enclosed environments using only artificial lighting and growing crops in vertically stacked rows or towers.

CEA is Already a Large Ag Sector

For more detail, I highly recommend reading “Let’s Talk About Market Size” by Allison Kopf, CEO at Agrilyst. In it, she describes the different type of indoor farms and the size of the market in greater detail. The point I wish to make here is that CEA is already a huge and profitable industry?—?worth $14B in the United States alone (as of 2016). According to Rabbobank, the world’s leading agriculture bank, the United States is a tiny player with only 911 hectares (2,221 acres) compared to countries like Spain (70,000 hectares) or China (82,000 hectares and growing) or even The Netherlands (11,500 hectares).

The CEA sector is already growing food you eat everyday. For example, nearly 60% of the tomatoes you consume in North America are grown in CEA. The Dutch yields average 20 times more tomatoes per acre than US outdoor growers. This is because indoor cultivation enables us to have year round production. Peppers, cucumbers, herbs, mushrooms, cannabis, and increasingly leafy greens are grown this way. In The Netherlands add strawberries, flowers, and blackberries to the commercial production list. In the vast research greenhouses at the world’s leading agriculture university, Wageningen, I personally witnessed peppercorns, vanilla, bananas, and papaya in research for commercial production. For the banana, learning to grow indoor and out of soil may save it from extinction as a soil fungus is currently decimating southeast Asia’s outdoor production, as The Guardian reported, “The First Dutch Bananas Could Help Tackle Fungal Threat,” on December 14.

CEA is Experiencing an Innovation Revolution

Driven by innovations in the energy efficiency of LED lights, increasingly sophisticated yet inexpensive sensors, advances in robotics, and the legalization of cannabis there has been a wave of innovation in CEA. This has enabled experimentation of potential new architectures for indoor farms: vertically stacked trays, aquaponics (a form that integrates the symbiotic growing of fish with the growing of plants), vertical towers, etc. This has also led to experimentation on new crop types: fish, insects, cocoa, vanilla, the aforementioned bananas, and more.

What will the winning architecture be?—?Dutch greenhouses, hi-tech vertical farms, integrated aquaponics, etc? What crops will we grow? Does indoor growing make new crops, like insects, commercially viable? We don’t know yet, but advances are being made…every day. And that’s a good thing.

More Food. Less Waste. Healthier Food. Safer Food. Less Land.

As Dr. Foley points out, indoor farms are expensive to build and operate. True. Starting any new farm from scratch (whether indoor or outdoor)is capital intensive. Much of the innovation happening in indoor agriculture is decreasing not only the upfront capital costs, but?—?most importantly?—?the ongoing operating costs. As the Dutch have demonstrated, CEA farms are profitable at large commercial scale and produce fruits and vegetables at competitive prices to the average consumer. Twenty years ago, under the rallying cry “twice as much food using half as many resources,” the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture. Now, 80% of their cultivated land is CEA. More food.

One of the recent business model innovations in indoor farming is to build the farms closer to the consumer. As Dr. Foley points out, the travel distance contributes little to a crop’s carbon footprint. However, growing produce closer to the point of consumption results in less food spoilage during transport and a longer shelf life in your fridge. More food. Less waste.

That longer shelf life also means food that is denser with its nutrients instead of days or weeks degraded while being transported. More food. Less waste. Healthier food.

Because water is recycled and reused, growing indoors uses 90% less water, on average. This is also means there is no runoff of nitrates and pesticides into your ground water. Speaking of pesticides: it uses 97% less pesticides. More food. Less waste. Healthier food. Safer food.

CEA has a smaller footprint on the land: 1 acre of indoor farming for leafy greens can produce in 1 year what 10 acres of farmland produces outside. The Netherlands is second to the United States in agricultural exports yet has 1/270th of the land. More food. Less waste. Healthier food. Safer food. Less land.

Looking to the Future

Vertical farms are a new innovation in the Controlled Environment Agriculture sector. Many innovations start out unscalable and inefficient. Yes, vertical farms require more innovation to bring down energy costs, but if we just abandon CEA because vertical farms alone seem unscalable, we stifle innovation for all farming?—?vertical, indoor, outdoor and otherwise. Through the new innovations in vertical farming, the entire agriculture industry is addressing energy efficiency, water efficiency, automation (labor efficiency), new business models, shorter supply chains, and new crop types. These are exactly the agricultural problems that need solving across the entire food system, and it’s promising to see the capital and brain power that is addressing them.

SOURCE

States Falling for Electoral Platitudes Now Face Future Energy Trauma

Governors of California, New York, et al have been issuing electoral platitudes that can only be expected to yield future energy trauma for their citizens.

Last week, New York City area utility Consolidated Edison notified regulators that, as of March 15, it would accept no new natural gas customers in Westchester County due to supply shortages. It is possible that cutoffs in the City itself may follow. While this is happening, New York City is requiring customers to switch out of dirtier burning fuel oil. Most are seeking natural gas.

Already, over 5,000 buildings in the City have made the switch. Meanwhile, as prior commentary in this blog has noted, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his administration have stymied all attempts to build a new pipeline that would be capable of supplying the City and other areas, like New England, with plentiful and inexpensive natural gas from the nearby Marcellus Shale region.

Once again we are seeing the Alice in Wonderland effects of New York State environmental incoherence. It desperately needs energy to grow, and also to improve environmental air quality, but does everything possible to prevent that energy from being available.

The energy dilemma cannot just be wished away. The implications of not building pipelines and securing our energy future are real and starting to bite. Without reliable energy supply, regions can’t grow. Without growth, there will be no jobs for an expanding population. Intellectual discussions and arguments about the large job opportunities available in the renewable sector are nice, but where are they? More to the point, where is the consistent supply of energy that will be provided by these renewable sources?

Out west in Oregon, newly reelected Governor Kate Brown, who ran on a progressive, clean energy platform, faces a challenge from her left with a new Clean Energy Jobs bill. Back in 2007, Oregon set goals for reducing its carbon emissions in 2010, 2020 and 2050. It met its goals for 2010 but admits it will not do so for 2020. In fact, the Oregon Global Warming Commission predicts the State will over-pollute in 2020 by 20%. There is an interim goal for 2035, but lawmakers may choose to ignore that and concentrate on 2050. This has environmental advocates alarmed.

Ironically, one proven way for the environmental advocates to reduce CO2 emissions is through increased use of natural gas. They have not been inclined to accept that option, however, putting all their eggs in the basket of renewables. Governor Brown then likely will face the problem Governor Cuomo faces. She will run a left-leaning state with a well-meaning yet unrealistic program for achieving goals about which most of us can agree. Governor Cuomo has chosen one path. It won him electoral platitudes but now faces future trauma. It will be interesting to see which way Governor Brown goes.

In Pennsylvania, the long battle over the Mariner East 2 pipeline appears over. Last week the Public Utility Commission ruled that a landowner group had failed to show that safety concerns necessitated an emergency shutdown of the pipeline. In typical fashion for this matter, two days later another sinkhole exposed a section of the older Mariner 1 pipeline. Chester County emergency service officials stressed there was no damage to the pipeline and no danger, but the entire situation continues to be messy and delicate. It does not help public perception that a horrific gasoline pipeline explosion in central Mexico predated the Mariner 1 sinkhole occurrence by a few days.

Internationally, and ironically, the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela, falls deeper and deeper into turmoil. President Nicolas Maduro’s security forces put down another mini-uprising Monday, but nationwide demonstrations have been called for Wednesday, the anniversary of the end of the most recent military dictatorship in 1958. Venezuela’s oil production has plummeted along with the rest of its economy, and President Maduro has given away large amounts of it to Russia in exchange for needed foreign reserve to service its enormous debt.

Despite starving his nation, Maduro retains the loyalty of large segments of the military command. Those commanders don’t carry the guns that fire on the starving people, however. The weapons themselves are in the hands of individual soldiers commanded on the street by junior officers. It remains a confounding question as to why the opposition, which still exists in Venezuela, has been so unsuccessful in convincing the junior officers that their long term interests do not lie with Maduro and the senior military commanders but with the starving people in the streets.

Of course, should Maduro’s regime eventually fall, it would set in motion the need for some fancy diplomatic footwork and military readiness, something neither the Trump Administration, nor its predecessor, have shown much capability to implement. Under those circumstances, energy markets would be thrown another huge curve ball. Both our government and companies retaining any interest in Venezuela, either directly or indirectly, should be planning for these scenarios right now.

SOURCE

Goodbye to a misguided war on coal

The unexpected departure of Dr. Jim Yong Kim as president of the World Bank gives President Donald J. Trump the perfect opportunity to reverse the anti-fossil fuel, energy poverty agenda the bank has pursued since Dr. Kim’s appointment by President Barack Obama in 2012.

The World Bank is the world’s premier development bank. Its knowledge of developing countries means that its participation is often essential to leverage private sector investment into some of the world’s poorest countries.

Rather than development, Dr. Kim saw the bank’s principal job as waging President Obama’s war on coal across the developing world. One of his first acts was instituting a ban on World Bank participation in any funding of new electrical generation projects using coal, other than in the most exceptional circumstances.

The United States is the bank’s largest funder, but Dr. Kim behaved as if Hillary Clinton had won Barack Obama’s third term in the 2016 presidential election. In no area was the policy rupture between the two administrations sharper than on energy, where Mr. Obama’s war on coal has been replaced by the Trump administration’s doctrine of American energy dominance.

Yet Dr. Kim decided to defy his host government and largest funder. At the December 2017 climate summit, France’s President Macron threw to celebrate the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Dr. Kim announced that the World Bank was extending its financing ban to upstream oil and gas. To cap it all, in October 2017 Dr. Kim said the bank would be withdrawing its support for its sole remaining coal project, a badly needed clean coal plant in Kosovo, a struggling country in the Balkans.

It’s not only that Dr. Kim misread the politics. On the fundamentals of what is good for developing countries’ economic development and human welfare, the Trump administration is right and Dr. Kim wrong. The centralized electrical grid is the single most beneficial innovation of the 20th century. In developed countries, it is what separates the 20th century from the 19th century.

It’s hardly surprising that FDR’s rural electrification program in the 1930s was one of the most popular and lasting parts of the New Deal. Rural farmers and small towns wanted all the benefits that only reliable, grid-connected electricity can provide and that city and suburban dwellers were already enjoying.

A study out this month by the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation shows why. In the 1920s and 1930s, small-scale generation and local distribution grids were increasingly replaced by much larger coal-fired power stations connected by a national grid. In those two decades, electricity prices more than halved, something that hasn’t happened again.

This is the energy transition developing countries want and need, but is being denied them by First World environmentalists. Because Dr. Kim was out of his depth at the World Bank, he allowed the bank to be captured by climate activists prioritizing green ideology over the interests of the world’s poor.

Only last month, the World Bank announced it would be committing $200 billion to climate action. “This is about putting countries and communities in charge of building a safer, more climate-resilient future,” Dr. Kim declared. That’s not going to make energy cheaper or more accessible or keep the lights on and the refrigerator chilled.

Wind and solar power are inherently unreliable and are not a substitute for a proper grid and thermal power generation. Despite Elon Musk’s claims, the developed world has not cracked the inherent intermittency of generating electricity from the weather.

For developing countries, the economics of wind and solar mean that the more renewables they have, the more it costs to build out a proper grid and invest in reliable generation. It is simply immoral to expect developing countries to solve the intermittency problem that has defied solution by the best brains in the West and inflict higher energy costs on those who can least afford them.

Dr. Kim’s departure opens the opportunity to end the World Bank’s walk on the dark side. In selecting the U.S. candidate to succeed him, the Trump administration will have the support of developing nations angry at the West’s climate imperialism and its attempts to obstruct their economic development. It will also have the support of energy-realist nations such as Japan and Australia, while China, consuming half the world’s coal, can hardly object. On energy realism, energy access and economic development, the goals and interests of developing nations and the United States are strongly aligned.

SOURCE

Australia: 'Inner-city, green elitism gone mad': Farmers' fury after Labor MP blames 'meat-eating MEN' for climate change

Irate farmers have labelled a State MP a 'green communist' after she blamed 'meat-eating' men for climate change while praising vegans.

Lisa Baker, the Labor member for Maylands in Perth, told the State Parliament her Government should promote reduced meat consumption.

She went onto state meat-eating men tend to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than vegan women.

Gary Buller, who breeds Angus cattle in WA's south-west, said Ms Baker needs to get a 'grip on reality'. 'There is much too much emotion in this whole debate and not enough dealing with the facts,' Mr Buller told the West Australian. 'People with these views are away with the fairies — they are green communists.'

Trevor Whittington, the WA Farmers chief executive, agreed with Buller. He believes Ms Baker's outspoken views were an example of 'inner-city, green elitism gone mad'. 'Her world is a simple one of vegans, good, meat eaters bad,' he said.

'We will watch with interest to see if she (Baker) manages to convince her colleagues to take her views to the next election.'

David Littleproud was equally scathing in his criticism, with the Federal Agriculture Minister saying Ms Baker's comments were 'laughable.'

A spokesperson for Ms Baker told Daily Mail Australia the State MP stands by her comments and clarified she wasn’t a vegan.

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

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

18 February, 2019

Mitch McConnell Forces Democrats Into A Senate Vote on Green Deal

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that he’ll bring up progressives’ widely mocked Green New Deal for a vote. The move is often used as a political tactic, which would force several Democratic 2020 presidential candidates to go on the record either for or against the radical proposal that has a massive scope and cost.

According to Politico, McConnell told reporters, “I’ve noted with great interest the Green New Deal and we’re going to be voting on that in the Senate. We’ll give everybody a chance to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal.”

Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kamala Harris (Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) — who are running for president in 2020 — have all endorsed a resolution in support of the Green New Deal introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has also expressed his support for the initiative, but has not formally announced whether he will run for president in 2020.

The Green New Deal was introduced with great fanfare last week, as dozens of members of Congress gathered for a news conference to roll out the sweeping new initiative aimed at weaning the U.S. completely off fossil fuels over the next decade.

The rest of the details of the plan are muddled, after a widely mocked summary of the Green New Deal was published and subsequently removed by staffers of Ocasio-Cortez, promising jobs for people “unwilling to work” and vowing to get rid of “cow farts.” Days later, the congresswoman’s chief of staff called the release of the document a mistake, saying it “doesn’t represent the [Green New Deal] resolution,” the New York Times reported.

Regardless, Ocasio-Cortez has admitted that implementing her multi-trillion-dollar proposal would require “massive government intervention,” which the average American voter may not be willing to get behind.

SOURCE

Rep. Escobar Wants to Be Sure New Border Fence Doesn't 'Stop Wildlife'

She said she does not oppose certain types of fencing, as long as those fences "don't stop wildlife, don't harm wildlife, but are a tool for Border Patrol to stop vehicles."

Among other things, the deal produced by a congressional conference committee gives President Donald Trump $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new fencing.

"Are you okay with 55 miles of new fencing along the border?" Willie Geist, an MSNBC "Morning Joe" contributor, asked Escobar Wednesday morning:

"You know, Willie, I need to know what kind of fencing, honestly," said Escobar, who is from the border city of El Paso:

"Because what we've seen in Homeland Security bills on the border, we've seen fencing being replaced, we've seen fencing going up. I am not anti, you know, the Normandy fencing out in the rural areas, things that -- that don't stop wildlife, don't harm wildlife, but are a tool for Border Patrol to stop vehicles. So I need to know what kind of fencing exactly it is."

Escobar, speaking about the broader deal, said she wants to know, "does it have investment in the ports? Does it have investments in judges? Does it have investments in the kind of humanitarian needs that we're seeing on the U.S.-Mexico border right now.

"And then finally, one of the most important points for me, and I know for the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, does it invest in the Northern Triangle so we can begin to stem the flow of families leaving very insecure and violent places so that we can actually get to the root of the issue, something the president has never even bothered to talk about.

"So there is still a lot for me to review before I say whether or not I support it," Escobar said.

Escobar accused the Trump administration of "cruelty" in the way it is treating "those coming to our front door, seeking legal asylum."

"In El Paso, we are still seeing hundreds of families arriving each day," Escobar said. She praised her community for receiving the asylum seeks with "kindness and generosity."

"But I'll tell you, as soon as the weather starts warming up, we are going to probably see even more families arriving at our doorstep, which is why it's really important that we deal with the root causes of migration and not just deal with them via cruelty, which is essentially the Trump administration response."

Escobar said improving living conditions in Central America is the key to stemming the flow of migration:

"We saw Mexican males, their migration, or their trying to enter the country decreased when their economy improved, when unemployment improved. If we do the same with other countries, then people can stay in a safe and secure place.

"They are running from a place where they can no longer live to a place they knowing that running to a place where they're not wanted. Can you imagine the desperation?" Escobar asked.

SOURCE

Green New Deal Would Barely Change Earth’s Temperature. Here Are the Facts

Here’s the most important fact about the Green New Deal: It wouldn’t work. Ultimately, fully implementing the Green New Deal would have no meaningful impact on global temperatures.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., released their much-anticipated blueprint for a Green New Deal Thursday.

And make no mistake: If implemented, the Green New Deal would bring huge changes to our country. According to an FAQ put out by Ocasio-Cortez’s office, this new deal is “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

The plan additionally asks Americans to “upgrade or replace every building in U.S. for state-of-the-art energy efficiency” and to “build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

That’s not even all. Far from being just an energy and climate resolution, the Green New Deal resolution is a wish list for big government spending, expansive government control, and massive amounts of wealth distribution. As Ocasio-Cortez told NPR, “the heart of the Green New Deal is about social justice.”

Ultimately, this deal would fundamentally change how people produce and consume energy, harvest crops, raise livestock, build homes, drive cars, travel long distances, and manufacture goods. And it wouldn’t even work.

Green New Deal Wouldn’t Change Climate Significantly

But here’s the key thing: Even if Americans were on board with this radical change in behavior and lifestyle, it wouldn’t change our climate.

In fact, the U.S. could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 100 percent and it would not make a difference in abating global warming.

Using the same climate sensitivity (the warming effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions) as the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes in its modeling, the world would be only 0.137 degree Celsius cooler by 2100. Even if we assumed every other industrialized country would be equally on board, this would merely avert warming by 0.278 degree Celsius by the turn of the century.

One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide emissions is developing countries.

But while one of the priorities of the Green New Deal is to make the U.S. a lead exporter in green technologies, assuming developing countries will forgo cheap, abundant carbon dioxide-emitting energy for more expensive intermittent sources is pure fantasy.

Yes, developing countries will likely expand their use of renewable power sources over time, but not to the extent it will have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. While some countries are shuttering their coal-fired plants, others in both developed and developing countries are building new plants and expanding the life of existing generators.

After all, affordable, reliable, and widely available energy is essential to lifting people out of poverty and improving the life, health, and comfort of people trying to reach a better standard of living.

Americans Could Face Hundreds of Dollars in New Energy Costs Monthly

But not only would the Green New Deal be ineffective, it would also almost certainly impose steep costs on Americans, via increased energy bills.

The resolution calls for deriving 100 percent of America’s electricity from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission” energy sources—a steep increase from the 63 percent of electricity that came from carbon dioxide-emitting conventional fuels in 2017. Nuclear power was responsible for another 20 percent. But, according to the FAQ sheet, “The Green New Deal makes new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear plants unnecessary. This is a massive mobilization of all our resources into renewable energies.”

The proposal also calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and other infrastructure as much as technologically feasible. Yet, as recently as 2017, petroleum accounted for 92 percent of America’s transportation fuel.

To achieve these targets, the resolution proposes a massive government spending program in addition to carbon dioxide taxes, subsidies, and regulation. How are Americans going to pay for it?

Don’t worry, the FAQ answers that one: “We will finance the investments for the Green New Deal the same way we paid for the original New Deal, World War II, the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, and decades of war—with public money appropriated by Congress. Further, government can take an equity stake in Green New Deal projects so the public gets a return on its investment.”

Credibly estimating the cost of the Green New Deal for American taxpayers, households, and businesses is exceedingly difficult. Even projecting the cost of switching to 100 percent renewable power for electricity relies on a set of largely unknowable assumptions. How companies would make large-scale investments to meet the mandate and how intermittent power sources would receive backup power is mostly a guessing game.

Technological challenges aside, the upfront capital costs would reach trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars of energy existing assets (coal, nuclear, natural gas plants, etc.) would be stranded and lost.

In effect, the result would be households potentially paying hundreds of dollars more per month in their electricity bill.

Green New Deal Could Lead to Millions of Lost Jobs

Even more concerning, the direct impact from higher energy costs is just a small part of the story. Energy is a necessary input for nearly all of the goods and services consumers buy. Consequently, Americans will pay more for food, health care, education, clothes, and every other good or service that requires energy to make and transport.

In fact, Heritage Foundation economists used the Heritage Energy Model, a derivative of the Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System, to model the economic impacts of a carbon tax, which Green New Deal advocates admit would only be one tiny fraction of the entire plan.

Each carbon tax analysis found an average shortfall of hundreds of thousands of jobs with peak year unemployment reaching over 1 million jobs lost and half the job losses coming in energy-intensive manufacturing industries.

Over a 20-year period, the total income loss would be tens of thousands of dollars and the aggregate gross domestic product loss would be over $2.5 trillion. If policymakers spent, taxed, and regulated to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for America’s transportation, agricultural, and industrial sectors, the costs would be several orders of magnitude higher.

Importantly, Americans have little appetite to pay such costs. In fact, a recent Associated Press poll found that 68 percent of Americans oppose paying an additional $10 per month to fight climate change. The protests in France are quite indicative of how people feel about costly climate policies.

The Broad Scope of the Green New Deal

Furthermore, the Green New Deal would affect a lot more than energy. Guaranteeing high quality health care, education, and a job with a family-sustaining wage are all part of this new deal.

And don’t forget the egregious amount of spending that would result in energy cronyism and corporate welfare on steroids—essentially, taxpayer dollars from hardworking families going to line the pockets of companies like Tesla and Solyndra.

Don’t worry, though. These Green New Deal proponents do admit they can’t quite get everything done in 10 years. According to the FAQ sheet:

We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.

Moderation itself.

In the end, this massive government-planned, taxpayer-funded plan is a raw deal for Americans—and a totally ineffective climate policy.

SOURCE

The Green New Deal’s toughest transition will be returning its supporters to reality

The Green New Deal's timeline is a challenge because there is substantial inertia built into economies. Replacing working, costly infrastructure and technology won't happen for decades.

A central part of this new deal is the proposal that the U.S. eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas by 2030. As fossil fuels now account for 80 per cent of American energy consumption, the Green New Deal would entail a profound and rapid “decarbonization,” or transformation of the energy economy to alternative fuels.

In a report published this week by the U.K Global Warming Policy Foundation, I describe the problems that governments would have to address if they seriously were to attempt to manage a transition such as that proposed in the Green New Deal.

Historically, the availability and use of energy sources was determined largely by geography and technology. The changes over time followed a pattern in which diffuse energy sources, such as wood, that needed large areas of land to produce, were replaced by denser ones, such as oil and natural gas. The choice as to which new technology to adopt was made in energy markets; generally, the technologies and fuels that offered more advantages in terms of cost, performance and reliability won out. Past transitions were slow, painstaking and difficult to predict.

There has been much recent academic research on the timescales involved. Professor Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba is a leading authority in the field and suggests that a timeframe of 50 to 70 years or longer is normal. This is because there is substantial inertia built into economies. Important capital goods and infrastructure have long economic lives; cars may average lives of only 10 years, but the average lives of other assets can be much longer — 30 years for locomotives, 35 to 80 years for electricity-generating plants, and 50 to 100 years for bridges and dams. Typically, hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of society’s capital are invested in these assets. Replacing them because a new technology arrives would impose enormous costs, which would be even higher to the degree that the technology is immature or unproven.

The likely high cost of decarbonization has been amply demonstrated in the case of renewable energy. In Germany, the costs of transition from coal and nuclear energy to wind and solar plants has already exceeded $1 trillion, with so far only modest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Those who foresee rapid decarbonization assume that all economic sectors and services can be electrified and that electricity can be delivered by intermittent renewable energy sources. Yet today, the technologies needed to make this feasible, especially affordable grid-scale electricity storage, do not exist. This is especially so in transportation, where the high energy density of oil products makes them the ideal source of motive power. Decarbonization involves reversing the historic transition from less dense to more dense energy sources, and thus major changes in the land requirements for energy production.

At the core of the policy thrust for rapid decarbonization is the view that people cannot be relied upon freely to make the right decisions as to which fuels to buy and sell and that governments must adopt policies and regulations to force the pace of change. Successful planning decisions concerning future energy supplies would depend on governments being able to judge future energy market conditions and prices in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive world.

The question is whether governments have the information needed to make good decisions about which products, services and technologies are the right ones. The history of government economic regulation, industrial planning and ultimately central planning of the economy has generally been one of failure far more often than success.

SOURCE

Australia: NSW government projects big jump in coal shipments

The Greenies are squawking but in view of Australia being a relatively short and direct sail from Japan, Korea, China and India, the projection is a reasonable one and may be understated. Asia still likes coal

The Berejiklian government is projecting NSW will sharply increase coal shipments over coming decades, a forecast increase at odds with international climate goals and its own target for the state to reach net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century.

Figures used for the NSW Freight and Ports Plan 2018-2023 and obtained by the Greens, show transport projections out to 2056 also imply thermal coal use will increase by 2036 - even though four of the state's five remaining coal-fired power plants are scheduled to have closed by then.

Annual shipments of coal for domestic power generation would rise from 23 million tonnes in 2016 to 24 million tonnes in 2036. They will drop only to 21 million tonnes by 2056 - a date well beyond the expected life of all existing plants.

The government's figures, prepared in 2017-18 by Transport for NSW's analytics team, are even more bullish about exports of both thermal and coking coal.

The former is forecast to rise steadily from 139 million tonnes in 2016 to 158 million tonnes by 2056, counter to expectations that thermal coal use will have to be cut if Paris climate goals - including net-zero emissions by developed nations by about 2050 - are to be met.

Coking coal, used to make steel, would almost double over the 40 years to 47 million tonnes by these predictions.

Even though nations burning NSW coal are accountable for the resulting emissions, the extraction and transport of the fossil fuel are sizeable contributors to the state's own pollution. The Berejiklian government has an aspirational goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

The NSW Minerals Council says the state is well-placed to grab a share of increased Asian demand for thermal coal that might top 400 million tonnes by 2030, citing researcher Commodity Insights.

But Tim Buckley, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said growth forecasts for coal imply the world ignores the Paris targets.

"Under its Sustainable Development Scenario, the International Energy Agency forecasts seaborne thermal coal would decline by 65 per cent by 2040, and cease by 2050," Mr Buckley said.

"It is telling that NSW government forecasts for coal demand are entirely consistent with the 'forecasts' of the Minerals Council of Australia, a group that releases a 50-page 2018 report forecasting a rosy picture for thermal coal demand over the coming decades, but without even mentioning climate change," he said.

Mr Buckley said Japan currently takes 44 per cent of the state's thermal coal exports but major companies are already planning to reduce coal use. Itochu, a trading giant, last week announced it would stop developing new coal-fired power plants and thermal coal mines - a move marking "a major pivot" for the company, he said.

The NSW Minerals Council is pushing for NSW to back new coal-fired power plants, saying "multiple sets of polling conducted by the industry show greater than 60 per cent support", according to its election policy priorities.

A spokeswoman for Transport for NSW said it was "uncertain whether the existing coal power stations in Australia are being closed down without like-replacement". "The Commonwealth government is considering the bids, which include coal-fired power stations," she 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

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

17 February, 2019

EPA announces plan to limit cancer-linked chemicals, critics say it’s not enough

The old PFOS scare again.

That the chemical concerned gets into people and animals one way or another has been known for decades. But the concentrations found are extremely minute -- measured in a few parts per billion. So how toxic is it? It certainly seems to be seriously toxic to a range of animals but evidence of toxicity to people is slight. And don't forget that this has been under investigation for a long time.

Additionally, it has been estimated that there is by now some PFOS in every American, so bad effects should be pretty evident by now. But they are not.

Note that the controversy is about PFOS in general use -- as part of domestic items. People who are for one reason or another exposed to exceptionally high levels of it could well have problems. And there do appear to have been some instances of that.

But the scare has been sufficient for American manufacturers to stop production of the stuff (as from 2002) and the levels in people have gone into steady decline. So if it is a problem, it has been dealt with. It is only residues that are claimed as the problem

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it will start work by the end of the year on a long-awaited plan to set national drinking-water limits for two harmful chemicals linked to cancer, low infant birth weight, and other health issues.

But environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers criticized the plan, saying it in effect delayed desperately needed regulation on a clear public health threat from chemicals that are commonly used in cookware, pizza boxes, stain repellents, and fire retardants.

EPA officials described their proposal as the “first-ever nationwide action plan” to address the health effects of human-made chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. There are currently no federal regulations on the production or monitoring of that class of about 5,000 chemicals, which are manufactured and used in a wide variety of industries and products. Studies have shown that they can linger in the human body for years, causing harmful health effects.

