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".

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29 March, 2018

UK: Plastic bottle tax: 22p return scheme to protect oceans from tide of waste

Governments are always urged to "do something" even when there is nothing they can do. This is a case in point. Nearly all the plastic in the oceans results from third world populations using thir local river as a dump. Western countries already dispose of their waste responsibly. So this new system will simply be a bureaucratic way of doubling up on what is done already

A tax of up to 22p could be added to plastic bottles to prevent the tide of rubbish flowing into the oceans, under plans announced by Michael Gove on Wednesday.

The Department of Environment is considering implementing a deposit return scheme similar to those which already exist in Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

In Europe consumers pay between 8p and 22p extra, which they get back when they return their bottles.

The plans may involve a network of reverse vending machines, where people could insert their bottles - plastic, glass and metal - and be reimbursed.

Announcing the scheme, Environment Secretary Mr Gove said: “We can be in no doubt that plastic is wreaking havoc on our marine environment – killing dolphins, choking turtles and degrading our most precious habitats.

“It is absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled.

“We have already banned harmful microbeads and cut plastic bag use, and now we want to take action on plastic bottles to help clean up our oceans.”

The announcement is the latest move in the government crackdown on plastic, following the plastic microbead ban and the 5p plastic bag charge – which has led to nine billion fewer bags distributed.   There are over 150 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s oceans and every year one million birds and over 100,000 sea mammals die from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste.

Deposit systems are already successfully operating in 38 countries around the world, producing average recycle rates for collected materials of 90 per cent - reaching as high as 95 per cent in Norway.

Commonwealth leaders will also be urged by Theresa May to agree measures to stop plastic from entering the ocean when the heads of member states gather next month.

It comes amid speculation that Britain could use some of its overseas aid budget to help Commonwealth countries to cut down on plastic pollution.

A Downing St spokesman said: “Marine pollution, particularly from plastics, is one of the most significant challenges facing the world today and the Commonwealth spread over six Continents is uniquely placed to take transformative action so that future generations can enjoy a natural environment that is cleaner and greener than we currently find it.

“The heads of government meeting does provide an opportunity to – you have 50 leaders all in one place where we can discuss plastic pollution and in particular what more we can do to stop plastic from entering the ocean.”

The deposit scheme announcement was welcomed by environmental groups and campaigners.

SOURCE

As Karakorum Glacier Stability Puzzles Global Warming Experts, The Scientific Excuses Start To Fly

When their prophecies don't turn out, Warmists invoke "special factors". But in science that is seen as a preliminary to defeat. Only a small minority of special factors will be considered before the theory is judged to have been disconfirmed

A while back a number of scientists hopped on the bandwagon claim that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by the year 2030. That claim was quickly exposed as being preposterous and so the red-faced scientists backed off and said they had in fact meant the year 2300. Today that figure as well is also looking fake.

Now scientists are busy making excuses to explain the unexpected non-melting.

The glaciers of the world are melting. Many, but not all.

And in earlier times there were also phases of melting before the Little Ice Age, a time when glaciers saw strong growth. It’s important to keep this in historical context. In today’s post we look at the latest results from glacier research out of Asia.

Let’s start in Karakorum. Tobias Bolch and his colleagues documented the central part of the mountains in the region and found that the glaciers there are for the most part stable:

Brief communication: Glaciers in the Hunza catchment (Karakoram) have been nearly in balance since the 1970s

Previous geodetic estimates of mass changes in the Karakoram revealed balanced budgets or a possible slight mass gain since ????2000. Indications of longer-term stability exist but only very few mass budget analyses are available before 2000. Here, based on 1973 Hexagon KH-9, ????2009 ASTER and the SRTM DTM, we show that glaciers in the Hunza River basin (central Karakoram) were on average in balance or showed slight insignificant mass loss within the period ????1973–2009.

Heterogeneous behaviour and frequent surge activities were also characteristic of the period before 2000. Surge-type and non-surge-type glaciers showed on average no significantly different mass change values. However, some individual glacier mass change rates differed significantly for the periods before and after ????2000.”

Overall the glaciers in Karakoram appear to be growing.

SOURCE

New Danish Paper Wrecks CO2 Theory Of Global Warming

Abstract

"Temperature data 1900–2010 from meteorological stations across the world have been analyzed and it has been found that all land areas generally have two different valid temperature trends. Coastal stations and hill stations facing ocean winds are normally more warm-trended than the valley stations that are sheltered from dominant oceans winds.

Thus, we found that in any area with variation in the topography, we can divide the stations into the more warm trended ocean air-affected stations, and the more cold-trended ocean air-sheltered stations. We find that the distinction between ocean air-affected and ocean air-sheltered stations can be used to identify the influence of the oceans on land surface. We can then use this knowledge as a tool to better study climate variability on the land surface without the moderating effects of the ocean.

We find a lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature data – with less impact of ocean temperature trends – after 1950. The lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature trends after 1950 should be considered when evaluating the climatic effects of changes in the Earth’s atmospheric trace amounts of greenhouse gasses as well as variations in solar conditions."

This is the killer graph:

Figure 19. Ocean air sheltered (OAS) and ocean air affected (OAA) temperatures, all regions.

We can readily see that temperatures at the OAS (ocean sheltered) sites were just as high back in the 1920s to 40s as now.

Frank Lansner explained the significance of his findings in an email to NoTricksZone:

"The little ice-age centuries led to a very cold ocean around 1900-1920 and so ocean and ocean-affected stations were not able to show the warming around 1920-30 so well. The ocean kept the warming hidden to some degree. Ocean temperature rise was somewhat delayed for decades it appears. That’s why ocean temperatures do not well reflect the heat balance over the Earth 1920-50 – unlike OAS areas valleys that reflected the change in heat balance rapidly. Thus it appears OAS data are the data best suited for evaluating the heat balance over the Earth.

SOURCE

Ethanol Indoctrination Enters School Studies

The Renewable Fuels Association is going to "educate" children about the wonders of ethanol

Have you quizzed your child yet on the supposedly benign value of ethanol? Believe it or not, some students at and above the third grade might have a thing or two to say about it after being subjected to “Ethanol in the Classroom,” an education (read: indoctrination) platform created by the Renewable Fuels Association.

The organization’s president, Bob Dinneen, recently described this e-learning tool as “providing a fun and interactive way for students to learn about the renewable fuel.” He further heralded it as “a fun platform for children and young adults to learn about ethanol’s numerous benefits.”

There are countless words that accurately describe ethanol, but beneficial is most assuredly not one of them. According to the Department of Energy, the U.S. produced 14.54 billion bushels of corn in 2016. Of that, 5.25 billion — or 36% — was used for ethanol. Which means that only 64% of corn is being used to feed the hungry; the rest is being wasted on a biofuel that ruins your lawnmower and other gasoline-powered tools and automobiles.

Our own Mark Alexander has chronicled numerous other problems associated with ethanol.

Here’s another fact — one that truly worries the mandate’s most vociferous advocates: The detrimental effect of ethanol isn’t a secret. Just how deficient is it? The Washington Times recently reported that “the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that boosted ethanol use has fallen out of favor so badly that environmentalists now see themselves on the same side of the debate as Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, arguing that the entire program is deeply flawed and must be completely overhauled.”

As Hot Air blogger Jazz Shaw says of “Ethanol in the Classroom,” “I don’t need to sit through the class to be able to guess that a few things were left out of the curriculum.” He adds, “This isn’t an education program. It’s an indoctrination scheme. Get ‘em while they’re young and you can influence their actions and choices as adults.”

The biofuel mandate is clearly on shaky ground. And the activists’ solution is to use children as pawns to save it — much like the gun control lobby is doing to an astonishing degree after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. All told, it’s more proof that education standards need to be controlled at the local level.

SOURCE

Independents Are Shifting To Climate Denial, According To The Latest Gallup Poll

In a sign the White House’s hard-line stance against climate science may be shifting public debate, independent voters have grown more doubtful of scientists’ warnings about climate change over the past year, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

Between 2017 and 2018, the percentage of independents who understand greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change fell 8 percentage points to 62 percent, while the share of those who believe the effects of global warming have already begun dipped 7 points to 60 percent.

Sixty-five percent understand that most scientists believe global warming is occurring, down from 71 percent in 2017.

Fewer respondents said they worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming, down 5 points from last year to 62 percent. But the 45 percent who said global warming poses a serious threat in their lifetimes stayed steady between 2017 and 2018.

Public opinion has seesawed slightly over the years, but the long-term trend is overwhelmingly toward the scientific consensus that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Gallup found that 66 percent of Americans understand that scientific evidence shows the Earth’s temperatures rising, and 64 percent acknowledge that burning fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial farming are the cause.

The results echo 2016 survey data from Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication, which found 69 percent know global warming is happening and 52 percent understand humans are triggering it.

Still, the shift, recorded during a week of telephone surveys earlier this month of 1,041 adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, mirrors surging climate denialism among Republicans. Just 35 percent of Republicans understand that humans cause global warming, down from 40 percent in 2017, while 34 percent said the effects of climate change have already started, 7 points less than the previous year.

The findings come just months after historic hurricanes wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas, and California’s largest wildfire on record killed 18 people and scorched more than 280,000 acres of land. Yet the disasters, which scientists said were made worse by warming global temperatures, seem to have stoked further debate over the causes of climate change and the policies to address it.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly mocked climate science over the past year, suggesting winter weather disproved long-term warming trends, as his administration gutted funding for climate programs and slashed the few regulations in place to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The Republican Party, the only major political party in the developed world to make rejecting climate science a platform issue, has doubled down on the issue as megadonors such as the fossil fuel magnate Koch brothers and the right-wing billionaire Mercers have increased their political spending.

SOURCE

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

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

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28 March, 2018

The centrality of EROEI

Until 2004 Britain was a net energy exporter. Today, it imports about half its energy. Some of that, in the form of coal and liquefied natural gas, comes directly from Russia, which also supplies a third of Europe’s gas through pipelines. The unprecedented “gas deficit warning” of March 2 was a sharp reminder of our dependence on imports.

Yet Britain is swimming in energy. Enough sunlight falls on the country to power the economy many times over. Wind, wave, water and tidal power cascade over us. There is wood in our forests. There are hot rocks beneath Cornwall and Durham, gas under Lancashire and enough coal under the North Sea to last centuries. We could easily buy sufficient uranium to keep us going indefinitely. And if we were to crack nuclear fusion, all we would need is a little bit of water and some Cornish lithium.

So what’s the problem? The human race has a plethora of options for powering civilisation in the 21st century, not a dearth. The problem is not energy, but energy conversion. Economic growth is effectively a matter of turning energy into complex structures that can be energised to do work. Energy conversion is the lifeblood of civilisation. Just as biology harnesses energy to build bodies and ideas, so human society captures energy to make physically improbable entities such as buildings, governments and social-media platforms. Energy conversion enables us to avoid entropy, the drift towards chaos.

The modern world stands on a cairn built by energy conversions in the past. Just as it took many loaves of bread and nosebags of hay to build Salisbury Cathedral, so it took many cubic metres of gas or puffs of wind to power the computer and develop the software on which I write these words. The Industrial Revolution was founded on the discovery of how to convert heat into work, initially via steam. Before that, heat (wood, coal) and work (oxen, people, wind, water) were separate worlds.

To be valuable, any conversion technology must produce reliable, just-in-time power that greatly exceeds — by a factor of seven and upwards — the amount of energy that goes into its extraction, conversion and delivery to a consumer. It is this measure of productivity, EROEI (energy return on energy invested), that limits our choice.

You could make your own electricity on an exercise bicycle, eating organic ice cream as fuel, but such a system would have wildly negative EROEI once you include the energetics of farming cattle and making ice cream. It would also produce a pathetic trickle of power: about 50 watts (joules per second). The average Briton uses about 4,000 watts, as much energy as if she had 240 slaves on exercise bicycles in the back room, pedalling eight-hour shifts. That’s roughly what “civilisation” looked like in ancient Egypt or China.

By the EROEI criterion, biofuel is a disastrous choice, requiring about as much tractor fuel to grow as you get out in ethanol or biodiesel. Wind power has a low energy return, because its vast infrastructure is energetically costly and needs replacing every two decades or so (sooner in the case of the offshore turbines whose blades have just expensively failed), while backing up wind with batteries and other power stations reduces the whole system’s productivity. Geothermal too may struggle, because turning warm water into electricity entails waste. Solar power with battery storage also fails the EROEI test in most climates. In the deserts of Arabia, where land is nearly free, sunlight abundant and gas cheap, solar power backed up with gas at night may be cheap.

Fossil fuels have amply repaid their energy cost so far, but the margin is falling as we seek gas and oil from tighter rocks and more remote regions. Nuclear fission passes the EROEI test with flying colours but remains costly because of ornate regulation.

Which brings me to nuclear fusion, a process potentially with a wildly positive EROEI (it fuels the sun and the H-bomb) but that so far has proved impossible to control. Fusion’s ever-receding promise suggests caution, but a British company, Tokamak Energy, is increasingly confident it can generate electricity by 2030, ahead of its American rivals. It forecasts ten large (1.5 GWe) power plants a year being built by 2035, and a hundred by 2040. It is a cheeky, private-sector upstart challenging the slow, international, public-sector collaboration on fusion.

The new fusion optimists base their confidence on yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), a novel superconducting material that allows smaller, less cold but more powerful magnets. Britain is a world leader in YBCO technology, so it is not impossible that we could see a breakthrough here in the next two decades comparable to Thomas Newcomen’s steam invention of 1712.

Suppose fusion does make the “too cheap to meter” breakthrough that fission failed to make. We could then stop worrying about carbon dioxide, but what would we do with all this energy? We could make as much fresh water as we fancied, through desalination, to water the deserts. We could grow food indoors to release the countryside for nature. We could electrify all transport. We could enable Africa to become as wealthy as America.

A green misery-monger called Paul Ehrlich once wrote that giving cheap, abundant energy to humanity would be like “giving an idiot child a machine gun”. On the contrary, cutting the cost of energy is absolutely central to delivering prosperity and fairness. This is why it is so baffling that Britain keeps pushing up the price of energy to encourage the medieval technologies of wood, wind and water power.

Professor Dieter Helm’s official review of government energy policy last year found that we could have reduced carbon dioxide emissions for far less than the £100 billion already spent on renewables by encouraging a switch to gas. But, as he says, governments are bad at picking winners, while losers are good at picking governments. Meanwhile, Germany, which has spent something like a trillion euros on support for green energy, is now building lots of coal-fired power to keep the lights on.

At huge cost, Germany is learning that you cannot have a cheap, reliable, low-carbon grid without the high EROEI of nuclear. The Energiewende is a historic error. But is there any guarantee governments would suddenly be more rational if fusion came along?

SOURCE

Flood, drought and disease tolerant plants —one gene behind all of them

Since there is no ongoing warming, the drought tolerant properties of this discovery will be the important ones

An international collaboration between researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Nagoya University and the University of Western Australia has resulted in a plant biology breakthrough. Since 2014, the researchers have worked on identifying the genetic background for the improved flood tolerance observed in rice, wheat and several natural wetland plants. In New Phytologist, the researchers describe the discovery of a single gene that controls the surface properties of rice, rendering the leaves superhydrophobic.

A gene called LGF1 controls the nanostructure of leaf surfaces. During flood events, the gene enables survival of submerged rice since the wax nanostructures retain a thin leaf gas film; hence the name of the gene, LGF1. The gas films facilitate gas exchange with the floodwater so that carbon dioxide can be taken up during the daytime in order to fuel underwater photosynthesis, and oxygen can be extracted at night.

The LGF1 gene also confers drought tolerance, since the tiny wax crystals reduce evaporation from the leaf surfaces, conserving tissue water.

Superhydrophobic surfaces retain a thin gas film underwater, which enables the stomata to function also during submergence. The stomata regulate the uptake of CO2 (carbon dioxide) for photosynthesis during the day, but also the uptake of O2 (oxygen) during darkness, enabling aerobic respiration. Without the protective layer of gas, the floodwater blocks the stomata and the gas exchange with the environment is greatly restricted; the plants are virtually drowning!

“We have used advanced microelectrodes both in controlled laboratory experiments and in the field situation to reveal the benefits of leaf gas films during submergence,” says professor Ole Pedersen, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.

Long-term effects are still a puzzle

“We have assessed the importance of leaf gas films during submergence of rice, and in some situations, rice grows equally well above as well as below water – only because rice possesses the LGF1 gene,” continues Ole Pedersen.

The implications of these findings are huge. Worldwide, climate change has already resulted in an increased number of floods, and in order to sustain food supply in a wetter future, the world needs climate-smart crops that better tolerate flooding.

“The superhydrophobic leaf properties that are coded by the LGF1 gene are, however, lost after a few days of submergence; the plants start drowning as the leaves become wet. Thus, our research now focuses on overexpression of the LGF1 gene. The overexpression should coat the leaves with more wax crystals and in this way prime the plants for a flood event. The fact that it is all controlled by just a single gene makes the goal much more realistic,” concludes professor Ole Pedersen.

SOURCE

A potentially scandalous case of Russian collusion — with liberals

Over the last two weeks at The American Spectator, journalist Kevin Mooney reported a significant story he has been investigating for at least a year. The potential political repercussions could expose one of the most disturbing Russia-collusion scandals of the Trump era — and it doesn’t implicate Donald Trump. To the contrary, it would implicate some of Trump’s loudest critics on the left. These leftists, it is alleged, might have worked against some of Trump’s biggest supporters in the Rustbelt; supporters that won him the presidency. And yet, for some reason, the story hasn’t blipped on Donald Trump’s radar screen — or Twitter screen. Trump hasn’t talked about it, including in his raucous rally in Western Pennsylvania on behalf of Rick Saccone in the Saccone-Lamb congressional race in a district that Trump won by 20 points.

Okay, what’s the story?

As Kevin Mooney reported in two exclusives (posted here and here), there indeed appears to be some serious Russian meddling going on. It’s not, however, the meddling being pushed by the party line at CNN and MSNBC. This meddling would be Russian funding of U.S. environmental groups, which, in turn, used those Russian resources to work against fracking in the United States and the Keystone pipeline.