“The PFAS action plan is the most comprehensive action plan for a chemical of concern ever undertaken by the agency,” said Dave Ross, EPA’s assistant administrator for water, in a telephone call with reporters Thursday. Andrew Wheeler, the EPA’s acting administrator, who is now President Trump’s nominee to head the agency, called the plan a “pivotal moment in the history of the agency.”

The American Chemistry Council, an industry lobbying group, voiced support for the plan. “We continue to support strong national leadership in addressing PFAS and firmly believe that EPA is best positioned to provide the public with a comprehensive strategy informed by a full understanding of the safety and benefits of different PFAS chemistries,” it said in a statement.

Critics called on the agency to move more quickly, citing 2016 action by the Obama administration on two of the chemicals that suggested the urgency of the risk.

“While EPA acts with the utmost urgency to repeal regulations, the agency ambles with complacency when it comes to taking real steps to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe,” said Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee.

After a public outcry over tests showing dangerous levels of PFASs in communities around the United States, particularly around military bases and fire stations, the EPA under the Obama administration in 2016 proposed creating a national standard for limiting the levels in drinking water of two of the most prevalent varieties of PFAS chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS.

It also issued a health advisory recommending that water utilities and public health officials monitor levels of the two chemicals in public water supplies and notify the public if the combined levels of those chemicals reached 70 parts per trillion. A draft report released last year by the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the “minimal risk level” for exposure to those two chemicals should be less than half that amount.

Given the available data on the effect of PFAS chemicals, environmentalists criticized the EPA’s response as inadequate to the threat.

Scott Faber, an expert on chemical policy with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, called it a “drinking water crisis facing millions of Americans.” But the EPA, he said, is “just not treating the crisis the way it deserves.”

In particular, critics of the EPA have sited the role of Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist with the American Chemistry Council, in a slowdown of the agency’s response to addressing PFASs.

But Wheeler did not offer a clear timeline of when such a standard might be completed. Such regulatory processes can often take years.

SOURCE

Warmism as fun for kids

Thousands of schoolchildren hit the streets of Britain today as they went on strike from school to protest over climate change - but the Prime Minister slammed them for 'wasting lesson time'.

Youngsters walked out of lessons for the Youth Strike 4 Climate protests in 60 towns and cities across the UK from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands, leaving many parents concerned they would face a £60 fine for truancy.

Parents have been divided on social media over whether their children should go on strike one day before half-term, amid concerns over the walkouts in London being hijacked by hard-line climate groups and career activists.

Some of the teenagers in Westminster stood on the statues of former prime ministers David Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill at Parliament Square, with others carrying placards bearing Socialist Worker logos.

Young people boarded an open top city tour bus, climbing to the top deck to bringing roads in the area to a standstill. Hundreds of pupils, holding signs, chanted 'We're not moving' as they blocked traffic from moving.

Students want the Government to declare a climate emergency and take active steps to tackle the problem, tell the public more about the size of the ecological crisis and reform the curriculum so it is an educational priority.

The pupils began to slope off at 3.30pm - the usual time for the school bell - after bringing Whitehall to standstill

But in their wake came more than a hundred taxis to cause gridlock in protest at plans to ban the iconic black cabs from certain roads.

Scores of vehicles were parked around Parliament Square, while surrounding roads were brought to a total standstill.

The protest comes after similar roadblocks by taxis in the past months on London Bridge and Tottenham Court Road.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas described the students' as 'inspiring' as she joined a protest, but school leaders and Education Secretary Damian Hinds have warned students they should not miss lessons to take part in the strikes.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Theresa May urged pupils to stop timewasting, saying it was 'important to emphasise that disruption increases teachers' workloads and wastes lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared for'.

Parents could be fined £60 if they allow their child to take an unauthorised absence in some areas where schools are under pressure from councils - despite others actively encouraging children to make banners and attend.

Some schools backing the protests posted pictures on social media of their children attending rallies, while Devon County Council said it 'fully welcomes and supports the aims of young people across the UK' today.

Among the banners held by pupils holding demonstrations across the country today were 'global warming isn't cool', 'there is no Planet B', 'when did the children become the adults' and 'don't burn our future'.

However, the National Association of Head Teachers has told members to not authorise truancy and instead help children 'engage with social issues' in other ways, such as discussions in class or at lunchtime.

The Government has insisted the issue is a matter for individual headteachers to deal with, but it is understood ministers would not expect absence to be granted simply for a protest.

Some have critised the protest, including Toby Young, former director of the New Schools Network, who said: 'Calling this a strike is ridiculous. What are they going to do? Down pencils? This is just truanting.'

The Youth Strike 4 Climate movement has already seen strikes in Australia, Switzerland and Belgium, and has been inspired by Greta Thunberg, 16, who protests every Friday outside Sweden's parliament to urge leaders to tackle climate change.

The strikes come in the wake of a UN report which warned that limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which climate impacts become increasingly severe, requires unprecedented action.

That includes cutting global carbon dioxide emissions by almost half within 12 years. They also want recognition that young people have the biggest stake in the future, should be involved in policymaking, and that the voting age should be lowered to 16.

In Parliament Square, two students brandishing a bottle of champagne climbed on to the roof of the number 11 bus to Fulham Broadway. Traffic around the square in central London was at a standstill after students blocked traffic by sitting in the roads.

Some young protesters climbed to the top of traffic lights around Parliament Square bearing banners and placards. Others climbed the statues in the square, including the one of Churchill, while placards were hung from the statue of Lloyd George, with one reading: 'you can have capitalism or you can have the planet'.

Mounted police and other officers tried to move the protesters off the roads and on to the pavements.

Some students at the protest in Parliament Square were seen drinking alcohol from bottles disguised by paper bags. Others ripped up homemade signs, chanting 'f*** Theresa May'.

What are the Youth Strike 4 Climate protests about?

The walk-out is being organised by the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement, which has been encouraging children and their parents on social media to join in.

Students in the UK are demanding the Government declare a climate emergency and take active steps to tackle the problem, communicate the severity of the ecological crisis to the public and reform the curriculum to make it an educational priority.

They also want recognition that young people have the biggest stake in the future, should be involved in policymaking, and that the voting age should be lowered to 16.

Campaigners have put together a slick public relations operation, providing children with template letters to schools which can be signed by their parents. There are also campaign leaflets and model messages which can be uploaded and shared on Whatsapp and Facebook.

One 14-year-old London schoolgirl, whose parents both support her decision to skip school to protest, said: 'Brexit won't matter if we don't have a world to live in'.

Pupils from across the country met in the capital to 'take a stand against emissions' as the crowds chanted 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' and there was a return of 'f*** Theresa May'.

But not everyone saw it that way - with some claiming they 'just wanted the day off school' - labelling the protest as 'bulls***.'

The protesters marched from Parliament Square to Downing Street holding hundreds of placards as traffic was brought to a standstill.

One motorist said: 'They ought to be in school, these are the kind that won't even want to work like the rest of us.'

SOURCE

The truth about cheese: The terrible costs of our favourite food

It might be hard to swallow, but if you think cheese is better than meat for both animal welfare and the environment, you need to think again

MY NAME is Graham, and I’m a cheesoholic.

I’m generally quite restrained at the table, but I can’t resist cheese. Hard, soft, runny, smoked, blue, British, continental, pasteurised, unpasteurised. If there is cheese on offer, I will keep on eating it until one of us is defeated. I eat it for breakfast and snack on it at night.

Recently, my cheese habit has become even more central to my diet. Last year I quit meat, finally fed up by its environmental and animal welfare record. It wasn’t easy, but what was there to fill the void? Why, my old friend cheese! Halloumi, paneer and parmesan are now my beef, chicken and pork.

I’m happy to live without meat. But lately I have been wrangling with my conscience again. Cheese is made from milk, and milk comes from cows. Cattle farming is appalling for the climate. Cows belch out vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that no known technology can stop from being vented into the atmosphere. Most dairy farming is a form of factory farming, with all the attendant animal rights issues. I haven’t kept a record, but I am sure my cheese consumption has gone up since I swore off meat. So have I just swapped one environmental and animal welfare sin for another – one that is possibly even worse?

This is an uncomfortable question for many people. A number of my colleagues said, half-jokingly, “please don’t do that story”. They were saying they would rather not know. They were right.

SOURCE

Green New Deal goes backwards in CA

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that he would be ending the state’s plan to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The project, he said, would “cost too much” and “take too long” to be feasible.

Speaking to his constituents during his State of the State address Tuesday, Newsom said:

Let’s level about the high speed rail. I have nothing but respect for Gov. [Jerry] Brown, and Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger’s vision. I share it. There’s no doubt that our state’s economy and quality of life depend on improving transportation. But let’s be real. The current project, as planned, would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.

The project was already years behind schedule, and, before its cancellation, was not due to be complete until 2033. Newsom did not, however, cancel a portion of this rail line that will stretch from Bakersfield to Merced and is already under construction. Newsom promised that this portion of rail, which he admitted critics called a “train to nowhere,” would cut down on pollution and commute time for people in California’s Central Valley.

He promised that this part of the project would be more transparent going forward.

The loss of a high speed rail line between two major cities will likely be seen as a step in the wrong direction for proponents of the Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal, published by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Thursday, called for building out “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary” as well as creating “affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.” Ocasio-Cortez has since denied that parts of the document her campaign released on Thursday were actually part of the official Green New Deal that she backed.

SOURCE

Heat on Australian Bureau of Meteorology over data records rewrite

Odd that Warmist revisions of the temperature record always make the past colder. If the revisions really were corrections for errror, we would expect that some records of the past would show up as warmer occasionally. It doesn't happen. The "errors" are systematic. Jennifer Marohasy has shown on a few occasions that their "adjustments" are unreasonable. Her comment on the latest fandango is here

The Bureau of Meteorology has rewritten Australia’s temperature records for the second time in six years, greatly increasing the rate of warming since 1910 in its controversial homogenised data set.

Rather than the nation’s temperature having increased by 1C over the past century, the bureau’s updated homogenised data set, known as ACORN-SAT, now shows mean temperatures have risen by 1.23C.

Bureau data shows the rate of mean warming since 1960 has risen to 0.2C a decade, putting the more ambitious IPCC target of limiting future warming to 1.5C close to being broken.

Homogenisation of temperature records is considered necessary to account for changes in instrumentation, changes in site locations and changes in the time at which temperatures were taken. But the bureau’s treatment of historical data has been controversial. In recent years there have been claims that the organisation was treating temperature records in such a way that left it exposed to accusations that ideological pursuits had trumped good scientific practice.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott unsuccessfully pushed for a forensic investigation into the bureau’s methods.

A number of reviews of the bureau’s network equipment and its temperature data handling have been carried out. A technical panel found the homogenisation methods used were largely sound.

But a key recommendation, to include confidence levels or error margins in the data, remains unfulfilled. A BoM spokesman said work was under way on a number of scientific papers looking at uncertainty and confidence intervals for temperature data observations, adjustments and national averages. “This work will be made available to the public following thorough peer review,” the spokesman said.

The bureau had fiercely defended the accuracy of its original ACORN-SAT data. But more recent analysis, including the removal of rounding errors, has effectively increased the rate of warming by 23 per cent, compared with the earlier homogenised ACORN version-one data.

Detailed technical information on the ACORN-SAT update was published late last year, but there has been no public announcement of the revised data, which is now considered the official national average temperature record. A bureau review of the homogenised data said the new version had “increased robustness and greater spatial coherence”.

The updating of the ACORN-SAT data coincided with the release last October of a new version of US weather agency NOAA’s global land temperature data set.

A bureau spokesman said ACORN-SAT version two was the bureau’s “improved official homogeneous temperature data set”. The new data set benefited from “the numerous scientific and technological advances which have occurred over the past six years, as well as the insights and recommendations from an independent ACORN-SAT technical advisory forum”.

“It also contains new data which was not previously available when the bureau developed the first data set,” he said.

The bureau said the updates had been independently peer-reviewed, and the findings were that the methodology was “rigorous and reliable”.

Scientist Jennifer Marohasy said that while version two of the data had used the same set of 112 stations as had been used in version one, the data had been remodelled relative to the raw data and also relative to the remodelled version one.

The bureau said the data in version two was subjected to two rounds of homogenisation, as had been the case with version one. “In total, 22 of the 966 adjustments applied in version two of the ACORN-SAT data set arose from this second-round procedure,” the bureau said.

A technical analysis of ACORN-SAT 2 by the bureau said 1910-2016 trends in Australian temperature were about 0.02C a decade higher than those found in version one. It said rounding errors in version one accounted for much of the new trend.

Dr Marohasy said the bureau had not explained how it could have generated a 23 per cent increase in the rate of warming, just through updating the official ACORN-SAT record.

The maximum-temperature trend from 1910 to 2016 at the 112 ACORN-SAT weather stations is now an increase of 0.116C a decade. It was 0.09C a decade in the earlier homogenised data.

The minimum-temperature trend is now an increase of 0.13C a decade, compared with 0.109C in ACORN-SAT 1.

The bureau said improved accounting for the widespread relocation of sites out of towns during the 1990s and 2000s, and the incorporation of recent data from new sites, were also substantial contributors.

Dr Marohasy said movement of sites was meant to be part of the adjustments made in the first version of the data.

“The incorporation of data from new sites may account for some of the 23 per cent increase,” Dr Marohasy said, “because the bureau have opened new sites in hotter western NSW, while closing higher-altitude weather stations, including Charlotte Pass in the Snowy Mountains.”

She said there had been no proper analysis of the effect of changing from manual to automatic weather stations.

The bureau said no evidence was found of a significant systematic impact arising from the change from manual to automatic weather stations. It said that ACORN-SAT 2 had increased robustness and greater spatial coherence, especially for minimum temperatures.

The new data records are likely to be seized upon by green groups in the lead up to the federal election.

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

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

15 February, 2019

NOT Headed For World Without Insects - Decline Study Is Very Patchy & Limited

By Robert Walker

Please don’t be scared by this, it is just the journalists hyping things up again. It does not mean what it seems to mean from the headlines. Insects can’t vanish and we will continue to be able to grow our crops and do agriculture. The study itself involves a lot of extrapolation on inadequate data, not their fault, it is just that there hasn’t been that much research done on insect populations for them to draw on.

The number of studies they found, 73, is not a lot for the whole world and the studies are limited. The authors are also getting criticism on twitter by experts for the way they conducted the survey, for instance they found it with a literature search in "Web of Science" for “[insect*] AND [declin*] AND [survey]” which seems likely to bias in favour of groups that are declining as well as miss out many surveys that don’t happen to use the term “survey”.

They should have stated the limitations of the survey and they do not seem to have taken the extra care needed for a survey likely to influence public opinion and decision making. This was a traditional review, and not the carefully conducted systematic review that you get in medicine and that first began to be used in conservation in 2006.

This is another example of hugely hyped up research with click bait headlines. Journalists do love a good “catastrophe” - this is generating terrifying headlines for the easily scared.

* Insects are not going to vanish. That can’t happen. As some go extinct others will flourish in their place.

* It does not mean we won’t be able to do agriculture. Only some crops depend on insects and many of those require domesticated insects like bees, and those are not going to go extinct, for the same reason that, say, sheep are never going to go extinct for as long as we want to keep them.

* The study is preliminary, based on inadequate data. It’s not clear that worldwide insects are decreasing at all. We just don’t have enough data to know. See this map - most of the map is white
The two studies in Australia and China can be discounted as they are of domesticated honey bees:

* None in Asia, only two data points in Brazil for the whole of South America, none for India, none for Russia, none in Africa except a couple in South Africa, only one in Canada, none in the Arctic or Antarctic or Siberia.

* They didn't find any studies on "most flies, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, cicadas, phasmids, mantids, cockroaches, termites, fleas, thrips, ants, a lot of beetle families + more"

Most of the studies are from Europe or the States and many are just for the UK which is one of the best studied. And even those studies only focus on particular groups of insects.

There could be a boom of grasshoppers or ants (say) in the UK, or even worldwide, and we just wouldn’t know because there haven’t been any comparative studies of them, as grasshoppers and ants are included in the many insects that their search didn't turn up any studies for.

The issue here is that to compare populations you need to know the figures from many years ago to compare with the present. But most parts of the world just don’t have an insect population figures from a decade ago, say, or several decades ago. So there isn’t really any way to fill those gaps, except looking forwards, to see what happens in the next decade or so. We can’t go back in time and survey insect populations in the past if nobody did it at the time. Then we also need researchers to look up the old records and then write comparison studies.

It is more important for highlighting how little we know about insect numbers.

Yet this story is just running without comment in all the top news sources. It also featured on the BBC News last night with a long segment about it in "Beyond 100 days" and interview with one of the researchers. For a study that is likely to influence decision makers and public opinion, they should have made clear how patchy the data is, and the non systematic nature of the review.

Here are some example click bait titles. CNN: Massive insect decline 'catastrophic' for planet

The Guardian: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'

Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review

The subtitle there is click bait, the study does not say that insects could vanish, not as in all insects, at least, not in the abstract. Large numbers of insects are declining or going extinct sure. However others are taking their place, as you might expect. This is from the abstract of the paper, the only part I can read:

"Concurrently, the abundance of a small number of species is increasing; these are all adaptable, generalist species that are occupying the vacant niches left by the ones declining. Among aquatic insects, habitat and dietary generalists, and pollutant-tolerant species are replacing the large biodiversity losses experienced in waters within agricultural and urban settings."

Also the abstract talks about what can be done about it. The causes it lists are:

i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation

ii) pollution, mainly that by synthetic pesticides and fertilisers

iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and

iv) climate change. The latter factor is particularly important in tropical regions, but only affects a minority of species in colder climes and mountain settings of temperate zones.
So, they are declining for different reasons, it's not one thing.

What may be a problem in the tropics is that the insects that are disappearing are adapted to a narrow range of temperatures and they don’t have enough time to adapt or to migrate. The Puerto Rico study reported a big decrease in insects. Fruit eating animals and birds though remained unchanged. And just one forest, calling for more studies. That also got dramatic headlines about collapse of insects. "Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’"

That is not enough by itself to generalize to other tropical forests though it may well be that it's the same for others too. Nor can it be generalized to other tropical habitats.

In colder climes the results are not what you’d expect from climate change. You would expect a warmer planet to have more rather than fewer insects. The insects are adapted to the winter / summer cycles of higher latitudes and are less likely to go extinct just because of somewhat warmer temperatures.

The abstract of the paper focuses on agricultural practices as the main thing we can do however, especially, reducing insecticide use. Also cleaning polluted waters:

IMMEDIATE REACTION FROM AN INSECT ECOLOGIST ON TWITTER

Here are some comments by Dr Manu Saunders who is an insect ecologist Manu Saunders

She put it like this on Twitter: "This review doesn't show worldwide declines in entomofauna, but does highlight how much we *don't* know about global insect fauna...

Also important to note are the insect taxa the authors couldn’t find long-term data on: most flies, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, cicadas, phasmids, mantids, cockroaches, termites, fleas, thrips, ants, a lot of beetle families + more.

Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera & dung beetles are not the 'most affected'. They may be the most studied & recorded, at least in some countries. But the most affected taxa will depend on the location & the drivers in question. Let's focus on finding out more about those contexts....

SOURCE

ANWR Will Assure US Oil Production Dominance

BP this month announced the discovery of 1 billion barrels of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast. As large as it is, that find pales in comparison to the estimated 5 billion to 16 billion barrels of “Texas Tea” located in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, which President Trump unlocked for energy exploration after Congress authorized his plan in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act.

Those who oppose developing Alaskan oil reserves may forget that it was President Jimmy Carter who first supported the idea of opening ANWR’s coastal plain to energy development. He did so as a way of dealing with the “crisis” Washington’s price-control policies had created at the nation’s gas pumps: long lines, limits on the number of gallons motorists could buy on any given day, and other disruptive rationing schemes.

By 2005, nearly 25 years after Carter left office, imported oil still accounted for more than 60 percent of domestic oil consumption. U.S. oil production has boomed in the decades since. Today, oil imports account for less than 20 percent of U.S. consumption, a percentage that continues to fall.

What’s changed? For one thing, the global oil cartel is losing its grip on the world market. On New Year’s Day, Qatar said it would leave OPEC and make production decisions independently. Meanwhile, the state-owned oil sector of OPEC member Venezuela, called the Saudi Arabia of Latin America, is paralyzed under its socialist government, reducing OPEC’s overall market share.

Oil production at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, together with construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (which was built following the 1973 oil crisis) played a key part in America’s recent energy boom. Before oil development began on the North Slope, conservationists warned that exploration, drilling, and building the 800-mile pipeline would irreparably harm the Porcupine caribou herd and cause serious environmental damage to the region’s permafrost. In the four decades since the pipeline was completed, however, it has safely carried more than 17 billion barrels of oil to the port of Valdez in southern Alaska, providing important lessons for the neighboring ANWR region.

Prudhoe Bay and 18 other oilfields on the North Slope now are home to more than 3,800 exploratory and producing wells, 170 drill pads and other oil and gas facilities. Over the years, producers implemented practices and safety standards to protect the permafrost and wildlife—and they succeeded.

The upshot is that subsurface drilling on the North Slope has increased by 4,000 percent since the 1970s, during which time the Porcupine caribou herd has expanded more than sevenfold.

Drilling in ANWR oilfields, whose potential has few rivals in the history of U.S. oil production, certainly will be challenging, both technically and environmentally. It was even more challenging to exploit the oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay while working within the constraints of state and federal safety regulations.

Technological frontiers nevertheless continue to be pushed back in the areas of seismic surveying, subsurface drilling, data processing, and predictive maintenance, meaning that best practices in ANWR are going to be even better.

Environmentalists want to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and their opinions should not be ignored. But economic growth and living standards also matter, as indicated by the overwhelming majority of Alaskans who favor ANWR production.

It also is important to recognize that the measure Congress approved stringently limits surface development on ANWR. The refuge spans 19.6 million acres and drilling is confined to no more than 2,000 of those acres—an area smaller than the municipal airport in Fargo, N.D.

No one can guarantee that the exploitation of ANWR’s oil and gas deposits will not affect some wildlife negatively. Positive impacts, likewise, are possible, as the example of Prudhoe Bay illustrates.

What can be guaranteed, however, is that ANWR will contribute considerably to America’s energy renaissance, providing the fuel that, green dreams aside, will power our homes, offices, factories, cars, and trucks for the foreseeable future.

SOURCE

Pingree, Ocasio-Cortez Pressure Big-Tech CEOs For Sponsoring LibertyCon

It was the skeptical mention of global warming at the conference that got them going

Members of Congress should not be in the business of chastising private-sector leaders for sponsoring events like LibertyCon that encourage civic engagement.

Hundreds of libertarian activists and young professionals recently descended upon the Washington D.C. area for LibertyCon. This conference put on by Students for Liberty provides networking opportunities and a forum to discuss libertarian ideas in a series of panels and presentations. They spanned a wide variety of topics, from the merits and drawbacks of a universal basic income to examining the greatest regulatory threats to the Internet.

One presentation caught the ire of a few Democrats in Congress. This presentation, led by Dr. Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor from American University, argued that there should be a more robust public debate about whether carbon dioxide was the cause of the “climate catastrophe.” Rossiter argued there should be a more dispassionate review of the data surrounding climate science, and be more room for debate about causes and effects.

To Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), this was unacceptable. The pair penned a letter to the CEOs of Facebook, Microsoft, and Google to chastise them for being high-level sponsors of a conference that featured such a presentation. It is worthwhile to note that they did not sponsor that presentation itself, but the conference in general.

It’s quite upsetting that two members of Congress would take time to send a letter making sure private companies get back in line after they sponsored a conference at which one presentation among dozens did not align with these politicians’ opinions on the climate. The conference also featured a debate on the merits of a carbon tax, and included a speaker who made the libertarian case in favor of such a tax.

To be sure, no self-professed libertarian should favor a carbon tax. Nonetheless, this panel demonstrates the openness of LibertyCon and its attendees to engage in an open debate on this issue, something apparently Pingree and Ocasio-Cortez oppose.

In an afternoon speech entitled “Arguments Libertarians Shouldn’t Make” by economist David Friedman, son of the lauded free-market economist Milton Friedman, he argued one such argument is that climate change isn’t real or isn’t caused by human activity. Friedman stated unequivocally that he believes climate change to be real and man-made. This certainly counters Pingree and Ocasio-Cortez’s narrative that LibertyCon was an anti-environmentalist free-for-all.

While it’s clear LibertyCon represented a forum for debate and engagement rather than a single-tracked agenda, it’s still concerning that this letter was sent in the first place. Members of Congress should not chastise private-sector leaders for sponsoring events like LibertyCon that encourage civic engagement of a younger demographic that has historically lacked in that area. This is a veiled form of intimidation.

It’s also ironic that one of this letter’s signatories is Ocasio-Cortez. She is nationally recognized for grassroots campaigning that led her to a shocking political upset victory. She has been willing to challenge conventional wisdom on many issues and does not shy from debate on issues and positions that are considered out of step with the mainstream.

This type of attitude, regardless of the conclusions to which she ultimately comes, will undoubtedly make our national discourse healthier. If any elected official should champion conventions that increase political participation amongst millennials and are willing to take on issues that few others are willing to talk about, it ought to be Ocasio-Cortez.

The fact that members of Congress were willing to write such a letter raises other issues with regards to political speech. Not more than five years ago, the nation found out that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had singled out and targeted politically conservative organizations for increased scrutiny within the agency. Elected officials going after sponsors of political events they don’t like calls to mind some of the same dark themes behind the IRS scandal and should be cause for concern.

Perhaps more concerning than the letter, however, is the introduction of the so-called “For the People Act,” H.R. 1. The legislation, which Pingree and Ocasio-Cortez cosponsor, would force all organizations involved in political activity to disclose their donors. With the IRS’s history of targeting groups for their political affiliation and members of Congress chastising private sponsors of political conferences, it’s not difficult to fathom the chilling effect on political speech that would occur if such legislation was passed into law.

The 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill stated that if an idea “is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.” If members of Congress take issue with certain opinions, they should be willing to fearlessly discuss them in a public forum, as the attendees of LibertyCon did. They should be confident in their convictions and trust the merits of their arguments. Our leaders who swore an oath to defend the Constitution should not only defend free speech, but be the foremost advocates for open discussion wherever possible

SOURCE

Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) said the planet “can’t sustain” people eating meat, as the 2020 hopeful aims to become the first vegan president

More empty assertion from Crazy Cory

Booker told the vegan magazine VegNews earlier this month that he became vegan after coming to the realization that eating eggs “didn’t align with my spirit.”

Free Beacon Reports:

While claiming he does not want to lecture Americans on their diets, Booker says Americans need to be nudged into fake cheese because the planet cannot sustain the “environmental impact” of the food industry.

“You see the planet earth moving towards what is the Standard American Diet,” Booker said. “We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry.”

“The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact,” he said. “It’s just not possible.”

Booker says the “devastating impact” of greenhouse gases produced by the meat industry is “just not practical.”

“The numbers just don’t add up,” he said. “We will destroy our planet unless we start figuring out a better way forward when it comes to our climate change and our environment.”

Booker, who said his vegan “journey” began in 1992 when he became a vegetarian after reading Gandhi’s biography, wants to make the “existing model” of the food industry “obsolete.”

“You never change things by fighting what exists in reality; to change something, you gotta build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete,” he said. “That’s the deal here. American consumers should not be told what to eat, but if you provide viable alternatives, in some cases, that taste even better—and if people have more information, if we consumers are informed about whatever it is—the dangers of the overuse of plastics all the way to the conditions in which animals that we are consuming are being treated.”

Booker argues all his nonvegan friends “love” vegan food like his favorites, “vegan pancakes” and “vegan stuffed French toast.”

“I’ve seen incredible vegan cheese shops popping up across the country, and my friends who are lovers of cheese just can’t tell the difference,” said the senator. “You have pizza: I was at the New Jersey VegFest, and Screamer’s Pizza is just phenomenal.”

“My nonvegan friends love it,” Booker said.

Booker is not alone in calling for transformations of major sectors of the U.S. economy. The 2020 Democratic presidential field has already called for the elimination of private health insurance, and to “reshape” capitalism.

Booker, along with every other prominent 2020 liberal candidate, signed on to the Green New Deal, which calls for the “economic transformation” of the United States by transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy in just 10 years. Renewable energy currently accounts for just 17 percent of electricity generation.

Booker’s fight against dairy intersects with the aims of the Green New Deal. Initial plans put out by democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed ambitions to eliminate “farting cows.”

On the campaign trail Booker endorsed the plan that guarantees every single resident in the country a job with paid vacation, retirement, “adequate housing,” and “access to nature,” because “our planet is in peril and we need to be bold.” He likened the plan to fighting the Nazis in World War II and going to the moon.

Booker explained he first became a vegetarian because his “body just took off,” and he had more energy after he stopped eating meat.

He then searched for science that backed up his feelings.

“I found the data that began to reaffirm my vegetarianism,” Booker said. “In fact, it led me to more about our environment and cruelty to animals. I began saying I was a vegetarian because, for me, it was the best way to live in accordance to the ideals and values that I have. My veganism started then.”

“I think so many of our likes and dislikes are childhood memories or family traditions, and you associate the foods you’re eating often with such good emotions—but now, suddenly, eating those eggs for me was something that didn’t align with my spirit, and I could feel it,” Booker said. “I finally just made a decision that I was going to become vegan. I remember my last non-vegan meal was Election Day, November 2014.”

SOURCE

Radical ‘Green New Deal’ – Coming to a Community Near You

Politicians in Washington are often immersed in endless political fights with little regard for the impact of the policies they are actually fighting over. We see this with taxes, regulations, spending, trade and other issues. The decisions they make often have unforeseen consequences in communities and small towns.

This week, the left’s new rising star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her allies, introduced their far-reaching radical “Green New Deal.” These ideas are not only being discussed in Washington, but they are actually well under way and causing great debate and conflict in many communities throughout the United States.

In New York, Governor Cuomo and his green energy bureaucrats have imposed mandates to reduce carbon emissions. Appealingly entitled Clean Energy Standards (CES), these mandates call for over 50 percent of the state's utilities to generate electricity through renewable sources by 2030. In addition, Governor Cuomo issued an executive order mandating over 2,000 megawatts of energy be generated, also by 2030, using offshore wind.

How is all of this being paid for you might ask. Well, by the same folks who always pay – you, the taxpayer.

Indeed, to fund the CES, New Yorkers will pay an increase of $3.6 billion in electricity costs according to a report by Continental Economics. That’s just to get things going. By 2050, New Yorkers will be subsidizing Cuomo’s green new deal to a tune of over one trillion dollars, “providing scant, if any, measurable benefits” the report states.

Footnote: U.S. per person CO2 emissions have declined to their lowest levels in over six decades. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that from 2005-2017 U.S. energy related emissions are down 14 percent.

But it’s not just about the numbers, the money and the costs. There is tremendous environmental and community impact experienced by the deployment of green energy. Utility scale solar facilities, not built in the desert, require destruction of the land – trees and farms – and they can permanently alter the character of the community.

There is additional risk from muddy runoff, which can impact roads, streams and tributaries. Water is needed for cleaning the panels so solar companies often have to tap into water sources impacting local wells and aquifers. If decommissioning is not handled appropriately, when their use is complete, these solar fields can be left to rot causing additional environmental damage, waste of land and taxpayers being left to pay the clean-up costs.

Solar and wind facilities, largely propped up by taxpayers’ subsidies, are causing environmental damage and community conflict. But local citizens going about their daily grind are never told or warned about these troubles. Rather, they are told to be proud that a green energy project is coming to a community near you. But in some communities, the people impacted, and the taxpayers being forced to pay for these projects, are standing up and voicing concerns about the damage they can cause.

Residents in Spotsylvania, Virginia, for example, are pushing back against what would be the largest utility scale solar complex east of the Mississippi, covering over 6,000 acres – that’s half the size of Manhattan. It would be the fifth largest solar facility in the U.S. and the twelfth largest in the world. This large, not so green, facility is part of embattled and controversial Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s version of the green new deal.

Local citizens have formed citizens groups. Large numbers of citizens are attending local government meetings and voicing their concerns. This all proves, once again, that if we are going to fight the not-so-good deals emanating from Washington and some state capitals, citizen activism is critical. Because while all of this sounds and feels good to the politicians, someone has to live with the consequences.

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 February, 2019

A new breakthrough in agriculture science could eventually lead to big productivity boosts for food crops

Note: The article below is from Newsweak. Yes. They apparently still exist. I have not reproduced below the absurd shrieks about how we are running out of food and how the population is "exploding". That in much of the developed world deaths exceed births appears to be unkown to the automotons writing below.

Much of American science writing seems to be stuck at 4th Grade. No wonder America imports so many scientists from Asia. The authors below are Hannah Osborne & Fred Guterl. Despite the childish writing, Fred is a big wheel, Executive Editor of the Scientific American. No wonder that many conservatives mock it as the Unscientific American.

Scientists recently managed to produce a tobacco plant that is 40 percent more productive than current strains. If they could extend such results to soybeans, rice and wheat, it could significantly improve the outlook for feeding the Third world.

But there’s a catch: The plant was genetically engineered. Will the public accept a new generation of food crops with altered DNA, especially if it could help stave off a food crisis? The question looms larger with each passing year, as advances in the tools of genetic manipulation, such as the advent of the gene-editing technique CRISPR, make it easy for scientists to edit an organism’s DNA. These tools have given scientists powerful techniques for improving agricultural crops. They also put scientists on a slow-motion collision course with a big swath of public opinion that rejects anything that smacks of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, as “Frankenfood.”

First, let’s look at what the scientists actually did. Paul South, a molecular biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and colleagues from the University of Illinois decided to focus on how plants perform photosynthesis, the process by which energy from sunlight is turned into chemical energy to power growth. Plants, it turns out, are wildly inefficient at this task.

During photosynthesis, a plant takes in carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas that accounts for most global warming—and emits oxygen into the atmosphere. Plants rely on a key enzyme, rubisco, to do the work of distinguishing carbon dioxide from oxygen. But for every four molecules of carbon dioxide that rubisco captures, it mistakenly picks up one molecule of oxygen. Oxygen is anathema to a plant’s metabolism, so it then has to go through a lengthy, energy-inten-sive process of expelling the oxygen. This process, called photorespiration, entails producing a chemical that is toxic to the plant itself.

Photorespiration burns a lot of metabolic energy that a plant could otherwise apply to more productive ends, such as growing larger leaves or fruit. In a typical agricultural field, during peak, midday photosynthesis, up to 50 percent of energy produced will be wasted on photorespiration.

South and his colleagues thought they could tweak a plant’s DNA to cause it to expend less energy on photorespiration. They chose the tobacco plant mainly because it is easier to manipulate genetically, has a fast life cycle and produces lots of seeds. Using gene-editing techniques, they altered the tobacco plant’s DNA to create a shorter, less energy-intensive “pathway,” or biochemical process, through which the plants perform photorespiration. This shortcut reduced the energy required for photorespiration so much that the tobacco plants were 40 percent more productive. The findings were published in the journal Science in January.

South and his colleagues now plan to carry out field trials with potato plants, and they will start designing new photorespiration pathways for cowpeas, soybeans, rice and tomatoes. “Because photosynthesis and photorespiration are highly conserved amongst plant species,” he says, “the benefits observed in tobacco should show an effect in other crops.”

It will likely take a decade for such crops to make it to the dinner plate; more research is needed, and there are regulatory obstacles. But the public relations obstacles might be the most difficult of all. Although evidence is overwhelming that GMO foods, which have been consumed by millions of people for more than a decade, pose no safety risk for human consumption, they are restricted in several European countries and rejected by many consumers.

Roger Beachy, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, was part of the program review of the project. He sees South’s breakthrough as having the potential to give plants more energy “to make proteins, nutrients, oils and to defend against the stressful conditions in the environment.” And, adds Beachy, “since losses due to photorespiration increase with temperature, this will also help offset impacts of global climate change on crop production and assist in the tropics, where increases in food production are most needed.”

SOURCE

Antarctic ‘time bomb’ waiting to go off could wash away cities, scientists warn

Just modelling crap and pretty poor modelling at that. They embrace the disputed marine ice cliff collapse theory, for instance.

But the fun part is that during the Eemian, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million, way lower than it is today (over 400ppm). So it should have been pretty icy during the Eemian according to Warmist theory. But, as they tell us below, it was hotter. So the bright sparks below are rejecting Warmism. I wonder if they realize it? Good for them if they are, of course

Earth’s sea levels should be nine metres higher than they are — and dramatic melting in Antarctica may soon plug the gap, scientists warn.

They say global temperatures today are the same as they were 115,000 years ago, a time when modern humans were only just beginning to leave Africa.

Research shows during this time period, known as the Eemian, scorching ocean temperatures caused a catastrophic global ice melt. As a result, sea levels were six to nine metres higher than they are today.

But if modern ocean temperatures are the same as they were during the Eemian, that means our planet is “missing” a devastating sea rise.

If oceans were to rise by just 1.8 metres, large swathes of coastal cities would find themselves underwater, turning streets into canals and completely submerging some buildings.

Scientists think sea levels made this jump 115,000 years ago because of a sudden ice collapse in Antarctica.

The continent’s vulnerable West Antarctic ice sheet — which is already retreating again today — released a lot of sea level rise in a hurry.

“There’s no way to get tens of metres of sea level rise without getting tens of metres of sea level rise from Antarctica,” said Dr Rob DeConto, an Antarctic expert at the University of Massachusetts in the US.

His team created state-of-the-art computer models that showed how Antarctic ice responded to warm ocean temperatures during the Eemian.

They showed two processes, called marine ice cliff collapse and marine ice sheet instability, rapidly melted the West Antarctic ice sheet.

They exposed thick glaciers that formed part of the ice sheet to the ocean, meaning the ice blocks floated out to sea more quickly. Here they quickly melted, adding thousands of tonnes of water to the world’s oceans.

Scientists warn if ice shelves in Antarctica undergo similar processes, it could spell disaster for Earth. Combined with melting in Greenland, we could see sea levels rise by almost two metres this century.

In the next century, ice loss would get even worse.

“What we pointed out was if the kind of calving that we see in Greenland today were to start turning on in analogous settings in Antarctica — Antarctica has way thicker ice, it’s a way bigger ice sheet — the consequences would be potentially really monumental for sea level rise,” Dr DeConto said.

Last month, NASA warned Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier could collapse within decades and “sink cities” after the discovery of a 300-metre doomsday cavity lurking below the ice block.

SOURCE

RNC Chair: Trump ‘Was Being Generous’ Calling Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal a Bad High School Paper

On Tuesday, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel defended President Donald Trump’s characterization of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) “Green New Deal” proposal.

Appearing on Fox News, McDaniel said Trump was “being generous” at Monday night’s rally in El Paso, Texas when he said Ocasio-Cortez’s plan “sounds like a high school paper that got a low mark”:

“I think the president was being generous saying that it was a high school paper that would get bad marks. My daughter is a sophomore in high school, she would have received a failing grade if she’d have put forward what Ocasio-Cortez did.

“Listen, you’ve heard her advisor all over TV last week saying people were making things up about their Green New Deal. They hadn't read, they hadn’t edited the version that they put up that said ‘unwilling to work,’ getting rid of air travel in ten years. Now they’re saying there’s a version two, and a version three and a version four.

“They didn't proofread this huge deal, this monstrosity that they're putting forward, a total government takeover.”

McDaniel added that Ocasio-Cortez “has no idea” the damage her plan would have on the U.S. because she’s dealing with theory, not reality:

“The president is 100 percent correct when he says this will absolutely take away all the economic gains we've seen as a country if this is implemented.

“She has no idea. She is working in theory and she doesn't understand the reality of what she’s proposing.”

SOURCE

Eyes Roll As Private Plane Enthusiast Harrison Ford Flies To UAE To Warn About The Dangers Of Fossils Fuels

Last year, Harrison Ford implored Americans to stop electing leaders who don’t “believe in science,” and this year he’s traveled to a conference hosted in a United Arab Emirates country to give the same warning:

Speaking to CNN’s Becky Anderson in Dubai, where he will be discussing ocean conservation at the World Government Summit, Ford said climate is “probably the most pressing issue that we have on a global scale, and it’s a global problem that needs global solutions.”

But he added that governments around the world were lagging behind when it came to climate action.

“There’s this isolationism, nationalism that’s creeping into governments all across the developed world,” said Ford. “And the problems require attention on nature’s scale not on the scale of the next election.

As you might have imagined, taking a jet to a UAE country to warn everybody about the dangers of continued burning of fossil fuels caused some eyes to roll.

SOURCE

Australia: Coal firm blamed for flooding beyond its control

The floods in North Queensland were greatly in excess of normal expectations

The Queensland Government is investigating whether Indian mining firm Adani has breached its environmental licence for the second time in two years with the release of coal-laden floodwaters from its coal port at Abbot Point in the state's north.

It comes as Adani revealed it did not apply for an emergency permit to dump more polluted water into the sensitive Caley Valley wetlands during the north Queensland floods last week.

The company told the ABC that Abbot Point operators were confident they could manage floodwaters with new infrastructure, but were then overwhelmed by flows from neighbouring properties.

Adani's own testing showed water released into the wetlands on February 7 had almost double the authorised concentration of "suspended solids", which included coal sediment.

But Abbot Point Operations chief executive Dwayne Freeman said their testing showed the water with 58 milligrams of sediment per litre, and that this was not "coal-laden sludge".

"This is a very minor elevation in total suspended solids ... we are confident there will be no environmental impacts to the wetlands area, despite this unprecedented weather event," he said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Department of Environment and Science (DES) said it was awaiting test results on water samples taken by its own officers on February 8.

The spokesman confirmed Adani's environmental authority for the port "imposes a maximum limit of 30 mg/L".

"DES will consider the results from the laboratory analysis along with other information in relation to the release event before making any determination as to whether or not the company has complied with the environmental authority conditions for the site," he said.

"Concurrent with the specific investigation into the release during the recent weather event, DES also continues to implement a long-term monitoring program in the adjacent Caley Valley wetland to determine whether any adverse impacts on environmental values is occurring."

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 February, 2019

Trump Responds Satirically to whacky Green New Deal…

Democrat darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released information on the Democrat Party’s radical and lunatic Green New Deal on Thursday. It was a complete disaster.

The Gateway Pundit Reports:

The Green New Deal is a Communist scam that included guaranteed income for Americans ‘unwilling to work.’

The 14-page Commie wishlist also included a plan to transition to all electric cars and completely eliminate airplane travel — because trains over the ocean is a genius idea!

The Democrats also want to get rid of cow flatulence — which means all cows would be eliminated.

Within hours, the Green New Deal was yanked from Ocasio-Cortez’s webpage.

It gets better…

Ocasio-Cortez’s policy advisor appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Friday night and claimed the Green New Deal document that Tucker Carlson and Republicans were reporting on was “doctored.”

It was all a lie — the document Tucker Carlson read on his show was not doctored — it was taken directly off of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s website.

AOC even retweeted a tweet from far-left ‘Media Matters’ spreading the lie that the document was doctored.

President Trump mocked the Democrat-Green-New-Deal-clown-show on Saturday evening, calling the resolution, “Brilliant.”

TRUMP: I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!

SOURCE

Media Fawns over the Green New Deal

Democrats unveiled their latest version of the Green New Deal on Thursday, but despite some concessions to reality, this version is still little more than socialism masked as environmental policy. But that didn’t stop the media from fawning all over it. Where was the fact-checking when you needed it?

Most media reports focused on the threat of climate change and how this was an aggressive plan to tackle it, but they glanced over its more radical, and ultimately absurd, proposals that had far less to do with environmental policy and far more to do with carrying out a far-left social and economic transformation of America.

ABC News reported, “The wide-reaching proposal calls not just for a massive overhaul of the nation’s energy sector over the next 10 years, but also investments in the country’s education, infrastructure and health care systems and a redesign of the entire U.S. economy.”

This is an understatement.

Among other things, the Green New Deal calls for the elimination of air travel through the development of high-speed trains—because the California bullet train project is going oh so well—the elimination of cars, the greening of every building in America, and even floats the idea of getting rid of meat.

Again, this would all be accomplished in 10 years.

And that’s not all.

It includes a grab bag of far-left goodies such as national health care for all and a jobs guarantee for those unable and, this is actually in text of the FAQ section, quote, “unwilling” to work.

Yes, the authors of the Green New Deal want to replace the nation of the self-made man with the unrepentant mooch.

It would seem that a proposal that has received so much coverage, and from a freshman member of Congress who has been showered with attention, would receive a little more scrutiny.

The fact is, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and the socialist ideas she espouses are looked upon favorably by many in the press, which is why they are happy to give her cover even though they know her ideas are absurd.

When even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clearly mocked the proposal, calling it the “green dream,” the press was willing to quickly brush over this as if she was actually praising the Green New Deal.

Politico actually buried this line at the bottom of its coverage despite the fact that an attack by the most powerful Democrat in Congress and person most needed to bring the plan to reality in the House just mocked and dismissed it.

This week the media was busy fact-checking whether or not Jewish people believe in heaven in response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. Yes, that really happened. But where was this same “fact-checking” during the release of the media darling’s Green New Deal?

SOURCE

Crazy Cory Booker Equates ‘Green New Deal’ To FIGHTING NAZIS

Sen. Cory Booker doubled-down on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ ‘Green New Deal’ Friday; telling a crowd of supporters the fight against climate change is the same as those who fought against Nazi Germany during World War II.

“We have to deal with this, our planet is in peril. We need to be bold, that’s why I co-sponsored the resolution for the Green New Deal,” said Booker.

“We are a nation that has done impossible things before. We need to be bold again in America. When the planet has been imperiled in the past, who came forward to save earth from the scourge of Nazism? We came forward,” he added.

SOURCE

Perspective on the extraordinary 2019 flooding in Townsville, Australia

Extraordinary floods go back a long way

A new study examines how unusual meteorology interacted with topography and other local conditions to generate some of the most devastating floods in American history.

A new study categorizes the 1903 Heppner Flood in eastern Oregon, shown here, as a “strange flood,” which stems from uncommon flood agents or extreme conditions. Credit: National Weather Service
By Aaron Sidder 4 February 2019

On 14 June 1903, a massive swell of water overwhelmed the small town of Heppner, Ore., killing more than 250 people. Ordinarily, floods are reported in probabilistic terms: A 10-year flood, for example, describes streamflow conditions that have a 10% (1 in 10) chance of occurring within any given year. But the Heppner Flood was so extreme that it defied standard descriptions. At its peak, the flood was more than 200 times larger than the discharge of a 10-year flood.

“Strange” is not an adjective commonly applied to floods and other natural disasters, but Smith et al. argue that it may be the most appropriate descriptor for extreme and unusual flooding. The Heppner Flood, they argue, may have been one of the strangest floods on record. It was triggered by an intense hailstorm in June, in a region where spring snowmelt typically drives peak annual streamflow. These conditions are characteristic of strange floods, which they define as extreme events triggered by circumstances that contrast with the common flood-generating mechanisms in a region.

The researchers examined extreme floods across several decades in the conterminous United States, using annual flood peak observations from more than 8,000 U.S. Geological Survey stream gauging stations. They developed a statistical framework they call the “upper tail ratio,” in reference to the upper tail of a statistical distribution, where rare events reside. The upper tail ratio is defined as the peak discharge for a flood of record, divided by the stream’s 10-year flood magnitude. The 1903 Heppner Flood registered an upper tail ratio of 200, topped only by the 1976 flood caused by the bursting of the Teton Dam.

The team discovered that record floods share many traits. In the western United States, severe flooding is linked to mountainous terrain and intense thunderstorms; in the east, it occurs in coastal regions susceptible to tropical cyclones. Major floods also have a different seasonal distribution than annual peak flow events: Annual flood peaks across the United States tend to have winter or spring maxima, whereas the strange floods in the upper tail nearly always occur in the warm season.

In addition to the analysis of floods across the United States, the authors provided a case study of the Blue Mountains, the setting for the Heppner Flood and other strange floods in the 1950s and 1960s. In the case study, they examined the hydrology, hydrometeorology, and hydroclimatology of the extreme floods in the region.

Strange floods are the least expected and most damaging floods, but their infrequency can make them difficult to study. The analysis offers insight into extreme floods and provides a platform for comparing floods around the world to those in the United States. (Water Resources Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022539, 2018)

SOURCE

Australia: NSW Greens push for mandatory solar and batteries for all new homes

As if new house prices were not unaffordable already for average workers

The bidding war among NSW political parties over solar panels has been joined by the Greens who want photovoltaic systems and batteries to be made compulsory for all new dwellings.

The Greens would also introduce a $2000 rebate for the introduction of panels plus storage for half a million homes as part of $1.25 billion boost over four years for the sector.

All public housing and government buildings would get panels too at a cost of $250 million, with 110,000 public housing tenants in line to receive electricity rebates, according to the Greens' policy aimed at the March 23 state election.

“It is negligent that in 2019 we have over 70,000 new dwellings in NSW every year and no requirement for solar panels on these developments," Cate Faehrmann, the Greens environment spokeswoman, said. Owners of new dwellings would pay into a renewable energy offset scheme as an alternative to adding panels or storage.

The Greens' policy follows Labor's launch on Saturday of its plan to support 500,000 households get solar, with a rebate capped at $2200 for households with annual income of $180,000 or less.

The Berejiklian government followed a day later with the release of a scheme offering no-interest loans for solar energy and batteries for as many as 300,000 owner-occupied households.

For those living in flats or renting, the Greens would set up an offset scheme to buy credits for solar arrays on their building or offsite. Some 20 per cent of all private dwellings in the state are apartments, while about 32 per cent of residents are renting - people who are currently "locked out of the benefits of roof top solar," the Greens 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

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

12 February, 2019

Attention-seeking Naomi has a new word for climate realists: 'They Are Arsonists'

She makes a good buck out of her flights of fancy. "Klein" is Yiddish for "small" and that well describes her understanding of the world. She takes after her peacenik parents, who fled to Canada to escape the evil U.S. Republicans. Her father was born into a Communist family so delusory beliefs are a family tradition

Left-wing activist, journalist, and best selling author Naomi Klein said it is not true that President Donald Trump did not mention "climate change" in his State of the Union speech because he praised the oil and gas industry, which, she added, is destabilizing the planet. She also said the House of Representatives cheered Trump's remarks and this demonstrates that many of the lawmakers are not climate change "deniers," but are "arsonists."

During his speech on Tuesday, Trump said, "[W]e have unleashed a revolution in American energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy."

At that point, the Republican side of the chamber stood and cheered; on the other side, nearly all of the Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), stayed seated and did not applaud.

This morning, Feb. 6, Naomi Klein, author of the best selling This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, tweeted, "People claim Trump said not one word about climate change but that's false. He celebrated the US being the world's 'No. 1' oil and gas producer. And the house cheered -- they cheered for the knowing destabilization of the planet."

"Don't call them deniers, they are arsonists," wrote Klein.

Apparently, the search for and production of oil and natural gas "is destabilizing the planet." Those who support this work are thus supporting global warming, which allegedly is burning up -- arson -- the planet.

Climate change skeptic Marc Morano, the founder of the non-profit Climate Depot, said that Naomi Klein believes that free markets and the Earth's climate cannot co-exist.

On his website, Morano noted that the Los Angeles Times likened Trump to an arsonist. In a 2018 story, the newspaper ran the headline, "As global warming continues, Trump wants to burn fossil fuels with an arsonist's glee."

In addition to her journalism and books, Klein currently holds the Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

SOURCE

Mike Shellenberger rejects AOC and her enablers

Mike is a "moderate" Greenie. He is President, 'Environmental Progress'. Also Time Magazine 'Hero of the Environment’

He believes nukes are the only realistic way to "decarbonize" Below is a series of his tweets

1. I'm sorry, but I am calling bullshit

You can't call for closing down our largest source of zero-emissions energy *and* claim "world is gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate"

Those two statements are simply incompatible

Anyone else suffering cognitive dissonance from this?

"The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change" - @AOC…

2. I am calling bullshit not just on @AOC but on her progressive enablers in the news media who are giving her a pass on the most crucial test of moral and political leadership of our time when it comes to climate change: a person's stance on nuclear power.

3. I am calling bullshit on climate fakery.

Anyone who is calling for phasing out nuclear is a climate fraud perpetuating precisely the gigantic "hoax" that Texas Sen. James Inhofe famously accused environmentalists of perpetuating.

4. If you want renewables, energy efficiency, and to close down our largest source of zero-emissions energy — fine. Just stop dressing it up as action on climate change.

It's gotten to the point of being ridiculous

5. And if you want to be a self-respecting progressive or journalist who is fairly considering or covering the climate issue, please stop giving @AOC and other supposedly climate-concerned greens a pass.

THEY ARE INCREASING EMISSIONS

"Ye shall know them by their fruits"

SOURCE

Projected melting of the Antarctic this century now reduced to give a max 17" sea level rise

Many predictions are for a one metre rise. Tamzin Edwards from King’s College London and her colleagues looked at paleoclimate data to estimate sea level rise from Antarctic melting. They re-analyzed data on ice loss and ocean level 3 million years ago, 125 thousand years ago and in the last 25 years and estimated the likelihood of rapid destruction of unstable sea areas of Antarctic glaciers

They found that the controversial marine ice-cliff instability (MICI) hypothesis does not necessarily explain the dynamics of sea level in the past, and without this the probability that the level will grow by more than 43 centimeters (17") by 2100 is only about 5 percent

Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice-cliff instability

Tamsin Louisa et al.

Abstract

Predictions for sea-level rise this century due to melt from Antarctica range from zero to more than one metre. The highest predictions are driven by the controversial marine ice-cliff instability (MICI) hypothesis, which assumes that coastal ice cliffs can rapidly collapse after ice shelves disintegrate, as a result of surface and sub-shelf melting caused by global warming.

But MICI has not been observed in the modern era and it remains unclear whether it is required to reproduce sea-level variations in the geological past. Here we quantify ice-sheet modelling uncertainties for the original MICI study and show that the probability distributions are skewed towards lower values (under very high greenhouse gas concentrations, the most likely value is 45 centimetres).

However, MICI is not required to reproduce sea-level changes due to Antarctic ice loss in the mid-Pliocene epoch, the last interglacial period or 1992–2017; without it we find that the projections agree with previous studies (all 95th percentiles are less than 43 centimetres). We conclude that previous interpretations of these MICI projections over-estimate sea-level rise this century; because the MICI hypothesis is not well constrained, confidence in projections with MICI would require a greater range of observationally constrained models of ice-shelf vulnerability and ice-cliff collapse.

SOURCE

Propaganda recognized

Michael E. Mann has Received the 2018 Climate Communication Prize from American Geophysical Union. Note that is a prize for communication, not science. His citation is below

Michael Mann not only is one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of climate science but also is unparalleled in the depth, diversity, and sheer volume of his communication about climate science and its implications for society. His firm grounding in scholarship at the highest levels of climate science underlies all of his climate communication efforts and makes him effective in engaging his peers as well as members of the public in nuanced, fact-based discussions about climate science, its uncertainties, and its implications for our future.

Mike’s efforts to communicate climate science stretch back more than 20 years; include the use of virtually every communication platform; and exemplify a mastery born of dedicated, sustained, and repeated engagement. He and several colleagues founded the seminal, award-winning science blog RealClimate to engage the public in fact-based discussions about the climate issues of the moment. It quickly became a trusted repository of fact-based discussion about peer-reviewed climate science that is frequently cited, even to this day. He has also written a number of popular science books aimed at engaging and informing science enthusiasts and, most recently, young children about climate change. He has given hundreds of interviews for traditional media outlets, as well as given an equally impressive number of public talks, participated in documentaries, written countless op-eds for prestigious newspaper outlets, and, perhaps most notable of all, is engaged in what appears to be a 24/7 stream of exchanges with his huge social media followings. Of particular note, he has regularly appeared to testify before Congress about climate science, knowing that such appearances will bring him under withering, partisan-fueled attacks.

In the past decade, Mike has been an unflinching and courageous defender of the principles of free and open scientific investigation and the urgency of combating misinformation with the scientific facts of climate change. He has done so at great personal cost, persevering through terrifying death threats, organized smear campaigns, and protracted lawsuits. Long before “alternative facts” became a household phrase, Mike was sounding alarm bells about efforts to undermine climate science findings and their role in shaping evidence-based policy. His courage, his resilience, and his tireless pursuit of truth in the public discourse around climate change have had a lasting impact on an entire generation of geoscientists and the public. Every day, Mike reminds us that communicating science lies at the heart of scientific practice, with untold benefits to society.

SOURCE

Australian patriots can’t hate Australia's top export, coal

When Samuel Johnson said patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel, he was attacking not patriotism but the scoundrels who falsely use it to defend their cause.

Patriotism gets a bad rap in this postmodern world — where so-called elites diss Brits who voted for Brexit to defend their nation’s sovereignty, or where progressive forces don’t see the value of borders in Europe, North America or Australia.

But most of us are viscerally patriotic — we want the best for our country, we know that our futures and those of our loved ones are inextricably linked to our nation’s ability to endure and flourish. Besides, we love the place and its people.

When a so-called think tank calls itself The Australia Institute, we assume it is on our side. Surely if it was preoccupied with supranational agendas, globalist redistribution or a borderless world it would be called the The UN Institute, The Globalist Forum or Socialist Alliance.

Yet this very same Australia Institute has been conducting meetings in foreign embassies in Canberra, actively lobbying against investment in Australia. It has been advocating against foreign investment in this nation in a way that is designed to damage our national economic interests, reduce employment prospects for our citizens and deliver benefits to our trade competitors.

(Bizarrely enough, given the institute’s claimed focus on equity and the environment, its interventions likely would also hinder the aspirations of poor communities on the subcontinent and lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions.)

The Australia Institute’s chief target is coal, which just happened to have been confirmed this week as the nation’s top export. We have overtaken Indonesia as the world’s largest coal exporter and the industry usually trails only iron ore as our most valuable export. Buoyant prices boosted coal exports above $66 billion last year — a record that tipped iron ore from the top spot.

The coal industry directly employs about 40,000 people in well-paid jobs sustaining families, communities and other businesses, primarily in Queensland and NSW. Coal-fired electricity generation still accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation’s power.