“While allegations of the Donald Trump campaign colluding with Russians to alter the presidential election outcome remain unproven at best,” wrote Mooney, “a clear money trail and U.S. intelligence reports demonstrate Russia’s active campaign of funding U.S. environmental groups.”

To put it succinctly: These reports suggest some sort of collusion or cooperation between U.S. environmental groups and Putin’s Russia, working together to undermine America’s crucial domestic energy sector. This sector is a boom industry, tremendous for our workers. It has resurrected the Rustbelt.

Mooney did a major story on this last August, which failed to gain any traction in the mainstream media. He reported in great detail that “some [U.S.] environmental activists who pressure politicians to halt production of natural gas [in the United States]” were acting as “agents of influence” on behalf of the Kremlin’s energy profits. As students of the Cold War know, agents of influence were a prime asset for covert Russian activity inside the United States. The Russians learned during the Cold War that agents of influence could be just as effective (if not more so) than outright KGB spies on the payroll.

Mooney cited and quoted (among others) retired CIA officer Kenneth L. Stiles, who analyzed the “money trail” between certain U.S. environmental interests and Russian energy interests. Stiles said these environmental groups “are, without a doubt, agents of influence to Moscow through [a] networking system of shell companies and foundations.”

What followed in Mooney’s story was a stunning array of information that truly cannot be ignored. He has since followed up with additional reports — one on U.S. green groups, the Russians, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act — as well as his pieces here at The American Spectator.

Mooney interviewed me back in October, for a story that was again completely ignored by the media. He sought me out for historical context, given my knowledge of the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of what the Reagan administration did in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan and a handful of key advisers, led by Bill Clark at the NSC and Bill Casey at the CIA, undermined Russia’s energy sector as part of a larger plan to undermine the USSR.

And thus, as I told Mooney, it’s fascinating to see Russia today working to undermine the construction of two natural gas pipelines on U.S. territory when, in the 1980s, Reagan worked to undermine the construction of two huge natural-gas pipelines on Soviet territory. Reagan and his administration succeeded in slowing and blocking the development of those pipelines. It was one of the most devastating forms of economic warfare ever waged against the Evil Empire.

Now, today, Russia seems to want to turn the tables. That is, Russia is apparently trying to block U.S. pipelines, and then some. Russia would also like to hinder other forms of energy development (i.e., fracking) thriving in the United States. Russia is doing this to protect and enhance its own energy sector.

It’s like an old Cold War powder-keg that went dry is suddenly being reignited with reverse fuses.

But what makes the current situation more nefarious is the possibility — if Mooney’s suspicions are indeed accurate — of Russian manipulation of domestic environmental groups inside the United States, and their willful cooperation. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had a heck of a time trying to enlist the support of Western allies in blocking the Siberian gas pipeline. Even Margaret Thatcher balked, because she wanted Britain to have the cheap Russian gas and British firms to have construction contracts in building the Kremlin’s pipelines. The same was true for the West Germans and French. Ronald Reagan boldly proceeded essentially alone, and the results were beautifully lethal to the Soviet economy.

But here today, we have the extremely troubling possibility of our own U.S. citizens being targeted and tapped by the Russians to undercut our own domestic industry, our workers, our consumers, our prices, our overall economy.

Of course, an essential consideration is whether these domestic forces know they’re being exploited. If they’re willfully working with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that would be a very serious matter. If they’re mere dupes, then they have a legal and moral obligation to mend their ways once made aware of any malfeasance, especially if in violation of U.S. law.

Finally, politically speaking, consider the striking irony here: we have the apparent possibility of liberals from the environmental movement helping Putin and the Russians at the very moment liberals have been screaming about cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

A critical factor in Donald Trump winning Rustbelt states like Pennsylvania and Ohio was the energy sector. Forget “Build the wall” or “Lock her up,” Trump’s 2020 slogan ought to be “Drill, baby, drill.” Across party lines, Americans are widely sympathetic to harnessing our vast energy reserves to create jobs and economic growth, from white-collar Wall Street to blue-collar Democrats. If Trump is looking for a winning policy issue that’s not partisan, this is it. If he’s looking to repeat his winning Electoral College strategy, this is an ideal issue. Most normal Americans, outside the loony left, express great frustration at why we don’t drill, drill, drill. Trump should drill — and out-drill Putin. If the environmentalists want to protest that one, let ’em, and let Trump unleash on ‘em.

As Kevin Mooney wrote at The American Spectator: “Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, figures to watch the U.S. surpass it within five years. Killing fracking and the pipeline stand as two ways for Russia to avert this fate.”

Precisely.

And so, to return to the central point, is it true that U.S. environmental groups have been aiding and abetting Putin and the Russians against our own domestic energy sector? Is this a case of political-economic collusion?

Well, the Republican Congress, to its credit, isn’t ignoring the question. On March 1, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee released a report titled, “Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media.” The media response? Crickets.

Donald Trump typically responds to crickets by creating his own firestorm. Well, where is he? This could be one of the biggest scandals out there, and fully in line with Trump’s political and economic thinking. Why isn’t he going bonkers with his Twitter account? Is he not reading The American Spectator? Surely he is.

I’m surprised by his silence. I’m sure his Rustbelt voters would be as well.

SOURCE

‘UK must boost fracking to reduce reliance on Russian energy’

The UK Government needs to speed up the development of fracking to improve the country’s energy security and make it less reliant on imports from Russia.

That’s according to the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF), which says in light of the “crisis” in British-Russian relations, planning laws regarding the controversial energy source need to be changed as quickly as possible.

It suggests this is necessary for the UK to avoid becoming too reliant on foreign imports for its gas supply in the near future.

Recent winter shortages forced Britain to import emergency gas supplies from Russia, which the GWPF stresses is an “unsustainable situation”.

The group says the first step is to change the law to class initial drilling as permitted development to stop activists from delaying the early stages of exploration.

A spokesperson from the group said: “The length of time it has been taking for shale gas extraction to get planning approval demonstrates that the system is utterly failing.

“An approach is needed that can bring about swift but considered planning decisions and that also provides the necessary reassurances for local communities that the environment is protected and disruption minimised.”

SOURCE

China to the rescue of the Australian power supply?

Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce have both used the Coalition partyroom meeting to urge Malcolm Turnbull to do more to keep the Liddell coal power station open.

According to a government MP, Mr Abbott raised an article in The Australian this morning and asked why the government did not attempt to facilitate a sale of the plant to Chinese group Shandong Ruyi.

Mr Turnbull responded by saying the government was not Liddell and could therefore not sell the coal-fired plant in the Hunter Valley. He added the government was agnostic on energy sources.

Mr Joyce spoke in the partyroom to say it was important the 45-year-old power station stay open.

Former Australian rugby union great Nick Farr-Jones wrote to the Prime Minister’s office in December declaring that his client, Shandong Ruyi Group, was interested in buying the 45-year-old plant, which AGL is closing in 2022.

Mr Farr-Jones, the director of consulting firm Taurus Funds Management, wrote that Shandong Ruyi, which has a controlling stake in the $240 million Cubbie Station cotton farm in southwest Queensland, wanted to invest in clean-coal technology and become a player in the Australian energy market.

The captain of Australia’s 1991 World Cup-winning Wallabies rugby team suggested the government should raise Shandong Ruyi’s interest in Liddell when it lobbied AGL to sell the coal-power plant to a third party.

AGL so far has refused the government’s request to extend the life of the 1800-megawatt power station, instead planning to replace Liddell’s power capacity with renewables, gas and a planned battery.

The Australian reported last week that Liddell’s closure may cause power outages because only 100MW of the replacement capacity has been funded.

In an email sent to Mr Turnbull’s deputy chief of staff, Clive Mathieson, on December 15 last year, Mr Farr-Jones said a senior representative of Shandong Ruyi met Scott Morrison in the middle of last year to detail the company’s ambition to invest in Australia’s power sector, including in thermal coal assets.

Shandong Ruyi, which is chaired by Qiu Yafu, specialises in textiles but in recent years has expanded into other industries including energy and real estate. The group bought the 96,000ha Cubbie Station in 2012, sparking intense criticism from the Nationals, but must reduce its initial 80 per cent stake in the farm to 51 per cent by late this year.

“Following the recent announcement by AGL that they intended to close the Liddell coal-fired power station in coming years, I thought I would drop you a quick note regarding a client of ours who would definitely be prepared to invest in latest-technology, low-emission, coal-fired power,” Mr Farr-Jones wrote. “To that extent they would review the current Liddell plant with a view to extending the life of the plant to provide reliable, lower cost power to NSW. They would also look to invest in Queensland, particularly north Queensland.

“Around six months ago I met with the Treasurer (Minister Morrison) with the son-in-law of the president of Ruyi to make sure he was aware of Ruyi’s intentions to invest in the power sector in Australia.”

A spokesman for Mr Turnbull earlier has said no response was provided to Mr Farr-Jones, and that the Prime Minister’s office did not raise Shandong Ruyi’s interest with AGL.

Shandong Ruyi, one of China’s largest integrated textile companies, has partnered with Chinese state-owned company Huaneng Power on power projects globally, including building low-emission, coal-fired plants in Pakistan, Mr Farr-Jones’s email said.

SOURCE

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

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

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27 March, 2018

Human Caused Global Warming: Some scientific rebuttals

No empirical evidence in observational data

1…. that atmospheric CO2 is responsive to fossil fuel emissions

https://ssrn.com/abstract=2997420

2…. that there exists an ECS parameter that determines temperature according to atmospheric CO2

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3117385

3…. that there exists a TCRE parameter that determines temperature according to cumulative emissions

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3142525

4…. a parody of the flaw in TCRE

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3144908

5…. Conclusion: No empirical evidence to support the “human caused global warming” hypothesis.

SOURCE

A Third Brief to Climate Tutorial

I just found out, thanks to Francis Menton, that a third skeptical brief was submitted to Judge Alsup in reference to his tutorial. The thrust apparently is to show that the temperature record does not support the claim that recent variability is anything out of the ordinary.

The article by Francis Menton is Klimate Kraziness: A California Judge Holds A “Tutorial” On Climate Science posted at Manhatton Contrarian.

The third friend of the court brief was by The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, which presented work of many scientists, most notably James Wallace III, Joseph D’Aleo, John Christie, and Craig Idso. Menton’s explanation below from his article.

Not to downplay the work of my co-amici, but we are the one of the three groups that emphatically made the essential scientific point that the most credible data as to world temperatures, properly analyzed, preclude rejection of the null hypothesis that natural factors are the predominant if not only cause of the observed warming. As stated in our submission:

The conclusion of the work is that each of EPA’s “lines of evidence” has been invalidated by the best empirical evidence, and therefore the attribution of any observed climate change, including global warming, to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations has not been established.

And, further on in our presentation:

[T]hese natural factor impacts fully explain the trends in all relevant temperature data sets over the last 50 or more years. This research, like Wallace (2016), found that rising atmospheric concentrations did not have a statistically significant impact on any of the (14) temperature data sets that were analyzed. Wallace 2017 concludes that, “at this point, there is no statistically valid proof that past increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations have caused what have been officially reported as rising, or even record setting, temperatures.”

Footnote:

The post The Climate Story (Illustrated) provides a set of graphics making the same argument: The temperature record does not support climate alarm.

Independently the prestigious Société de Calcul Mathématique (Society for Mathematical Calculation) has written a detailed 195-page White Paper that presente a blistering point-by-point critique of the key dogmas of global warming, starting with the temperature record. See Bonn COP23 Briefing for Realists

SOURCE

Some crazy things are taking place in the lawsuit of the People of California against the Big Oil

OK, San Francisco's city hall and some other Northern Californian carefully selected left-wing nut jobs have boldly called themselves "the People of California" and sued six Big Oil companies to create a lawsuit "People of California vs BP p.l.c." with some extra words. Richard Lindzen, Will Happer, and Steve Koonin (a lukewarmer from the Obama administration) submitted some materials to the court and they're great. But look what Chevron officially wrote:

Chevron agreed with the latest scientific assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC), which was released in 2013 and 2014, the oil company’s lawyer said. [...]
Holy crap, "Chevron agrees with the IPCC report". To make this story doubly comical, and to complete the reversal of the sides, some green activists denounced this support for the IPCC as a tobacco industry tactic. Well, I am not sure. How can someone "agree with the IPCC report"? It has some thousands of pages in total. Some of it is boring data, some of them are accurate, some of them are not, most of them can't be verified by an individual who hasn't spent years on the measurements themselves. But a big fraction – which is still some hundreds of pages – are creative interpretations and at least some 1/2 of those are just rubbish.

So every intelligent person – including co-authors of the IPCC report themselves – would surely still find a huge number of pages he or they would disagree with. In particular, every intelligent person who has looked into the topic knows that the IPCC report doesn't contain any evidence supporting the idea that Chevron should change its business because of some climate phenomena.

Can these assertions that "Chevron agrees with the IPCC assessment" help the good cause in any way? I don't believe it. Such a claim clearly contradicts what the actual scientists – such as Lindzen, Happer, and Koonin – say about the problem. Chevron is turning into a company of clowns. I think that their lawyer simply has to be an alarmist activist himself. Do you have an alternative explanation? Maybe Chevron wants to make its future profits from the green regulations and its friendship with the government bureaucrats instead of fossil fuels?

Why would a big oil company ever hire a climate alarmist as its lawyer? Have the alarmists reversed their divestment campaigns, bought most of the stocks, and guarantee the alarmist behavior of the company through the stockholders' meetings? There are so many crazy things going on here.

So what Lindzen, Happer, and Koonin wrote – and what Spencer wrote elsewhere (he pointed out that the climate models don't actually start with any "feedbacks" so the term "feedback" is just one possible approximate a posteriori description of the behavior of the models after you learned about the results, not something well-defined that enters the calculations at the beginning) – is very interesting but these actual scientific arguments make very little impact on the debate because the key events are still being decided by the green brain of Mr John Kelly, or the idiotic green lawyer at Chevron. For these people, it's enough to say "the debate is over" or "we agree with the whole IPCC report" and for many others, it's an order to end any debate or doubt and continue in the unlimited hysteria.

Sadly, if Trump fails to fix the underlying cause of this mess – the corruption in this scientific discipline – he will be tilting at the windmills. You can't really cure a disease by addressing the symptoms only.

It's ironic but now, under the Trump presidency, we may see how the alarmist climate science community was created. It was created by the likes of General Kelly and the Chevron lawyer. Such people with no understanding of the science have made arbitrary oversimplified and almost entirely untrue yet officially "authoritative" statements – and they defined constraints that the buildup of the climatological community had to adapt to. So a soldier told you "it's a matter of patriotism to end the debate and fight climate change" or an idiotic lawyer or administrator turned out to be influential and said that it was right to "agree with the whole IPCC report". So everyone was "obliged" to agree with it – who would want to be unpatriotic or contradict the main lawyer in your organization? – and only alarmists were hired.

This has nothing to do with science and it's no surprise that the field is mess. Climatology is special because it's so "interesting" for politicians, lawyers, and even generals. No general or lawyer has ever pushed scientists to agree or disagree with the Higgs boson because the army and lawyers don't know what the Higgs boson is and how to make it interesting for their well-being. But climate change is an entirely different issue.

SOURCE

Alarmism Takes A Big Hit…Flood Of New Scientific Findings Show Nothing Unusual Happening Climatically

Two days ago Kenneth presented an impressive flurry of scientific, peer-reviewed charts published over the past 15 months (46 alone in 2018). Much to the surprise of alarmist scientists, global warming is weak at best.

Lack of warming a global phenomenon
According to Kenneth, these new papers show that “nothing climatically unusual is happening”. For example a publication by Polovodova Asteman et al shows that continental Europe’s temperatures are lower today than they were on other occasions over the past 2000 years:

Today’s warming doesn’t stand out

The authors write that the contemporary warming of the 20th century “does not stand out in the 2500-year perspective” and is “of the same magnitude as the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.”

A number of strident global warming scientists prefer to dismiss the significance of Europe’s temperature record, claiming that it is local in nature and does not tell us what is really happening globally. However, other papers fully contradict this. For example, a paper by Wündsch et al., 2018 shows us that the warming today in South Africa also is nothing unusual.

It’s global, stupid

Temperature reconstructions show the same is true in Southeast Australia, according to McGowan et al., 2018, Northern Alaska (Hanna et al., 2018), the Tibetan Plateau (Li et al., 2018), South Korea (Song et al., 2018), Antarctica (Mikis, 2018), to cite just a few among dozens of others.

“Warming holes” surprise scientists

Meanwhile new findings by Partridge et al., 2018 show in fact that other regions have cooled. The eastern US “annual maximum and minimum temperatures decreased by 0.46°C and 0.83°C respectively.”
The surprising winter cooling has led scientists to dub the eastern US a “warming hole”, where scientists blame oceanic cycles for the unexpected cooling.

Greenland within normal, cooler than 1930s

Greenland often gets cited by alarmists as a climate canary in a coal mine due to its massive ice sheets and their potential to cause dramatic sea level rise should they melt. But a brand new study by Mikkelsen et al., 2018 shows that surface temperatures going back over 150 years are lower than they were in the 1930s!

Looking at the above Greenland surface temperature chart, we see that the mercury plummeted some 5°C from 1930s to the 1980s before thankfully rebounding in the 1990s and 2000s. Here as well there exist no signs for warming alarm.

Greenland cooling again since 2000

Furthermore, much to the surprise of global warming scientists, Greenland temperatures have again been falling since 2000. Westergaard-Nielsen et al., 2018 examined the most recent and detailed trends based on MODIS (2001–2015) and concluded that if there is any general trend for Greenland it is “mostly cooling”.

South Pole cooling, getting icier

At the other end of the planet at the South Pole, new findings by Cerrone and Fusco, 2018 confirm the large increase in the southern hemisphere sea ice and suggest it “arises from the impact of climate modes and their long-term trends”.

They write that the results indicate a progressive cooling has affected the year-to-year climate of the sub-Antarctic since the 1990s and that the SIC [sea ice concentration] shows upward annual, spring, and summer trends.