It is worth repeating this crucial fact: about 70 per cent of the nation’s electricity comes from coal. This is an industry that not only underpins our nation’s prosperity, filling state and federal government coffers with tens of billions of dollars of revenue, but also one that is absolutely central to every facet of our daily lives. Yet The Australia Institute is setting it up as public enemy No 1.

Although employment numbers in coalmining have declined by up to 20,000 over the past decade, The Australia Institute wants the job shrinkage to continue. One of its key criticisms of Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin is that it won’t generate as many jobs as the proponents suggest and that it won’t be commercially viable. After exhausting environmental objections over air, land, groundwater and ocean consequences — not to mention indigenous heritage options — these anti-capitalist obstructers are willing to use commercial arguments against capital investment.

These malleable and inventive objections to development are nothing new in the environmental movement — more than two decades ago I helped expose how green activism encouraged the concoction of “secret women’s business” to block the Hindmarsh Island bridge — but there was a recent development involving The Australia Institute that seems a bridge too far.

It came through Joe Kelly’s exclusive report in last week’s The Weekend Australian. “The Australia Institute left-wing think tank met officials at the Chinese embassy to urge them not to back a new clean-coal plant in Australia,” Kelly reported, “warning it would result in the same political and community hostility experienced by the Adani project.”

Think about that: an institute bearing our nation’s name actively lobbies foreign governments to dissuade investment in this nation, hoping to eliminate employment opportunities for our citizens, revenue for our governments and prosperity for our nation. And we wonder why there is a crisis of confidence in Western liberal democracies.

As Kelly reported, on top of the China embassy meeting last month, The Australia Institute has held talks with at least five other embassies and high commissions over the past six months. The institute’s executive director is Ben Oquist, a one-time chief of staff to former Greens leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne.

He defends The Australia Institute’s activities as being in the national interest. “Being Canberra-based, it is not unusual for embassy staff to seek briefings from Australia Institute researchers on their economic and policy research in relation to projects involving their governments,” Oquist said in response to my queries. “Examples include Galilee Basin thermal coal development, the previous (South Australian) state government’s nuclear waste dump proposals and how Australia will implement the Paris Agreement.

“There is international interest in the ever-changing climate and energy policies in Australia, including the financial, economic and social risks of gas and coal investment and the growing role of cheaper, cleaner renewable electricity … Our research can add considerably to the understanding of risks, costs and benefits of the projects and policies.

“All of The Australia Institute’s research is focused on the national interest: making Australia a more just, equitable and sustainable place.”

This is a difficult argument to sustain, given that the only way an assault on coal could possibly benefit Australia would be if global carbon dioxide emissions were cut enough to reduce the expected effects of global warming. But global carbon emissions are increasing each year by about double our annual national emissions.

Besides, if Australia exported less coal, other countries with lower grade resources, such as Indonesia, would fill the gap, producing even more emissions. (This claim was made by Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 when he was prime minister — “arguably it would increase (emissions) because our coal, by and large, is cleaner than the coal in many other countries” — and even an ABC Fact Check endorsed it.)

Regardless, The Australia Institute is out to block the Adani mine and prevent the construction of new high-efficiency, low-emissions, coal-fired power generation in Australia.

We have a national crisis in energy affordability and reliability, and The Australia Institute is subverting efforts to find solutions, preferring to pursue the same ideological crusade for renewable energy investment that created the mess.

To bolster the national electricity market, the government is now considering 10 submissions to provide extra dispatchable power that would be underwritten by a minimum price. At least one proposal involves high-efficiency, low-emissions coal generation and others focus on gas-fired plants and stored hydro.

Clearly taxpayers would gain most from whichever plant provides the greatest reliability and quantity of power closest to existing transmission infrastructure. But I have a feeling The Australia Institute might opt for stored hydro, come hell or high water (pardon the pun).

With these crucial policy and economic decisions playing out in an election year, many in the media/political class continue to proselytise for renewables. ABC’s Media Watch this week criticised Queensland and NSW media for positive stories about the possible benefits, including jobs, from coal-related investment.

We have a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster that routinely amplifies The Australia Institute’s efforts to sabotage investment in our natural resources yet mocks commercial media that can see a positive angle on enterprise and employment.

As if this were not bad enough, the NSW Land and Environment Court has now rejected a new Hunter Valley coalmine based on climate change imperatives.

The move, widely hailed by green groups, heralds a new level of global climate activism enforced through our courts.

Judge Brian Preston decided he need to reject the mine because in order “to meet generally agreed climate targets” we needed a “rapid and deep decrease” in emissions. The case against the mine was run by the Environmental Defenders Office NSW, which is funded by the state government. Taxpayers’ money used to deliberately attack our No 1 export. We have truly lost our way.

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

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

11 February, 2019

An Investing Prophet Takes on Climate Change

The guy above and below is good evidence that a stockmarket guru can be a bit of a nit. And his ideas about population control reveal him as a great steaming nit. He is aware of the drastic decline in fertility in developed countries but still thinks "we" have a problem of overpopulation. How does he square that circle?

He even repeats the old Malthus/Ehrlich scare about running out of food. That the whole trajectory of history is towards greater and greater abundance of food obviously does not move him. And he clearly knows nothing about agricultural economics or agricultural science generally if he thinks that the soil will one day stop growing things.

To be less colloquial about it, he is yet another example of the perils of hubris. Icarus lives! Hubris is very common among people who are good in some area of intellectual endeavour. Because they know a lot about one thing, they tend to think they know it all. They ovegeneralize. Understanding stockmarkets is a long way from understanding climate statistics.

And there is nothing in the article to show that he knows anything about detailed climate statistics. He would be pretty rattled if he did. The long hiatus is a pretty comprehensive refutation of the whole global warming theory. He relies, no doubt, on the profitable musings of a small group of climate scientists in influential positions. He bases his beliefs on an appeal to authority, one of the informal fallacies of logic and something which history would warn anyone about

In the end, I suppose he is just another virtue signaller. He uses his money to buy praise: He is getting old (80) and wants to fix his image as a humanitarian before he dies.

I reproduce just the first half of the article below. That tells you plenty. The whole article is available at the link, if you have got time to waste

Terrifying an audience is one of Jeremy Grantham’s specialties. The legendary investor, co-founder of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO), is famous for predicting doom. And he’s famous for being right, with a remarkable record of spotting investment bubbles before they pop, notably the 2000 tech crash and 2008 financial crisis.

These days, the topic of Grantham’s warnings is not financial markets but the environment. At universities and investor conferences, gardening clubs and local environmental groups, he gives a talk titled “Race of Our Lives” —the one between the Earth’s rapidly warming temperature and the human beings coming up with ways to fight and adapt to climate change.

Green technologies, like batteries and solar and wind power, are improving far faster than many realize, he says. Decarbonizing the economy will be an investing bonanza for those who know it’s coming—“the biggest reshuffling of the economy since the Industrial Revolution.” Despite these gains, people are losing the race: Climate change is also accelerating, with consequences so dire that they’re almost impossible to imagine.

Grantham says he’ll devote 98 percent of his net worth, or about $1 billion, to help humans win the race. Currently he and his wife, Hanne, are giving more than $30 million a year to eight large nonprofits and about 30 smaller ones. Beneficiaries include three academic institutes in the U.K. named after him, at Imperial College London, the London School of Economics, and his alma mater, the University of Sheffield.

While the donations fund a variety of climate research and policy projects, Grantham focuses his presentations on overpopulation. Forget the flooding of oceanfront cities such as Miami or his adopted hometown of Boston. “Agriculture is in fact the real underlying problem produced by climate change,” he says. With topsoil disappearing at a rate of 1 percent a year and “only 30 to 70 good harvest years left depending on your location,” he says, farmers will struggle to feed the planet. Higher sea levels will inundate the world’s great rice-producing river deltas.

“Even without climate change,” he says, “it would be somewhere between hard and impossible to feed 11.2 billion” people, the United Nations’ median population estimate for 2100. Every other animal species on Earth lives with “recurrent waves of famine,” Grantham says, with population rising and falling based on their food supply. Why not us? He brings up a chart showing the tripling of the world’s population since he was born, more than 80 years ago. “If that’s the curve in the stock market,” he says, “you know what to do: panic and go short.” Translation: When something goes up that far for that long, it’s almost certain to plummet. The only question is when. The next bubble, he seems to be implying, is humans. “The presentation is so severe and raw,” says Morningstar Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Rob Pinkerton, who watched almost 1,300 financial advisers take in Grantham’s keynote speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago in May. “It really rattled them.”

Grantham’s discussion of overpopulation makes some people uneasy. “Population is a delicate issue,” says Jonathan Foley, a climate scientist who focuses on agriculture and is executive director of Project Drawdown, a group working on responses to climate change. On the one hand, the decision to have children is “one of the most fundamental of human rights,” he says. “Naturally it’s a sensitive topic to bring up, especially coming from the West.” Still, Foley agrees the issue needs to be discussed. “We can’t pretend there are no limits to the planet,” he says. “You need to address the seriousness of this without triggering people to become fatalistic.”

Grantham delights in being provocative, making statements that seem especially outrageous considering the source, a longtime denizen of Wall Street. The investment business is a “vastly overpaid industry,” he tells a roomful of financial advisers. He lambastes economists, the Federal Reserve, and the flaws of capitalism. “On income inequality, I am left of Karl Marx,” he declares. A father of three and grandfather of six, he applauds the falling fertility rate in most of the developed world. “We have discovered at long last that children are both expensive and incredibly inconvenient,” he says. And as for his perceived adversaries—climate skeptics, oil and chemical company executives, and politicians who fail to take climate change seriously—“perhaps they hate their grandchildren.”

Born north of London in 1938, Grantham never met his father, a major in the Royal Engineers who fought in World War II and died in North Africa in 1941. Grantham and his three older sisters were abruptly sent north to Yorkshire to live with their grandparents after a bomb landed, unexploded, dangerously near their home. After graduating from the University of Sheffield, he was frustrated to find Oxford and Cambridge graduates—“the typical, upper-class chinless wonders” —dominating the best jobs in London. Nonetheless, he says, he “talked his way” into a position at the oil company Royal Dutch Shell, then won admission to Harvard Business School.

For a billionaire, he’s comically thrifty. He and Hanne have lived in the same Beacon Hill townhouse since 1974. A rare bit of self-indulgence is his recently arrived Tesla Model 3. Colleagues tell stories of Grantham insisting on flying coach and of helping him carry luggage down into the London Tube because he didn’t want to pay for a car out to the airport. “He’s cheap, and he’s funny about it,” says Peg McGetrick, a longtime friend and a director at GMO. “He really wants to put every dime into this foundation.”

At first, Grantham and his wife were relatively conventional environmentalists. Their philanthropy was inspired by their travel, including a family trip deep into the jungles of Borneo when their children were young. By 2011, though, Grantham was protesting the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House. His daughter was among dozens of climate change activists taken to jail. Earlier he had been “apolitical,” or, if anything, an “old, late-lamented liberal Republican,” he says. The 2000 U.S. election was a turning point. “Suddenly, politics and climate became mixed up,” he says. “I began to realize that there were major-league deficiencies in capitalism which had not been on my radar screen.” And “I had no idea how deeply the propaganda machine of the right wing went and how well-funded it was, how smart it was, and how far ahead of the curve it was. The left were ignorant in comparison.”

Climate change, politics, and capitalism became frequent topics of Grantham’s quarterly letters. In his view, the U.S. has been pushed into the grip of an unhealthy version of capitalism, one in which corporations put profits way ahead of all other considerations. “The social contract of 1964, when I arrived here, has been totally torn up,” he says. “Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn’t exist for them. Therefore, grandchildren have no value.”

While capitalism “does a million things better than any other system,” he says, it fails completely on long-term threats such as climate change. “You must not expect unnecessary good behavior from capitalists,” he says. The answer, he adds, is strong regulations: “I’m sorry, libertarians, it is the only way.”

The election of Donald Trump was, he hopes, the “final flowering of corporatism. It seems that every conceivable advantage that you could give to corporations has been given, and every conceivable advantage has been taken away from the man in the street.” He laments that the Republican administration has led to a “lopsided” tax law, more pressure on unions and workers, and a rollback of environmental regulations. Especially galling is Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a move that he says makes the U.S. a “rogue state.”

SOURCE

The "Frankenfood" hysteria holds back the war on plant diseases yet again

Genome editing has been used to destroy a virus that lurks inside many of the bananas grown in Africa. Other teams are trying to use it to make the Cavendish bananas sold in supermarkets worldwide resistant to a disease that threatens to make it impossible to grow this variety commercially in future.

The banana streak virus can not only be spread from plant to plant by insects like most plant viruses. It also integrates its DNA into the banana’s genome. In places like west Africa, where bananas are a staple food, most bananas have now the virus lurking inside them.

When these plants are stressed by heat or drought, the virus emerges from dormancy and causes outbreaks that can destroy plantations. And there’s nothing farmers can do.

Destroying the virus

But Leena Tripathi at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Kenya has now used the CRISPR genome editing method to target and destroy the viral DNA inside the genome of a banana variety called Gonja Manjaya.

The plan is to use these plants to breed virus-free plants for farmers. Her team is also using CRISPR to make the bananas resistant to the virus, so they are not simply re-infected.

But the legal status of genome-edited plants in the west African countries where Gonja Manjaya is grown remains uncertain. “I think right now they are in discussions about whether it requires legislation,” says Tripathi.

The banana streak virus does not infect the popular Cavendish banana. But a fungal strain called Tropical Race 4 is devastating Cavendish plantations as it spreads around the world. Before the 1960s the most popular banana was the reportedly more delicious Gros Michel, which farmers had to stop growing because of the spread of another fungal strain called Tropical Race 1.

Because the Cavendish is a sterile mutant that can only be propagated by cloning, there is no way to breed resistant varieties. Instead, several teams worldwide are trying to use CRISPR to make it resistant to Tropical Race 4.

An Australian team has already genetically engineered the Cavendish to make it resistant by adding a gene from a wild banana. But because of the opposition to GM food worldwide, this variety may never be grown commercially. Using CRISPR is seen as preferable because some countries including the US do not regard genome edited plants as transgenic, depending on what has been done.

Journal reference: Communications Biology, DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-02

SOURCE

BRAYING DONKEYS:

Three of them below:

Schumer: ‘Climate Change is Going to Evoke Huge Changes in’ USA ‘in the Next 10, 20, 30 or 40 Years’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) gave a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday criticizing President Donald Trump for his State of the Union Address, noting, among other things, that Trump did not make an issue out of “climate change.”

“He talked about the future of America and didn’t even mention climate change,” Schumer said. “How could you do that?

“Every scientist who has studied its knows that in the next 10, 20, 30 or 40 years, climate change is going to evoke huge changes in our country and in our world,” Schumer continued.

“If you believe in the future and you want to have a good future for our children and grandchildren, which we all do, you can’t ignore climate change,” Schumer said. “You may have different views on it, but you can’t ignore it,” he said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a videotaped interview two weeks ago: “And I think the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

SOURCE

Durbin: ‘Planet is at Risk Because This President and His Party Have Broken With Every Nation on Earth in Their Opposition to Responsibly Address Climate Change’

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) sent out a Tweet after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday night accusing Trump and the Republican Party of putting Earth at risk for breaking with all other nations on climate change.

On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate that President Barack Obama had unilaterally entered into.

“Our planet is at risk because this President and his party have broken with every nation on Earth in their opposition to responsibly address #climagechange,” Durbin said in his Tweet.

President Obama never presented the Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate for ratification, where, under the U.S. Constitution, it would have required a two-thirds majority (or 67 of 100 senators) for ratification.

“In 2015,” said the Congressional Research Service, “Parties to the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] in Paris, France, adopted the Paris Agreement (PA). The PA builds upon the Convention and—for the first time—brings all nations into a common framework to undertake efforts to combat climate change, adapt to its effects, and support developing countries in their efforts.

The PA also reiterates the obligation in the Convention for developed country Parties, including the United States, to seek to mobilize financial support to assist developing country Parties with climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

“On June 1, 2017,” the Congressional Research Service reported, “President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the PA.”

SOURCE

Elizabeth Warren cheers AOC's Green New Deal, calls for an 'ultra millionaires tax', calls Trump bigoted and says climate change means 'our existence is at stake'

Senator Elizabeth Warren has officially announced her 2020 presidential campaign. The 69-year-old Massachusetts Democrat officially launched her campaign at a rally on Saturday in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of New England's poorest and most heavily Latino communities.

'I am a candidate for president of the United States of America,' she told the cheering crowd on a blustery day where the wind chill hit 19 degrees.

Warren struck a populist note in her speech, highlighting her humble origins as the daughter of a janitor, and lashed out at a 'rigged' system that favors big banks and the elite.

She proposed an 'ultra millionaires tax' on the super wealthy and twice praised the Green New Deal, an ambitious environmental, economic and social master-plan rolled out this week by freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

Warren also lashed out at President Donald Trump, saying: 'The rich and the powerful use fear to divide us. We're done with that. Bigotry has no place in the Oval Office.'

The former law school professor began her speech with a lecture on the history of the rally's location, Everett Mill, where the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912 organized a strike of female workers whose pay was cut corresponding to a new law shortening the work week of women.

Warren praised the mostly immigrant women for winning a pay raise and inspiring new worker-protection legislation.

'They stuck together and they won,' Warren said. She said that the history lesson was a 'story about our power when we fight together' and vowed that the upcoming election would be 'the fight of our lives.'

She hopes her populist stance will distinguish her in the field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage, an embarrassment Warren did not mention in her speech.

Warren concluded her speech to the walk-off song Respect, by Aretha Franklin.

Warren will battle at least five fellow senators for the nomination and chance to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

On Wednesday, Warren repeatedly apologized for claiming on a 1986 bar registration form to be 'American Indian'.

A year later, she had jumped from teaching law at the University of Texas to working as a full professor in the Ivy League, first at the University of Pennsylvania and then Harvard.

In a statement, President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, reacted to Warren's announcement with disdain.

'Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected,' Parscale said in a statement.

'The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush American's middle class,' he added.

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

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

10 February, 2019

Democrats Release Green New Deal. Here’s What’s in It

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a resolution that outlines the “Green New Deal” that’s become a central part of the Democratic agenda.

The Green New Deal resolution calls for “10-year national mobilizations” toward a series of goals aimed at fighting global warming, according to a copy of the bill obtained by NPR. A separate fact sheet claims the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.”

That includes getting all our energy needs from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” by “dramatically expanding and upgrading existing renewable power sources.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s nonbinding resolution calls for a variety of social justice and welfare state goals, including “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security,” and “high-quality health care” benefits for Americans.

The resolution calls for “repairing historic oppression” among certain groups, including minorities, immigrants, women, low-income workers, indigenous people, and youth collectively called “frontline and vulnerable communities.”

The call to “promote justice and equity” among those groups is seen as one of the Green New Deal’s primary goals by its architects. The House resolution has more than 20 co-sponsors, according to a fact sheet also obtained by NPR.

“[I]n 10 years, we’re trying to go carbon-neutral,” Ocasio-Cortez told NPR Thursday on why the Green New Deal called for aggressively reducing emissions.

Ocasio-Cortez, who describes herself as a democratic socialist, unveiled her resolution Thursday after weeks of fanfare and language tweaking to attract broader Democratic support.

However, the resolution, and any legislation stemming from it, has zero chance of passing out of Congress or being signed into law by President Donald Trump. Conservative groups, and even some Democrats, see the Green New Deal as a grab bag of unrealistic socialist dreams.

“A six-page, nonbinding resolution marketed as a ‘War Plan’ proves Congressman [Ocasio-Cortez] isn’t prepared and hasn’t done her homework,” Dan Kish, distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Running the world’s greatest economy on unicorn farts and rainbow stew all run by masterminds in Washington, D.C., is a fool’s errand,” Kish said.

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey will be releasing companion legislation in the Senate Thursday, which reportedly includes Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York as co-sponsors.

“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us,” Ocasio-Cortez told NPR in an interview.

“It could be part of a larger solution, but no one has actually scoped out what that larger solution would entail. And so that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish with the Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

SOURCE

'Green New Deal' Is Just Repackaged Socialism

With the "great unveiling," it's more evident than ever that the real agenda is more government.

It’s a little over 13 pages, but this week the long-awaited framework and philosophy for the “Green New Deal” (GND) was unleashed onto Congress. Described by House sponsor (and shiny new object) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as “national, social, industrial and economic mobilization at a scale not seen since World War II,” the measure sets an ambitious timetable for weaning ourselves off our carbon dependency. Of course, it doesn’t get into the specifics of cost, either in dollars or in freedom.

As Mark Alexander has noted, the so-called “climate change” agenda is all about socialist economic control, as evident in the insane requirements of the GND. According to Alexander, “It may be green on the outside, but is is red on the inside.”

Written as a resolution rather than a bill, the GND reads as a laundry list of socialistic changes attached to the overriding goal of combating climate change by making America 100% dependent on “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources … by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources [and] deploying new capacity.” Along the way, a second chief goal of the GND is to empower “frontline and vulnerable communities,” also known as the victim class.

While those on the extreme Left — including Vox writer David Roberts, who in December authored an extremely long treatise on the GND’s origins and eventual goals — were pleased to see the concept come to life, Roberts and others like him also know that the resolution left a lot of blanks to be filled by actual legislation.

One comparison for the GND could be made to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is described by author Michael Grunwald as its own “ginormous energy bill.” A significant part of that “stimulus” money went to renewable energy and efficiency projects. But while best known for its support of failed green-energy companies like Solyndra and Ener1, it also created a large funding pool that lifted the solar- and wind-energy industries to the modest market share they now own.

Most of the 2020 Democrat presidential contenders were already behind the Green New Deal in concept, but its introduction allowed them to prove their environmental bonafides. Sen. Cory Booker was “excited” to join in, adding, “Our history is a testimony to the achievement of what some think is impossible — we must take bold action now.” Fellow Senator and GND co-sponsor Kamala Harris insisted, “We must aggressively tackle climate change which poses an existential threat to our nation.” Not to be outdone, Sen. Elizabeth Warren chimed in, “Climate change is real, it threatens all of us, & we have no time to waste to address it head-on.” She’ll also co-sponsor the resolution, which becomes a perfect palette from which these contenders can paint their own proposals to oppose President Donald Trump.

There was one contender with a more serious policy idea, though. Former Congressman John Delaney, who came from a business background and left Congress at the end of last term to concentrate fully on his long-shot Oval Office run, made the case that “the right answer on climate is to do whatever big thing can get done ASAP. … That’s why I support my bipartisan carbon tax-dividend proposal.”

In fact, revenue sources such as a carbon tax aren’t being discussed in this rendition of the GND. Nor does the resolution explicitly call for the elimination of fossil fuels as some extremists would prefer. Adding the aspect of “clean” energy allows the inclusion of natural gas, which is generally accepted as a clean fuel. Fracking for it, on the other hand..…

While there were compromises and large parts of the plan open for interpretation, the GND is still getting a cool reception from Democrat leadership. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?” asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi somewhat dismissively. “Quite frankly, I haven’t seen it,” she added, “but I do know it’s enthusiastic and we welcome all the enthusiasm that is out there.”

Translation: She knows it’s pretty extreme, so just wait for her moderated “compromise” offer. By the way, Pelosi also pointedly did not choose Ocasio-Cortez for a new committee on climate change.

Last month, our Brian Mark Weber called out the Green New Deal for what it really is: “a dangerous scam to destroy the country as we know it.”

Republicans, for their part, should certainly lampoon the GND’s most laughable parts — such as its promise of “economic security for those unable or unwilling to work” or “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States … to achieve maximal energy efficiency” or “build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary” or to “replace every combustion-engine vehicle” (emphasis ours) — but they must be on guard for those aspects that seem somewhat reasonable by comparison.

We can’t dismiss the chance that some portions of the GND will make it through Congress or be executive-ordered by a future president. After all, people thought HillaryCare didn’t stand a chance when it was unveiled in 1993 and failed in a fully Democrat-controlled Congress. But a quarter-century later, Republicans controlled both houses and the White House and still couldn’t get rid of its successor. If nothing else, history shows that leftists are masters of incrementalism, especially when they conjure up a crisis and claim that only they can solve it.

Let’s be mindful of that history when the sun comes out tomorrow and provides its live-giving (albeit unevenly applied) brand of global warming.

SOURCE

Green New Deal Backers Embrace Their Fantasies

Jonah Goldberg

On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced what many news outlets described as “legislation” for the Green New Deal, a wildly ambitious plan to eliminate the American fossil fuel industry within a decade or so. It’s worth noting that it’s not legislation as people normally understand the term. It’s a resolution titled “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” In other words, even if it passed — a considerable if — nothing would really happen.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t taking it too seriously. She didn’t put Ocasio-Cortez on the new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and when asked about the resolution, she was dismissive.

“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi said. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

I bring this up for the simple reason that a lot of people on the left and right have every incentive to make this thing a much bigger deal than it is.

Still, given that almost everyone running for the Democratic presidential nomination feels obliged to say they’re for it, it’s worth taking somewhat seriously.

This raises the first of several problems: It’s not a very serious proposal. The goal is to eliminate the fossil fuel industry over a decade and, perversely, phase out nuclear power over a slightly longer period. All of the jobs dependent on these industries would be replaced by government-guaranteed jobs.

“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years,” the backers explain in an outline, “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

Well, at least the plan isn’t too ambitious. Retrofitting “every building in America” can be done in 10 years, but eliminating all the gassy cows will take a bit longer. Maybe we’ll move them all to Hawaii, which with the near-abolition of airplanes will be effectively cut off from America anyway.

Even if you take these goals seriously, as a practical matter it’s a fantasy masquerading as green virtue-signaling.

But it’s a fantasy based on a worldview that should be treated seriously because it’s so dangerous. NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Ocasio-Cortez whether she was comfortable with the “massive government intervention” critics say is required by such an undertaking.

“We have tried their approach for 40 years,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “For 40 years we have tried to let the private sector take care of this. They said, ‘We got this, we can do this, the forces of the market are going to force us to innovate.’ Except for the fact that there’s a little thing in economics called externalities. And what that means is that a corporation can dump pollution in the river and they don’t have to pay for it, and taxpayers have to pay.”

The fascinating thing is that Ocasio-Cortez thinks this is actually true.

Thanks to the government intervention known as the Clean Water Act and other regulations, corporations can’t pollute waterways. Ironically, the only entities that can pollute with impunity are government agencies such as the EPA, which did precisely that in Colorado in 2015. Closer to home, ExxonMobil has spent millions cleaning up Newtown Creek, which happens to run through Ocasio-Cortez’s native Brooklyn, close to her district. Ironically, the city of New York is still allowed to pollute the creek whenever there’s a heavy rainfall.

Even if Ocasio-Cortez was speaking figuratively in her talk of “externalities,” the larger point remains. The free market hasn’t been given free rein, and over the last 40 years the free market and government regulations alike have made laudable environmental progress. In 2017, the U.S. had the largest reductions of CO2 emissions in the world for the ninth time this century. Rather than celebrate and build on that reality, the Green New Dealers would rather embrace their fantasies — and waste a lot of time and money in the process.

SOURCE

Even If US Cut CO2 Emissions 100%, World Would Only Be 0.137 Degree Celsius Cooler by 2100

By Nicolas Loris (Loris is an economist who focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues)

Here’s the most important fact about the Green New Deal: It wouldn’t work. Ultimately, fully implementing the Green New Deal would have no meaningful impact on global temperatures.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., released their much-anticipated blueprint for a Green New Deal Thursday.

And make no mistake: If implemented, the Green New Deal would bring huge changes to our country. According to an FAQ put out by Ocasio-Cortez’s office, this new deal is “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

The plan additionally asks Americans to “upgrade or replace every building in U.S. for state-of-the-art energy efficiency” and to “build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

That’s not even all. Far from being just an energy and climate resolution, the Green New Deal resolution is a wish list for big government spending, expansive government control, and massive amounts of wealth distribution. As Ocasio-Cortez told NPR, “the heart of the Green New Deal is about social justice.”

Ultimately, this deal would fundamentally change how people produce and consume energy, harvest crops, raise livestock, build homes, drive cars, travel long distances, and manufacture goods. And it wouldn’t even work.

But here’s the key thing: Even if Americans were on board with this radical change in behavior and lifestyle, it wouldn’t change our climate.

In fact, the U.S. could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 100 percent and it would not make a difference in abating global warming.

Using the same climate sensitivity (the warming effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions) as the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes in its modeling, the world would be only 0.137 degree Celsius cooler by 2100. Even if we assumed every other industrialized country would be equally on board, this would merely avert warming by 0.278 degree Celsius by the turn of the century.

One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide emissions is developing countries.

But while one of the priorities of the Green New Deal is to make the U.S. a lead exporter in green technologies, assuming developing countries will forgo cheap, abundant carbon dioxide-emitting energy for more expensive intermittent sources is pure fantasy.

Yes, developing countries will likely expand their use of renewable power sources over time, but not to the extent it will have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. While some countries are shuttering their coal-fired plants, others in both developed and developing countries are building new plants and expanding the life of existing generators.

After all, affordable, reliable, and widely available energy is essential to lifting people out of poverty and improving the life, health, and comfort of people trying to reach a better standard of living.

But not only would the Green New Deal be ineffective, it would also almost certainly impose steep costs on Americans, via increased energy bills.

The resolution calls for deriving 100 percent of America’s electricity from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission” energy sources—a steep increase from the 63 percent of electricity that came from carbon dioxide-emitting conventional fuels in 2017. Nuclear power was responsible for another 20 percent. But, according to the FAQ sheet, “The Green New Deal makes new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear plants unnecessary. This is a massive mobilization of all our resources into renewable energies.”

The proposal also calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and other infrastructure as much as technologically feasible. Yet, as recently as 2017, petroleum accounted for 92 percent of America’s transportation fuel.

To achieve these targets, the resolution proposes a massive government spending program in addition to carbon dioxide taxes, subsidies, and regulation. How are Americans going to pay for it?

Don’t worry, the FAQ answers that one: “We will finance the investments for the Green New Deal the same way we paid for the original New Deal, World War II, the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, and decades of war—with public money appropriated by Congress. Further, government can take an equity stake in Green New Deal projects so the public gets a return on its investment.”

Credibly estimating the cost of the Green New Deal for American taxpayers, households, and businesses is exceedingly difficult. Even projecting the cost of switching to 100 percent renewable power for electricity relies on a set of largely unknowable assumptions. How companies would make large-scale investments to meet the mandate and how intermittent power sources would receive backup power is mostly a guessing game.

Technological challenges aside, the upfront capital costs would reach trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars of energy existing assets (coal, nuclear, natural gas plants, etc.) would be stranded and lost.

In effect, the result would be households potentially paying hundreds of dollars more per month in their electricity bill.

Even more concerning, the direct impact from higher energy costs is just a small part of the story. Energy is a necessary input for nearly all of the goods and services consumers buy. Consequently, Americans will pay more for food, health care, education, clothes, and every other good or service that requires energy to make and transport.

In fact, Heritage Foundation economists used the Heritage Energy Model, a derivative of the Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System, to model the economic impacts of a carbon tax, which Green New Deal advocates admit would only be one tiny fraction of the entire plan.

Each carbon tax analysis found an average shortfall of hundreds of thousands of jobs with peak year unemployment reaching over 1 million jobs lost and half the job losses coming in energy-intensive manufacturing industries.

Over a 20-year period, the total income loss would be tens of thousands of dollars and the aggregate gross domestic product loss would be over $2.5 trillion. If policymakers spent, taxed, and regulated to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for America’s transportation, agricultural, and industrial sectors, the costs would be several orders of magnitude higher.

Importantly, Americans have little appetite to pay such costs. In fact, a recent Associated Press poll found that 68 percent of Americans oppose paying an additional $10 per month to fight climate change. The protests in France are quite indicative of how people feel about costly climate policies.

The Broad Scope of the Green New Deal

Furthermore, the Green New Deal would affect a lot more than energy. Guaranteeing high quality health care, education, and a job with a family-sustaining wage are all part of this new deal.

And don’t forget the egregious amount of spending that would result in energy cronyism and corporate welfare on steroids—essentially, taxpayer dollars from hardworking families going to line the pockets of companies like Tesla and Solyndra.

Don’t worry, though. These Green New Deal proponents do admit they can’t quite get everything done in 10 years. According to the FAQ sheet:

“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

In the end, this massive government-planned, taxpayer-funded plan is a raw deal for Americans—and a totally ineffective climate policy.

SOURCE

Latest forecast: climate of fear

Comment from Australia

Weather and climate used to be different things, but the capture of weather by climate change advocates is now all but complete. Wild weather is a political statement worldwide. A fear-inducing drumbeat of broken temperature records is constant, and nightly reports of extreme weather somewhere in the world are the new normal.

Wildfires, an unstable polar vortex, freezing temperatures, boiling hot days, too much rain, not enough. All routinely are cited as evidence of a changing climate. Fine print be damned.

The catastrophisation of weather is clickbait: an easy sell that plays heavily into primal fears and seamlessly into domestic and international politics.

It is a cornerstone of UN climate talks, at which everyone “knows” the “weather has changed”.

The emphasis has been premeditated, as was the shift from global warming to climate change.

It is being legitimised by a new branch of “attribution science” that links climate change influence to what were otherwise weather events.

Scientists use computer models to build virtual worlds, one with and another without carbon dioxide emissions from human activity. Thousands of model simulations are run and the outputs from the “pure” world are compared with those of the virtual world as it is today.

Over several years the public has been softened up to accept that weather is climate, but the key message has been that no single event can be attributed to climate change with any certainty. Things are about to shift gear.

The next step globally is to include references to the climate signal in daily weather bulletins.

Once normalised through public agencies, attribution study results will be used in court cases seeking compensation payments from big oil, bad government and wealthy nations for the damages caused by climate change.

Throughout the week, as floods swamped Townsville in north Queensland and fires ravaged swaths of Tasmania, there was a chorus of claims that extreme weather events, including these, were evidence of climate change.

Scott Morrison was denounced for not making the link publicly when he visited Townsville flood victims. The Climate Council issued a special report on extreme weather; the Australian National University released its climate update for 2019; and a new GetUp front group was launched, Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action.

Extreme weather events now are confidently projected by lobby groups and vested interests as evidence of a changing climate. The punchline is always the same: government is not doing enough on climate. To fix the weather, more must be done to stop burning coal, build renewable energy plants and suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The Climate Council says all extreme weather events are being influenced by climate change, as they are occurring in an atmosphere that contains more energy than 50 years ago. The extreme weather events of last year, it says, are the latest in a long-term trend of worsening extreme weather, both in Australia and globally, as a result of climate change.

“The frequency and intensity of many extreme weather events — heatwaves, bushfires, floods, and storms — have increased over the past several decades, mirroring many of the trends that have been observed globally,” the Climate Council says. “The evidence is clear that climate change is influencing the global trend of worsening extreme weather.”

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on 1.5C warming is slightly more measured. It says there is “medium confidence” that trends in intensity and frequency of some climate and weather extremes have been detected over time spans during which about 0.5C of global warming occurred.

But in testimony to the US house natural resources committee hearing on climate change this week, retired climate scientist Judith Curry said: “Based on current assessments of the science, man-made climate change is not an existential threat on the timescale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation. If we believe the climate models, any changes in extreme weather events would not be evident until late in the 21st century. The greatest impacts will be felt in the 22nd century and beyond.”

Curry says extreme damage from recent hurricanes plus billion-dollar losses from floods, droughts and wildfires emphasise the vulnerability of the US to extreme events. “It’s easy to forget that US extreme weather events were actually worse in the 1930s and 1950s.’’

But ANU Climate Change Institute director Mark Howden says recent extreme heatwaves, rainfall and bushfires emphasise how important it is to maintain a safe and stable climate.

“Climate and atmospheric changes are accelerating, leading to more and more unprecedented climate-related events, whether these are land or ocean-based heatwaves, fires, floods or biodiversity losses such as fish kills,” Howden says.

The new GetUp group says “the government can no longer ignore the way their climate change denial is hurting our communities and putting lives at risk”. “They must take Australia beyond coal projects like Adani and move to 100 per cent renewable energy for all,” it adds.

Award-winning Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan made an eloquent contribution to the debate, penning an essay decrying the Tasmanian fires and saying they signal a “terrifying new reality, as disturbing and ultimately almost certainly as tragic as the coral reef bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef”. “Another global treasure in the form of Tasmania’s ancient Gondwanaland remnant forest and its woodland alpine heathlands are at profound and immediate risk because of climate change,” Flanagan wrote.

He is no stranger to the history of fire in Tasmania. In the climax to his novel Gould’s Book of Fish, set in a Tasmanian island prison, he writes: “Watch the whole island transforming into a single furnace, one flame as infinite as Hell, an eternity of suffering in which nothing existed except to fuel the fire further, and then the fire finding its way into the heart of the settlement.’’

Fire records for Tasmania are clear. The state has faced a series of devastating fires from early settlement in 1803. The worst were in 1854, 1897-98, 1913-15, 1926-27, 1933-34, 1940-42, 1960- 61, 1967, 2013 and 2016.

The current concern is whether a new threat is posed by dry lightning strikes to areas and species that are not likely to recover. A 2015 review by the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service found that data from the past 20 years suggests the fire regimes in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area are changing. Fires lit by arson had decreased but “fires started by dry lightning now appear to be the main threat to the TWWHA”, it says. “However, it is too early to know whether a shift in climate may be contributing to a long-term increasing trend in dry lightning activity in summers.”

Aynsley Kellow, professor emeritus of government at the University of Tasmania, tells Inquirer politicians have quickly laid the blame for the latest fires on climate change because of dry lightning strikes. “I always find it a bit distasteful to try to make political capital out of misfortune,” he says. “Here people say areas of forest that haven’t been burnt in millennia are now under a new threat, but that is clearly nonsense.

“The wet sclerophyll forest, for instance, is largely the result of substantial wildfire 200 years ago. It is the case that most sclerophyll forests, wet or dry, are fire adapted.

“Where it is an issue is with some of the rainforest species such as King Billy pine and so on — you could say it is the eucalypts versus the rainforest species, and the eucalypts tend to win.

“I have got no problems trying to preserve some rainforest but when fire comes from a natural source like a lightning strike, if you have a naturalistic view of the environment, who is it of us to intervene in that process?

“I don’t mind intervening because I think humans should be managing the landscape. But I think it is a fairly long bow to say this is unprecedented. It suggests there hasn’t been dry lightning strikes in the past.

“Part of the problem is that with the technology that is available these days you can count lightning strikes. That facility just wasn’t there in the past and it’s partly a reflection of the improvement of monitoring technology of climate science.

In Townsville, work is still under way to understand the magnitude of this week’s flood event.

The cause of the heavy rains is easily explained in meteorological terms. A large monsoonal trough stretching into the Coral Sea dragged in moisture and dumped it on its southern front. The front stayed almost stationary for six days, producing rainfalls of more than 2m in some areas.

Andrew Gissing, from risk management and catastrophe modelling group Risk Frontiers, says it is not uncommon to see severe rain causing flooding in Queensland alongside simultaneous fire weather in the south.

“I don’t necessarily think that is unique,” he says. “We are doing some work on how extreme the Townsville floods have been. A colleague is saying it is a one-in-200-year event. You do have uncertainty associated with the length of the record you can look at to work out how extreme some of this stuff is.’’

Newspaper accounts testify to the flooding that is the old normal in Townsville. A report from January 30, 1892 speaks of what “seemed one prolonged thunderstorm, thunder and lightning prevailing the whole time”. “Half the population cannot reach the city and business is at a standstill,” it says.

In 1953, The Queensland Times reported that year’s Townsville flood was the worst since 1881. “The stench of dead animals along the river bank is almost unbearable,” it says.

Research by Griffith University using sediment records says floods in southeast Queensland during the past 1500 years rival the size of floods in recorded history (1893, 1974 and 2011).

The Climate Council says extreme weather is costly. Insurance companies in Australia paid out more than $1.2 billion in claims last year. But research by Risk Frontiers has so far not picked up a climate signature in insurance losses. Losses at the moment are being driven primarily by development in at-risk areas.

“Having said that, insurance losses may not necessarily be the best place to pick up that (climate change signal) because they are not capturing the full extent of the loss,” Gissing says. “Certainly, with the various climate projections we have got no reason to believe we won’t see one in the future.’’

Scientist Jennifer Marohasy says Australia is still a country of drought and flooding rains. “We still see in the record for rainfall and temperature that you have these dry periods and wet periods,” says Marohasy. “Often the more significant and longer the drought, the bigger the flood that follows.”

The contest lies in the accuracy of a new branch of climate science that attempts to attribute the contribution of climate change to extreme weather events.

A landmark report in 2016 by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says attribution can answer questions about how much climate change influences the probability or intensity of a specific type of weather event.

On July 30 last year, Nature journal declared that “extreme-event attribution — the science of calculating how global warming has changed the likelihood and magnitude of extreme heat, cold, drought, rain or flooding — is ready to leave the lab”. The journal says research has advanced to the point where public agencies can take over the task.

This year, Germany’s national weather agency will start posting instant findings on social media to “quantify the influence of climate change on any atmospheric conditions that might bring extreme weather to Germany or central Europe”.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says attribution research can be used by courts “to settle questions of liability for the costs or harm caused by an extreme event that may have been influenced by global warming and climate change”.

Marohasy’s view is that rather than existing climate models, which are unable to predict events such as the Townsville flood even weeks beforehand, climate science should pay more attention to artificial intelligence systems that can include cycles.

AI research is being taken up by the weather authorities of China and other Asian nations.

“We have now got AI to allow us to understand relationships in historic data,” Marohasy says. “AI is central to the fourth industrial revolution in things such as driverless cars and medicine, but climate science refuses to move away from general circulation models. We are aware there have always been extreme rainfall events but no one wants to look at the raw historic data. They want to remodel data and strip cycles from data because the concept of cycles is alien to the theory of anthropogenic climate change.

“It wants to take everything back to CO2 so that it has policy relevance,” Marohasy adds.

Indeed, a common feature of reports on extreme weather is a demand that government do more to stop burning fossil fuels and move to renewables. But Curry told the US house committee it was misguided to assume current wind and solar technologies could power an advanced economy.

She says there are two options on the table. One is to do nothing and the other is to rapidly deploy wind and solar plants with the goal of eliminating fossil fuels in one to two decades.

“Apart from the gridlock engendered by considering only these two options, in my opinion neither option gets us to where we want to go,” Curry says. “A third option is to re-imagine the 21st-century electric power systems, with new technologies that improve energy security, reliability and cost while minimising environmental impacts.

“Acting urgently on emissions reduction by deploying 20th-century technologies could turn out to be the enemy of a better long-term solution.’’

It’s an idea that finds it difficult to compete in the atmosphere of fear generated by the urgency now being injected into a narrative as old as time: there’s something strange about the weather.

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

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

8 February, 2019

British Met Office: global warming could exceed 1.5C within five years

A 5 year forecast! I thought they had given up on medium term forecasts after they got so many wrong. That was after they forecast a "BBQ summer", only to have it rain like Billy-O the whole time

Lowest Paris agreement target may temporarily be surpassed for first time between now and 2023

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.

Until now, the hottest year on record was 2016, when the planet warmed 1.11C above pre-industrial levels, but the long-term trend is upward.

Man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are adding 0.2C of warming each decade but the incline of temperature charts is jagged due to natural variation: hotter El Ni?o years zig above the average, while cooler La Nin? years zag below.

In the five-year forecast released on Wednesday, the Met Office highlights the first possibility of a natural El Ni?o combining with global warming to exceed the 1.5C mark.

Dr Doug Smith, Met Office research fellow, said: “A run of temperatures of 1C or above would increase the risk of a temporary excursion above the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Predictions now suggest around a 10% chance of at least one year between 2019 and 2023 temporarily exceeding 1.5C.”

Climatologists stressed this did not mean the world had broken the Paris agreement 80 years ahead of schedule because international temperature targets are based on 30-year averages.

SOURCE

2018 Was the Fourth-Hottest Year on Record

They somehow manage below to spin a steady DECLINE in temperature as confirming global warming. Clearly, no evidence will count against their theory

This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest on record, U.S. government scientists have confirmed, adding to a stretch of five years that are now collectively the hottest period since modern measurements began.

The world in 2018 was 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than the average set between 1951 and 1980, said NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This means 2018’s average global temperatures were the fourth warmest since 1880, placing it behind 2016, 2017, and 2015.

SOURCE

Head Of International Ski Federation is a skeptic

From an interview with Gian Franco-Kasper

"And then there is the so-called climate change.

So-called?

There is no proof. We have snow, sometimes very much.

Also, because it gets warmer and snowing in places where it used to be too cool.

I was at Olympia in Pyeongchang, at the beginning it was minus 35 degrees. To anyone shivering toward me, I said: Welcome to the global warming.

No one has been freezing in Adelboden for a long time. There have always been cold and warmer winters.

Do you claim that it is not true that the temperature has been rising globally in the last 100 years?

It got colder every year in the 60s and 70s. But I believe in global warming, of course.

We hear that irony again.

It's like the bark beetle. If it were up to the media and public opinion, we should not have any forests left. 20 years ago, the bark beetle raged, it could no longer stand a tree.

Are you a friend of Trump?

Not at all, but a friend of scientists and green activists, who are looking for a bark beetle by all means and just can not find it"

SOURCE

White House officials join event mocking climate change science, renewable power

A report from the CBC, no less

Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply "dumb."

These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by some of the country's most vocal climate change doubters and attended by a handful of Trump administration officials.

The second annual conference, organized by the conservative think tank the Heartland Institute, pulled together speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center For Industrial Progress, along with officials from the U.S. Department of Interior and the White House.

Panels at the event included: Carbon Taxes, Cap & Trade and Other Bad Ideas; Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement; and Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.

Ex-EPA chief Scott Pruitt attended 2017 event

The day-long conference reflected the political rise of global warming skeptics in Donald Trump's America that is occurring despite mounting scientific evidence, including from U.S. government agencies, that burning oil, coal, and natural gas is heating the planet and leading to drought, floods, wildfires and more frequent powerful storms.

A similar conference blasting the link between fossil fuels and climate change last year drew then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to reverse Obama-era climate initiatives and roll back regulation hindering drillers and miners but who has since resigned in a flurry of ethical controversies.

The U.S. officials who joined this year included White House special assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes, an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. They praised the administration's moves to clear the way for oil industry activity and steered clear of commenting on climate change.

But their presence gave climate change doubters at the conference a boost.

"It's a step in the right direction," said self-described climate change doubter Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, referring to the U.S. officials in attendance.

Sea level rise claims 'overblown': Heartland Institute
In an email, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said department officials "speak at thousands of conferences every year and share ideas with a diverse group of individuals." A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment.

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, said the views presented at the conference "once on the fringes of U.S. politics" would be proven right.

"The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown, overstated or frankly just wrong," he said in an interview.? Huelskamp dismissed United Nations findings on climate change as "fake science" motivated by a desire for "power and control."

"It's a nice world they live in," said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees of the America First Energy Conference. "It's not the world we live in."

In the conference exhibit hall, the words "Coming Soon!" in big orange letters framed a Heartland Institute advertisement for the fifth volume in its "Climate Change Reconsidered" series. Attendees also passed around a book titled Dumb Energy: A Rant Against Wind and Solar Energy.

The more than 40 speakers praised Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, a global agreement to fight climate change mainly by cutting carbon emissions; and for rolling back regulations to allow oil companies to lead the biggest energy surge in the nation's history.

But they warned that proponents of the U.S. oil and gas boom are still locked in an epic struggle with climate activists in academia and within federal agencies.

"The deep state is real," said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. "They're certainly anti-fossil fuel."
?
Funes of the Interior Department spoke on a panel called The Future of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas, alongside Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling at LLOG Exploration Co. and Fred Palmer, who joined Heartland in 2016 after retiring from coal company Peabody Energy.

"Oil production under President Trump has increased two million barrels per day since the beginning of his administration," Funes said. "The U.S. is exporting four times as much oil as it exported a decade ago."

SOURCE

AOC Goes Off The Deep End, Offers INSANE Ideas To Save Planet; ‘Eat Peanut Butter, Skip…’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has gone off the deep end with “ideas” to “save” the planet. The New York lawmaker took to Twitter on Tuesday to highlight a trip she made to Queens, New York, earlier this week to visit with teenagers.

The 29-year-old socialist said she informed the group that switching razors, replacing meat and dairy meals once a day, and eating peanut butter was the key to addressing climate change.

“Yesterday I visited a school assembly w/ teens in Queens. One of them asked, “What can WE do to combat climate change?” 2 recs: – Skip disposable razors+switch to safety razors – Give your tummy a break! Skip meat/dairy for a meal (easiest is bfast, I do banana & peanut butter),” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

She added in a follow-up tweet: “My other tips: – Start incorporating thrift, consignment & second-hand clothes in your wardrobe (host a clothing swap w/ friends for a no-spend option) – Walk, bike, & use public transit more often – Bring your own bag/coffee mug. It’s okay if you forget, 1x/week is still a win.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s “tips” for addressing climate change is part of her socialist “Green New Deal,” which will cost trillions of dollars and require the U.S. to completely get off fossil fuels within 10 years.

A new study reveals the price tag for Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” and it’s absolutely mind-boggling. The 29-year-old New York socialist has promised that her plan will provide “free” healthcare, education, and even jobs. However, taxpayers will be stuck footing the bill, which comes out to $7 trillion.

Her plan also calls for a guarantee that every American will “get” a job, pledging to “provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”

A recent study from PJ Media found that the estimated $7 trillion projected cost is painfully low, and that it could actually cost nearly $50 trillion, which would be roughly seven — SEVEN — times more than that.

According to an eye-popping PJ Media analysis based on a new report from Power the Future, the “Green New Deal” proposed by democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would cost more than 8,000 times as much as President Donald Trump’s border wall.

All that “free” stuff Ocasio-Cortez keeps promising sure is expensive.

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

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

7 February, 2019

UN Report Shows Politics and Climate Science Are a Deadly Mix

The influential and widely discussed 2018 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes generally that the Earth is warming; that any increased warming will raise sea levels, harm coral reefs, and reduce crop production; that the warming is primarily man-made, the result of increasing amounts of trapped greenhouse gases, (especially carbon dioxide) in the upper atmosphere; and that it makes scientific and economic sense to reduce CO2 emissions now with petroleum-based energy taxes and regulations before more environmental damage is done.

There is a broad consensus among climatologists that global warming is fact and requires a strong political response in order to prevent weather and economic-related calamities from occurring within the next 10 or 20 years. However, there is also a strong minority position among some scientists and economists that is both skeptical of prevailing climate change science and also of the necessity for any governmental response to the alleged environmental dangers.

The scientific evidence on warming is reasonably clear: There has been a slightly more than 1 degree Celsius increase in atmospheric temperature since 1880 up to the present. Over those many decades, there have been periods of warming; periods of cooling; periods where no major changes have occurred; and, more recently, a relatively sustained period of warming. Most climate scientists expect the current warming trend to continue (absent any CO2 reductions) into the foreseeable future with substantial weather related problems (costs) if the warming advances another half degree Celsius or more.

There are several problems with this scenario. The first is that if the current warming trend moderates somewhat, stops all together, or reverts to a period of modest cooling, then few of the calamitous events predicted will occur within the IPCC benchmark 2030-2040 time-frame. The second is that it is still unclear whether warming actually generates more severe weather patterns as is frequently assumed. For example, the incidence of severe tornado activity (F3+) in the U.S. trends downward over the last 5 decades and 2018—perhaps the warmest year on record—marked a 13 year low.

Finally, any forecast of anything (GNP, divorce rates, cell phone sales) 10 to 20 years out has almost zero reliability and almost no chance of being correct. There are simply too many known variables that could change and skew the results; in addition, there are an unknown number of new variables that could arise that would work to radically alter outcomes predicted by climate models. Indeed, the spotty history of previous climate modeling should throw caution to the wind concerning all current predictions.

A far more serious problem, however, is that it is not entirely certain that man-made CO2 emissions are, if fact, driving temperature change in the first place. Carbon dioxide is a relatively minor greenhouse gas and the statistical association of specific levels of carbon emissions with specific temperature change is not impressive. And while CO2 emissions have steadily increased for many decades (much of it from expanding industrial activity in India and China) the Earth’s temperature, though trending upward, has displayed a marked variability over time. This suggests that there may be other factors aside from CO2 that are actually driving temperature.

One of the more likely candidates that would explain the variability of temperature over time, not unexpectedly, is the variability associated with solar activity. Indeed, the correlation of solar activity (surface temperature changes, sun spot cycles) with temperature variability may be far more robust than any CO2/temperature association. Are increasing CO2 levels irrelevant? Probably not entirely, but it is yet to be established beyond doubt that CO2 levels are the primary culprit in any warming scenario.

Yet if CO2 levels are not the primary driver of temperature change, then the entire economic and political case for carbon taxes and other regulations on emissions is severely weakened. Why should we increase the cost and price of energy generated from oil and natural gas if reducing emissions would produce no discernible environmental benefit? After all, there is one thing in this debate that is absolutely certain: Raising energy prices would harm consumers of energy. It would lower the standard of living of everyone and hurt low income households the worst. Thus, even though some advocates of energy regulation would frame their case in lofty moral terms, there is simply nothing inherently moral about inflicting costs on society without any predictable social payoff.

Some of us are old enough to remember the media scare concerning global cooling in the early 1970s. We were all going to freeze in the dark unless the government did something post haste. That concern looks relatively silly today. Perhaps the same thing will be true about the current climate change hysteria.

SOURCE

New Book Trashes Greenhouse Gas Fake Science

As interest in a new book mounting a devastating attack on junk climate science gains traction we publish excerpts to show what the fuss is all about.

Canadian space scientist, Joseph E Postma’s new book ‘In the Cold Light of Day: Flat Earth in Modern Physics and a Numerical Proof for God: A Climate Alarm’ is a welcome addition to the growing body of carefully-researched work dismantling the cornerstone of man-made global warming.

Postma is well known for not pulling his punches in exposing the guilty in the biggest scientific fraud of all time. Below are a some excerpts to whet the appetite:

Introduction: This is a book which entirely debunks the pseudoscience of climate alarmism, and also disrupts the foundations of the entire field of climate science, and even science in general, itself. That climate alarmism is pseudoscience will be entirely proven within this book. Note that I am not a climate denier: I do not deny that the climate exists, and I do not deny that it changes. The term “climate denier” is just one of those loaded idiotic sophistical phrases that means exactly nothing, which is in fact the same foundation that the so-called science of climate alarmism rests upon. There is no such thing or such a person who denies the climate or denies climate change, and the joke here is that there are people who believe that there are other people who deny that the climate exists and deny climate change.

No one denies climate change, or the existence of the climate. I do deny alarming climate change based on climate science’s concept of a greenhouse effect, because the latter can be quite easily proven not to exist. I also deny that the climate is currently changing in an alarming way, given that geological history demonstrates that current changes in the climate are equivalent to nominal natural variations of the past. The only thing which is remarkably changing is the atmospheric concentration of gaseous carbon dioxide, and with no climate alarm greenhouse effect then this change will have none of the claimed alarming effects upon the temperature of the atmosphere of the planet Earth. The only real effect that an increased carbon dioxide concentration will have is that plant growth is enhanced, given that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric fertilizer of sorts. The entire situation of human carbon dioxide emission from combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is a win-win for humanity and for the planet: man gets cheap and abundant energy, and life gets the carbon dioxide it is made out of back into the atmosphere where the carbon dioxide can be turned back into more life once again through photosynthesis. If you’re pro-life, you should be pro-carbon dioxide.

The greatest travesty of climate alarmism based on its so-called greenhouse effect and so-called greenhouse gases is that the truly important questions in legitimate climate science aren’t being researched and answered. For example, we still don’t seem to really know why the current interglacial period has lasted so much longer than the previous ones. And it is still not clearly understood as to why the Earth was in a “little ice age” between 1300AD and 1850AD, why there was a warmer medieval period before that, and why the Earth came out of the little ice after 1850AD, etc. In fact, climate alarm science has made researching those legitimate questions taboo because they can only be answered by natural variations which have as large as or larger of an effect on the climate than so-called modern anthropogenic changes via the climate alarmist greenhouse effect, and that destroys the alarmist narrative that modern climate variation is not within the bounds of expected natural variation, which it is. It is almost as if someone doesn’t want research being done into the most important climate phenomena relevant to modern man, i.e., onset of ice ages, etc. We could have another ice-age begin, and all the historical data shows that one should have started by now, and we would have no idea why! The most difficult part of what you’re about to read is that it is unbelievable. Once you see what has happened, you won’t believe it to be possible that science has gotten itself into this position.

For a treatment such as this it is impossible to not to have to refer to thermodynamics and its mathematics in order to understand how nature works. Reality is governed by the physical principles and laws of physics which we can only understand and quantify through mathematics. I will have a lot to say about mathematics and its relevance and meaning in science, and we will have to use some mathematics too. For some sections, if you truly wish to follow the math along, it might be helpful for you to write down the equations on scrap paper as you read so that you can refer back to them given that sometimes a few pages may transpire between one equation and the next and it is often necessary to reference the previous equations. If math isn’t your thing, then just “read around” the math as I will do my best to explain what is going on.

About the subtitle of the book: Firstly, this book is nothing to do with supporting the ridiculous flat Earth meme which can be found around internet discussion forums these days. That part of the subtitle indicates that the flat Earth meme has actually been clandestinely if not accidentally inserted into modern physics to the extent that flat Earth theory is actually literally taught to science students by science professors in professional academic universities and their science departments. Yes, seriously.

The second part of the subtitle about a mathematical proof for “God” is meant in the proper philosophical Idealist sense, and I leave the development of concepts in this book to get you there. I could have written “universal noumenal mind” but no one would understand what that meant, and God is a somewhat near-enough substitute if you’re careful about what you mean by that, but it has all of the essential features a thinking person would expect in the aspects of it being omnipresent and omnipotent, immanent and transcendent, etc. ……

The tone of the book is at times hostile and mocking, but…well…sorry…once you see what is going on and what has happened, if you understand it, you should feel a lot more than that, or perhaps you’ll in fact only feel that it confirms just how bad things have gotten in supposed intellectual discourse.