SOURCE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

Philippines to hold inquiry on global warming's impact on human rights

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) will hold its first public hearing this week on a landmark complaint alleging that several multinational oil and mining firms have violated the human rights of Filipinos by causing global warming that has led to natural disasters.

Among those named in the complaint are international oil giants Chevron and BP, as well as miner Tio Tinto, according to petitioner Greenpeace.

Can Philippine storm survivors hold companies to account for climate damage?

The CHR told ANC on Sunday that while the agency cannot impose penalties, the hearings will set as a precedent towards fighting climate change.

"We have sent the message that we are here not to establish any financial liability. We are here to establish whether or not human activity, so-called anthropogenic processes are involved in bringing about climate change," said CHR Commissioner Roberto Cadiz.

The first of the series of hearings will be held from March 27th to 28th.

SOURCE

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

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

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26 March, 2018

Juneau schools leave room for debate in climate change curriculum

The Juneau School Board is considering adopting new curriculum for middle and high schools — based on growing national science standards. The model has been adopted entirely in 19 states, and one of the core ideas is teaching students about climate change.

The standards don’t shy away from attributing it to an increase of human activity. But how that’s taught in the classroom could be up to interpretation.

In the past five years, the way that science is taught in the classroom — across the nation — has shifted. Pop quizzes are still a thing, but the Next Generation Science Standards challenge students to think systematically.

“You still have the content there, but the focus has changed,” Ted Wilson said. He helped oversee the new curriculum for the Juneau School District, which includes activities that encourage place-based learning.

Another key part of the science standards is that students graduate with an understanding of earth and human activity, and that includes learning about climate change. The standards don’t mince words: What caused climate change to accelerate? It’s us.

The Juneau School District is borrowing some core ideas from the new standards.

But Wilson says how those ideas are taught in the classroom is up to the teachers. There’s no school district policy on climate change. Wilson’s advice is to stick to “it’s happening.”

“The aspect of how much of it is human-caused — because there is still a lot of controversy about that — is to teach it as this is one stream of thought,” Wilson said.

One stream of thought, Wilson says, that humans contributed to our most recent climate change.

“To present it like that,” Wilson said. “And for students to come away with their own opinions whether they think humans have made that impact or not.”

But Glenn Branch, a deputy director at the National Center for Science Education, says there are clear facts about who’s causing climate change to ramp up. His nonprofit advocates for evidence-based science in the classroom.

Branch says there’s a social controversy over climate change. But there isn’t a scientific one.

Scientists all over the world have studied this. And the overwhelming majority have reached the same conclusion: humans are largely to blame. It’s not an opinion, Branch says. It involves climate models and math.

Branch says that doesn’t leave room for avoiding the facts or debating them.

“It’s inappropriate,” Branch said. “Both because it reinforces a false conception that there’s a legitimate scientific debate about climate change, and also because it misrepresents the nature of science.”

Still, Branch says states are trying to navigate this all across the country. With topics that can be perceived as controversial, like climate change, he says it’s understandable school districts don’t want to make waves.

Branch says there are social issues that can be debated, like carbon taxes. However:

“You certainly don’t have it about issues such as human impact on climate change or the shape of the earth,” Branch said.

But Ted Wilson doesn’t take issue with climate change being presented in the classroom like a debate. Has human activity accelerated it or not? He says that regularly happens in history class or language arts.

Where does Wilson draw the line? Would flat earth theory be something he’d consent to someone teaching in a science classroom?

“As far as something that they’re asking students to debate, they could,” Wilson said.

Bottom line, Wilson says, is students should be able to think critically. And then decide on their own how to interpret the world, whether it’s flat earth theory or climate change. Regardless of what’s accelerating warming, how can we adapt? That’s the takeaway, he says.

“I think in our political climate, we don’t want teachers to be seen as people that are trying to push an agenda,” Wilson said.

Teaching students about climate change is part of the state’s science standards. But a spokesperson from the Alaska Department of Education says it’s largely up to the school districts to decide how that’s done.

Next year, the department will be able offer some new guidance. The state is currently updating its science standards. After being reviewed by teachers, parents and industry, it will be posted for public comment in 2019.

SOURCE

Global cooling

Poland clamps down on environmental defenders ahead of UN climate talks

The notoriety of the next IPCC climate conference (COP24 in November) is already infecting the host country, which is a heavy user of its own coal for electricity generation. Maybe COP should read COPS? They clearly suspect trouble is likely.

Poland recently passed a bill that bans spontaneous protests and allows police surveillance at this year’s world climate summit, reports DW.com.

Civil society groups say Poland wants to silence environmental defenders.

There are still eight months to go until the international community meets for the UN climate talks in Poland’s Katowice, but the host is already causing controversy.

Poland has passed a bill specifically for the UN summit which, according to environmental groups, will exclude members of civil society from the Paris Agreement process and endanger activists who have been threatened in their home countries.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signed the bill at the end of January, but it has gone widely unnoticed by the international community so far. It bans all spontaneous gatherings in the southern coal-mining city of Katowice between November 26 and December 16, spanning the entire period of the annual world climate change conference.

It also submits registered conference participants to government surveillance. It allows authorities and police to obtain, collect and use personal data of attendees without their consent or judicial oversight.

Now, a group of more than 100 environmental, women’s and indigenous organizations have signed a statement calling on Poland to repeal the law, arguing that it is a crackdown on human rights.

The bill “is setting a dangerous precedent that undermines basic human rights and fundamental freedoms, particularly including the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, association and of speech, and the right to privacy,” says the statement published by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD).

Limited participation

Poland still allows demonstrations that are registered with local authorities in Katowice before the summit. But it restricts all spontaneous protests, activities and assemblies during the 24th ‘Conference of the Parties’ summit (COP24).

SOURCE

China struggles to kick its coal habit even as it pledges to increase renewable energy use

China is the world's biggest polluter, consuming more coal than the rest of the world combined.

It is now taking global leadership in combating climate change and has pledged to drastically cut its use of fossil fuels.

Central to that plan is to increase renewable energy by 20 per cent by 2030.

But many question whether the rhetoric is matching reality.

In the middle of China's coal heartland of Datong, solar panels fill the hilltops as far as the eye can see.

The project, called Top Runner, employs cutting-edge technology. And its success will, in part, determine how far and how fast solar energy can be rolled out across China.

The project is totally wireless and its conversion rate of sunlight to electricity is as high at 17 per cent. So far enough power is generated for 65,000 homes.

Pu Chengjun, who helps manage the project from Three Gorges New Energy, says it has the potential to transform the local area.

"The structure of energy and economy will be adjusted. It will change from coal mining, heavy industry to clean energy, new energy, solar energy. It's a model project," he says.

Communities in Datong have been destroyed by rampant coal mining. The water table has been poisoned and the land has subsided. Only small amounts of land can be used for agriculture.

Many villages that once lived off the riches of coal now lie derelict and abandoned.

Mr Pu believes solar energy can revive the area's fortunes.

"It will provide about 1,000 jobs a year in construction and maintenance and the company pays rent of more than half a million dollars a year to the locals for land that was useless," he says.

Nationally, solar only generates about 2 per cent of China's electricity and wind power a little more than 3 per cent, but much more is in the pipeline.

China says it will be the world's biggest investor in renewables and has pledged $400 billion by 2030.

But the problem is much of the electricity is not getting onto the grid. It is being squeezed out by coal, which provides three-quarters of the nation's energy needs.

Coal is cheap, and China is self-sufficient. And that has created a dependency. Coal is firmly entrenched and much of China's business and political elites are making billions from it.

Yuan Ying, the manager of climate and energy at Greenpeace China, says the coal culture will be a challenge to change, and top decision-makers down do not regard solar as a viable alternative yet.

"The whole power system is pivoted around coal, a lot of employment, a lot of incomes, a lot of GDP growth is relying on the coal industry. In the provinces the local officials prefer coal," she says.

Many of the massive showcase renewable projects in the outer provinces are too far away from the energy-hungry cities and industrial centres of the east, and transmission lines and the grid haven't been upgraded to utilise the power.

Ms Yuan says the situation is improving, but 20 per cent of renewable power that is generated is being lost.

"In western parts large amounts of energy produced by solar and wind is wasted and not integrated into the grid, that brings a lot of losses for the companies operating the renewables," she says.

The other issue is cost. Renewable energy is still expensive compared to coal.

Those in the solar industry in China, like Huang Xinming from JA Solar, say it is only a matter of time before technological breakthroughs bring lower prices. "It won't take too long, maybe five years," Mr Huang says.

"Then it will be a low-cost, clean and stable fuel of the future. In the last decade it's already dropped from $5.00 to 40 cents a watt."

Whether China can recast itself as the world's leader in clean energy will depend on how effective energy reforms are, and how fast the coal culture can change.

But the Chinese public, usually apolitical, may be the biggest drivers in the country's energy transition as they are demanding a cleaner, safer future.

SOURCE

Australia: Raising big dam wall plan 'would flood 50 Aboriginal heritage sites'. Greenies furious

Greenie hatred of dams is as implacable as it is irrational

A proposal to raise the Warragamba dam wall would flood 4,700ha of the Blue Mountains world heritage area, destroying more than 50 recognised Aboriginal heritage sites and wiping out pockets of threatened plant species, conservationists have said.

The $670m plan to raise the dam wall by 14 metres was announced by the New South Wales government in 2016 as a strategy to prevent catastrophic flooding in outer-western Sydney.

It faces strong opposition from conservationists and Gundungurra traditional owners, who say WaterNSW has made it difficult for them to engage in a consultation process and has underestimated the number of cultural heritage sites that will be lost.

Kazan Brown, a Gundungurra woman who has nominated to be part of the Aboriginal consultation group on the project, said she was given four days’ warning of an information session on 20 March. The briefing was held in northern Sydney, more than a three-hour drive in peak-hour traffic from Brown’s home in Warragamba.

Infrastructure NSW said the briefing was “not a mandated part of that consultation process” but invitations were issued to “registered Aboriginal parties”. Four groups accepted but due to “personal circumstances” none turned up.

A second meeting will be held at Katoomba on 27 March.

Brown said raising the dam wall would flood more than 50 Aboriginal heritage sites. A significant number of sites were flooded when the original dam was built.

“They [WaterNSW] are saying that it is going to save more sites downstream,” she said. “But they are talking about different cultures. Everything that is behind the dam wall belongs to the Gundungurra and Dharawal people and everything that’s downstream belongs to the Darug.”

Among the sites at risk behind the dam wall are rock art sites, burial sites and ochre deposits in a cave on the waterline.

Brown said the Gundungurra people could not afford to lose any more heritage sites. “We lost a lot when they first flooded the valley,” she said.

Infrastructure NSW said it was still assessing the impact on Aboriginal heritage sites.

Ecologist Roger Lembit was involved in environmental assessments of a proposal to raise the wall by 23 metres in 1995. A spillway was built instead.

Lembit said he was “very surprised” to see another proposal to raise the dam, especially after the Blue Mountains received world heritage listing in 2000.

“You would think that world heritage meant something,” he said.

The new inundation area includes Camden white gum (Eucalyptus benthamii), which is nationally is listed as vulnerable, and Kowmung hakea (Hakea Dohertyi) which is listed as endangered.

It also contains “highly unusual” mixed ironbark and cypress pine forests, areas of dry rainforest and a substantial number of old growth trees.

The proposal would also flood 65km of wild rivers and streams, according to the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, which will launch a campaign to save the wild rivers on Monday.

The 142m high dam wall was completed in 1960. It fences in Lake Burragorang, a 2,000 gigalitre lake on the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains that provides 80% of Sydney’s water supply.

It guards the Hawkesbury-Nepean valley, which was identified by the Insurance Council of Australia as the most flood-prone area in NSW.

According to the Hawkesbury-Nepean valley flood risk management strategy, which recommended the dam wall be raised, up to 134,000 people live and work on the floodplain. That number is growing as Sydney sprawls westward.

The strategy said raising the dam wall would create “airspace in the dam to temporarily hold back and slowly release flood waters coming from the Warragamba river catchment”, which would reduce the flood risk by 75%.

The proposal was developed in response to the 2011 Brisbane floods, which were triggered by a release from the Wivenhoe dam.

It has already received $58m in state funding and is undergoing ecological assessment. If approved, construction will begin in 2020.

SOURCE

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

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

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

25 March, 2018

Global carbon emissions have hit a record high

All the Greenie attacks on our standard of living have achieved nothing -- even by Greenie standards

Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a historic high of 32.5 gigatons last year, after three years of being flat, due to higher energy demand and the slowing of energy efficiency improvements, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

Global energy demand rose by 2.1 percent last year to 14,050 million tonnes of oil equivalent, more than twice the previous year’s rate, boosted by strong economic growth, according to preliminary estimates from the IEA.

Energy demand rose by 0.9 percent in 2016 and 0.9 percent on average over the previous five years.

Over 70 percent of global energy demand growth was met by oil, natural gas and coal, while renewables accounted for almost all of the rest, the IEA said in a report.

Improvements in energy efficiency slowed last year. As a result of these trends, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by 1.4 percent in 2017 to 32.5 gigatons, a record high.

“The significant growth in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 tells us that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.

“For example, there has been a dramatic slowdown in the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency as policy makers have put less focus in this area.”

At talks in Germany late last year among almost 200 nations about details of a global climate accord, scientists presented data showing that world carbon emissions were set to rise 2 percent in 2017 to a new record.

SOURCE

BBC’s Fake Climate Claims Now Becoming A Habit

By Paul Homewood

Accuracy is one the fundamental requirements imposed on the BBC by its Charter.

For years, however, it has been sorely lacking in its handling of climate related matters.

Most of the time, the BBC gets away with it, simply because people don’t realise it, or if they do don’t complain, or if they do are fobbed off all too easily.

However in recent months, it has been forced to retract three totally fallacious claims, which could and should have been avoided with a few simple checks.

1) The first concerned a report on the World at One last march, which discussed rising sea levels around Florida:

The BBC correspondent, Nick Bryant made the following comment:

"Sea levels at Miami are rising at ten times the global rate"

When I complained, the BBC’s first response, as usual, was to prevaricate and ignore the specifics of my complaint completely.

Only after I pursued matters to the Executive Complaints Unit were they finally forced to retract their claim, which was so utterly ridiculous that it should have set alarm bells ringing at the outset.

2) Then in October 2017, the BBC broadcast an episode of “Russia with Simon Reeve”.

The programme made certain claims about reindeer in northern Russia, as Lord Lawson of GWPF noted in his letter of complaint to the BBC:

Lord Lawson pointed out that on the contrary reindeer populations were stable, and in some cases increasing.

Again the BBC were forced to issue a retraction, as the GWPF reported in January this year:

"The alarming claim that reindeer populations across Northern Russia were “in steep decline because of climate change”, was made during the first episode of the recent BBC 2 series: Russia with Simon Reeve.

Writing to the BBC Complaints department, Lord Lawson pointed out that according to a 2016 study, 17 out of 19 sub-populations of Eurasian Reindeer were now either increasing in number, or had a stable population trend.

The BBC have now accepted this evidence, and have published a correction which reads: “This programme suggested that many reindeer populations are in steep decline because of climate change. It would have been more accurate to say that many reindeer populations are threatened by it.”

Indeed it would have been less inaccurate, given that the claim is blatantly false. However, even the claim that they are “threatened” is highly questionable given their growing populations.

The false alarm highlights the BBC’s habitual attempts to exaggerate the consequences of climate change and to ignore scientific evidence that contradicts climate alarmism.

3) Then in December 2017, one of the BBC’s weather forecasters ran an article on BBC Online, provocatively headlined “Is Climate Change Making Hurricanes Worse?”

After listing some of the major hurricane events of 2017, but with no attempt to put them into historical perspective, the piece ended with this “statement of fact”:

"A warmer world is bringing us a greater number of hurricanes and a greater risk of a hurricane becoming the most powerful category 5"

There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, as even the IPCC have been forced to admit.

My first complaint was fobbed off, and only after I resubmitted my complaint, complete with a list of scientific references and graphs did they grudgingly admit that their claim was utterly false.

The offending sentence has now been deleted, and a correction added:

Conclusions

Once may be an accident, twice a coincidence. But three times in just a few months suggests a pattern. These events pose a number of questions:

1) Who is feeding the reporters with these fake claims?

It is hard to believe that they are making them up themselves. What you think of BBC reporters, they are professionals who have spent their careers learning how to build stories, based either on their own research, or on what they have been told.

So, have these fake claims originated from somewhere like Greenpeace?

2) Why were the claims not spotted and checked out beforehand by programme editors, whose job it is to do so?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, as Booker suggested, there is a blind, unthinking global warming groupthink at work here.

Sea level rise in Florida? Well, we all know Miami is soon going to drown!

Reindeers dying because of global warming? Well, that nice man from WWF told us, and he would not lie, would he!

Hurricanes getting worse? Well, that’s what the models say!

There is a third question – why is this continued bad reporting tolerated by the BBC powers that be?

But I think we all know the answer to that!

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

Canada: A billion-dollar plan no one should follow

In its March 19 Speech from the Throne, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's government asserted, “you cannot be serious about lowering emissions and fighting climate change without a price on carbon pollution.”

Nowhere did the speech specify what this supposed pollution actually is. That’s probably because, if it did, millions of Canadians would realize that the Wynne government is wasting billions of dollars trying to control a non-pollutant in the forlorn hope that reducing the province’s minimal contribution to worldwide emissions of this non-pollutant will have a beneficial effect on Earth’s complex and ever-changing climate.

In a March 14 press release, Wynne said that her government is “building a cleaner, low-carbon Ontario.” But carbon is not unclean. Carbon is a solid, naturally occurring, non-toxic element found in all living things. It forms thousands of compounds – far more than any other element. Medicines, trees, oil, natural gas, plastics, paints, food crops, and even our bodies are made of carbon compounds.
Pure carbon occurs in nature mainly in the forms of graphite and diamonds. They are certainly not Premier Wynne’s target.

So, what is the “carbon pollution” she is concerned about? Is she speaking about reducing soot emissions from cars and power plants? Amorphous carbon, carbon without a fixed atomic structure, is the main ingredient in soot, which we certainly do need to control. Power plants have already done a good job reducing soot and other actual, dangerous pollutants. So have cars.

Instead, the premier is crusading against emissions of one specific carbon compound: carbon dioxide, or CO2. Ignoring the oxygen atoms and calling CO2 “carbon” makes about as much sense as ignoring the oxygen in water (H2O) and calling it “hydrogen.”

Calling CO2 “carbon,” or worse “carbon pollution,” causes people to think of it as something dirty and thus important to restrict. Calling carbon dioxide by its proper name would help people remember that, regardless of its role in climate change (a point of intense debate among scientists), CO2 is really an invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis, and thus to all life. Indeed, without at least 200 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, most life on Earth would cease to exist.

We are actually near the lowest level of atmospheric CO2 in Earth’s history. Around 440 million years ago, CO2 was over ten times higher than today’s level, while Earth was stuck in one of the coldest periods in the entire geologic and modern record.

The climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is clearly wrong. In fact, it’s the other way around. Planetary temperatures largely control atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The warmer the air and ocean waters get, the more CO2 is released from oceans into the atmosphere; the colder the seas, the more carbon dioxide they retain.

Wynne does not seem to understand this, or the fact that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 ppm CO2 – for a good reason. Plants inside grow far faster, more efficiently and with less water than at the low 400 ppm found outside in Earth’s atmosphere.

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that document how the productivity of forests and grasslands has risen as CO2 levels have increased – not just in recent decades, but in past centuries.

Moreover, increasing carbon dioxide levels pose no direct hazard to human health. CO2 in submarines can reach levels above 10,000 ppm, 25 times current atmospheric levels, with no harmful effects on the crews.

Finally, Wynne mixes up “the government's actions on climate change” with “making our air cleaner.” The Speech from the Throne switches back and forth between the two, as if they were related.

(We hope it’s a mistake, and not a deliberate attempt to mislead people and promote expensive and damaging public policies.)

Activists do this often when they claim CO2 emission controls will bring important pollution reduction co-benefits. There is no basis for this assertion. US Environmental Protection Agency data show that total emissions of six major air pollutants dropped 62% since 1980, amid a 14% increase in CO2 emissions. Using climate regulations to reduce pollution is obviously an expensive blunder.

Wynne’s ‘carbon pollution’ mistake is dangerous because it dumbs down a vitally important science debate, inappropriately sways millions of people, and ultimately drives terrible government policies.

The Premier says climate change is a fight that “our children and grandchildren can’t afford for us to lose.” What our children and grandchildren really cannot afford is picking up the tab for the Wynne’s government’s billion dollar plans to “lead the world” on reducing plant food that is “greening” our planet, rolling back deserts, and enabling us to grow more food from less land.

Highly complex climate and weather systems are now, and always have been, driven by fluctuations in the sun’s energy output, cosmic rays, ocean currents, volcanic activity and dozens of other powerful natural forces, over which humans have absolutely no control

So, the Ontario government’s CO2 reduction plans will obviously do nothing to “protect” Earth’s climate. But they will drive up energy prices, force companies to spend billions more on electricity and fuels, kill countless jobs, hurt poor and working class families the most, and reduce forest, grassland and crop growth.

Ontario’s plan to price CO2 emissions is a prime example of what countries, states and provinces throughout the world should avoid.

SOURCE

Scott Pruitt is bringing transparency to the EPA; why is the Church of Man-made Climate Change angry about that?

Earlier this week Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a policy change that is driving several “scientists” mad. Pruitt announced the EPA would no longer use “science” from outside groups that refuse to share data. This has become a problem for the agency because previous administrations would receive reports from outside groups and make decisions based on the report without reviewing the data. Any scientist will be able to tell you junk data going in means junk results coming out.

In an interview given to The Daily Caller, Pruitt stated, “If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rule-making, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what—rules that were adopted by this agency.”

Pruitt continued, “When we do contract that science out, sometimes the findings are published; we make that part of our rule-making processes, but then we don’t publish the methodology and data that went into those findings because the third party who did the study won’t give it to us.”

Many climate change alarmists are already howling at the moon because of the decision. They feel like they should be able to submit work to the government without having to show their work, makes you wonder if they’ve ever taken a high-school math class. What is not up for debate is the enormous weight given to the studies and the potential harm to the U.S. economy the studies present.

Michael Bastasch, reporting for the Daily Signal, notes, “The EPA has primarily relied on two 1990s studies linking fine particulate pollution to premature death. Neither of the studies have made their data public, but the EPA used their findings to justify sweeping air quality regulations.” These air quality regulations end up putting thousands of people out of work, without ever having to show the data that led to the regulations.

Another of the more famous “studies” is Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph. Al Gore even used it in his film an Inconvenient Truth, you may remember it as a documentary that hasn’t gotten one prediction right. The “hockey stick” graph has been used by just about every environmental group in the world to prove man-made climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has used the graph in the past to justify its barbaric environmental recommendations.

Mann just lost a libel lawsuit in Canada. Mann initiated the suit against Canadian Climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball after Ball, using more reliable and publicly available data, disproved Mann’s famous hockey stick graph. In fact, Tim Ball’s graph looks nothing like Mann’s graph. The twist in the case had Mann failing to meet a court-ordered deadline to hand over the data he used to get his graph. What was Mann trying to hide?

One of the U.S. government’s own agencies has even been caught manipulating climate data. A former principal scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), John Bates, accused his former agency of manipulating data to erase the global warming pause. Bates blasted the agency for the faulty science because he believed the 2015 report was rushed to get President Obama’s desk before the Paris Climate Summit. Science that impacts thousands of jobs and millions of families should not be rushed.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning stated, “transparency about the scientific method used to come to conclusions that have major public policy impacts, is essential in order for others to evaluate and attempt to replicate the findings. Every grade school child learns that for science to be legitimate, someone doing the exact same process have to come up with the same results. It’s called falsifiability. Data that cannot be examined and potentially falsified simply must not be accepted by the government. Transparency is the key to ending politically driven science.”

It is important to note, Pruitt is not ruling out the studies. All the studies have to do is show their work. Provide the raw data to ensure there has been no data manipulation to reach a preconceived conclusion. Considering most of the scientists perform the studies using federally funded research grants, the data belongs to the American taxpayer. If the “scientists” have nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear.

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the Space, Science, and Technology Committee, has been fighting the transparency battle for years. Chairman Smith has introduced H.R. 1430, the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017. The bill states:

“The Administrator shall not propose, finalize, or disseminate a covered action unless all scientific and technical information relied on to support such covered action is—(A) the best available science; (B) specifically identified; and (C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.”

Doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Every student from the third grade to a Ph.D. must do the same thing, show your work so that it can potentially be falsified. Otherwise it’s not really scientific.

Scott Pruitt is to be commended for this action, but more can be done. The Senate must act to ensure secret science is no longer used to justify job-killing regulations. The House has already done its job; it is now up to the Senate to ensure transparency.

SOURCE

Happy Human Achievement Hour: A Better Alternative to ‘Earth Hour’

There is a profound intellectual temptation toward viewing the world through the lens of our favorite ideas. Powerful ideas can inspire, shape how we interpret the world, and provide emotional solace during tempestuous times. But no matter how attractive and interesting or how well they explain the world around us, the core of life remains what we do. It is in the actions of mankind that we can see how people adapt to challenges, achieve progress and, hopefully, make life better for each other.

Every year, we each have the opportunity to make the fullest use of 8,760 hours. Remarkably, people from all walks of life in a wide array of cultures engage in very similar behaviors for most of that time. Foremost, people sleep or work for approximately two-thirds of every day. We also engage in leisure, education, household upkeep, and the care of loved ones. Here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we spend a great deal of our time developing ideas to improve how we govern, in order to advance the health, welfare, and economic station of people everywhere.

This is why several years ago we launched Human Achievement Hour, an annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour—this year, Saturday, March 24th from 8:30pm to 9:30pm—people around the world pay tribute to human ingenuity and advancements in every field from health and energy to communications and transportation. Originally launched as an alternative to “Earth Hour,” an activist campaign that calls on people to show their concern about climate change by turning off their lights, Human Achievement Hour challenges people to celebrate human ingenuity and our ability to solve problems creatively.

From exploration of the cosmos to investigation of the most minute chemical interactions within the human body, we are wired with a natural curiosity that leads to discovery and, sometimes, to transformative achievements.

Discoveries, inventions, and the deployment of the technological advances that they make possible may be the most visible elements of human achievement. However, at CEI we take a broad view and also celebrate the less visible, even mundane, aspects of human achievement. The humane interactions of life, the simple one-to-one conversations that are the social glue allowing people to trade information, learn and grow, signal interest, or exchange one good for another are the essential elements of a market, and of society itself.

We each have a choice to make about the ideas that shape our behavior. Do we believe that our lives are on an inescapably downward trajectory, that our ability to solve problems today—large and small—is fixed, and that progress is measured by metering out scarce and depleting resources? Or, can we see a dynamic future in which the world is full of opportunity and room for individuals, communities, and whole regions to adapt to what comes next?

I firmly hold the latter view. And for one of the 8,760 hours each year it is good to both reflect upon it (by thinking about it) as well as to promote it (by doing something with it).

To one and all, Happy Human Achievement Hour!

SOURCE

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

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

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23 March, 2018

The Flawed Methodology Behind Studies Measuring the Cost of Climate Change

Many prominent studies used by the federal government to measure the costs of climate change rely on a flawed methodology that incorporates faulty economic models and fails to account for human adaption, according to a new report.

A new report released by the Manhattan Institute, a domestic policy and urban affairs think tank, sheds light on how the doom and gloom climate change scenarios painted by the federal government and those in academia are actually the result of "laughably bad economics."

For instance, a study conducted by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley estimated that countries such as Mongolia would experience unbridled economic growth because of climate change, resulting in the average Mongolian earning four times more than the average American by 2100.

The Manhattan Institute's report, written by Oren Cass, outlines how studies attempting to gauge the economic and social costs of climate change are inherently speculative. Cass, a former domestic policy director for the Romney campaign, explains these studies require the difficult translation of forecasted temperature increases into measurable effects on weather, such as rising sea tides. Those effects must then be translated into societal impacts, such as depleted freshwater sources, which must be further translated to determine fiscal impact.

This process results in the over-reliance on statistics analyzing variations in temperature, and it creates a correlation-based approach rather than one based on causation.

The linking of rising temperatures to increased mortality rates and lower economic output, on the basis of historical correlations, is flawed and provides results that vastly exceed those "from more traditional analyses of climate change's expected effects on the physical world."

The aforementioned Berkley-Stanford study found warm countries experienced lower economic growth in abnormally warm years, while cold countries experienced higher levels of growth. The economic model designed by the California academics concluded unmitigated climate change would decrease gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 20 percent by 2100. The study did not take into account a country's existing resources, but rather only drew estimations by looking at the "historical relationship between temperature and a country's economic output."

The authors of the Berkley-Stanford study did not return requests from the Washington Free Beacon for comment.

Cass notes studies that rely upon historical correlations to portray dystopian consequences have become increasingly ascendant in the ever-polarizing conversation on climate change. "These studies have gained rapidly in prominence," Cass wrote. "They now account for the overwhelming share of costs in climate assessments."

In his report, Cass also offers a searing indictment of studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), citing the often made mistake of not accounting for the variable of human adaption. While Cass himself notes that human adaption is difficult to predict, the willful avoidance of it by climatologists casts doubt on the accuracy of their doomsday-like prognostications.

A study conducted by the EPA in 2015 attempted to estimate the number of heat-related mortalities that will result from climate change-related temperature increases. The study, incorporating data from 33 cities across the United States, operated under the assumption that a day considered unusually hot in 2000 will cause a similar mortality rate in 2100. The study projected that abnormally warm weather in northern cities by 2100 will result in nearly 12,000 heat-related deaths annually.

Cass notes the EPA study does not, however, account for the fact that "southern cities such as Phoenix, Houston, and New Orleans, were already hotter in 2000 than northern cities are predicted to be in 2100." The EPA's predicted heat-related mortality rates in 2100 for northern cities is nearly 50 times higher than the actual heat-related mortality rates that southern cities experienced in 2000.

The EPA study estimates that by 2100, climate change will cost the U.S. economy between $1.3 trillion and $1.5 trillion annually. As Cass notes, at least 89 percent of this sum was derived from economic models utilizing temperature studies that do not account for human adaption and blend the line between correlation and causation.

The Manhattan Institute report finds attempts to extrapolate future costs from present realities, often without taking into account a region's ability to adapt to changing temperatures, lead to "absurd estimates."

The irony, Cass points out, is studies that attempt to understand the qualitative costs of climate change often–however inadvertently–fail to account for future change and adaption.

SOURCE

In the courtroom

CHEVRON WOULD LIKE you to know that it believes in climate change. It also believes people cause it by burning carbon-based fuel—the kind Chevron extracts from the ground, refines, and sells. In fact, Chevron believes all this so hard that today its lawyer said so, in a federal court in San Francisco. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Yup. They’re right.

That’s not as up-is-down as it might sound; Chevron representatives have said as much before. The follow-up questions, though, will be the tricky part. Because what was at stake in that courtroom was not whether the effects of climate change—sea level rise, ocean acidification, weather extremes, wildfires, disease outbreaks—are people’s fault. It was whether a lawsuit could show that specific effects (floods) are specific people’s fault. Specifically, the people at Chevron.

...and BP and ExxonMobil, because San Francisco and Oakland are suing those companies for money to build seawalls and other protective infrastructure. The idea isn’t just that petrochemical transnationals extract, produce, and sell the fuel that puts carbon into the atmosphere. It’s that they knew that was bad, kept doing it anyway, and cut ads and marketing that tried to convince people it wasn’t a problem.

But before they could really dig into that, the judge in the case, William Alsup, asked for what he termed a “tutorial.” On March 6, he sent the lawyers on both sides a list of nine questions digging into the basic history and science of climate change (Number two: What is the molecular difference by which CO2 absorbs infrared radiation but oxygen and nitrogen do not?), with a special eye on sea level rise. Which is as odd as it sounds.

Outside the usual procedural kabuki of the courtroom, the truth is no one really knew what to expect from this court-ordered “tutorial.” For a culture based in large measure on precedent, putting counsel and experts in a room to hash out climate change for a trial—putting everyone on the record, in federal court, on what is and is not true about climate science—was literally unprecedented.

What Alsup got might not have been a full on PowerPoint-powered preview of the trial. But it did reveal a lot about the styles and conflicts inherent in the people who produce the carbon and the people who study it.

The other petrochemists put forth Theodore Boutrous, an AC-130 gunship of a lawyer who among other things got the US Supreme Court to overturn the California law against same-sex marriage. Here, retained specifically by Chevron, Boutrous argued what seemed to be climate change’s chapter-and-verse. He extolled the virtues of the several IPCC reports, 2013 most recently, and quoted them liberally. Boutrous talked about how the reports’ conclusions have gotten more and more surefooted about “anthropogenic” causes of climate change—it’s people!—and outcomes like sea level rise. “From Chevron’s perspective, there’s no debate about climate science,” Boutrous said. “Chevron accepts what this scientific body—scientists and others—what the IPCC has reached consensus on.”

Still, over the course of the morning, Boutrous nevertheless tried to neg the IPCC in two specific ways. One was a classic: He challenged the models that climate scientists use to attempt to predict the future. These computer models, Boutrous said, are “increasingly complex. That can make the modeling more powerful.” But with great power comes great potential wrongness. “Because it’s an attempt to represent things in the real world, the complexity can bring more risk.” He assured the court that Chevron agreed with the IPCC approach—posting up a slide pulled from an IPCC report that showed the multicolored paths of literally hundreds of models, using different emissions scenarios and essentially describing the best case and worst case (and a bunch of in-between cases). It looked like a blast of fireworks emerging from observed average temperature, headed chaotically up and to the right.

So here comes the crux of the thing—a question not of whether climate change is real, but whether you can ascribe blame for it. Leaning heavily on more IPCC quotes, Boutrous showed slides and statistics saying that climate change is a global problem that doesn’t differentially affect the West Coast of North America and isn’t caused by any one emitter. Or even any one source of emissions. Anthropogenic emissions are driven by things like population size, economic activities, lifestyle, energy use, land use patterns, and technology and climate policy, according to the IPCC. “The IPCC does not say it’s the extraction and production of oil,” Boutrous said. “It’s economic activity that creates the demand for energy and that leads to emissions.”

If that seems a little bit like the “guns don’t kill people; people kill people” of petrochemical capitalism, well, Judge Alsup did start the morning by saying today was a day for science, not politics.

So what knives did the representatives of the state of California bring to this oil-fight? Here’s where style is interesting. California didn’t front lawyers. For the science tutorial, the municipalities fronted scientists—people who’d been first authors on chapters in the IPCC reports from which Boutrous quoted, and one who’d written a more recent US report and a study of sea level rise in California. They knew their stuff and could answer all of Judge Alsup’s questions … but their presentations were more like science conference fodder than well-designed rhetoric.

For example, Myles Allen, leader of the Climate Research Program at the University of Oxford, gave a detailed, densely-illustrated talk on the history and science of climate change...but he also ended up in an extended back and forth with Alsup about whether Svante Arrhenius’ 1896 paper hypothesizing that carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere warmed the planet explicitly used the world “logarithmic." Donald Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the Nobel Prize-winning 2007 IPCC report, mounted a grim litany of all the effects scientists can see, today, of climate, but Alsup caught him up asking for specific things he disagreed with Boutrous on—a tough game since Boutrous was just quoting the IPCC.

Then Alsup and Wuebbles took a detour into naming other renewable power sources besides solar and wind. “Nuclear would not put out any CO2, right? We might get some radiation as we drive by, but maybe in retrospect we should have taken a hard look at nuclear?” Alsup interrupted. “No doubt solar is good where you can use it, but do you really think it could be a substitute for supplying the amount of power America used in the last 30 years?”

“I think solar could be a significant factor of our energy future,” Wuebbles said. “I don’t think there’s any one silver bullet.”