I would like to thank the group of scientists known as “The Slayers” and the subsequent group Principia Scientific International (PSI) for the moral support over all these years of our climate alarm skepticism. There is not a single thing which is or has been enjoyable about this process and this position we have taken, and we have only had each other for consolation. We have survived because our position is unassailable, because there is no argument to prove that the Earth is flat….

You see, I can’t just point out to science colleagues that climate alarm is based in flat Earth theory, given its very own diagrams for its very own greenhouse effect upon which it is based. They don’t care. They literally don’t care. They value climate alarm and the culture of anti-human guilt more than they do what you think should be actual real science. And so instead I need to figure out how to write a scientific paper explaining with scientific and mathematical reasons that the Earth is not a flat plane, and that using a flat plane to do science is not real science let alone good, fair, or even approximate science…..

How easy should it be for science to reject flat Earth theory? It should be the easiest thing in the world. In fact it is the most difficult thing for science to do once flat Earth theory has inveigled its way in to becoming part of the modern science pedagogy. Science has no method for self-correction other than for generations to die…but in this case the generation that dies is the one who once understood that the Earth isn’t flat, and the new generation is the one which doesn’t care. It’s not that the new generation consciously believes that the Earth is flat…no, it is that the new generation doesn’t care about using flat Earth physics and they will defend the right of other scientists to do so because they cannot comprehend what could be wrong in doing so.

The sensation of education and of being educated has become identical to that of cognitive dissonance, and the subconscious cognitive dissonance of utilizing flat Earth theory on the one hand while ridiculing it on the other must feel so perfectly highly educated. How can science have arrived at any other result when it has been teaching students to just “shut up and calculate” instead of come up with a good reason for and understanding of the very math that they’re learning, and when it believes in cats which can be alive and dead at the same time? The ridiculous alive-dead cat idea and the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics itself from which it came is the quintessence of cognitive dissonance, and this sort of thinking (i.e., non-thinking or ceased thinking or thinking with a wrench in the gears) has become standard pedagogy in professional academic science. And so that is to say, to make it clear, that cognitive dissonance has become the standard for education in physics and academic science. If you are a physicist, you can only feel like you are educated if you carry around with you the mental state of constant cognitive dissonance. From Wikipedia: “In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.” ....

Scientists think that climate alarm is the most important thing that science and modern science has done for humanity, and none of them care that it is based in flat Earth theory and actually has no true scientific or logical or empirical foundations whatsoever. Scientists are strangely emotionally wedded to flat Earth climate alarm and all of its human-hating self-hatred overtones…..

We now live at a historical height of professionally instituted stupidity essentially mandated by law, worse than it has ever been because this state is now being claimed as highest reason by those who pass as intellectuals.

The absurdity of things today is that the intellectuals, the academics and the doctors of philosophy and of science profess themselves to be the epitome of reason while adopting the climatological consequences of flat Earth theory as their most important contribution to humanity in the modern age! And they do this because for them it feels like the right thing to do, for them it feels like the educated thing to do, because for them the mental discomfort of their cognitive dissonance has become synonymous by their education with right opinion.

SOURCE

Green Raw Deal: Carbon emissions continue to grow even as global economy, population and labor force continue to slow

Global carbon emissions continue to grow even as the global economy, population and labor force continue to slow down, showing that “green” policies designed to curb economic and population growth are having almost no impact on achieving the stated goal of reducing carbon emissions.

In 2018, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to 408.52 parts per million (ppm), according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In the meantime, the global economy has continued to slow down, according to data compiled by the World Bank, averaging 4.1 percent growth a year from 1961 to 1991, but then dropping to 2.8 percent annual growth for 1992 to 2017.

Similarly, the growth of the global labor force — those working or looking for work — has slowed, averaging 1.7 percent from 1992 to 2005, and then just 1.1 percent from 2006 to 2018.

So, too, has the overall growth the world’s population slowed down, once averaging 1.86 percent annual growth from 1961 to 1991, before slowing down to 1.3 percent average annual growth from 1992 to 2017.

It has been more than 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and almost three years since the Paris climate accords were implemented. But other than commitments from partner countries to reduce carbon emissions, not much has been accomplished on that front. Carbon emissions are still accelerating.

Another unknown is what technologies might be developed that could supplant carbon-emitting fuels if economic growth was occurring more rapidly. What if regulations in advanced economies designed to reduce carbon emissions were inhibiting the very growth that might produce more efficient energy sources?

In the meantime, those very regulations tend to create cost advantages for developing countries like China, fueling rapid industrialization there, and in turn accelerating carbon emissions.

All of which calls into question what, if anything, the policies are actually achieving. Besides harming the economy and redistributing global wealth to developing countries, that is.

In other words, the policies are not merely counterproductive, they are practically futile as they fuel economic growth elsewhere. And surely that futility is dawning on policymakers who still favor reducing carbon emissions, leading to calls for a “Green New Deal.”

But what is that? Vox.com’s David Roberts defines the new deal as “a massive program of investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure, meant to transform not just the energy sector, but the entire economy. It is meant both to decarbonize the economy and to make it fairer and more just.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined in its most recent report that “Limiting the risks from global warming of 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication implies system transitions that can be enabled by an increase of adaptation and mitigation investments, policy instruments, the acceleration of technological innovation and behaviour changes…”

The Panel also calls for “[s]trengthening the capacities for climate action of national and sub-national authorities…” in order to avert what it views as catastrophic global warming, per its report.

So, economies will continue to be transformed via “system transitions” to green energy that will be directed by national authorities with increased powers to implement the green political program.

If it sounds somewhat vague that’s probably the point. In short, that means fewer choices, fewer opportunities and more dictates coming from on high until governments hit the numbers they’re hoping for on carbon emissions, if ever. Vox.com’s Roberts notes that green programs hit roadblocks when conservatives won elections in the UK in 2009 and Republicans began to take back Congress in 2010 from total Democratic control.

So, the obstacles to the “Green New Deal” are: 1) continued economic growth, even if it is slowing, particularly in developing economies, but also everywhere else; 2) a growing population with greater energy needs, even if its growth is continuing to slow; and 3) party politics that prevent these unpopular policies from being fully implemented.

Meaning those touting pushes to reduce carbon emissions are being frustrated not only by the slowness by which democracies make decisions, but also by economic and demographic realities.

Since the industrial revolution, the world’s population has exploded as mechanization has led to abundance in agriculture, transportation and construction. All of which was fueled by the dramatic increased use of carbon-emitting fuels. It stands to reason, that to reduce the incidence of carbon emissions, one way would be to reduce the number of carbon emitters.

Hopefully the true believers have not come to that realization yet.

But to be sure, the policy is failing, as evidenced by the acceleration of carbon emissions growth, even as advanced economies take it upon themselves to slow down their growth and attempt to regulate coal and oil out of usage. Instead, the cost advantages generated are fueling growth elsewhere via globalization, leading to more carbon emissions.

On the whole, political ideologies do not tolerate obstacles for very long. Eventually, this will lead to a call for action. The obstacles must be removed. And make no mistake. Those pushing for the “Green New Deal” are calling for a revolution. The question is just how much of our freedoms are in the crosshairs?

SOURCE

Trump chooses oil man to head the Interior Department

LOL

President Trump on Monday announced he would nominate David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist and current deputy chief of the Interior Department, to succeed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned amid allegations of ethical missteps.

In a message on Twitter, Trump wrote, “David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!”

While Zinke had been the public face of some of the largest rollbacks of public-land protections in the nation’s history, Bernhardt was the one quietly pulling the levers to carry them out, opening millions of acres of public land and water to oil, gas and coal companies. He is described by allies and opponents alike as having played a crucial role in advancing what Trump has described as an “energy dominance” agenda for the country.

“Bernhardt has really been running the show, directing the policy shop in a very strong way,” said Mark Squillace, an expert on environmental law at University of Colorado Law School. Echoing a frequent critique of Bernhardt, Squillace emphasized that the former energy lobbyist and lawyer, if confirmed by the Senate, would have broad authority to shape rules that affect his former clients.

Trump has pushed the Interior Department to strip away regulations on the oil industry and open new lands and waters to drilling.

After Trump ordered Zinke to open almost the entire U.S. coastline to offshore drilling, Bernhardt did the heavy lifting of developing the plan, which Zinke called “a new path for energy dominance in America.” And when the president told the department to weaken safety regulations on offshore drilling equipment, the agency’s proposal said its plan “would fortify the administration’s objective of facilitating energy dominance” by encouraging domestic oil and gas production.

As Bernhardt prepares to take the helm, he is well aware that he will face accusations of conflicts of interest. The issue came up repeatedly in his 2017 Senate confirmation hearing for the deputy job.

Bernhardt was narrowly confirmed to his current post by a vote of 53-43, with most Democrats voting against him. He is likely to face further scrutiny in his next confirmation hearings. If enough Democrats opposed his nomination, they could block a procedural motion requiring 60 votes to bring his confirmation to the Senate floor.

Bernhardt, who was also a top interior official in the George W. Bush administration, went on to work for some of the country’s largest oil and gas companies. As a partner in the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, he lobbied for the oil companies Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. His legal clients have included the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Halliburton Energy Services, the oil- and gas-extraction firm once led by Dick Cheney, the former vice president.

In August 2017, Bernhardt signed an ethics letter saying he would recuse himself from policy decisions that might stand to benefit former clients specifically.

If confirmed, Bernhardt will lead a sprawling department that oversees the nation’s nearly 500 million acres of public land, including vast national monuments and protected wilderness areas. Already, in little more than a year as the department’s deputy, he has overseen numerous polices aimed at opening public lands and waters to mining, drilling, farming and other development.

Environmentalists see him as a threat. “David Bernhardt is the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, adding that he “has been dismantling basic protections for lands that belong to all of us and the vulnerable species, like the sage grouse, that depend on them.”

This year, Bernhardt oversaw the revision of a program to protect tens of millions of acres of habitat of the imperiled sage grouse, a puffy-chested, chickenlike bird that roams over 10 oil-rich Western states. His proposal to change that plan, made public in December, would strip protections from about 9 million acres of the sage grouse habitat, a move that would open more land to oil and gas drilling than any other single policy action by the Trump administration.

Bernhardt has also helped shepherd policies such as loosening the standards of the Endangered Species Act, speeding the path to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to new oil and gas drilling, and reducing the boundaries of national monuments to open the land to mining and drilling.

Among the first major decisions awaiting Bernhardt will be how to handle the administration’s plan to open the nation’s coastlines to offshore drilling — one of the issues for which Zinke is under investigation. After the Trump administration in early 2018 announced it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all U.S. coastal waters, Zinke made a surprise announcement a few days later on Twitter that he would exempt Florida from that plan.

The statement, which was accompanied by a photograph of Zinke and Rick Scott, the former Florida governor who was then running for a Senate seat, was seen as politically motivated. A federal investigation is continuing into whether it violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their offices to influence elections.

Governors of other coastal states have said that they, too, would like to be exempt from the drilling, and that if the plan to exempt Florida but not other states goes forward, they will sue the department.

Bernhardt will now decide whether to enact Zinke’s pledge to Scott, who went on to win his Senate campaign.

SOURCE

Green policies are wrecking Australia

Viv Forbes, writing below, is a farmer and a geologist. He seems a bit weak on economics however. Most of what he says below is well said but he should have been more circumspect about the prospect of recycling abundant coastal water into the dry interior. It is a proposal that seems commonsense and so has been rumbling on for decades but all the studies tell us it would be a big boondoggle.

The cost of doing it would be large and the benefit small. It would allow the growing of more crops and the raising of more cattle but most primary products have long been in worldwide glut. As a farmer Viv should know that. Only the most efficient producers can make a buck selling primary products --- and even efficient farmers can go broke if they are not close to their markets. Transport is a large component of costs.

It was all shown unambiguously in the Ord experiment. They could grow anything there and did but they could not sell it. The Ord was reasonably close to the huge markets of Asia but Asians wanted to grow their own rice and other food, thank you very much. All that the Ord grows now for export is sandalwood -- no food

There is an existing market for products from inland Australia -- when drought allows -- but increasing the volume produced would undoubtedly decrease prices, which would be pretty self-defeating and could send ALL the inland farmers broke. A good use of taxpayer funds? Australia certainly needs more dams for both flood control and water supply -- but only to serve nearby big cities

There is even a lot of scope for barrages. They are simple and cheap and should not arouse much in the way of Greenie objections. The barrage on the Fitzroy does a good job of providing the city of Rockhamption with potable water. A barrage on the Brisbane river just upstream of the port could be very useful.

It would be a better alternative to Brisbane's absurd and costly desalination plant. From a Greenie viewpoint a desalination plant is part of the problem. It uses heaps of electricity every time it is switched on. A barrage just sits there

Water conservation peaked in Australia in 1972 – our last big dam was Wivenhoe in Queensland, built 35 years ago.

Elsewhere in Australia, water conservation virtually stopped when Don Dunstan halted the building of Chowilla Dam on the Murray in 1970 and Bob Brown's Greens halted the Franklin Dam in 1983 (and almost every other dam proposal since then).

The Darling River water management disaster shows that we now risk desperate water shortages because our population and water needs have more than doubled, and much of our stored water has been sold off or released to "the environment."

However, we regularly see floods of water being shed by the Great Dividing Range, most of it ending up in the Pacific Ocean, while to the west of that watershed there is severe drought.

Our ancestors had the prudence and the will to build great assets like the Tasmanian and Snowy hydro schemes, Lake Argyle, Fairbairn Dam, and the Perth to Kalgoorlie water pipeline. What are we building for our children?

Politicians can pass laws or find money for games, stadiums, climate jamborees, study tours, gifts to foreigners, green energy toys, and useless giant batteries. Canberra alone spends a billion dollars every day.

Our engineers know how to lay large pipelines over hundreds of miles to export natural gas and bore road and rail tunnels through mountains and under cities and harbors.

But we cannot find the funds or the courage to build a couple of dams on the rainy side of the Great Divide somewhere between the Ross River at Townsville and the Clarence River at Grafton and some pumps, tunnels and pipes to use and release it into the thirsty Darling River basin.

Someone is always cursing either droughts or floods.

We need to curse less and dam more.

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

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

6 February, 2019

New study warns loss of up to two-thirds of Himalaya’s glaciers

Another "Report". I can tell you what a "report" is. It is a piece of research that is too sloppy to get into any academic journal. In this case however the "report" is a 600 page free book: The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. I have had a look at it and it is mostly prophecy based on conventional Warmist assumptions but there is one chapter (3) which offers actual evidence for warming in the region. It talks of "rapid warming" but when we drill down to the figures we find that:

"The number of cold nights reduced by 1 night per decade and the number of cold days reduced by 0.5 days per decade"

Wow! is all I can say. It looks like warming in the Himalayas is even more trivial than in the globe as a whole. Move along, people, nothing to see here. I know I am wasting my time reading all this Warmist crap but someone with a functioning brain has got to do it

Two-thirds of Himalayan glaciers, the world’s “Third Pole”, could melt by 2100 if global emissions are not reduced, scientists warned in a major new study.

And even if the “most ambitious” Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is achieved, one-third of the glaciers would go, according to the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment.

Glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region are a critical water source for some 250 million people in the mountains as well as to 1.65 billion others in the river valleys below, the report said.

The glaciers feed 10 of the world’s most important river systems, including the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Mekong and Irrawaddy, and directly or indirectly supply billions of people with food, energy, clean air and income.

Impacts on people from their melting will range from worsened air pollution to more extreme weather, while lower pre-monsoon river flows will throw urban water systems and food and energy production off-kilter, the study warned.

As the glaciers shrink, hundreds of risky glacial lakes that could burst and unleash floods have formed in the foothills of the mountains, which include giants such as Everest and K2.

The new report was published by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal, one of eight countries on the front line.

Five years in the making, it involved more than 350 researchers and policy experts, 185 organisations, 210 authors, 20 review editors and 125 external reviewers.

“Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks... cutting across eight countries to bare rocks in a little less than a century,” Philippus Wester of ICIMOD, who led the report, said in a statement.

“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,” he added.

SOURCE

Rep. Tlaib Promotes Using Eminent Domain to Seize GM Property to Create ‘Green New Deal’

On Friday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) promoted and quoted a video calling for the government to use eminent domain to seize plants closed by companies like General Motors (GM) – and use those plants to create Tlaib’s “Green New Deal.”

Tlaib tweeted a new video created by Greater Detroit Democratic Socialists of America, “Make the Green New Deal a Reality,” quoting its last line advocating using government to “take control” of corporate production capacity:

"Either we can continue to let corporations, who treat our communities and workers like disposable resources, dictate our fate, or we can take control of our situation, and use our productive capacity to address our common crisis.#GreenNewDeal"

If a company like GM closes a plant, the government should “use eminent domain to take it back and use it for the people,” the video argues:

“If companies, like General Motors, won’t keep their plants open, even after accepting massive, public-funded bailouts, let’s take them back and use them to make the Green New Deal a reality.

“After all, GM used eminent domain in the 80’s to destroy a low-income neighborhood in Hamtramck. If they can destroy an entire community to build a plant, only to abandon it later, why can’t we use eminent domain to take it back and use it for the people?

“We have the ability. Now, all we need is the public will.”

The video advocates seizing property from profit-hungry corporations to create “engines of the Green New Deal”:

“What was once used to generate corporate profit can now be used, not only to create good union jobs, but also to build the sustainable energy future we so desperately need.” ... “We only need the political will to convert these abandoned plants into the engines of the green new deal.”

A full transcript of the video’s closing call for using eminent domain to take corporate property is below:

Generations have been lost to poverty, with little hope for the future, and an ecological nightmare threatens life as we know it.

Yet, there is a silver lining in this tragedy. Through this abandonment, we have inherited a massive amount of used industrial capacity. What was once used to generate corporate profit can now be used, not only to create good union jobs, but also to build the sustainable energy future we so desperately need.

This is an unparalleled opportunity that combines both our proven potential for massive industrial output along with the urgent need for a new, green infrastructure to halt the climate crisis. This could be a historic victory for both economic justice and ecological sanity.

We only need the political will to convert these abandoned plants into the engines of the green new deal.

If companies, like General Motors, won’t keep their plants open, even after accepting massive, public-funded bailouts, let’s take them back and use them to make the Green New Deal a reality.

After all, GM used eminent domain in the 80’s to destroy a low-income neighborhood in Hamtramck. If they can destroy an entire community to build a plant, only to abandon it later, why can’t we use eminent domain to take it back and use it for the people?

We have the ability. Now, all we need is the public will.

Either we can continue to let corporations, who treat our communities and workers like disposable resources, dictate our fate, or we can take control of our situation, and use our productive capacity to address our common crisis.

SOURCE

Columbus Caused Climate Change?

Christopher Columbus started the Little Ice Age! That’s right — not only was that Genoese devil responsible for unleashing the scourge of Europeans upon the Americas, but now, according to a recent study released by researchers at University College London (UCL), he was also responsible for causing climate change.

You see, Columbus’s discovery of the New World brought disease from Europe that unleashed a genocide upon millions of Indigenous Peoples™ whose disappearance subsequently resulted in a massive overgrowth of vegetation across previously farmed land in Central, South, and North America. This surge in forestation tanked global CO2 levels, which in turn cooled the planet and threw it into a mini ice age.

Evidently, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution, with its massive increase in the burning of fossil fuels, that enough CO2 was produced to reverse the cooling trend.

Now that pesky fact often cited by skeptics of the dogma of anthropogenic climate change — that the 17th century’s Little Ice Age was caused by natural forces rather than human activity — can finally be refuted. In fact, it can now be argued that mankind was actually entirely responsible for causing the Little Ice Age as well as this current global-warming phenomenon.

Not only that, but it can be concluded that Europeans (white people) are most responsible for causing climate change. UCL geography professor Mark Maslin argued, “The really weird thing is, the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue the domination.” Check and mate! How’s that for killing two birds with one stone? Oh, wait — that analogy is no longer PC. It’s feeding two birds with one scone.

Never mind the fact that during the era known as the Little Ice Age, the sun was in the Maunder Minimum, a period of 28 years in which fewer than 50 sunspots were observed. Contrast that with the modern era, when there have been between 40,000 and 50,000 sunspots. To be clear, correlation does not prove causation, but it does raise the question. And it’s a far more scientifically plausible theory than blaming Columbus and his crew of Europeans for climate change.

SOURCE

The Three Major Problems with a Carbon Tax

When it comes to energy policy, Washington has one resource that appears infinitely renewable: carbon-tax proposals.

Al Gore proposed a carbon tax back in 1992. The Clinton administration tried, and failed, to impose a “Btu” tax on all forms of energy. The latest iteration of the carbon tax is the “carbon dividend” plan, which was endorsed last month by a group of Nobel-winning economists, chairs of the Federal Reserve, and two former Treasury secretaries.

Proponents claim that a carbon tax would be the most cost-effective way to cut carbon-dioxide emissions. But the carbon tax keeps running aground. There are three big problems with the concept: It would disproportionately hurt low-income consumers, it would inevitably be watered down by special interests, and it would have to be imposed on our trading partners.

* The regressive effects are well known. Even if, as many proponents suggest, the proceeds of the tax were paid out to consumers on a quarterly basis rather than being used to fund the government, having to wait months to recover the extra money they’ve spent could cause financial stress for poor and working-class families.

A 2012 study by scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute found that the carbon-tax burden “would comprise 3.5 percent of the income of the poorest decile of households and only 0.6 percent of the income of the highest decile.” For low-income workers, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck, such a tax — which would mean higher prices for nearly everything — would impose a major burden. Higher energy prices would be particularly burdensome, and the payments less likely to fully cover the costs, for workers and tradesmen who live in rural areas and must drive long distances to get to and from their job sites.

* Second, a carbon tax would be targeted by armies of lobbyists, with some aiming to kill it and others aiming to get a dispensation. In 1993, the Washington Post reported that the Clinton administration was abandoning the Btu tax because it had underestimated “the opposition the tax would face from manufacturers, farmers and the energy industry.” Last November, voters in Washington State defeated a carbon-tax proposal known as Initiative 1631 by a wide margin. That tax would have exempted aviation and maritime fuel, as well as “energy intensive, trade-dependent” businesses such as steel plants, aluminum producers, and pulp and paper mills.

* The stickiest problem with the carbon tax is the problem of “border carbon adjustments,” which is another name for the tariffs that would be imposed on imported goods and services. Such tariffs will be needed, supporters say, to prevent “carbon leakage” (i.e., carbon-intensive manufacturing moving overseas) and “enhance the competitiveness of American firms that are more energy-efficient than their global competitors.” That border adjustment would require calculating the greenhouse-gas footprint of nearly every single thing we import. Imagine what it might mean for a big manufacturer like Boeing, which produces airplanes with parts that are manufactured and imported from multiple countries. Some of those parts are themselves made from parts and commodities imported from still other countries. Keeping track of all of those carbon flows, and avoiding constant disputes over the accuracy of the data, will be an accounting nightmare.

In addition to determining the right level of tariff, a carbon tax must overcome the “free-rider” problem. William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale University who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for his work on climate-change policy, is a long-time advocate for a carbon tax. Nordhaus has underscored the “importance of near-universal participation in programs to reduce greenhouse gases.” In 2007, he estimated that if only half of the world’s countries agreed to participate in a carbon-tax effort, there would be an “abatement cost penalty of 250 percent.” In other words, the countries that have imposed the carbon tax will have to more than double their carbon-tax rates in order to compensate for the free-riding countries.

Moreover, rich and poor countries alike have consistently prioritized economic growth over substantive action on climate change. University of Colorado professor and author Roger Pielke Jr. has dubbed this the Iron Law of Climate Policy: “When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out every time.” It will be especially difficult for the U.S. to get poorer countries to jump on the carbon-tax bandwagon, seeing as the average American uses five times as much electricity as the average Brazilian, ten times as much as the average Iraqi, and 16 times as much as the average Indian.

The history of international efforts to ban land mines shows how difficult it will be to impose a worldwide carbon tax. Land mines are ghastly weapons that seldom hit their intended targets. Nearly 90 percent of the people who are killed or maimed by them are civilians. All around the world, large swaths of usable land have been declared off limits to farming and human use owing to the danger of abandoned, unexploded land mines.

The effort to ban land mines has garnered widespread support. According to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, 164 countries have signed the Mine Ban Treaty, which was first adopted in 1997, the same year that the Kyoto Protocol was signed. But just as the Kyoto Protocol hasn’t had much success in limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, 32 countries still haven’t signed the mine-ban treaty, including the United States, China, India, and Russia. Thus, despite universal agreement on the awfulness of land mines, and decades of concerted effort, there is still no worldwide agreement to ban them.

If we can’t get an agreement to ban land mines, how will we ever get an enforceable international agreement to tax coal, oil, and natural gas, which together currently provide 85 percent of the world’s energy?

Proponents claim carbon taxes are essential in the fight against climate change. That may be true. But my guess is that we will see a universal agreement to ban land mines before we see a substantial levy imposed on the fuels that drive the global economy.

SOURCE

UN to be told: stop fighting Australian Coal mine

Australia will formally reject the UN’s intervention over the Adani coalmine, accusing it of blindly accepting inaccurate claims of green activists and dismissing the majority support of indigenous landholders.

After lobbying by US law firm Earth Justice, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year publicly urged the Morrison government to suspend the Carmichael project as it had not been approved by “all native title claimants”.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan yesterday said the Morrison government would write to the UN committee to formally correct the “clear errors” in its understanding of Australian law.

Senator Canavan said the UN had accepted incorrect claims that 2017 legislation enshrining majority rule within indigenous groups when considering land-use agreements was designed to undermine land rights.

He said the amendments, which followed the Federal Court’s McGlade ruling, had been widely backed by individual indigenous groups, the representative Native Title Council and Labor.

“They insinuated that these changes were effectively made to limit indigenous rights or somehow advantage this evil Adani project. This is just a massive misunderstanding of what happened,” Senator Canavan said.

“They were done after significant consultation with those groups and with the national Native Title Council.

“They helped protect over 200 indigenous land-use agreements which provide benefits to indigenous people which would have been put at risk without the agreements.”

The committee said it was “particularly concerned” by the 2017 law, derided by activists as the “Adani amendment”, to ensure indigenous land-use agreements needed only majority support among traditional owners. In Adani’s case, the indigenous land-use agreement with the Wangan and Jagalingou people was endorsed by 294 of 295 clan members in a 2016 ballot, after years of consultation with the Indian company.

Queensland’s Labor government is holding up the Adani project over the company’s plan to manage the area’s population of black-throated finches.

The government has received an independent review of the plan by environmental scientist Brendan Wintle, but last night missed Adani’s 5pm deadline to deliver the report.

Adani has accused the government of “shifting the goalposts” on its project, while the Liberal National Party said Labor was delaying the final go-ahead to prevent the issue becoming a distraction for Bill Shorten ahead of the federal election due in May.

Labor backed the native title amendment after a court judgment added a “high degree of uncertainty” by requiring votes approving land-use agreement to be carried unanimously.

Senator Canavan suggested the committee do its own research.

“International organisations seem to take as given claims made by vested interests in the big environmental movement,” he said.

The W&J Family Council — a minority group of traditional owners opposed to the mine — has criticised the legal change as an “Adani amendment” designed specifically to prop-up the “dodgy” land-use deal, which includes $250 million of economic opportunities.

However, traditional owners last week wrote to the UN insisting that the majority of clan members still supported the agreement with Adani.

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

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

5 February, 2019

Keep fraudulent science out of our courtrooms

Courts should bar evidence that fails to meet basic standards of honesty, integrity and credibility

Paul Driessen

A California jury recently awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million) to a former groundskeeper, who claimed the weed killer glyphosate caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Monsanto deliberately or negligently failed to warn him adequately about the chemical’s cancer risks.

The case is on appeal, and a second trial will soon begin before U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who himself has 620 more glyphosate cases on his docket. Overall, more than 9,300 additional cases are in the works against Monsanto and its new owner, Bayer – and personal injury mass-tort law firms are trolling for more alleged victims. “If you were ever exposed to glyphosate and now have cancer, you may be entitled to damages. Call us now,” their print, radio and television ads proclaim.

If the allegations are correct, compensatory and even punitive damage awards would be justified, though what might be “reasonable” damages is very much open to debate. However, reputable evidence strongly suggests that there is no connection between glyphosate use and lymphomas or other cancers.

In fact, the two cases and indeed the entire mega-litigation argument hinges on one study – and Judge Chhabria had to decide whether it would be admissible at the upcoming trial. Unfortunately, he ruled that plaintiff lawyers could introduce that study as evidence, despite the multiple deceptions surrounding it.

Many experts say the study is highly suspect, bordering on fraudulent, and should have been barred.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer. Introduced in 1974 and licensed in 130 countries, it is the world’s most widely used herbicide. Millions of homeowners use it regularly. Farmers employ it with “Roundup-Ready” corn, soybeans and other crops that are engineered to be resistant to it, so as to minimize weeding and tilling, preserve soil structure, and reduce erosion and water evaporation.

Farmers also like it, says cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat, “because it is environmentally benign and has low toxicity.” In fact, he says, “the acute toxicity of glyphosate is lower than that of table salt.”

Multiple studies by respected organizations worldwide have concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic. Reviewers include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, Health Canada, Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, and others

The U.S. Agricultural Health Study conducted by the U.S. National Cancer Institute followed the health of 54,000 farmers and commercial pesticide applicators for over two decades. It found no glyphosate-cancer link. The AHS is ongoing and is by far the most extensive such study ever done.

Only one agency, the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), says otherwise. IARC does no research of its own. It simply reviews existing research and classifies chemicals as definitely, probably or possibly a cause of cancer in humans – often at extremely high doses that humans are extremely unlikely to encounter in the real world. Nor does the agency conduct “risk assessments” to determine exposure levels at which chemicals might actually have adverse effects on people.

In fact, some chemicals may cause cancer at extremely high doses, but be completely harmless at levels encountered in our daily lives. Other substances are harmful at high doses but beneficial or vital at very low doses; not having them in our bodies at certain low levels can cause severe health problems.

To date, IARC has studied over 900 substances – and found only one was “probably not carcinogenic.” Its antiquated approach lumps bacon, sausage, sunlight and plutonium together in its “definitely carcinogenic” category. Its list of “possible” carcinogens includes pickled vegetables and caffeic acid, which is found in coffee, tea, apples, blueberries, broccoli, kale, onions and other fruits and vegetables.

Glyphosate is listed as “probably” cancer-causing, along with creosote, inorganic lead compounds, malathion, many big-word chemicals, high-temperature frying, red meat and “very hot beverages”!

Groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson has said he somehow got “drenched” twice by glophosate. But in each case he failed to take a shower or wash the chemical off, follow other standard or specific detoxification procedures that anyone should follow for chemical accidents like this, or seek immediate medical attention (likewise standard procedure). Perhaps his legal team could make a plausible argument that getting drenched twice constituted the extremely high doses that IARC often cites as carcinogenic.

However, IARC’s secretive, sloppy, bungled – or even systematically and deliberately fraudulent – handling of its glyphosate review makes even that possibility little more than pseudo-evidence that should be barred from Johnson’s case, the Edwin Hardeman case, and all other glyphosate trials.

IARC supposedly based its 2015 glyphosate-causes-cancer finding on evidence from rodent studies. However, subsequent reviews by Dr. Kabat, National Cancer Institute statistician Robert Tarone, investigative journalists Kate Kelland and David Zaruk, and other investigators confirmed that the IARC process was tainted beyond repair from the very beginning.

IARC’s glyphosate review was proposed by U.S. government statistician Christopher Portier, who also helped design the study and served as special advisor to the IARC “working group” that evaluated the chemical. He did so while also being paid as an advisor to the anti-chemical Environmental Defense Fund. Then, just days after IARC issued its ruling, Portier signed a contract to receive $160,000 for serving as a litigation consultant for two law firms that were preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of “glyphosate cancer victims.” Portier and IARC tried to cover up these blatant conflicts of interest.

Tarone discovered that, during its deliberations, the IARC panel highlighted certain positive results from rodent studies it relied on – while ignoring contradictory results from the same studies. Overall, the data do not support the agency’s claim that glyphosate is carcinogenic, he determined.

Kelland found ten instances where “a negative conclusion about glyphosate leading to tumors was either deleted or replaced with a neutral or positive one” between draft and final versions of the IARC report. Portier himself admitted the animal studies subgroup report concluding “limited evidence” of carcinogenicity somehow got upgraded to “sufficient evidence” for the final report.

Just as disturbing, the chair of IARC’s glyphosate Working Group was also a senior investigator for the AHS pesticide and herbicide analysis. He knew the AHS results clearly exonerated glyphosate as a carcinogen. However, he did not inform the Group about those results, on the spurious ground that they had not yet been published. He later admitted that the study would likely have altered IARC’s decision.

Kabat says “IARC had to cherry-pick the results from two mouse studies in order to make its tortured case that the animal evidence supported a conclusion of carcinogenicity.” IARC also did not have access to the 2017 National Cancer Institute study and apparently ignored the 2015 AHS analysis.

The 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals requires that, in cases like these glyphosate cancer claims, plaintiffs must prove to the presiding judge’s satisfaction that the scientific evidence they intend to present is relevant and reliable. It must have been tested and/or peer-reviewed against accepted standards, must be accepted in the applicable scientific community, and must meet basic standards of honesty, integrity and credibility.

IARC’s claim that glyphosate is carcinogenic is such an outlier, so beneath scientific norms, so tainted by conflicts of interest and misconduct, so unrelated to actual chemical risks – indeed so deceptive and borderline fraudulent – that it should never have been admitted as evidence in any glyphosate trial.

It is bad enough that these cancer trials are driven by emotional appeals to jurors’ largely misplaced fears of chemicals and minimal knowledge of chemicals, chemical risks, medicine and cancer. It is far worse when our courts let these lawsuits also be driven by the scientific misconduct of one agency, IARC.

If the lower courts cannot or will not rein in these abuses, the Supreme Court will have to revisit Daubert.

Via email

Here’s What You Need To Know About the Great ‘Polar Vortex’ of 2019

More than 220 Americans experienced the coldest weather in decades over the past few days as a “polar vortex” bought Arctic air rushing south, forcing schools and factories to close, grounding flights and stopping mail deliveries.

The cold became deadly in many parts of the eastern U.S., resulting in at least 23 dead amid the subzero temperatures. Natural gas systems strained to keep the heat on in parts of Michigan and Minnesota.

It was so cold Hell literally froze over. The Michigan town of Hell shut down because of the cold, forcing residents to go to their local “warming center,” which happened to be a saloon. The joke was not lost on local residents, who heartily embraced it, according to WTHR.

Grand Forks, North Dakota recorded eight consecutive hours of negative 65-degree wind chill, Accuweather reported. Chicago hit a low of negative 23 degrees — the coldest weather they’ve seen since the 1980s.

Wind chill hit negative 77 degrees Fahrenheit in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, Tuesday evening. The state also saw the lowest actual temperature recorded during the Arctic blast — negative 56 degrees in Cotton on Thursday morning.

Minneapolis was 28 degrees below zero Wednesday morning, the coldest temperature since 1996. The night before, Minneapolis went 14 consecutive hours with wind chill under 50 degrees, Accuweather noted.

“Cold weather is sort of the fabric of this region,” Kenny Blumenfeld, a senior climatologist at Minnesota’s State Climatologist Office, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Living through brutal cold is sort of “like bragging rights,” Blumenfeld said in an interview. “This one is a little bit of a throwback to the olden days when we used to have more of these,” he said.

And that’s what the observational data shows — a decrease in extreme cold, in particular in middle America and the Northeast. Scientists say extreme cold snaps will become less frequent if temperatures rise.

However, many in the media sought to tie the extreme cold to man-made global warming. Reporters put out a slew of stories — virtually all interviewing the same two scientists — to push the theory.

The idea is melting Arctic sea ice causes the circumpolar vortex to weaken and more easily spill freezing air into the midlatitudes. Many scientists, including state climatologists, don’t see the evidence to back it up.

“Tying the polar vortex to global warming is a bit of a stretch,” Dr. Adnan Akyüz, North Dakota’s state climatologist, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Our winter are not as cold as they used to be 100 years ago,” Akyüz said. “Wintertime temperatures are increasing the fastest.”

Cold “benchmarks” have become less common, according to Akyüz. Extreme cold that used to happen every year has decreased to once a decade or so, he said. For example, the number of days at zero degrees or lower in Fargo have trended down since peaking in 1883.

North Dakota’s winters have warmed roughly 5 degrees over the last century, but, like much of the region, this is mostly warming of low temperatures readings taken in the early morning.

Blumenfeld said Minnesota’s winters were warming ten times faster than summer, but cautioned not to mistake that for the state getting “hotter.” Summertime highs haven’t changed much, he said, adding that some areas have summertime cooling trends.

“We’re still as hot as we’ve always been, just not as cold,” Blumenfeld said. “The climate we’ve had is always going to be in play.”

In fact, Minnesota is among a group of states to see summertime cooling trends, according to recent research that found agriculture operations actually cooled Midwest regions from 1950 to 2009.

A similar study released in 2018 also found seasonal cooling over the eastern U.S. between 1961 and 2015. The so-called “warming hole” appears over the southeastern U.S. in late winter and spring, but move to the Midwest in the summer and fall.

But don’t think Minnesota, North Dakota and other northern states aren’t cold anymore. “What this event really tells us is that we can still get very cold,” Akyuz said, adding the most recent polar vortex brought the coldest temperatures in roughly a decade.

SOURCE

House Democrats To Hold Global Warming Hearing After Massive Cold Front Sweeps Across Nation

Democrats in control of the House Energy and Commerce Committee set a date for the chamber’s first hearing on global warming in six years.

The hearing is scheduled for next week, February 6, after the coldest weather in decades for many parts of the U.S. is forecast to subside.

A “polar vortex” event brought record-cold to the Midwest and Great Plains, forcing factories to close, straining energy systems and leaving at least 11 dead.

Meteorologists forecast a rapid thaw in the coming days with temperatures rising 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Illinois and other areas.

Washington, D.C. is expected to see temperatures in the 50s when the climate hearing is scheduled.

Democrats want to make tackling global warming a central part of their 2019 agenda, and top committee chairs plan a series of hearings on the matter.

House energy and commerce Democrats will be the first to take up the climate crusade this year.

“Year after year, politicians have ignored this threat and denied the science. We can’t afford to let them stand in the way any longer,” Rep. Paul Tonko, a subcommittee chair who will head the hearing, said in a video statement released Wednesday night.

The hearing would focus on the “cost of inaction on climate pollution” and “how a just transition to a clean energy economy” would help the economy and environment, Tonko said.

“We are committed to taking action.” Tonko said. “We believe the science, we understand the urgency and we are committed to getting results.”

What also remains to be seen is if House Democrats take up calls for a “Green New Deal” being pushed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several 2020 hopefuls.

Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey are set to unveil “Green New Deal” legislation as soon as next week.

SOURCE

Natural Gas Shortage Hits Midwest Amid ‘Polar Vortex,’ Forces GM To Halt Work at 13 Plants

Midwest states are experiencing natural gas shortages amid subzero temperatures, including in Michigan where GM shuttered more than a dozen plants and told thousands of employees to work from home.

GM halted work at four assembly plants and nine supporting facilities Wednesday night after utility Consumer energy asked customers to help conserve natural gas, Automotive News reported.

GM also asked “about 20,000 employees at its Warren Tech Center and 4,000 at the Pontiac Propulsion campus to work from home through at least Friday,” according to Crain’s Detroit.

A “polar vortex” event brought record-cold, subzero temperatures into the Midwest Wednesday. The cold has persisted and led to a record-low negative 13 degrees Fahrenheit in Detroit Thursday morning.

Fiat Chrysler Ford Motor Co. also cut natural gas use and interrupted production schedules, AN reported. Fiat canceled a shift at two assembly plants and was considering canceling more to further reduce energy use.

Local news reports point to “a fire at a utility’s suburban Detroit facility” that forced Consumer Energy to ask customers to use less energy. CEO Patti Poppe told Detroit News that “localized planned curtailments” would be needed if energy isn’t reduced enough.

Consumer Energy has a severe weather warning out for customers, warning the extreme cold “could cause outages.”

However, the utility reported only a few dozen people without power as of Thursday morning.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also asked residents to turn down thermostats to 65 degrees Fahrenheit or less to conserve power.

Utility DTE Energy is also asking consumers to use less energy to ensure grid reliability. The utility said that while it’s own lines were performing well, “our system is connected to energy grids in other states and Canada that are experiencing issues due to the extreme weather.”

Michigan isn’t alone. Utility Xcel Energy asked customers in parts of Minnesota to reduce natural gas usage to prevent widespread outages. Customers have been asked to turn thermostats down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Minnesota has suffered through wind chills in the negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit range beginning Wednesday. Minneapolis was negative 21 degrees Thursday morning, with an expected high of negative 1 degree.

CBS Minnesota reported that “more than 7,000 lost power in the metro Tuesday evening” due to equipment failures. Power has since been restored.

SOURCE

Don’t Buy The Carbon Dioxide Tax Myth – It Just Means More Government Control

The carbon dioxide tax is like the Hydra of myth. Every time some hero cut one of the Hydra’s heads off, two more sprang up in its place. The same is true for the carbon dioxide tax. Every time a version of the carbon dioxide tax is proposed, economists and other analysts deftly cut its head off, showing its promises of climate salvation and economic prosperity to be false, myths like the Hydra itself, yet two more versions of the tax arise.

Progressives and socialists embrace the carbon dioxide tax myth to promote more government control, their control, over the economy and peoples’ lives.

Sadly, a number of old mossback, Rockefeller Republicans have also embraced the myth of the carbon dioxide tax. The main attraction for them seems to be their belief they can create a revenue-neutral carbon dioxide tax. For them, it’s just a matter of political engineering. The problem is, the idea a carbon dioxide tax can be revenue neutral is just as much of a myth as that it will save the earth from climate doom (as if the earth needed saving, which the best science shows it doesn’t), or that it will increase jobs and boost the economy.

As my colleague James Taylor has persuasively written, no carbon dioxide tax is revenue neutral for the households being taxed. A carbon dioxide tax raises the price of coal, natural gas, and gasoline in an attempt to force consumers to purchase more expensive wind power, solar power, and electric vehicles. Although consumers will spend substantially more money on energy and energy-related bills, the wind and solar industries will pay no carbon dioxide taxes.

As Taylor points out, the tax revenue generated by a “successful” carbon dioxide tax — one that significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions — will decline sharply over time, leaving little money to return to the people. Thus, although the government would not receive much revenue to return to consumers from the tax, people, now paying substantially more for their energy bills, will face a dramatic decline in their discretionary household incomes.

Nor will the tax be revenue neutral for households with workers in the fossil fuel industry or related fields. The idea that all the oil field workers, coal miners, coal and natural gas power plant operators, and those working in chemical and plastics manufacturing will be able to smoothly transition to other jobs without a hitch is a myth as well: their household incomes will fall sharply in the short-term if not permanently. And even if they could simply snap their fingers and magically switch jobs, the jobs they would be taking installing and servicing solar panels and wind turbines simply don’t pay as well as the jobs they will be forced out of by the carbon dioxide tax.

Nor, in truth, could any carbon dioxide tax be truly neutral in terms of government revenue.

Even if Congress and the president keep their hands out of the till, not finding creative ways to spend whatever new revenue a carbon dioxide tax generates, and returns it through some scheme to the people being taxed, it’s simply a fact a good portion of the revenue generated by the tax will be diverted to the bureaucracies involved in collecting it and disbursing the tax checks. No government program is cost-free.

Just as with every other government program, there will be huge transaction costs for collecting, tracking, auditing and archiving taxes paid and revenues paid out. New employees will have to be hired, or existing federal government workers will have to divert their time from other responsibilities, to account for the carbon dioxide taxes to be paid, assure that they are paid, to police the program, and to send out the revenue checks and handle complaints when disputes arise.

These and other costs will eat up billions of dollars each year. Unless these costs are paid directly out of the carbon dioxide tax revenues — in which case all the revenues will not be returned to taxpayers as promised — then the government will have to impose other taxes or take on additional debt to pay for the program. So much for revenue neutrality.

Anyone who tells you paying a new tax will be good for you, especially a tax on fossil fuels that serve to power the economic prosperity we currently enjoy, is lying. In the meantime, hang onto your wallets and when the time comes, vote any and all policymakers who support carbon taxes out of office.

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

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

4 February, 2019

Electric cars are useless in a cold climate

BONJOUR, i.e. the company Téo Taxi, a new kind of taxi service in Montreal, Quebec, with the common French term for “Hello” (“Bonjour”), literally meaning “GOOD DAY” on its cars has shut down operation. Just when demand was rising due the cold temperatures in the city.

When launched in 2015, it was widely viewed as a novel cost-saving alternative to common taxi service operations. The Quebec government and major provincial institutions all jumped on board. The company acquired a fleet of vehicles and paid its (450+) employees fair wages.

Demand for the cab service was good, especially in this cold period of the year. Of course, competition from the other service providers of that kind kept profit margins low. Therefore, it wasn’t exactly a highly profitable enterprise at this time but, as I think, the real problem was a serious and insurmountable issue.

So, what’s the real problem and what caused the company’s failure?

Its main proponent, entrepreneur Alexandre Taillefer had no choice but to shut down the enterprise. Despite the estimated $30 million of tax dollars plus privately funded capital infusions, estimated at $50+ million (including Taillefer’s personal fortune, estimated at $4 million), it couldn’t make it. The competition from other short-haul service companies was just too severe.

At least, that’s what the MSM (main stream media) claim. I have a different view: The problem was more technical than financial in nature, namely the wrong technology used.

BONJOUR’s fleet of a few hundred cars was exclusively “electric cars.” That (politically correct, hence wrong) “electric idea” was the main cause of its demise.

For brevity, I’ll put it into a bullet form:

* Electric vehicles use energy stored in batteries.
* Batteries are chemical systems.
* By the Laws of Nature, chemical processes are temperature dependent.
* Every 10 degrees Celsius (C) in temperature change typical process speeds by a factor of 3.
* Hence, between PLUS 25 C (in summer) and MINUS 25 C (in winter), reaction speed changes by a factor of roughly 3^5 = 250 or so.
* Both speed of charging and discharging of batteries declines with falling at below freezing temperatures.
* The charge capacity of Lithium-Ion batteries also declines with lower temperatures.
* More frequent recharging needs reduced operating distances and increased overall charging time.
* In short, that’s why you’ll be finding few electric cars on the road in winter.

SOURCE

‘Cooling Is Warming’: Climate Hoaxers Spin US Freeze

America enjoys a winter filled with tons of snow and frigid cold weather and out pops the Climate Hoaxsters to assure us this kind of weather only further proves our planet is getting, um… warmer.

This current Climate Hoaxster freak-out is largely in reaction to President Trump’s tweet earlier this week mocking them.

“In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded,” he tweeted. “What the hell is going on with Global Waming? [Sic] Please come back fast, we need you!”

Naturally, this launched a million reactionary headlines from our oh-so objective, unbiased, not-at-all left-wing media.

“Look at This Embarrassing F*cking Moron,” screamed Esquire.

“Debunking the utter idiocy of Donald Trump’s global warming tweet,” pouted CNN.

“Here’s Why the Crazy Cold Temperatures Prove Global Warming is Real,” Forbes says reassuringly.

“What Trump keeps getting wrong about Global Warming,” the Washington Post helpfully reports.

But here is my personal favorite headline from, where else?, NBC News…. “Yes, it can be this cold outside in a time of global warming.”

There are three Party slogans in George Orwell’s 1984, his masterpiece about an all-controlling centralized government that runs on lies, terror, and propaganda. See if you can pick out which Party slogan I invented among the four:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Frigid Weather Means Our Planet is Getting Warmer

The Climate Hoaxsters say that this run of cold weather does not mean the planet will not warm over the course of years, which would sound reasonable if these were not the same Climate Hoaxters who told us Global Warming meant the “end of snow,” or that this winter would be “warmer-than-average,” or that a run of warm weather last winter proved the planet is warming.

That last example is interesting, no?

You see, last year our Climate Hucksters told us a run of warm weather proved the planet is warming, which means we all have to give up our freedoms to a centralized government in order to save the planet.

BUT… a run of frigid weather this year also proves the planet is warming and we all have to give up our freedoms to a centralized government in order to save the planet.

So no matter what happens, no matter how cold or warm or temperate it is, everything proves Global Warming is fer real.

Hey, remember when the Climate Grifters told us Global Warming would make hurricanes worse?

Remember how, when that scientific prediction was humiliated in the face of record low hurricane activity, these same Climate Grifters told us this lack of hurricane activity proved Global Warming was really fer real?

Remember in 2005 when the establishment media told us that by 2015 Global Warming would drive gas up to $9 a gallon (it’s $2.08 here today), milk up to $12 a gallon ($2.99), and New York City would be underwater?

Remember how during that crucial time between 2005 and 2015, that decade before the imminent flooding of Manhattan, the establishment media did not remove any of its personnel from a New York City that was about to be drowned?

In fact, while CNN was telling us the seas were certain to rise, CNN shifted much of its base of operations from the inland safety of Atlanta to Manhattan; while CNN’s then-parent company, Time Warner, spent billions relocating its headquarters just two blocks from the water’s edge in New York.

And, soon enough, I’ll be asking if you remember how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a sitting member of Congress — went on TV and said the world would end in 12 years because of Global Warming.

You see, no matter what happens, no matter what the weather looks like, no matter how false their predictions turn out to be, no matter often they act as though they don’t believe in Global Warming, the Climate Swindlers still scream See! See! Toldjaso! — and almost always do it from a wildly expensive base of operations on the same coast they claim will soon be underwater.

Any student of history can look back and discover that all of history’s mass-murdering socialists — from Hitler to Stalin to Mao — have manufactured audacious lies and scapegoats as a means to consolidate power into a malevolent Central Authority.

Freedom is Slavery.

War is Peace.

Ignorance is Strength.

Cooling is Warming.

SOURCE

Why ‘Green’ Energy Is Futile, In One Lesson

Here in Minnesota, we are enduring a brutal stretch of weather. The temperature hasn’t gotten above zero in the last three days, with lows approaching -30. And that is in the Twin Cities, in the southern part of the state.

Yesterday, central Minnesota experienced a natural gas “brownout,” as Xcel Energy advised customers to turn thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using hot water. Xcel put up some customers in hotels.

Why? Because the wind wasn’t blowing.

Utilities pair natural gas plants with wind farms, in order to burn gas, which can be ramped up and down more quickly than coal, when the wind isn’t blowing.

Which raises the question: since natural gas is reliable, why do we need the wind farms? The answer is, we don’t. When the wind isn’t blowing–as it wasn’t yesterday–natural gas supplies the electricity.

It also heats homes, and with bitterly cold temperatures and no wind, there wasn’t enough natural gas to go around. The resulting “brownout” has been a political shock in Minnesota.

Isaac Orr, a leading energy expert who is my colleague at Center of the American Experiment, explains this phenomenon in detail:

[W]ind is producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part.

While that’s not good, what’s worse is wind is only utilizing 24 percent of its installed capacity, and who knows how this will fluctuate throughout the course of the day.

Coal, on the other hand, is churning out 45 percent of our power, nuclear is providing 13 percent, and natural gas is providing 26 percent of our electricity.

This is exactly why the renewable energy lobby’s dream of shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants and “replacing” them with wind and solar is a fairy tale. It simply cannot happen, because we never know if and when the wind will blow or the sun will shine when we need it most.

“But the wind is always blowing somewhere” ~ a renewable energy lobbyist

Renewable energy apologists often argue that although the wind may not be blowing in your neighborhood, it’s blowing, somewhere. All we have to do, they argue, is build wind turbines and transmission lines all over the country so we can have renewable energy everywhere. It turns out this old chestnut is also completely wrong.

For example, the wind isn’t blowing in North Dakota or South Dakota, where more than 1,800 MW (a massive amount) of wind projects are operating or planned, at massive cost, by Minnesota electric companies.

In fact, the wind isn’t blowing anywhere.

Just look at California, the state that is consistently the most self-congratulating about how “green” they are. Wind is operating a 3 percent of installed capacity, solar is operating at 12 percent, natural gas is running wide open, and California is importing a whopping 27 percent of its electricity from Nevada and Arizona.

***

Days like today perfectly illustrate why intermittent, unreliable sources of energy like wind and solar would have no place in our energy system if they were not mandated by politicians, showered with federal subsidies, and lining the pockets of regulated utilities that are guaranteed to profit off wind and solar farms whether they are generating electricity, or not.

Isaac’s real-world message is starting to break through, at least here in Minnesota. Tomorrow morning the Star Tribune is running Isaac’s op-ed headlined “Bitter cold shows reliable energy sources are critical.”

Lawmakers considering doubling Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate to 50 percent by 2030 should use this week’s weather as a moment to reconsider their plans to lean so heavily on wind and solar.

***

[C]oal-fired power plants provided 45 percent of MISO’s power and nuclear provided 13 percent — most of this from Minnesota’s Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants (which we should keep open, by the way).

Natural gas provided 26 percent of our electricity use at that time, and the remainder was imported from Canada and other U.S. states.

Natural gas also heated the homes of approximately 66 percent of Minnesotans this week, by far the most for any home heating fuel, but there wasn’t enough gas to combat the frigid temperatures.

Because of the extreme cold, Xcel Energy urged its natural gas customers in Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton, and Isanti to reduce the settings on their thermostats, first down to 60 degrees, then to 63, through Thursday morning to conserve enough natural gas to prevent a widespread shortage as temperatures remained 14 below zero.

Some Xcel customers in the Princeton area lost gas service, and Xcel reserved rooms for them in nearby hotels.

This week’s urgent notice from Xcel to conserve natural gas shows there is real danger in putting all of our eggs into the renewables-plus-natural gas basket.

At a minimum, pursuing a grid powered entirely by solar, wind and natural gas would require more natural gas pipeline capacity, which is likely to be opposed by the factions that are currently challenging the replacement of the Line 3 pipeline.

***

If Minnesota lawmakers are sincere in their belief that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible, they must lift Minnesota’s ban on new nuclear power plants, which has been in place since 1994.

Not only would nuclear power plants be essentially guaranteed to run in minus-24-degree weather, but a forthcoming study by American Experiment has found that new nuclear power plants could not only achieve a lower emissions rate by 2030, but also save Minnesota $30.2 billion through 2050.

Stay tuned. We will release that report in two weeks. I think it will be a bombshell, not only in Minnesota but in other states that are fecklessly mandating ever-higher utilization of intermittent, unreliable, inefficient “green” energy.

SOURCE

A New Campaign Would Create The Highest Gas Tax In The Country

Former Michigan lawmakers are pushing the state’s governor to implement what would be the most expensive gas tax in the U.S.

The Michigan Consensus Policy Project, led by a bi-partisan coalition of ex-lawmakers, is calling for the state to enact what would ultimately be a 47-cents-per-gallon tax to fund road and bridge repairs.

The proposal would raise Michigan’s gas tax by five cents annually for nine years, including another two-cent tax in the first year.

The proposal would be in addition to Michigan’s current gas tax, which is set at 26.3 cents per gallon. If implemented, the total tax would top at 73.3 cents in nine years’ time — making it the highest rate in the country.

Bob Emerson — a former Democratic state Senate minority leader and one of the backers of the campaign — said the gas tax is the best approach to funding Michigan roads because it “closely correlates to the amount of driving people do,” according to The Detroit News.

Average families in Michigan would see a considerable cut in the take-home pay if the tax is implemented, with middle-income, two-vehicle households estimated to pay an extra $400-plus a year under the plan.

“There’s no question there’s a need and no question about the importance of this,” said Ken Sikkema, a former GOP state Senate Majority Leader, explaining the need to fix Michigan’s roads and bridges. “It’s our hope that this proposal jump starts that important conversation.”

The goal of The Michigan Consensus Project is to push Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state’s Republican-led legislature to enact the 47-cent gas tax increase, which is estimated to generate upwards of $2.7 billion a year in extra revenue for the state’s transportation system.

The campaign comes as Whitmer is expected to unveil her first budget presentation in March. The New Democratic governor, while she hasn’t yet voiced support for the proposal, has expressed strong interest to “fix the damn roads” in Michigan.

Beyond the unlikeliness of such an exorbitant tax making it through the GOP-controlled legislature in Michigan, energy taxes have proven to be unpopular at a national and international level.

Voters in Washington State, for example, soundly rejected a carbon tax proposal in November for the second time. It was the second time voters in the deep blue state voted against implementing a tax on carbon emissions.

Across the Atlantic, French protesters have rioted over President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise gas and diesel taxes. The backlash ultimately forced Macros to withdraw the proposal altogether.

SOURCE

We must hope Dr. Soon is right …

And the global warming apocalypse is not nigh. Real-world evidence certainly supports him.

Jeffrey Foss, PhD

Everyone has heard the bad news. Imminent Climate Apocalypse (aka “global warming” and “climate change”) threatens humanity and planet with devastation, unless we abandon the use of fossil fuels.

Far fewer people have heard the good news. The sun has just entered its Grand Minimum phase, and the Earth will gradually cool over the next few decades.

Why should we all hope Earth will cool? Because nobody with any trace of human decency would hope the Earth will actually suffer catastrophic warming.

Many of us believe in the threat of global warming, but live in the hope that we can switch to “renewable energy” before it is too late. But this is a false hope. Despite our best efforts over several decades, renewables such as wind and solar energy still meet only 2% of global energy needs, while hydro adds only 7% or so.

So avoiding the alleged Climate Apocalypse by relying on renewable energy would require surviving on less than 10% of our current energy requirements. But that is impossible. It would also be really catastrophic: billions could die.

Our global economy runs on energy, and over 80% of it is still fossil fuels, with nuclear and other non-renewables providing another 10%. If we switch to renewables tomorrow, 90% of our energy will be lost, and the global economy will sink like the Titanic. Keeping nuclear power would merely add a second lifeboat as the great ship sinks. Even if the energy loss were spread out over decades, the final result would still be the same.