In part, one might be tempted to put some blame on Alsup here. You might remember him from such trials as Uber v. Waymo, where he asked for a similar tutorial on self-driving car technology. Or from Oracle v. Google, a trial for which Alsup taught himself a little of the programming language Java so he’d understand the case better. Or from his intercession against the Trump administration’s attempt to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, protecting the immigration status of so-called Dreamers. “He’s kind of quirky and not reluctant to do things kind of outside the box,” said Deborah Sivas, Director of the Environmental and Natural Resource Law & Policy Program at Stanford Law School. “And I think he sees this as a precedent-setting case, as do the lawyers.”

It’s possible, then, to infer that Alsup was doing more than just getting up to speed on climate change on Wednesday. The physics and chemistry are quite literally textbook, and throughout the presentations he often seemed to know more than he was letting on. He challenged chart after chart incisively, and often cut in on history. When Allen brought up Roger Revelle’s work showing that oceans couldn’t absorb carbon—at least, not fast enough to stave off climate change, Alsup interrupted.

“Is it true that Revelle initially thought the ocean would absorb all the excess, and that he came to this buffer theory a little later?” Alsup asked.

“You may know more of this history than I do,” Allen said.

But on the other hand, some of what the litigators seemed to not know sent the scientists in the back in literal spasms. When Boutrous couldn’t answer Alsup’s questions about the specific causes of early 20th-century warming (presumably before the big industrial buildup of the 1950s), Allen and Wuebbles, sitting just outside the gallery, clenched fists and looked like they were having to keep from shouting out the answer. Later, Alsup acknowledged that he’d watched An Inconvenient Truth to prepare, and Boutrous said he had, too.

All of which makes it hard to tell whether bringing scientists to this table was the right move. And maybe that has been the problem all along. The interface where utterly flexible law and policy moves against the more rigid statistical uncertainties of scientific observation has always been contested space. The practitioners of both arts seem foreign to each other; the cultural mores differ.

Maybe that’s what this “tutorial” was meant for. As Sivas says, the facts aren’t really in doubt here. Or rather, most of them aren’t, and maybe Alsup will use today as a kind of discovery process, a way to crystalize the difference between uncertainty in science and uncertainty under the law. “That’s what judges do. They decide the credibility of one expert over another,” Sivas says. “That doesn’t mean it’s scientific truth. It means it’s true as a legal claim.”

Now things might get even more real. If a court attaches culpability for sea level rise in California to petrochemical companies, that might establish causation for a planet’s worth of damage, any disaster someone can plausibly connect to climate change. That’s wildfires, drought, more intense hurricanes. Attribute it to climate, and it could attribute all the way to fossil fuel companies’ bank accounts.

SOURCE

Trump’s EPA Chief says Open Debate about Climate Change is still on

It was “absolutely false” the White House shot down plans for a public debate on global warming science, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Monday.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Pruitt told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

White House chief of staff John Kelly [NOT the EPA] “killed” the effort before any public announcements could be made, The New York Times reported March 9. Kelly “considered the idea ‘dead’ and not to be discussed further,” White House officials said at a mid-December 2017 meeting, The Times reported.

White House officials derailed a public red-blue team exercise, while they suggested alternate routes, an E&E News follow up report claimed. The exercise has indeed “evolved,” Pruitt told TheDCNF.

“The red team, blue team exercise has evolved a little bit,” Pruitt explained to TheDCNF. “We’ve been working diligently over the last several months to determine the best way forward to encourage this open, honest, transparent debate about these very important issues. The American people deserve that, frankly, they deserve it.”

“If some believe that CO2 poses an existential threat to mankind, they think it’s more important than North Korea — they do, don’t they?” Pruitt asked. “If that’s the case, I want to know it.”

“Let us make sure that there’s an honest discussion about that,” Pruitt continued. “Let’s go into this and actually have an open mind about what we know and what we don’t know. That’s something we’re working on, we’ll continue to work on, and preferably have some answers on that soon as well.”

Pruitt suggested a red-blue team-style exercise to debate climate science last year, echoing former Obama Energy Department official Steven Koonin, who advocated for such an exercise in The Wall Street Journal.

The military uses red-blue team exercises to expose vulnerabilities in strategic plans. President Donald Trump embraced Pruitt’s call for such debates, according to reports, as well as scientists skeptical of catastrophic global warming.

Scientists claiming to be part of the “consensus” and environmentalists oppose red-blue team debates, arguing they will be used to discredit climate science.

Pruitt did not go into detail on how exactly the red-blue team exercise had “evolved,” but E&E’s report suggested EPA could take comments on the endangerment finding.

White House officials told EPA staffers they could review the 2009 endangerment finding, taking public comments on the state of climate science, E&E reported. The endangerment finding was issued under the Obama administration and gives EPA legal cover to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, Pruitt had concerns over how the Obama administration finalized the 2009 endangerment finding so quickly, utilizing United Nations assessments instead of EPA-generated studies, he said. “I think the process most definitely was a process that was abused,” Pruitt told TheDCNF.

“Anytime that this agency, or any agency, that would go to a third party, like the UN — in that case the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and took the work product of the IPCC and then transferred it to this agency and used that as the basis by which the decision was made, that’s a breach of process, in my view,” Pruitt added.

The George W. Bush administration began the endangerment finding in 2008 but dragged its feet, allowing the Obama administration to take it up in 2009 and quickly turn around a finding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatened public health.

Conservative groups have petitioned Pruitt to reconsider the endangerment finding, citing reports from independent researchers arguing global warming is overblown and relies on flawed climate models.

Pruitt did not say whether or not he would reconsider the finding but tied the matter to the larger issue of transparency in science EPA relies on to issue regulations.

“I think what’s important there — and that’s what drives this discussion that I’ve been focused on over the last four or five or six months on ensuring that there’s an objective, transparent discussion on what do we know and what don’t we know with respect to CO2,” Pruitt said.

“How do we know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, looking out 82 plus years, right? It’s a fair question, right? Particularly if you’re basing policy on it now,” Pruitt noted.

SOURCE

Contra Climate Alarmists, Tuvaluans’ Homes Secure As Island Nation Grows

Climate alarmists have hyped the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu as a prime example of the dangers posed by rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change. They warn Tuvalu’s islands will soon be underwater, creating thousands of climate refugees. Science is once again confounding the alarming climate projections: new research published in the journal Nature Communications shows Tuvalu is actually growing as sea levels rise.

Researchers from the University of Auckland used aerial photographs and satellite imagery to examine changes in Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014. They found eight of the nine atolls and 75 percent of the islands grew during the time period, increasing Tuvalu’s land area by 2.9 percent. Among other factors, the researchers found wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms seem to be more than offsetting the rising sea levels, adding to Tuvalu’s land base.

According to coauthor Paul Kench, Ph.D., a coastal geomorphologist, the researchers’ findings indicate Tuvaluans should be planning for a long-term future on the islands instead of preparing to migrate in flight from rising seas.

“We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” Kench said. “The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region over the past half century, but the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion, not erosion. … [As a result,] loss of land is unlikely to be a factor in forcing depopulation of Tuvalu.”

SOURCE

Australia: Greens claim Dutton has ‘racist’ views on white Sth African farmers

The Green/Left run over with sympathy for disadvantaged minorities -- unless the minority is white. In that case no abuse is off the table towards anybody who wants to help the minority concerned

The Greenie spokesman said minister Dutton is racist for wanting to rescue endangered white farmders in South Africa while making no effort to help the Rohingya. But the Rohingya are largely illiterate Muslims and nobody wants them. Even in their ancestral homeland of Bangladesh nobody wants them

Liberal Democrats leader David Leyonhjelm has slammed comments from Greens senator Nick McKim, who claimed that the Liberal Party “still has a White Australia policy”, and accused Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton of being “racist”, “fascist” and “regurgitating speaking points from neo-Nazis”.

Mr Dutton has sparked controversy and diplomatic tensions when he last week argued the “persecuted” farmers needed help from a “civilised country” like Australia, following disturbing reports of extreme violence, land theft and murders.

Senator Leyonhjelm said Senator McKim was “living in the past”.

“South Africa used to be a thoroughly obnoxious, racist society,” he told Sky News.

“I lived there for a little while and I saw it. It was totally abhorrent, but it’s not any more, and it’s a multicultural society, it’s not racist at all, it has an anti-racist constitution, and yet here we have a group of people who are being persecuted, murdered, chucked off their farms because they are white.

“That is racism. That is plain and simple racism. The fact that the racism used to work the other way 20-odd years ago does not justify racism in the opposite direction today. “(Nick McKim) is totally up the creek on this whole issue.”

Greens leader Richard Di Natale meanwhile defended Senator McKim. “What we do know is he certainly holds, I think, racist views,” Senator Di Natale said.

“We’ve got 700,000 people fleeing the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh at the moment, this crisis that is the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, and yet what does Peter Dutton say about any of those things?

“He doesn’t say anything about the crisis in Myanmar, no, he goes in to bat for South African farmers. What’s the difference here? The difference is that they are white and that the other communities who are suffering, and we’re talking about an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar right now, that they’re not white.”

Asked whether he believed it was reasonable to suggest the Liberal Party “still has a White Australia policy”, Senator McKim stuck by his claim. “Absolutely. It’s naked, and it’s transparent and it’s out in the open,” Senator McKim told Sky News.

“I mean basically we’ve got Peter Dutton who is regurgitating speaking points from neo-Nazi or Nazi or fundamentalist white nationalist websites around the world who are now out there bragging that they’ve captured Peter Dutton and they’re very happy that he’s repeating the speaking points that they’ve been putting on their websites,” he said.

“You’ve got Mr Dutton and others supporting him now nakedly and clearly suggesting that Australia’s immigration policy should be conducted on the basis of the colour of somebody’s skin, and it’s a simple reversion to the White Australia policy which was actually adopted by both the Labor and Liberal Parties back in the day, and I thought we’d gone past that and I think most Australians thought we’d gone past it.”

Senator McKim claimed Australia’s offshore detention policy was motivated by skin colour. “Of course it’s got things to do with skin colour. I’ve been to Manus Island many times as you know and I can assure you there’s no white people locked up on Manus or Nauru,” he said.

“Those people are exclusively from races and countries that they’re non-white people.

“I can be absolutely certain that if a South African person arrived by boat to seek asylum in Australia, they would not end up on Manus Island and Nauru under Peter Dutton’s regime. I can give you that guarantee 100 per cent.”

Asked whether he was accusing Mr Dutton of being a “closet neo-Nazi”, Senator McKim said he had “exhibited racism right through his public career”.

“When he boycotted the apology to the stolen generation and walked out of the house of assembly in a huff just before that apology was given, his regime in terms of Manus Island and Nauru is clearly race based, and he’s also exhibited some of the things that we know through human history are associated with fascists, I mean for example, setting up an enemy to try and scare the Australian people, and he’s done that with Muslim people, and then seeking to undermine the rule of law on that basis,” he said.

“I’m mean it’s fascism 101 that we’re seeing from Peter Dutton.”

Asked whether he was disputing that white South African farmers were being violently attacked and murdered, Senator McKim said: “I don’t know the issue on the ground. I’m not the one advocating on their behalf.” “I’m not saying they shouldn’t be accepted,” he said.

“I’m saying let’s assess them on the basis of need and let’s prioritise on the basis of need in a way that doesn’t take into account the colour of somebody’s skin.”

‘ABC lefties are dead to me’

Peter Dutton earlier said he was staring down fierce criticism from “crazy lefties” at the ABC as he pushes on with plans to bring white South African farmers into Australia.

The Home Affairs Minister said he was unperturbed by “mean cartoons” and negative media coverage.

“I think the ABC and others report these things how they want to report them, and how they want to interpret them,” Mr Dutton told 2GB. “Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC, and on The Guardian, Huffington Post, can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it. They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.

“We just get on with making decisions that we need to.”

Mr Dutton said he was blind to skin colour and would continue to bring in migrants based on the national interest.

“It concerns me that people are being persecuted at the moment — that’s the reality — the numbers of people dying or being savagely attacked in South Africa is a reality,” he said.

Mr Dutton likened the latest backlash to the reaction over his comments on African gangs in Melbourne over summer. “Stick to the facts and you’re on safe grounds so all of the criticism over the last week has meant nothing to me,” he said.

“We’re looking at ways we can help people to migrate to Australia if they’re finding themselves in that situation.”

SOURCE

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

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

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22 March, 2018

When will the US feel the heat of global warming? For the Great Plains, natural variability will dominate until late this century

Even Warmists are noting that the USA hasn't warmed significantly

By increasing the energy stored in our atmosphere, climate change is expected to generate more severe storms and heat waves. Severe storms and heat waves, however, also happen naturally. As a result, it's tough to figure out whether any given event is a product of climate change.

A corollary to that is that detecting a signal of climate change using weather events is a serious challenge. Are three nor'easters in quick succession, as the East Coast is now experiencing, a sign of a changing climate? Or is it simply a matter of natural variability?

A team of researchers has now looked at heat waves in the US, trying to determine when a warming-driven signal will stand out above the natural variability. And the answer is that it depends. In the West, the answer is "soon," with climate-driven heat waves becoming the majority in the 2020s. But for the Great Plains, the researchers show that a specific weather pattern will push back the appearance of a warming signal until the 2070s.

Finding the heat

The study, performed by researchers at three different institutions in Florida, focuses on what they term the Time of Emergence, which they define as the point when "the signal of anthropogenic climate change will emerge against the background natural variability." For this work, they focused on heat waves, which they defined as an extended period of time with temperatures 5 degrees Celsius or more above the typical temperature.

They started out by analyzing historic events, using the temperature records from 1920-2000. They found that there were regions where heat waves tended to cluster. These included the West Coast, Southern Great Plains, Northern Great Plains, and the Great Lakes (they found eight in total). While many of these regions partially overlap, a heat wave that affected one of them typically did not affect any of the others, suggesting they were driven by independent weather patterns. The four mentioned above affect the largest portions of the US population and so were chosen for further analysis.

From here, the analysis is pretty straightforward. The authors used a collection of climate models to examine the frequency of heat waves for the remainder of the present century (2020-2100) under a high emissions scenario. While nations have committed to reducing emissions, this scenario would reflect a continuation of our current trajectory. The frequency of extreme events that showed up in the models was then compared to their frequency in the historic record.

For areas like the Great Lakes and the US West, the results were about what you'd expect: with continued climate change, both the frequency and severity of heat waves went up. For the Great Plains, this was also true, but the effect was much more moderate and emerged only gradually.

To quantify this difference, the authors developed a simple measure: the year in which half of the heat waves wouldn't have qualified as heat waves if it weren't for the influence of climate change. For the US West, that point was crossed in 2028. The West was followed by the Great Lakes, which crossed the threshold a decade later in 2037. But the Great Plains were on a completely different schedule. In the Northern Plains, the 50-percent threshold wasn't crossed until 2056, while the Southern Plains didn't have a clear signal of climate change until 2074.

Explaining the Plains

So why is internal variability so significant in the Great Plains? The researchers suggest two potential causes of these regional differences. One is a difference in the flow of air across the continental US, something that may be changing with our warming climate. If the prevailing winds become more erratic, then it's possible that they would bring cooler air across the Plains more often. The alternative is soil moisture. This takes up heat from the air and ground as it evaporates, which would counteract some of the heating caused by greenhouse gases.

Harsh winter weather in eastern US could be due to warmer Arctic
For the West Coast, the two appear to be related. Our warming climate is expected to produce wind patterns that reduce the frequency of storms and thus lower the amount of moisture in the soil. This, in turn, would reduce evaporation, leading to enhanced heat—which may explain why the climate signal appears there earliest.

For the Great Plains, however, the researchers identified a specific weather pattern that prevailed during the summer months called the Great Plains Low-Level Jet. The LLJ draws moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico, allowing it to fall as rain over the Plains. The evaporation of this rain would then offset some of the heat.

As a bit of science, this is some nice work, as the researchers have not only identified a case where natural variability has large influence on climate change, but they've identified the source of that variability. But they also point out that the findings could be helpful for policy. Over the last three decades, they note, heat-related fatalities have been the biggest weather-related cause of death in the US. Identifying the areas most at risk of increased heat would help us prepare for a future where that's looking increasingly inevitable.

And, in the case of the West Coast, it may be arriving in as little as a decade.

SOURCE

Clean Power Plan: Just Repeal, Don't Replace

Marlo Lewis

Yesterday I submitted comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM), which discusses options for replacing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) with some other regulation to control carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing power plants. The EPA is in the process of repealing the CPP, which was President Obama’s marquee domestic climate policy and principal regulatory component of his Paris Climate Treaty emission-reduction pledge. My comments make the case that the EPA should simply repeal the Clean Power Plan without replacing it.

In this post, I first discuss—and supplement—the ANPRM’s statutory argument for repealing the CPP. I then summarize three reasons why any CPP replacement rule would also be unlawful.

Why the CPP is unlawful

The EPA promulgated the CPP under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). According to the ANPRM, the CPP exceeds EPA’s authority under that provision. CAA section 111(d) emission performance standards are supposed to reflect the “best system of emission reduction” (BSER) that has been “adequately demonstrated,” taking into account “cost” and the “remaining useful life” of each “source.” The statute defines “stationary source” as “any building, structure, facility, or installation which emits or may emit any air pollutant.” Consequently, all previous CAA section 111 performance standards were based on technologies and practices that could be applied by and at the source.

Abruptly departing from the text and the agency’s historic practice, the CPP requires states to establish performance standards more stringent than any individual fossil-fuel power plant can meet through measures implemented by and at the source. For example, the CPP establishes an emission performance goal for existing coal power plants of 1,305 lbs. CO2/MWh. That is beyond the capability of even new highly efficient super critical pulverized coal power plants, which typically emit about 1,720 lbs. CO2/MWh.

To comply with unattainable standards, the CPP expects power plant owners or operators to reduce grid-wide emissions in their capacity as actors in the electricity marketplace. CPP compliance options include purchasing power from lower-emitting facilities, investing in new renewable generation, buying emission credits from other facilities that over-comply, or simply reducing output, which cedes market share to lower-emitting facilities.