Humankind could not produce enough food, clothing and shelter. Jobs would vanish. Massive starvation, disease and death would result. Hard physical labor would once again become the norm. Even though life could be maintained for some portion of humanity, liberty and happiness would be lost.

Let’s stop pretending. The prescribed cure for Climate/Global Warming Apocalypse is far worse than the purported disease. If we don’t use coal, oil and natural gas for energy, many of the 7 billion of us now alive must die. Those who survive will be impoverished and enslaved, toiling and scavenging for food by day, and fearing the darkness by night – except for the privileged few who still have money, energy and power.

The sudden and dramatic growth of human life, liberty, and happiness since the industrial revolution was achieved by replacing muscle power with coal and oil power. Before that, Hillsdale College professor of history Burt Folsom points out, only the wealthy could afford whale oil and candles. Everyone else had to go to bed early, and often hungry, when the sun went down, sleeping to recover enough energy to work – only to repeat the daily cycle yet again. Freedom of thought and travel had little real worth when we were too tired to think or walk.

The petroleum age saved whales from the brink of extinction – and brought cheap kerosene to the masses, so that they could read at night, bringing light into their lives and their brains.

The premature switch to renewable energy recommended by the false prophets of Climate Apocalypse is really just one step in an industrial counter-revolution devoutly desired by those discontented with modern life in free market democracies – and ready to erase our hard-won prosperity and freedom.

The Climate Apocalypse global warming bad news is rewarded by big money from the government and servile amplification from traditional big news media – while the good news of global cooling is silenced and unheard, stifled by both traditional media and most of today’s social media platforms.

We should all be suspicious of the motives of those who push this bad news, and welcome those who push back. Dr. Willie Soon is one scientist, although by no means the only one, who has the courage to stand up to big money, big government, big (pseudo) science, big media and big environmentalism to spread the good news. It’s high time we all heard it.

The good news from Dr. Soon and his fellow solar scientists is that the increase in global temperatures since 1800 was caused by two centuries of increasing solar output – not by human use of coal and oil.

But then solar output began to fall around 2000, in a repetition of a well-known 200-year cycle of solar activity, and global warming stopped. That’s more good news that too few people know. The purveyors of Climate Apocalypse have no explanation for this two-decade failure of their prophecy, which fortunately for all of humanity shows the superiority of solar science over apocalyptic warming foretold by computer models, hysteria and headlines – but not by real-world evidence.

Finally, solar science says we should expect steady but manageable global cooling until about mid-century, when solar activity will recover and temperatures begin to warm once again. Once again, this will be due to solar activity, and not to fossil fuels or carbon dioxide emissions.

In the best news of all, that means humanity’s successful pursuit of life, liberty, happiness, and better living standards and healthcare needn’t be stopped by Climate Apocalypse – or its prescribed cure. The only thing we have to fear is the fear of Climate Apocalypse itself.

Equally important, a warmer or cooler planet with more atmospheric CO2 and plentiful, reliable, affordable fossil fuel and nuclear energy would be infinitely preferable to a cooler planet with less CO2 and only expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent wind, solar and biofuel energy.

At the very least, humankind has an historic opportunity to witness a crucial test between two scientific hypotheses of enormous consequence. The next decade or two will reveal whether Earth warms or cools.

Surely all right-minded people must hope that it cools – and that the fear-mongering of imminent global warming apocalypse cools as well.

I might add that no one should wish the current severe Chicago-style polar vortex cold on anyone. I extend my sympathies and prayers to all who are now suffering from the cold. But be of good cheer in the knowledge that this cold-snap at least puts the lie to vastly worse climate scare global warming stories.

I also wouldn’t wish on anyone the “Green New Deal” energy reality of February 1, 2019 – when wind power provided 1.5% of the energy that kept lights on and homes warm in America’s Mid-Atlantic region, solar provided zero, and derided and despised coal, natural gas and nuclear power provided a whopping 93% or that energy! Imagine the cold, misery and death toll under 100% pseudo-renewable energy.

Via email

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

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 February, 2019

How climate change is undermining the war against HIV in Africa

There's some fancy footwork below. It's true that much of Africa has been heavily hit by drought in recent years -- which is a change in climate. But what is the cause of that change? We are undoubtedly supposed to assume that it is Americans driving around in SUVs. If we read further in the article however we find the admission that it is all an effect of an El Nino, which is a natural phenomenon. America's SUVs are in the clear

Widespread poverty and worsening droughts, floods and other climate risks make Africa particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change

Yaounde — Teenage girls growing up in Lesotho in areas hit by harsh drought and other climate shocks are more likely to drop out of school, start having sex earlier and contract HIV, researchers say.

In a study looking at the link between climate change and HIV infection since antiretroviral (ARV) treatment drugs became widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa, researchers found that severe drought threatens to drive new HIV infections.

In the urban areas of Lesotho researchers looked at, droughts were linked to an almost five-fold increase in the number of girls selling sex and a three-fold increase in those being forced into sexual relations.

Such findings mean climate shocks — which can bring displacement, loss of income and other problems — threaten to undermine progress made in HIV treatment, said Andrea Low, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the International Centre for AIDS Care and Treatment Programmes at Columbia University. “I think the real concern is that we have gained a lot in terms of epidemic control ... but there is always a possibility of losing all those gains if a lot of people are displaced due to climate extremes [and] forced migration.”

People forced to migrate as a result of drought may no longer have easy access to the support of family and friends or to HIV treatment, Low, the study’s lead author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from New York.

People who lose the stability of their communities are more likely to engage in high-risk sex, acquire HIV or discontinue treatment for HIV, the study found. Widespread poverty and exposure to worsening droughts, floods and other climate risks make Africa one of the continents most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, UN disaster officials said.

Southern Africa experienced two years of an El Ni?o–induced regional drought — one of its worst in decades — in 2014–2015. In 2016, this resulted in food shortages and higher prices affecting almost 40-million people in the region, according to the World Food Programme.

In Lesotho more than half the population lives on less than $1.90 a day according to World Bank, and 55% grow their own food, making them particularly vulnerable to drought.

The country of 2.2-million also has the second highest rate of HIV prevalence in the world, behind nearby eSwatini (formerly Swaziland), according to the UN agency for HIV/AIDS.

Keeping girls in school

Low and her colleagues said ways of reducing HIV risk associated with climate shocks include providing easier access to medical care, distributing HIV self-testing kits and offering cash transfers to pay school fees for drought-hit families forced to migrate.

“We really need to think about the population in the long term,” Low said, noting it was vital to keep children in classrooms. “If that’s reduced every time there’s some kind of climate extreme and they have to pull their kids out of school, that is going to have really detrimental effects — not just on HIV but on all aspects of society.”

SOURCE

Natural gas is doing far more than renewables to clean our air

Carbon emissions from the power sector are now the lowest they have been since 1985.

It is amazing how fast carbon emissions from U.S. electricity production have decreased due to the major shift from coal to natural gas. And due to technical advances in shale gas, the cost of producing natural gas keeps falling.

For decades, base-load power generators — mainly coal and nuclear power — dominated the power industry. Today, however, the share of the nation’s electric-generating capacity supplied by natural gas is steadily rising. Demand for coal for electric generation fell by 22 percent from 2011 to 2015, while power-sector demand for natural gas rose by 32 percent.

Natural gas has shown the ability to inject real progress in carbon mitigation, while providing backup power for intermittent solar and wind energy. In fact, the amazing growth in shale production has led cheaper natural gas to provide a much bigger impact on the drop in carbon emissions than the deployment of renewables.

Investors strongly prefer natural gas, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Despite the availability of federal tax credits and portfolio standards mandating the use of renewables in 29 states, solar and wind combined supply just 9 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Think about the benefits to U.S. consumers from the availability of cheap natural gas. Many more Americans now work for manufacturing plants that rely on natural gas, transforming large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. And increasing production of natural gas explains why the economies of Texas and New Mexico, among others, are booming.

While inexpensive gas has spurred economic growth and reduced the carbon footprint from electricity generation, it has some collateral benefits as well. It has led to emissions reductions across the board, making an impact on the reduction of mercury, particulates, and sulfur dioxide.

Just as the remarkable rise in U.S. oil production has checked OPEC’s power, the investment in natural gas has become a geopolitical game changer. Exports of liquefied natural gas has been good news for the world. European countries such as Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine now have an alternative to Russian gas, weakening Russia’s grip on their economies.

And LNG exports to Asia are enabling China, Japan, and India to burn less coal. Exports of LNG nearly quadrupled in 2017 to 700 billion cubic feet, according to the Energy Information Administration. As LNG shipments to ports around the world increase, making it possible to shut down more coal plants, governments are betting that global carbon emissions will decline.

Some environmental groups associated with the campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground are trying to sabotage the shale gas revolution. But their reckless argument that solar and wind alone can prevent the worst effects of climate change does not have any basis in fact.

The U.S. “greens” are lobbying states to impose restrictions on the use of hydraulic fracturing. For that matter, they are trying to block the construction of new pipelines needed to transport gas from where it’s being produced to markets where it’s needed. They should know that these actions could backfire, since both solar and wind need natural gas as a backup fuel because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Gas, easy to turn on and off, is a necessary partner to renewable electricity.

Nor is there any truth to the claim that gas companies are not committed to reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane emissions from natural gas production are down 14 percent since 1990, even as natural gas output has increased more than 50 percent over the same period. The world’s biggest oil and gas companies have pledged to cut their methane emissions by one-fifth, and they are making increasing use of drones and robots to detect and fix leaks in pipes and valves.

Even as environmentalists pound the climate change drum, they seem more interested in promoting wind and solar power for their own sake than in finding cost-effective solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

SOURCE

The Climate Derangement Syndrome Strikes Again

By Caleb Rossiter

This week, the New Yorker magazine glowingly profiled Jon Leland, who is "scaring people about climate change" by placing "This Place Will Be Water" stickers on buildings in Manhattan. Leland is obviously claiming that industrial, noncontaminant warming gasses will warm the air, melt the ice, and expand the water in the seas enough to inundate the Big Apple.

Before he starts his new "This Place Will Be Desert" campaign in the Midwest, I'd like to warn him that his stickers make claims that are scientifically dubious. They're right up there with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her recent claim that "the world's going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change."

As to Leland's current campaign, there isn't much to it. After a dramatic 130-yard increase from the cyclical ice age that earth goes through every 120,000 years, sea level has been stable for the past 8,000 years, rising and falling only slightly as temperature changes. In the past century, the rate of increase has fluctuated between half an inch and an inch per decade.

Land use and natural land changes are as important in the equation today as the expansion of oceans. And the predictions of disappearing islands that motivated the stickers have proven to be as groundless as predictions of disappearing polar bears.

As to his new campaign, the 50 percent increase to date in the concentration of carbon dioxide has actually fertilized the planet. Crops are now about 15 percent more productive and deserts are receding. Field experiments predict that this greening effect will increase by another 30 percent as carbon dioxide levels rise another 50 percent over the next 100 years, from today's 4 percent of one percent to 6 percent of one percent. While the experiments also predict that some nutrients will be reduced by about five percent in some crop varieties, this would be more than offset by changes in growing techniques, increased yields, and, most importantly, increased income from fossil-fueled economic growth.

Finally, although global temperature has risen about one degree Celsius since the start of the industrial revolution, this has not wholly been caused by industrial warming gasses linked to the economic growth that has increased the world's wealth, health, and life expectancy so dramatically. Atmospheric physicists on both sides of the debate over potential climate catastrophe agree that the first half of the rise, before 1945, was largely caused by natural sources like long-term cycles or solar fluctuations. At that point, emissions were too low to have much impact. The substantial "feedback" warming that many climate models have predicted from fossil-fueled heat in the form of increased humidity and hence water vapor, the primary natural warming gas, has not yet been observed.

Only a quarter of Africans have electricity in their homes, and businesses across the continent suffer from interruptions, stalling economic growth and the access to the clean water that increases life expectancy. There's a cause I hope Leland and the Ocasio-Cortez can take up with me: backing African plans to build fossil-fueled power plants equipped with the scrubbing technology that takes out the real pollutants.

SOURCE

Media Ties Record-Breaking Cold to Global Warming

A “polar vortex” event is breaking record-low temperature readings across the Great Plains and Midwest, and many in the media are rushing to blame the deep freeze on global warming.

The New York Times, for example, filled the top of its website with coverage of the Midwest’s polar plunge, including one prominent article that claims record heat in Australia and record cold in the U.S. were two sides of the global warming coin.

“Also, broadly speaking, scientists say, a hotter planet makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense,” reads the Times article, warning we live in the “Age of Weather Extremes.”

The Chicago Times, Axios, The Washington Post, and others echoed the theory that global warming was weakening the jet stream, allowing the “polar vortex” to meander south and bring record cold.

Many experts don’t think this is correct and say it’s media climate-hype. In fact, weather events that used to be considered, well, weather are now attributed to global warming that’s supposed to play out over decades and measured in trends, not short-term weather variability.

“‘Climate change’ once referred to outcomes measured via statistics (‘detection’) tracked over decades,” University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. noted Wednesday on Twitter.

“Today ‘climate change’ is most often used as a causal factor in attributing events over hours, days or weeks,” Pielke said. “We’ve become dumber.”

Make sense? Of course it doesn’t, and many scientists have pointed it out.

“Frankly, it is a stretch to make that link,” Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday.

“There is always cold air over the Arctic in the polar night and the question is whether it sits there or breaks out,” Trenberth said. “So all this is in realm of weather. Not climate.”

Several studies have claimed a correlation, and even link, between arctic warming and mid-latitude weather, including one published in 2018 that found cold snaps are more likely when the Arctic is abnormally warm.

But that study suffered from serious flaws, namely, it did not test any hypothesis nor did it try to establish causality between global warming and cold snaps. Government data sets also point to fewer cold outbreaks, not more.

SOURCE

January was Australia's hottest month EVER, with average temperatures of 86F (30C) - and a high of 121F (49.5C)

Ya gotta laugh. The Greenie "Climate Council" responded to reports of record heat in Australia and record cold in the Northern hemisphere by saying that it showed global warming. One wonders if anyone ever taught them arithmetic at school.

If anything, the global average suggests cooling, as the Australian figures were mostly only a touch above normal but the Northern winter was/is punishingly cold. In fact, in some parts of Australia -- like where I live in Brisbane in S.E. Queensland -- temperatures were a touch below normal. There is clearly nothing global going on.

In their press release, the Bureau of Meteorology cautiously decribed Brisbane January temperatures as "very warm'. They were warm -- as they always are in January: An interesting lesson in how to mislead without actually lying.

In fact what we see is a sort of random walk. Our January rainfall in Southern Queensland has been exceptionally light. No big downpours at all: While North Queensland experiences exceptional flooding -- even in normally dry Townsville. I'd like to see any "model" predict that! It's totally random

Even the BoM could not resist the temptation to sermonize. They were once very vocal advocates of global warming but have pulled in their horns a lot since Jennifer Marohasy and others exposed their use of blatantly incorrect and corrupt data. Below is an excerpt from their press release that formed the basis of the story below"

Bureau senior climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins said the heat through January was unprecedented.

"We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month, with records broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes," Dr Watkins said.

"The main contributor to this heat was a persistent high pressure system in the Tasman sea which was blocking any cold fronts and cooler air from impacting the south of the country.

"At the same time, we had a delayed onset to the monsoon in the north of the country which meant we weren't seeing cooler, moist air being injected from the north.

"The warming trend which has seen Australian temperatures increase by more than 1 degree in the last 100 years also contributed to the unusually warm conditions."

So in the last sentence below he makes a guarded reference to global warming. In fact he had already described what was actually going on. What a galoot!

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the January record on Friday as parts of the northern hemisphere experienced record cold temperatures.

The scorching start to 2019 followed Australia's third-hottest year on record. Only 2005 and 2013 were warmer than 2018, which ended with the hottest December on record.

Heat-stressed bats dropped dead from trees by the thousands in Victoria state and roads melted in New South Wales during heatwaves last month.

On January 24, the South Australian capital, Adelaide, recorded the hottest day ever for a major Australian city – a searing 115.9F (46.6C).

On the same day, the South Australian town of Port Augusta, population 15,000, recorded 121.1F (49.5 C) – the highest maximum anywhere in Australia last month.

Bureau senior climatologist Andrew Watkins described January's heat as unprecedented. 'We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month, with records broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes,' he said.

The main contributor to the heat was a persistent high-pressure system over the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand that blocked cold fronts from reaching southern Australia.

Rainfall was below average for most of the country, but the monsoonal trough has brought flooding rains to northern Queensland state in the past week, leading to a disaster declaration around the city of Townsville.

Queensland's flooded Daintree River reached a 118-year high this week. Emergency services reported rescuing 28 people from floodwaters in the past week.

'The vast bulk of the population will not have experienced this type of event in their lifetime,' State Disaster Co-ordinator Bob Gee told reporters, referring to the extraordinary flooding.

Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill described the torrential rain as a 'one-in-100-year event' that had forced authorities to release water from the city dam. The water release would worsen flooding in low-lying suburbs, but would prevent the Ross River from breaking its banks.

In the southern island state of Tasmania, authorities are hoping rain will douse more than 40 fires that have razed more than 460,800 acres (720 square miles) of forest and farmland by Friday. Dozens of houses have been destroyed by fires and flooding in recent weeks.

Milder weather since Thursday has reduced the fire danger but it was forecast to escalate again from Sunday.

The Climate Council, an independent organisation formed to provide authoritative climate change information to the public, said the January heat record showed the government needed to curb Australia's greenhouse gas emissions which have increased during each of the past four years.

'Climate change is cranking up the intensity of extreme heat, and January's record-breaking month is part of a sharp, long-term upswing in temperatures driven primarily from the burning of fossil fuels,' the council's acting chief executive, Martin Rice, 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

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

1 February, 2019

The whole ‘narrative involving the polar vortex is just another pseudoscientific scam’

By physicist Dr. Lubos Motl

The polar vortex is some distortion of the shape of the warm and cold regions and winds and their boundary that makes the Arctic "reach" to zones that expect to be warmer. It's great but you can't really get a polar vortex without some wind from the North – cold Arctic wind that actually brings the boundary and the whole chilly air mass to Chicago, and does so sufficiently quickly so that the air doesn't get heated up much during the journey.

If you think just for a little while, you will immediately conclude that such episodes of very cold weather have always taken place (you remember some of those decades ago, to say the least) – and when they were extreme enough, they were always caused by a polar vortex. The polar vortex doesn't depend on the human activity or the modern era at all. Half a century ago, journalists didn't write "polar vortex" during every cold spell but it was a polar vortex, too.

Because the poles are warming a bit faster, the temperature difference between the warmest zones and the Arctic has shrunk a bit in the recent century – perhaps by a degree Celsius which means by a few percent (from 40 °C to 39 °C, to invent some numbers – but the precise numbers depend on the exact question). This smaller difference implies that there's less clear "stratification" or separation of the different latitudes. So the polar vortex may be more frequent, indeed. But it's also less intense because, you know, the Arctic which sends this chilly air is less chilly than in the past – because this is basically the Earth's region where the global warming was fastest!

When you quantify such things, you will realize that the frequencies of well-defined cold spells and the temperatures of the worst ones may change at most by a few percent or a few tenths of a degree – the two opposite effects above largely cancel – so there is really no change that anyone could detect. On top of that, if you measure the variability by some uniform measure involving "integrated squares", it is rather clear that global warming has made this variability (and therefore extremes) a bit smaller, after all – because the temperature on Earth got a bit more uniform and the non-uniformities of the temperature on Earth is more or less the source of the temporal variability of temperatures at each place, too (because the temporal temperature variability at a fixed place is largely "feeling" the spatial variability elsewhere due to the changing direction of the wind).

This whole "narrative" involving the polar vortex is just another pseudoscientific scam, a subset of the general climate change and environmentalist scams. What's annoying is that the scientific terminology is being abused to promote some totally silly anti-scientific beliefs among the gullible laymen. And needless to say, "polar vortex" isn't the only scientific term that is being abused like that.

On one hand, you could say: It's nice that the journalists talk about the "polar vortex". The public may learn some atmospheric physics from the newspapers, isn't it great? On the other hand, the actual main purpose of this term, "polar vortex", is for the journalists to sound credible and convey a thesis about the climate that is absolutely idiotic. Cold spells like that didn't exist before 1776 or some year like that! They're caused by SUVs or coal power plants!

Sorry, the latter statement is a sign of the speaker's absolute scientific illiteracy – and it's way more harmful and stupid than the notion of "polar vortex" is useful and intelligent. At the end, rather normal people have always used the phrase "Arctic air" or terms involving "North" to describe the sudden arrival of very cold weather. They may use "polar vortex" now – which is somewhat more complete in its description of the shape of the masses of cold air (just to be sure, not "every" cold day is due to a "polar vortex").

But the increase of accuracy or knowledge from the "Arctic air" to the "polar vortex" is much smaller than the decrease of people's scientific literacy when they unlearn that the weather was always changing approximately equally – and instead start to believe that the weather was free of extremes a few century ago. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of science which is much worse than the ignorance of the term "polar vortex". "Polar vortex" is superficially being written in the newspapers to increase the readers' understanding of the air masses – but in practice, the main lesson that they're supposed to learn is the nonsensical thesis that "polar vortices" are man-made!

You know, the leftists used to agree with such things. They were mocking Christians for believing that the world wasn't there 6,000 years ago, that there was the Big Flood, Creation, and other wonderful Biblical events. Everyone should know about the longevity of the Earth. Cosmology, astrophysics, geology, archaeology, and genetics have all determined that the world around us – and even most of the important objects and processes – are billions or at least "many millions" years old.

To believe that something major didn't exist thousands or hundreds of years ago – mammals, trees, stars, mountains, seasons, days and nights, sexes, competition, races, rainbows, cold spells, earthquakes, anything like that – means to be a hopeless, scientifically illiterate imbecile. And this is what the deceitful media are trying to gradually make out of millions of readers and viewers – while they're pretending that they're making them smarter by occasionally using some scientific jargon.

Sorry, science isn't about the jargon. Science is about the content, especially the most essential insights. The fact that nothing fundamental has changed about Nature or weather in recent centuries is a cornerstone of the scientific world view and inkspillers and demagogues who are eroding this understanding of the world among the readers need to be punished.

SOURCE

As it got hotter in Spain, less people died. Thank air conditioning and electricity

Cheap energy might save more lives than expensive “climate-changey” energy?

Researchers looked at 47 major cities in Spain, from 1980 to 2015 and checked 554,491 deaths. Even though temperatures have risen, less people are dying of heat in Spain. Apparently human ingenuity, energy and air conditioners were more than able to keep up with climate change. The population is older but less vulnerable to heat now than it was forty years ago.

Air conditioners rose from 5% of the population to 35% during the study period.

Oh the dilemma — to save lives, should we build more windmills to try to change the global climate or aim to get 100% of households access to an air conditioner?

Welcome to the dire threat of climate change:

The relative risk of death fell as temperatures rose (According to the model used).

From the Discussion in the paper:

The temporal evolution of heat-related mortality risks here found is, in general, consistent with those reported by previous studies in some other countries [12–15], which provide evidence for a decrease in vulnerability to climate warming despite the ageing of societies. For example, in Spain, the proportion of people [...]

SOURCE

Fossil-Fuel-Burning Elon Musk Finds an Enemy in WaPo

But other climate crusaders are allowed to do business as usual without fear of Leftmedia vilification.

If there’s one thing The Washington Post has no shortage of, it’s irony. This week, the global-warming-will-surely-kill-us outlet reported that “Tesla chief Elon Musk’s corporate jet flew more than 150,000 miles last year, or more than six times around the Earth, as he raced between the outposts of his futuristic empire during what he has called ‘the most difficult and painful year’ of his career.”

The Post says these excursions underscore “an awkward dynamic for one of the world’s most outspoken crusaders of renewable energy: In September, a few days after calling fossil fuels ‘the dumbest experiment in human history,’ his plane burned thousands of pounds of jet fuel flying 300 miles from L.A. to Oakland so Musk could view a competitive video-gaming event.”

This self-righteous behavior has precedent, of course. As the Post concedes, “Musk is far from the only corporate leader to depend on the speed, flexibility and privacy of flying across the world on a private plane, and his high-profile role as chief executive, visionary and hype man for multiple companies helps explain why he would rely on it so heavily to get around.”

Yet there is hardly as much finger-pointing and lamenting over hypocrisy when it comes to other climate crusaders like Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Bill Nye. These alarmists and many others regularly traverse the globe via airplanes for the sole purpose of vilifying the fuel that gets them places.

Just last week, MarketWatch reported, “Despite global warming being one of the major issues discussed at Davos every year, some 1,500 private jets are expected … at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to an estimate from Air Charter Service, up from 1,300 last year.”

Nobody in Davos has apparently heard of Skype.

Tesla’s mission is honorable. In fact, renewable energy is a worthy goal. But the agenda, rhetoric, and egregious hypocrisy surrounding the industry is repugnant. Musk undoubtedly deserves some criticism for his hypocritical behavior, but so too does the Post for its sanctimoniously looking the other way when it serves the Left’s broader agenda. In addition to Musk, the Davos story further demonstrates that elitists never actually practice what they preach. But coverage of leftist duplicity isn’t necessarily created equal.

SOURCE

Big new natural gas discovery in the North Sea

Good for Britain, which presently imports most of its gas from Russia and the Gulf

One of China’s biggest oil companies has rejuvenated the “lifeblood” of the North Sea after unveiling its biggest gas discovery in more than a decade.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC, together with French oil major Total and Italy’s Edison revealed a 250 million barrel discovery in one of the oil basin’s most depleted areas.

CNOOC tried and failed to drill for gas at the Glengorm field twice in 2017 before striking the quarter billion barrel discovery some 20 years after it was first mapped out for exploration.

The Glengorm find, off the east coast of Aberdeen, is the largest North Sea gas discovery since 2008 when Total unveiled a major gas discovery at its Culzean gas field

SOURCE

Australia:Eucalyptus trees cope fine with extreme heatwaves, defy climate models, survive 50C temps

What happens to a poor tree when you withhold rain for a whole month, then hit it with four days in a row of 43C temperatures? It was so hot, some of the leaves on these trees got close to 49-50 °C.

In at least one gum species in Australia, the answer is “not much”. They suck up lots of water from their deep roots and sweat it out until the heatwave passes. The trees become evaporative coolers “siphoning up” water. They cope so well, that not only did the trees not die, but their trunk and height growth were unaffected. Indeed, only about 1% of the leaf area even exhibited browning.

But with global warming running at a heady 0.13C per decade, you might wonder how many years will it take for the trees to adapt?

From the paper — “one day”:

The gums rapidly increased their tolerance for extreme heat, the researchers found. Within a day the threshold temperature for leaf damage had increased by 2C.

Righto. At the current rate of warming, the world might get two degrees hotter in 150 years. So these trees can adapt 55,000 times faster.

The researchers say the trees were not just likely, but remarkably good with heatwaves:

“We conclude that this tree species was remarkably capable of tolerating an extreme heatwave via mechanisms that have implications for future heatwave intensity and forest resilience in a warmer world.”

This research (yet again) fits the hypothesis that life on Earth is well adapted to a wildly variable climate, probably because it happened all the time. The researchers even looked to see if exposing trees to hot weather first would help adapt them to extreme heat, but found it didn’t matter. The trees ability to adapt was innate. They just coped.

The models didn’t predict this

As the trees transpired more, they also stopped photosynthesising — they shut down in a survival mode. This breaks a pretty long standing biology rule, and thus breaks most plant growth models (and some climate ones too). It’s pretty central to plant biology, leaves give up water to bring in CO2. As plants transpire more, they absorb more CO2 and turn it into carbohydrate (i.e. more plant) which is photosynthesis. We now know that rule breaks under extreme heat when trees take a sauna-break, stop working, and just … sweat. I’d probably do the same if my leaves were 50C.

As usual in the news, no one mentions that the models were totally wrong on this, they just say, they found “the opposite” and it needs revising.

The Australian –

"Scientists have long known about this evaporative cooling mechanism, known as transpiration. But current climate models suggest transpiration is closely related to trees’ photosynthesis rates, and that it declines during heatwaves.

The researchers found the opposite, with photosynthesis all but stopping but water use increasing.

“Our dynamic global vegetation models, particularly those that simulate the exchange of CO2 and water vapour between land and the atmosphere, will need to be revisited in light of these findings,” Professor Tjoelker said."

Then there is The Caveat we’ve come to expect. Good climate news always has a bad news rider:

"He said it was a “good news-bad news story”, suggesting that scientists had underestimated gum trees’ resilience but over-estimated their carbon fixing capacity."

Since the trees kept on growing after the heatwave, any loss of carbon fixation measured in days or hours, seems pretty minor in the planetary scheme of things.

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

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

Home (Index page)

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here. It shows that we actually live in an era of remarkable temperature stability.

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

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

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded in the graph above: 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

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

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."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

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:

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

“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.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

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

"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.

DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart

BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral Reef Compendium.
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Bank of Queensland blues

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
Basic home page
Pictorial Home Page.
Selected pictures from blogs
Another picture page (Rarely updated)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.comuv.com/

OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/