In effect, the CPP regulates the “U.S. power sector” as if it were a single source, with individual power plants—the actual sources as defined in CAA section 111—conceived as mere cogs in a vast machine. However, the power sector cannot be a “source” because it is not a building, structure, facility, or installation. The power sector is a market process comprised of hundreds of sources, hundreds of non-emitting generating units that are not sources, and millions of customers who do not produce power.

Or, as the ANPRM sums up the issue, a valid best system of emission reduction “must be based on a physical or operational change to a building, structure, facility, or installation at that source, rather than measures that the source’s owner or operator can implement on behalf of the source at another location.”

The ANPRM requests information on how EPA might replace the CPP with a new regulation “limited to [CO2] emission reduction measures that can be applied to or at an individual stationary source.”

Why EPA should not replace the Clean Power Plan

While I completely concur that lawful CAA section 111(d) emission performance standards must be based on measures that can be applied to individual sources, even a replacement rule based on such measures would still be unlawful. Four separate statutory reasons lead to that conclusion.

Section 112 Exclusion. CAA section 111(d) excludes from its regulatory purview “any air pollutant . . . emitted by a source category regulated under CAA section 112.” CAA section 112 requires EPA to list and regulate categories of industrial sources of hazardous air pollutants, such as arsenic, mercury, and cyanide. Coal- and oil-fueled power plants have been regulated as hazardous air pollutant sources under section 112 since 2012, and NGCC combustion turbines since 2004. Therefore, EPA may not regulate power plants under CAA section 111(d). The CPP is unlawful under the very provision that purportedly authorizes it. Any CPP replacement rule would be unlawful for the same reason.

Historic practice. The ANPRM suggests that BSER for existing power plants could be based on “equipment upgrades” and “good practices” that increase the efficiency by which those facilities convert heat into electricity. The improvement in thermal efficiency would, in turn, reduce CO2 emission rates. Such measures would be applied by and at the source. Nonetheless, such a BSER is inconsistent with the EPA’s practice of more than 40 years.

Until the Clean Power Plan, the EPA always based Clean Air Act performance standards for both new and existing sources on specific emission control technologies, not recipes to improve the source’s operating efficiency. It would be ridiculous, for example, to define BSER for primary aluminum plants in terms of incremental efficiency gains rather than in terms of technologies that can actually control fluoride emissions. The ANPRM’s suggested BSER is inconsistent with the statutory understanding reflected in EPA’s historic regulatory practice under Clean Air Act section 111.

Non-existent BSER. The Obama EPA claimed carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the “adequately demonstrated” BSER for new coal power plants. That was highly dubious, because no utility-scale CCS power plant has ever been built without hefty government subsidies. Even with subsidies, CCS power plants are not economical unless they can sell the captured CO2 to firms engaged in enhanced oil recovery. A BSER must be “broadly applicable,” but many coal power plants are not located near enhanced oil recovery operations. Besides, even the Obama EPA acknowledged that retrofitting existing power plants with CCS technology is too costly to pass muster as BSER.

The Trump EPA should acknowledge the reality that its predecessor refused to face: An adequately demonstrated best system for reducing CO2 emissions from existing power plants does not exist. Absent a bona fide BSER, Clean Air Act section 111(d) may not be used to regulate CO2 emissions from those facilities.

Contrary to congressional intent. As EPA’s 1975 implementing rule explains, one of Congress’s major purposes in enacting CAA section 111(d) was to enable EPA to control air pollutants ineligible for regulation under the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQ) program. Such pollutants may not be regulated under the NAAQ program because they are not emitted by “numerous or diverse sources.” However, carbon dioxide is emitted by both numerous and diverse sources. It is exactly the type of ubiquitous “air pollutant” Congress did not intend to be addressed by CAA section 111(d).

As the 1975 implementing rule also explains, CAA section 111(d) was designed to address air pollutants with “highly localized” effects. For such pollutants, proximity to the source chiefly determines the associated health risks. In contrast, the CO2-greenhouse effect is global, not local. Whatever the impacts of CO2 emissions on global climate, or climate change on particular communities, the potential health and welfare risks are not affected by proximity to the source.

In short, carbon dioxide and CAA section 111(d) are a total mismatch.

SOURCE

Pompeo, Trump and the Paris climate agreement

John Stossel

President Trump's pick to be the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is not a fan of the Paris climate agreement, the treaty that claims it will slow global warning by reducing the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Politicians from most of the world's nations signed the deal, and President Obama said "we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet."

That's dubious.

Trump wisely said he will pull America out of the deal. He called it a "massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries."

Unfortunately, Trump often reverses himself.

The climate change lobby has been trying to change Trump's mind. Al Gore called his stance "reckless and indefensible." Most of the media agree. So do most of my neighbors in New York.

That's why it's good that Pompeo opposes the Paris deal. Such treaties are State Department responsibilities. Pompeo is more likely to hold Trump to his word than his soon-to-be predecessor Rex Tillerson, who liked the agreement.

The Paris accord is a bad deal because even if greenhouse gases really are a huge threat, this treaty wouldn't do much about them.

I'll bet Al Gore and most of the media don't even know what's in the accord. I didn't until I researched it for this week's YouTube video.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass is the rare person who actually read the Paris accord.

Cass tells me it's "somewhere between a farce and a fraud." I interviewed him for a video project I am doing with City Journal, a smart policy magazine that often makes the case for smaller government. "You don't even have to mention greenhouse gases in your commitment if you don't want to. You send in any piece of paper you want."

The Paris accord was just political theater, he says. "They stapled it together and held it up and said, 'This is amazing!'"

The media announced that China and India made major commitments.

In truth, says Cass, "They either pledged to do exactly what they were already going to do anyway, or pledged even less. China, for instance said, 'we pledge to reach peak emission by about 2030.' Well, the United States government had already done a study to guess when Chinese emissions would peak, and their guess was about 2030."

In other words, China simply promised to do what was going to happen anyway.

"China was actually one of the better pledges," says Cass. "India made no pledge to limit emissions at all. They pledged only to become more efficient. But they proposed to become more efficient less quickly than they were already becoming more efficient. So their pledge was to slow down."

It's hard to see how that would help the planet.

"My favorite was Pakistan, whose pledge was to 'Reach a peak at some point after which to begin reducing emissions,'" says Cass. "You can staple those together, and you can say we now have a global agreement, but what you have is an agreement to do nothing."

However, Cass says one country did make a serious commitment. "The one country that showed up in Paris with a very costly, ambitious target was the United States. President Obama took all the zero commitments from everybody else but threw in a really expensive one for us."

Obama pledged to reduce emissions by 26 percent. If that ever happened, it would squash America's economy.

Nevertheless, when Trump said he was leaving the Paris accord, he was trashed by politicians around the world.

The UK's Theresa May was "dismayed," and Obama said, "This administration joins a handful of nations that reject the future."

Cass counters that if "the future is worthless climate agreements ... we should be proud to reject."

Don't get me wrong: The Earth has been warming, and humans probably contribute to it.

But the solution isn't to waste billions by making emissions cuts in America while other countries do nothing.

Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty. It's good that Pompeo is around to remind him of that.

SOURCE

Greenie versus Greenie in Massachusetts

NAHANT — Since 1967, scientists at Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center have quietly gone about their work, studying ocean life from East Point, a spectacular rocky bluff that juts into the Atlantic Ocean and was once home to Henry Cabot Lodge’s estate and a World War II bunker.

But that scenic outpost has turned into a bitter battleground. Neighbors are fighting Northeastern’s proposal to build a 60,000-square-foot addition to the center as part of an ambitious plan to turn it into a nationally regarded coastal sustainability institute.

In an ironic twist, residents assert the institute dedicated to protecting vulnerable coastal communities will instead ruin the natural beauty of East Point — one of Nahant’s most cherished spots — and make the state’s smallest town feel more like a heavily traveled college campus.

“No matter how you design it, a 60,000-square-foot building on what we call Nahant’s last wild area will destroy it,” said Jim Walsh, a former selectman.

Jim Dolan, a retired high-tech worker who raised five children in Nahant, said he is so angry at Northeastern’s “total disrespect and total disregard” for the town he’s ready to set fire to the master’s degree he earned from the university in the 1970s.

“How about if we get everyone from Nahant who has a Northeastern degree to go to the board of directors meeting and burn them all?” Dolan said. “I don’t do that lightly. I’m a big education guy. But having a university take a position to not honor its neighbors is unconscionable.”

Such is the intensity of the opposition in Nahant, a one-square-mile peninsula that is home to 4,000 residents and has been a haven for wealthy families since the 19th century.

Hundreds of signs on front lawns in town declare, “Love Nahant, No Northeastern Expansion.” Residents have picketed outside the gates of the center and packed a Town Hall meeting last month, booing when Northeastern officials presented their expansion plans.

Last week, the bad blood reached a boiling point when Northeastern canceled a lecture at the center titled, “Nitrogen: Friend or Foe? Effects of Fertilization on a New England Salt Marsh.” University officials feared that residents who had been posting hostile messages on social media would disrupt the talk.

“It’s been really hard coming through town, the town that I’ve been driving through for 30 years, seeing such hostility,” said Geoffrey Trussell, the center director, who has worked there for three decades, studying ocean predators.

SOURCE

Green/Left governments want us to use public transport

But that puts us in the hands of bureaucrats who don't give a sh*t about us. The story below is from the Australian city of Brisbane. The Brisbane train system is actually one of the best in Australia's capital cities. Sydney commuters have it much worse. So it is interesting to see what counts as a good system below. Nobody gives a sh*t in Brisbane either

SCHEDULED maintenance has caused public transport chaos on the night of Ed Sheeran’s first concert at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.

Passengers leaving from the city on the Caboolture/Sunshine and Redcliffe lines were being moved on to buses at Northgate station and being told to expect delays of up to an hour on their journey.

Buses replaced trains between Northgate and Petrie stations for the remainder of the evening.

As reported by The Courier-Mail, TransLink announced the works – maintenance on overhead powerlines – two months ago, warning commuters that buses would be used from 9.30pm onwards, before tracks reopened in the morning. That particular maintenance work was only scheduled for last night and will not impact tonight’s show.

Concert goer Katherine Lameree didn’t arrive home at Dakabin until after 1am due to the maintenance work. The gig finished at 10.30pm. Ms Lameree said it took her 30 minutes to reach the station.

Ms Lameree and her partner got off the train at Northgate where they were forced to join the que to the waiting bus.

“The lines were up the ramp for the overpass to get to the busses,” she said. “There was one waiting and they couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

Ms Lameree ended up calling a friend from the station and instead got a lift home, but was left disappointed that the maintenance went ahead despite the event.

“They knew the event was on, they were partnered with it offering free transport. Surely it could’ve waited until Thursday or be done in off peak during the day,” she said.

“A lot of people voiced it (frustration) on the train… but we all were like do we expect any better from Queensland Rail.”

A TransLink spokesman last week told The Courier-Mail last week of the track closure from Northgate to Petrie affecting the Redcliffe Peninsula and Sunshine Coast lines, encouraging Ed Sheeran fans to plan ahead. They did not give a reason as to why the closure was scheduled for that particular night.

Despite the warning many Ed Sheeran fans were angry TransLink chose the night of a major Brisbane event to conduct the maintenance.

In a Facebook comment, concert goer Ashley Darrenkamp called Queensland Rail “utterly ridiculous” for scheduling maintenance on the same night as the the 52,000-capacity sellout gig.

“They really messed up! I had to end up finding another way home, costing heaps of money!,” she wrote.

“Having to wait for buses to then stop at every station then to catch another train... very upset. I was fully aware and expecting delays due to high volumes but this was unacceptable.”

Another fan, Jessica Hopwood, said she too was also caught off guard by the maintenance.

“Traffic to Roma street station from the concert took 40 minutes then been told at the platform to get off the train at Northgate, then waiting in line for 20 minutes for a bus,” she said.

SOURCE

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

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

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21 March, 2018

An amusing sermon from a true believer, Peter Kraai

He seems to be a passionate believer in global warming but shows zero familiarity with science. Science depends on numbers and he offers not a single number in support of anything he says. And the things he does say are so vaguely put that you would need a book to critique them all

But one of his assertions that is unambiguously wrong is his claim that only a small part of the Antarctic is melting. Zwally's 2015 study showed that the Antarctic as a whole is cooling, not warming. And since the Antarctic holds 96% of earth's glacial ice those rising sea levels beloved of Warmists are just not going to happen. Zwally's findings and many others like them are statistics enough to discredit the whole global warming theory but Mr. Kraai is ignorant of them. He just believes what suits him.

The way he puffs up his chest as someone concerned for the future of "the children" shows what his motivation is. He wants to be seen as on the side of the angels and damn the facts. He is doing virtue signalling, not any serious discussion of the evidence. His confidence in the truth of his delusions is remarkable, though

To the Editor:

I trust that you have defaulted into printing op-eds from Cal Thomas because you have paid for a contract to do so -- even if the content is tripe or a fable. However, consider the moral of his recent fable ("Apocalypse now and the $6,000 Costco meal," March 15,2018) -- that, despite the decades of massive, peer-reviewed support for anthropogenic climate change, we should listen to charlatans funded by fossil fuel companies and ignore the corrections necessary (and readily available) to provide our offspring with a healthy future. This is indeed immoral.

The book he cites, Marc Morano's "Politically Incorrect Guide To Climate Change," is also scientifically incorrect. Not because there is no truth within, but because it is at least 10,000 respected studies away from the whole truth, and does not contain "nothing but the truth." To say Morano's pamphlet rises to the intellectual rigor of a comic book is to insult comic books; they try to get the science right. Thomas is neither stupid nor uneducated (so he can understand the basic science if he chooses), therefore he must be complacent or venal enough to allow our children's planet to fall further into disrepair.

No competent scientist has ever believed climate change (which, by the way, Cal, includes global warming -- they're not the same) "will destroy all life on Earth." However, neither will any of us deny that, through our obscene and opulent overuse of the world's resources, we have entered into the sixth mass extinction event. Yes, life will continue, but lacking many if not most of the algae, plants, animals and ecosystems that keep our lives viable, beautiful and awe-inspired.

As for climatologists (who interpret multi-year, -century, and -millennia trends rather than tell us what may happen in the sky tomorrow, as Thomas' meteorologist source John Coleman does), and their predictions, "none of which have materialized":

Ocean acidification, dilution by fresh water, and altered flow of climate-determining currents have materialized.

More flooding from bigger hurricanes (note, Cal, I didn't say more frequent storms) has materialized.

Progressive melting of the great majority of mountain range ice- and snow-caps, glaciers, permafrost and poles (except, Cal, as you stated, a small part of Antarctica) has materialized.

Wars over dwindling water, soil and food have materialized.

Drastically mutated terrestrial growth zones (normally stable for thousands of years) have materialized.

Perhaps most paradoxical about Thomas' indifference to Earth's (and its life forms') chronic degradation is his frequently revisited self-identification as a God-fearing Christian. As God views the destruction perpetrated by fossil fuel apologists on this used-to-be-Eden he created, the Almighty must surely be dusting off his smiting instruments. And I think even Thomas would agree with what Jesus wouldn't do; pat the egocentric and materialistic on the back while suggesting they continue their consumptive ways as the poorest and those least contributory to the global mayhem suffer the most.

But then, I'm only a "climate change fanatic," according to Thomas, willing to set aside my nonessential desires so that subsequent human generations and the other 2 million species can reclaim the unsullied life they also deserve. At least this fanatic can look his children and students in their eyes and truthfully say, "I'm on your side."

SOURCE

Scott Pruitt Will End EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’ To Justify Regulations

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Pruitt will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules. Such studies have been used to justify tens of billions of dollars worth of regulations.

EPA regulators would only be allowed to consider scientific studies that make their data available for public scrutiny under Pruitt’s new policy. Also, EPA-funded studies would need to make all their data public.

“When we do contract that science out, sometimes the findings are published; we make that part of our rule-making processes, but then we don’t publish the methodology and data that went into those findings because the third party who did the study won’t give it to us,” Pruitt added.

“And we’ve said that’s fine — we’re changing that as well,” Pruitt told TheDCNF.

Conservatives have long criticized EPA for relying on scientific studies that published their findings but not the underlying data. However, Democrats and environmental activists have challenged past attempts to bring transparency to studies used in rule making.

Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith pushed legislation to end the use of what he calls “secret science” at EPA. Pruitt instituted another policy in 2017 backed by Smith against EPA-funded scientists serving on agency advisory boards.

“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rulemaking, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what — rules that were adopted by this agency,” Pruitt explained.

Pruitt’s pending science transparency policy mirrors Smith’s HONEST Act, which passed the House in March 2017. Smith’s office was pleased to hear Pruitt was adopting another policy the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chairman championed.

“The chairman has long worked toward a more open and transparent rule-making process at EPA, and he looks forward to any announcement from Administrator Pruitt that would achieve that goal,” committee spokeswoman Thea McDonald told TheDCNF.

Junk science crusader Steve Milloy also called on EPA to end its use of “secret science” in rule making, especially when it comes to studies on the toxicity of fine particulates in the air.

EPA has primarily relied on two 1990s studies linking fine particulate pollution to premature death. Neither studies have made their data public, but EPA used their findings to justify sweeping air quality regulations.

Reported benefits from EPA rules are “mostly attributable to the reduction in public exposure to fine particulate matter,” according to the White House Office of Management and Budget report. That’s equivalent to billions of dollars.

In fact, one of EPA’s most expensive regulation on the books, called MATS, derived most of its estimated benefits from reducing particulates not from reducing mercury, which the rule was ostensibly crafted to address.

EPA estimated MATS would cost $8.2 billion but yield between $28 billion to $77 billion in public health benefits. It’s a similar story for the Clean Power Plan, which EPA estimated would cost $8.4 billion and yield from $14 billion to $34 billion in health and climate benefits.

Democrats and environmentalists have largely opposed attempts to require EPA rely on transparent scientific data. Said data would restrict the amount of studies EPA can use, but a major objection is making data public would reveal confidential patient data, opponents argue.

“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.

“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said.

Milloy, however, countered and argued it’s a “red herring” to claim that forcing regulators to use public science data would harm patient privacy.

“The availability of such data sets is nothing new,” said Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute.

“The state of California, for example, makes such data available under the moniker, ‘Public Use Death Files,'” Milloy said. “We used such data in the form of over two million anonymized death certificates in our recent California study on particulates and death.”

“Opponents of data transparency are just trying to hide the data from independent scrutiny,” Milloy added. “But the studies that use this data are taxpayer-financed, and they are used to regulate the public.”

SOURCE

Can climate litigation save the world?

Global moves to tackle climate change through lawsuits are poised to break new ground this week, as groups and individuals seek to hold governments and companies accountable for the damage they are causing.

On Tuesday, action by 12 UK citizens reaches the high court for the first time, while on Wednesday in San Francisco, the science of climate change will effectively be on trial at a key moment in a lawsuit.

The litigation represents a new front of climate action, with citizens aiming to force stronger moves to cut carbon emissions, and win damages to pay the costs of dealing with the impacts of warming.

They are inspired by momentous cases from the past, from the defeat of big tobacco to the racial desegregation of schools in the US. Big oil is fighting back hard, but though victories have been rare to date wins are more likely in future, as legal experts say the attitudes of judges often shift with the times.

A flurry of billion-dollar cases against fossil fuel companies brought by New York city and communities in California over the rising seas has pushed climate litigation into the limelight. But cases are being brought across the globe, with more than 1,000 suits now logged by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia law school in New York.

The UK government is now facing its first major climate change lawsuit, brought by 12 citizens through a legal group called Plan B and which already has the support of the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King.

“The UK carbon target for 2050 does not match the Paris agreement goal and the government knows that,” says Tim Crosland, a barrister at Plan B. He says the purpose of the case is to make the government live up to its responsibilities: “It is about closing the accountability deficit which is one of the biggest problems with climate change – if everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible.”

The UK has had climate laws in place for a decade and is seen by some as a leading nation, but Crosland argues the great dangers of global warming make this irrelevant. “Either we don’t want to fall off the climate cliff edge or we do. Who is doing better than others is the wrong question.”

On Wednesday meanwhile, a landmark case in California, in which the cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing major oil companies for damages, reaches an unprecedented moment with a day-long hearing on the science of climate change itself.

Further cases are under way from India to Uganda, and across Europe including the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Norway, where campaigners are seeking to block oil drilling in the Arctic. In Colombia, 25 young plaintiffs are taking to the courts to halt deforestation.

Lawyers won a rare victory – now under appeal – in the 2015 Urgenda case in the Netherlands, with the court ruling the Dutch state must increase its cuts to emissions.

A Pakistani farmer has also won a ruling that the “lethargy of the state in implementing [climate policies] offends the fundamental rights of the citizens”.

And a Peruvian farmer is suing German energy company RWE over its alleged contribution to the melting glaciers near his Andean hometown.

But it is in the US, the world’s most litigious nation, that the greatest number of cases have been brought. The most high-profile suit against the government is the Juliana case, filed by 21 teenagers in Oregon, which saw off a Trump administration attempt to halt it earlier in March.

The basis of the case, says Julia Olson, lead counsel for Our Children’s Trust which is fighting the case, is failure of US administrations to protect its citizens by tackling global warming. “The US government has put these plaintiffs and other young people in a dangerous situation. First and foremost it is about personal security and the danger that exists presently. Beyond that, it is about protecting other fundamental rights under the US constitution – basic liberties such as to be able to decide where to live and to raise a family safely.

“I can’t convey how egregious and incredible this story is across every presidential administration of our government going back 60 years,” Olsen says. “This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue. Every president made those choices.”

While lawsuits against governments seek stronger action, those against the fossil fuel industry seek a simpler remedy – money. The argument is that these companies knowingly sold products that caused damage and a financial settlement is required, drawing parallels with the titanic legal battle fought and won against the tobacco industry.

Michael Burger, at the Sabin Center, says there is a similarity in that these growing cases threaten a level of legal and reputational risk to the companies that might eventually force them to settle or face financial oblivion.

“The other obvious similarity with tobacco is you have a long history of corporate obfuscation and attempts to blur the science and public understanding,” he says. Some of the characters involved are even the same – on both sides – with the same scientists defending both tobacco and oil companies and the same lawyers prosecuting them.

“But there is also a key difference,” says Burger. “Tobacco is a product individual people inhale and it gives them cancer. Fossil fuel production is the beginning of a long chain of causation that includes numerous corporate actors and individual consumers, as well as government licensing and permitting schemes. The causal chain is much longer.”

Scientists are now confident they can quantify the emissions resulting from each big company’s fossil fuels – just 90 firms are responsible for two-thirds of all emissions. But lawyers for the fossil fuel companies are robust in their response, saying a causal link to damages is “unprovable”.

The oil giants are also fighting back, with ExxonMobil in January seeking court permission to “investigate potential claims of abuse of process, civil conspiracy, and constitutional violations” by the Californian officials suing them. One of these, Serge Dedina mayor of Imperial Beach, says: “This appears to be the same kind of bullying tactic that the industry uses again and again to avoid accountability.”

Industry lobby groups are also mobilising against climate litigation in the US, with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) launching a campaign against “politically motivated legal attacks” in November. “It has become clear that these activist plaintiffs’ attorneys, sympathetic academics and agenda-driven media outlets are distorting the use of tort litigation to advance their narratives with the ultimate objective of undermining manufacturers and the engine of the American economy,” said Linda Kelly, NAM general counsel.

However, an international panel of senior judges concluded in January that many companies around the world may well already be in breach of existing laws in relation to their impact on climate change. “Very, very few enterprises currently meet their obligations – if they did [climate change] would mostly be solved,” said Jaap Spier, who was advocate general in the Dutch supreme court until 2016 and part of the panel that published the assessment.

Spier says judges are influenced by growing concerns in society, such as worries over climate change, and are increasingly likely to look favourably on climate litigation in coming years. “If you assume companies don’t [change] at some stage, I have not the slightest doubt that courts will understand that they must step in.”

More and more climate cases are being filed, with lawyers suggesting a range of factors, from the election of Donald Trump to more extreme weather events, to revelations about what fossil fuel companies knew about climate change dangers, and a growing awareness of the urgent need to act.

Despite this, major victories at a supreme court level still appear years off. But Burger says even wins along the way to the highest court add to the pressure for change: “There is a victory here which is just surviving the initial motions to dismiss. Having courts advance these cases towards a trial could itself move fossil fuel companies to want to start to seek some other solution.”

Nick Butler, who spent 29 years at BP and is now at King’s College London, says the companies do not believe the point has been reached where they are likely to lose cases but the pressure is real nonetheless: “The legal actions add a further dimension to the pressure for change in an industry that has begun to accept the need to reinvent itself.”

Olson argues that the courts are starting to recognise the urgency and highlights that the district judge in the Juliana case, Ann Aiken, said climate change needs to be addressed with “all deliberate speed”. That is a potent phrase in the US, taken from the 1955 supreme court judgment on the Brown v Board of Education case that ordered the end of racial segregation of schools.

“We need a decision that says you cannot discriminate against young people and deprive them of a climate system that will sustain their lives,” she says.

“[Aiken] very much understands that constitutional rights are at stake and that speed is the critical factor here. I think we will be on a very fast track.”

SOURCE

Environmentalist Publishes Op-Ed on Climate Change… Covers it With Blatant Lies

An anti-fossil fuel movement proponent dubiously claimed Tuesday natural gas development’s methane emissions are hitting catastrophic levels.

Activist are failing to impress upon people the dangers associated with the fracking industry, according to Vermont’s Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben. He also suggested most research shows methane emissions from natural gas are pitching above a safe level, yet many studies show the antithesis.

“When I think about my greatest failing as a communicator — and one of the greatest failings of the climate movement — it’s not that global warming still continues,” McKibben wrote Wednesday for Yale Environment 360.

The movement’s biggest moral failing, he said, was not selling people on the danger unchecked methane emissions pose to the climate.

Democrats, Republicans and the public have generally accepted the idea natural gas is a fine alternative to other forms of fossil fuel production, but the general population is unaware methane emissions from such energy put the climate in a precarious spot, McKibben added.

“It turns out that there are lots of places for leaks to happen — when you frack a field, when you connect a pipe, when you send gas thousands of miles through pumping stations — and so most studies show that the leakage rate is at least three percent and probably higher,” he noted without citing any specific study buttressing his claim.

McKibben relied on data from Cornell University Ecology Professor Bob Howard’s studies to conclude methane emission leakage rates were nearly three percent, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Howard’s work has been criticized in the past for using too short a time frame. He uses a 20-year window to study the global warming potential of methane emissions in the atmosphere as opposed to the more common 100-year horizon.

Environmental groups have also scrutinized Howard’s work.

“While I can see an argument for using a time horizon shorter than 100 years, I personally believe that the 20-year GWP is too short a period to be appropriate for policy analysis,” former National Resources Defense Council director Dan Lashof said in 2011 of McKibben’s chronological methodology.

Environmental Protection Agency research and other studies, meanwhile, paint a much different story.

Actual emissions from gas power plants were “nearly 50 times lower than previously estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” a 2013 University of Texas study availed. Researchers at UT concluded methane emissions from the supply chain’s upstream portion are 0.38 percent of production.

EPA’s latest methane emissions data from 2017 show very low methane leakage rates of approximately 1.2 percent. The agency and UT’s data and research were concluded, using the more reliable 100-year time frame. McKibben has spent several years thrashing Democratic leaders for promoting the natural gas industry.

McKibben was singing a different tune in 2009 when he felt so strongly about power plants switching to natural gas he was willing to be jailed in support of the cause. He was one of several celebrities who protested on Capitol Power Plant’s front steps in Washington, D.C.

“There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law … We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested,” McKibben told reporters prior to the March 3, 2009, protest.

“(I)t would be easy enough to fix. In fact, the facility can already burn some natural gas instead, and a modest retrofit would let it convert away from coal entirely. … It would even stimulate the local economy,” he added.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Found

SOURCE

Trudeau’s carbon tax plan is close to blowing up in his face

The carbon-tax system isn’t a tax grab. It’s an economic bulldozer. A carbon tax in a low pollution country with endless forests like Canada is ludicrous. The idea that it is to be collected by the provincial government, sent to the Federal government, and then returned to the provinces makes absolutely NO sense

Things have turned very much Jim Karahalios’s way lately, and they might not be done yet. If you haven’t heard of Karahalios, he was the noisy member of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives persecuted by his own party for refusing to let former leader Patrick Brown get away with making carbon taxes an official policy. Although Karahalios clearly spoke for most members, Brown was determined to stick with his carbon tax — and to muzzle Karahalios and his “Axe the Tax” campaign, which has since expanded to every province. Karahalios was even tossed out of PC events and stripped of his PC membership.

With Doug Ford now leading the party into a spring election, the Ontario PC party looks less like Brown’s than it does Karahalios’s, who got his official apology (and the lawsuit appeal dropped) earlier this month from the party. And with Canada’s largest province looking like it might soon be on the same warpath as other provinces against the federal Liberals over the carbon tax, the whole country could soon look more like Karahalios’s sort of place than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s.

Until now, most pundits have taken the federal Liberals’ word that the carbon tax is going to happen, whether provinces sign on to it or not. No one’s really questioned the legitimacy of Trudeau’s threat to use a “backstop” power that would see Ottawa collecting a price-fixed carbon tax within a particular province if the province itself will not. Even the National Post’s estimable Andrew Coyne suggested not long ago that the Ontario PC leadership candidates’ “declaration of opposition to a carbon tax is… meaningless”: Since Ottawa will levy the tax itself if it has to, “the tax will be collected” whether they liked it or not. In reality, though, a growing number of provinces are girding for battle in what could be a federal-provincial showdown for the ages. Far from being certain of getting its way, the federal government likely lacks the weapons it needs to win.

Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s tough talk this week warning the Saskatchewan government she was coming to get their carbon taxes (while revoking their $62-million low-carbon grant) could be a bluff. In a few months, she might be trying the same bluff on Ontario, if polls hold up and the next premier ends up being Ford. He has been fiercely decrying the carbon tax, insisting the “reckless” and “job-killing” tax would “do great damage to Ontario.” He promises to “take Justin Trudeau to court” to stop it.

And by next year, Ford could be teaming up in that fight not just with Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe, but likely Jason Kenney in Alberta, who is remarkably popular and currently on track for a landslide victory to become the province’s first United Conservative Party premier in 2019, with a campaign built almost entirely on a promise to axe Alberta’s carbon tax. Heck, even before then, Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday that she’s now refusing to raise Alberta’s carbon taxes to meet Trudeau’s minimum rates if he doesn’t stop B.C. from blocking the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Together, the provinces representing half the Canadian population now are or soon might be arming for a carbon-tax war with Ottawa. That doesn’t even count Manitoba, which is still refusing to align its own less-burdensome carbon-tax plan with Ottawa’s pricing scheme. Or New Brunswick, whose plan is also at odds with federal requirements. Or Nova Scotia, whose cap-and-trade scheme doesn’t come close to meeting McKenna’s stipulations. (Newfoundland and P.E.I. haven’t revealed their plans yet.)

So how many provinces exactly do Trudeau and McKenna think they can successfully fight? And if they thought trying to force wildly unpopular small-business taxes down peoples’ throats was a fiasco, wait till they see how ugly things get trying to force a carbon tax on hostile Canadians who loathe it even more than their premiers, who at least are tempted by the potential cash grab.

Yet McKenna sounded positively blithe this week about the ease with which she plans to deploy her “backstop” weapon, in responding to a letter from Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan, who said the province could not accept her carbon tax. McKenna’s response: If Duncan’s government didn’t start taxing carbon at the minimum price she requires, “we would have no choice but to ensure that a price on pollution applies …. We would do so by applying the federal carbon pricing system in Saskatchewan.” It sounds so simple. Except the closer you examine her position, the weaker it seems.

There is already the matter of the constitutional clash that will form the basis of the Ford court case, over whether the feds even have the power to tax carbon, especially connected to resources. University of Saskatchewan constitutional law expert Dwight Newman thinks the provinces have “more of a case than a lot of people are giving them credit for.”

More to the point, no one has explained the logistics that would let McKenna make good on her ultimatum. The ability of a Canadian government to implement policy has always relied on the co-operation of provincial governments, notes Newman. Indeed, B.C.’s current NDP government, with its pipeline-stalling mischief, is right at this moment revealing just how powerless the federal government can appear when a province refuses to play along with it. Besides that, Newman points out that the federal government has never tried exercising the power to levy a specific tax on Canadians of one province but not another. Even if this one were willing to try, in the face of so many obvious constitutional problems, does it really have the tools and the stomach to monitor and bill for the carbon use of every farmer, factory, fuel pump and furnace in Saskatchewan?

McKenna makes it all sound so simple and straightforward, from her perch there on the edge of a minefield of untold and unprecedented legal and logistical difficulties. But this is a government that has yet to succeed in executing on anything remotely this complicated. At least it will be entertaining watching McKenna trying to collect carbon bills from ill-disposed farmers in Melfort, without an ounce of help from the province or municipalities.

SOURCE

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20 March, 2018

Thanks To Global Warming We May Run Out Of Cities To Host Future Winter Olympic Games

This is just modelling rubbish. There are many large cities in the North of the world where winter temperatures fall way below zero. A 2 degree rise in global temperature would hardly touch them. They would still be way below zero

If you’ve been enjoying the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, we have bad news for you. Climate change could be jeopardizing the future of this popular quadrennial sporting event.

Competitions such as ski jumping, bobsleigh racing, and snowboarding require a lot of snow and ice, which means host countries should really have average daily temperatures of below freezing.

Sadly, thanks to global warming, locations that have traditionally been perfect for the Games may not be up to scratch by the mid-century. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who published their initial findings in 2015 in the journal Current Issues in Tourism. The study has recently been updated to include Pyeongchang (2018) and Beijing (2022).

The team, led by geography professor Daniel Scott, analyzed climate data from the former host locations and used models to predict the effect climate change will have on February temperatures in throughout the next century. First, they considered a low-emission model, where average global temps increase by 2.6°F by 2100. Then, they considered a high-emission model, where average global temps rise by 8.5°F.

Shockingly, nine former sites would be considered “unreliable” or "high risk" hosts by 2080 under the low-emission model. This rises to 13 under the high-emission scenario. By 2050, between eight (low-emission) and nine (high-emission) locations would already be judged “unreliable” or "high risk".

So, what can be done about it?

Well, one solution is to use artificial snow. This is done by pumping highly-pressurized water through tiny nozzles, which freezes in cold air and transforms into "snow". There is one little problem, however.

“You’re relying on cold air to do the refrigeration for you,” Scott told the New York Times. This won’t happen if the air is above sub-zero.

Alternatively, you could bank snow from an earlier winter or cover bales of straw with a combination of artificial snow and natural snow excavated from somewhere colder. This is what they did in Sochi (2014) and Vancouver (2010) respectively, when temperatures were above freezing.

However, both times athletes complained of poor conditions.

There is the option to bring competitions inside, though this might work a little better for figure skating than it does for alpine skiing.

More likely, we'll see the list of possible locations shrink and the same sites will take it in turns to hold the Winter Olympic Games.

SOURCE

FEMA is preparing for the future. “Climate change” isn’t part of it

The United States is still reeling from last year’s megadisasters. Puerto Rico lingers in the longest blackout in US history after Hurricane Maria tore through the island, and the scorched earth left behind from record-breaking fires in California is now causing floods and mudslides.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was on the front lines of many of these calamities, had to go back to Congress last September to ask for billions more dollars to handle the gargantuan relief efforts.

With some of the dust settled, it’s clear that the events in 2017 fit the pattern of extreme weather we expect as average global temperatures go up, with strong climate change signals emerging in fires and rainfall.

FEMA has, and will continue to, respond to climate change-influenced disasters. But the agency’s new strategic plan for 2018-2022, released Thursday, doesn’t mention climate change or global warming at all. That’s despite the fact that the 38-page document projects more frequent and more expensive disasters. This is a glaring omission from an agency that deals with anticipating and responding to weather extremes driven in part by a changing climate.

The damages from the hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires, and tornadoes in 2017 cost at least $306 billion.

“Disaster costs are expected to continue to increase due to rising natural hazard risk, decaying critical infrastructure, and economic pressures that limit investments in risk resilience,” according to the document.

FEMA did signal that it wants to invest more in “pre-disaster mitigation,” which may or may not include climate change. But it wasn’t so coy in its previous 2014-2018 strategic plan, which noted that the agency “will also ensure that future risks, including those influenced by climate change, are effectively integrated into the Agency’s risk assessment resources and processes.”

Dropping climate change from FEMA’s strategic plan is just the latest part of the Trump administration’s long pattern of erasing climate change as a public policy issue across the federal government. Agencies including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of the Interior have removed climate change language from many of their websites. Other agencies have limited access to policy and technical documents dealing with climate change. And some government research grant applications faced extra scrutiny and rejection for mentioning the “double C-word.”

It’s not just rhetoric. President Trump wants the United States to back out of the Paris climate agreement, and the EPA is working to undo the main policy for restricting greenhouse gases, the Clean Power Plan. The White House’s latest budget proposal seeks a 72 percent cut to clean energy research and reduces FEMA’s budget by almost $600 million from $16.1 billion.

SOURCE

The bias towards bad news is getting worse, and affecting how we act

‘Deadly new epidemic called Disease X could kill millions, scientists warn,” read one headline at the weekend. “WHO issues global alert for potential pandemic,” read another. Apparently frustrated by the way real infectious diseases keep failing to wipe us out, it seems that the nannies at the World Health Organisation have decided to invent a fictitious one.

Disease X is going to be a virus that jumps unexpectedly from an animal species, as happens from time to time, or perhaps a man-made pathogen from a dictator’s biological warfare laboratory. To be alert for such things is sensible, especially after what has happened in Salisbury, but to imply that the risk is high is irresponsible.

No matter how clever gene editors get, the chances that they could beat evolution at its own game and come up with the right combination of infectiousness, lethality and viability to spread a disease through the human race are vanishingly small. To do so in secret would be even harder.

I fear the only effect of the WHO’s decision could be to cause unnecessary alarm and damage public confidence in the very technology that brings more effective cures and vaccines for known and unknown diseases. It also feeds our appetite for bad news rather than good. Almost by definition, bad news is sudden while good news is gradual and therefore less newsworthy. Things blow up, melt down, erupt or crash; there are few good-news equivalents. If a country, a policy or a company starts to do well it soon drops out of the news.

This distorts our view of the world. Two years ago a group of Dutch researchers asked 26,492 people in 24 countries a simple question: over the past 20 years, has the proportion of the world population that lives in extreme poverty

1) Increased by 50 per cent?

2) Increased by 25 per cent?

3) Stayed the same?

4) Decreased by 25 per cent?

5) Decreased by 50 per cent?

Only 1 per cent got the answer right, which was that it had decreased by 50 per cent. The United Nations’ Millennium Development goal of halving global poverty by 2015 was met five years early.

As the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling pointed out with a similar survey, this suggests people know less about the human world than chimpanzees do, because if you had written those five options on five bananas and thrown them to a chimp, it would have a 20 per cent chance of picking up the right banana. A random guess would do 20 times as well as a human. As the historian of science Daniel Boorstin once put it: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Nobody likes telling you the good news. Poverty and hunger are the business Oxfam is in, but has it shouted the global poverty statistics from the rooftops? Hardly. It has switched its focus to inequality. When The Lancet published a study in 2010 showing global maternal mortality falling, advocates for women’s health tried to pressure it into delaying publication “fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause”, The New York Times reported. The announcement by Nasa in 2016 that plant life is covering more and more of the planet as a result of carbon dioxide emissions was handled like radioactivity by most environmental reporters.

What is more, the bias against good news in the media seems to be getting worse. In 2011 the American academic Kalev Leetaru employed a computer to do “sentiment mining” on certain news outlets over 30 years: counting the number of positive versus negative words. He found “a steady, near linear, march towards negativity”. A recent Harvard study found that 87 per cent of the coverage of the fitness for office of both candidates in the 2016 US presidential election was negative. During the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, 80 per cent of all coverage was negative. He is of course a master of the art of playing upon people’s pessimism.

This is a human susceptibility and one that is open to exploitation. Even while saying that they would prefer good news, subjects in a subtle psychology experiment in Canada who were told to choose and read a newspaper article while waiting for the “experiment” to begin in fact “chose stories with a negative tone — corruption, setbacks, hypocrisy and so on — rather than neutral or positive stories”. Financial journalists have been found to report rising financial market indices with declining enthusiasm as rises continue, but falling ones with growing enthusiasm as the falls continue. As the Financial Times columnist John Authers said: “We are far more scared of encouraging readers to buy and ushering them into a loss, than we are of urging them to be cautious, and leading them to miss out on a gain.”

That is one reason for the pervasive negativity bias that afflicts the public discourse. Humans are loss-averse, disliking a loss far more than they like an equivalent gain. Such a cognitive bias probably kept us safe amid the dangers of the African savannah, where the downside of taking risks was big. The golden-age tendency makes us remember the good things about the past but forget the bad, with the result that the present seems worse than it is. For some reason people sound wiser if they think things are going to turn out badly. In fiction, Cassandra’s doom-mongering proved prescient; Pollyanna was punished for her optimism by being hit by a car.

Thus, any news coverage of the future is especially prone to doom-mongering. Brexit is a splendid example: because it has not yet happened, all sorts of ways in which it could go wrong can be imagined. The supreme case of unfalsifiable pessimism is climate change. It has the advantage of decades of doom until the jury returns. People who think the science suggests it will not be as bad as all that, or that humanity is likely to mitigate or adapt to it in time, get less airtime and a lot more criticism than people who go beyond the science to exaggerate the potential risks. That lukewarmers have been proved right so far cuts no ice.

Activists sometimes justify the focus on the worst-case scenario as a means of raising consciousness. But while the public may be susceptible to bad news they are not stupid, and boys who cry “wolf!” are eventually ignored. As the journalist John Horgan recently argued in Scientific American: “These days, despair is a bigger problem than optimism.”

SOURCE

Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different. Climate models didn’t predict this…

A funny thing happens when you line up satellite and surface temperatures over Australia. A lot of the time they are very close, but some years the surface records from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) are cooler by a full half a degree than the UAH satellite readings. Before anyone yells “adjustments”, this appears to be a real difference of instruments, but solving this mystery turns up a rather major flaw in climate models.

Bill Kininmonth wondered if those cooler-BOM years were also wetter years when more rain fell. So Tom Quirk got the rainfall data and discovered that rainfall in Australia has a large effect on the temperatures recorded by the sensors five feet off the ground. This is what Bill Johnston has shown at individual stations. Damp soil around the Stevenson screens takes more heat to evaporate and keeps maximums lower. In this new work Quirk has looked at the effect right across the country and the years when the satellite estimates diverge from the ground thermometers are indeed the wetter years. Furthermore, it can take up to six months to dry out the ground after a major wet period and for the cooling effect to end.

In Australia rainfall controls the temperature, which is the opposite of what the models predict, but things are different in the US.

In Australia maximum rainfall occurs in the summer but it is highly variable, whereas in the US, while the summer rain is heavier, it’s the winter precipitation where the big variations occur. This seasonal pattern makes a big difference. Both the Australian pattern and the US pattern appear in other places around the world, but the models only have the one scenario. It appears the modelers figured out the situation in New Jersey and programmed it in for the rest of the world, but whole zones of the world are behaving quite differently.

Models predict that temperature affects rainfall — but in Australia the rainfall affects the temperature. No wonder these models are skillless at predicting temperature and on rainfall — they are even worse.

As far as I know this is new and original research. Tom Quirk has run it past a few people, including John Christy of UAH who notes that this has been seen elsewhere. Let’s keep up with the peer review…

SOURCE

Australian PM 'disappointed' the Greens linked destructive wildfire to climate change

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has expressed his "disappointment" that the Greens linked the catastrophic bushfire that ripped through Tathra overnight to climate change.

"I'm disappointed that the Greens would try to politicise an event like this," the Prime Minister told reporters, speaking from the fire-ravaged town this afternoon.

“You can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought or a storm – to climate change."

As Tathra residents waited to hear if they'd lost their homes, businesses, and or livelihoods, Greens leader Richard Di Natale rose in the Senate and linked the catastrophic bush fires to climate change.

"We are seeing climate change in our every day lives have an impact on the risk of bush fires in our communities," he said.

"We can't any longer be complacent about risk of bush fires once the end of summer comes around. "And yet here we are with bush fires racing through my home state and indeed my community."

But Malcolm Turnbull said such intense fires are part and parcel of life in Australia.

“We are the land of droughts and flooding rains, we're the land of bushfires,” he said. “Nature hurls her worst at Australians – always has and always will."

“We saw from the air how the fire had not just leapt over a river, but had leapt over streets of houses, apparently without any damage, and then landed on a group of houses which had been burnt out. So, you can see how unpredictable it is.

“We have an environment which has extremes. Bushfires are part of Australia, as, indeed, are droughts and floods.”

Coalition Senator, Ian Macdonald, called the speech "hypocritical and a fraud". "These events happened before. They will happen in the future," he said.

The official New South Wales bush fire season ends at the end of March.

SOURCE

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

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

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19 March, 2018

How to lie with graphs

According to climate alarmists at Earth-Sky, wildfires are on the increase in the US, and 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2012 were record years.

2015 wildfire season a record-breaker | Earth | EarthSky

The graph above starts in 1960, and it isn’t hard to see why. Their graph starts at one of the lowest years on record. The graph below is a much longer record from the US Forest Service.

Indicator 3.16: Area and percent of forest affected by abiotic agents

I overlaid the two graphs at the same scale below, showing the spectacular fraud behind the start date of 1960 in the 1960-2014 graph. Their record high years were actually closer to being record low years.

The USFS graph is quite real, and correlates well with newspaper reports from the time

SOURCE

An interesting graphic from NOAA

The unobservant might well look at this graph and say:"There you are! The sea level is rising, just as global warming theory predicts!

But look at the calibrations. The graph goes back to 1850, showing that the sea level was rising long before global warming was thought of. And the rate of rise has been smooth, unlike the accelerated rise in recent times that would be expected from anthropogenic global warming

Relative Sea Level Trend: The Battery, New York

The relative sea level trend is 2.84 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence. interval of +/- 0.09 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1856 to 2017 which is equivalent to a change of 0.93 feet in 100 years.

The plot shows the monthly mean sea level without the regular seasonal fluctuations due to coastal ocean temperatures, salinities, winds, atmospheric pressures, and ocean currents. The long-term linear trend is also shown, including its 95% confidence interval. The plotted values are relative to the most recent Mean Sea Level datum established by CO-OPS. The calculated trends for all stations are available as a table in millimeters/year and in feet/century (0.3 meters = 1 foot). If present, solid vertical lines indicate times of any major earthquakes in the vicinity of the station and dashed vertical lines bracket any periods of questionable data or datum shift.

SOURCE

TURBINES NOT TURNING

THERESA May’s “green” energy dash was slammed yesterday as a report claimed wind turbines barely turned for TWO MONTHS last year.

The GMB union said that on 65 separate days, turbines supplied less than 10 per cent of their potential for at least half a day – meaning the UK was reliant on gas, nuclear and coal to keep the lights on.

Wind turbine ineffectiveness means the UK is reliant on gas, nuclear and coal to keep it running

In total there were 138 days with “low wind” for at least half an hour. And there have been a staggering 341 days since March 2017 when solar panels supplied less than 10 per cent of the “installed capacity”.

GMB national secretary Justin Bowden said: “It is the facts, not the hype, which should determine the UK’s energy policy decisions. He added: “Those advocating a renewable-only energy policy cannot just shrug their shoulders on cloudy, windless days, or when it is dark, and pretend that more windmills and solar panels on their own can keep the lights on.

“They have to accept that unless and until there is a scientific breakthrough on carbon capture or solar storage, then a balanced energy supply mix -which includes nuclear and gas as the only reliable shows in town - is a reality.”

Hundreds of millions of pounds has been handed in subsidies to green energy giants to fund turbines and solar panels. Ex-PM David Cameron famously told aides to ditch the “green crap” in 2013 after the subsidies were blamed for hikes in household bills.

The figures from the union’s “Wind Watch” come a day after it emerged hundreds of offshore wind turbines in UK waters need emergency repairs after they started eroding. Owners of the 175-turbine London Array wind farm off Kent – the biggest offshore farm in the world – are among those to have applied to the Marine Management Organisation for permission to carry out urgent repairs.

The GMB has been the sole trade union to back fracking – and represents thousands of staff in the gas industry. The union attacked Labour for speaking “nonsense” when the party vowed to ban fracking.

The union said it would force the UK to rely on foreign dictators “henchman, hangmen and headchoppers” for gas.

SOURCE

The Empirical Evidence Answers: What Is The Correlation Between CO2 & Climate-Related Deaths?

The empirical evidence strongly indicates an inverse correlation between CO2 levels and deaths from climate.

The adjacent chart superimposes annual atmospheric CO2 levels onto a chart that Bjorn Lomborg produced on his Facebook page.

Since 1920, while climate-related deaths have plummeted, the deaths from non-climate related natural events has essentially hovered in a narrow range.

Yet, from 1920-2017, the atmospheric CO2 levels has grown an exceptional amount at an exceptional speed. A growth that has primarily attributed to the modern industrial/consumer combustion of fossil fuels.

That is the undeniable empirical evidence that lays total waste to the anti-science beliefs and doomsday claims of celebrity-seeking individuals who populate Washington D.C., Hollywood, ivory towers, and etc.

It's just another example of 'elites' failing to connect the real science dots.

Simple Summary: The trace greenhouse gas CO2 should not be feared as some sort of death-machine unleashed by humans. Instead the empirical evidence suggests it is an indication of civilization advancement and the life-saving achievements it produces.

Long live the CO2-savior!

SOURCE

Opponents say Block Island wind farms are causing problems across prime fishing grounds

NEW BEDFORD — The five enormous turbines that have been generating electricity off Block Island over the past year are considered a model for the future of offshore wind.

But the nation’s first ocean-based wind farm also has exposed what fishermen say are serious threats to them caused by scattering massive metal shafts and snaking underwater cables across prime fishing grounds.

With state officials poised to announce the winners of bids to develop much larger wind farms south of Martha’s Vineyard, fishermen across the region have been pressing officials for answers to their concerns about where the turbines will be located, how far apart they’ll be built, and the placement of the cables to the mainland.

Somehave pointed to issues they’ve encountered in the waters around Block Island as the reason they are worried.

“It’s true that the area where the turbines are have created habitat that attracts fish, which is good; but in the area where the cable lines extend to the mainland, it’s completely devoid of fish,” said Michael Pierdinock, chairman of the Massachusetts Recreational Alliance, which represents about 50,000 recreational fishermen. “These used to be fruitful fishing grounds.”

The opposition of the fishing industry, a powerful interest group in New England, could prove a hindrance for developers of the proposed wind farms, which will be chosen next month.

Those projects, which could ultimately span hundreds of thousands of acres some 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, are expected to generate 1,600 megawatts of power within a decade, or enough electricity for about 800,000 homes.

At a meeting last month in New Bedford of fishermen, developers, and state and federal officials, Pierdinock and commercial fishermen urged regulators to study the potential impact of the proposed wind farms on marine mammals, spawning grounds of herring and squid, and other species that inhabit the area.

The fishermen also raised questions about the impact of electromagnetic waves pulsing across the seafloor on species such as sharks, which navigate and hunt in part by sensing electrical currents, and how rotating turbine blades could impede their ability to navigate with radar.

Wind power companies have dismissed most of their concerns, and fishermen have become increasingly frustrated, saying that they’re being ignored.

“We don’t know the causes of some of the things that have been happening, and it’s apples and oranges to compare fisheries off the United Kingdom and the North Atlantic,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “There’s just a lot more we need to know.”

Officials at Deepwater Wind, the Providence-based company that built the Block Island wind farm and is seeking to developone of the larger projects off the Vineyard, rejected assertions that the underwater cables from their turbines have harmed the fishery.

“There’s zero scientific evidence for that,” said Aileen Kenney, vice president of permitting and environmental affairs at Deepwater Wind. “We’ve heard of no decline of fishing activity around the project.”

She also dismissed claims that fishermen have had their lines caught on the concrete casings that cover small portions of cables that couldn’t be buried. Most of the cables connecting the turbines to electricity substations on land have been laid 4 to 6 feet below the seafloor.

Still, Deepwater Wind intends to bury as much cable as it can if it is selected to develop one of the new projects, she said.

Erich Stephens, chief development officer for Vineyard Wind, which is also bidding to develop one of the offshore projects, said he hopes the fishing and offshore wind industries will learn to coexist.

“All indications are that fish and wildlife are not harmed by wind turbines,” he said. His company, which has proposed building a $2 billion wind farm that could generate 800 megawatts of power, has sought to accommodate fishermen, he said.

Instead of placing turbines in an irregular pattern, which would produce the most energy, the company intends to position them in neat rows, eight-tenths of a mile apart. That would allow two fishing vessels to drag their nets through the area at the same time, he said.

“We have made an effort to meet with fishermen and understand their concerns,” Stephens said. “It’s going to take patience and understanding all around.”

State and federal officials said they’re also trying to address fishermen’s issues. Baker administration officials said they have told federal regulators that any decision about where to build the turbines “must include consideration of natural resources and important marine ecosystems.”

SOURCE

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

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

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18 March, 2018

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Says Opponents of Climate Change Regulations Guilty of Grave Sins

Shelly is making a half-witted attempt to get religious people onside. It's doubtful if he believes his own words

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday that those who stand in the way of regulations meant to control “climate change” are guilty of three grave “sins.”

“It is an evil mess we are in, and if there is any justice in this world, there will one day be a terrible price to pay if we keep listening to evil voices,” Whitehouse said.

Before he arrived at his point about the grave sins committed by opponents of climate change regulations, he urged Americans to “listen to the oceans” and “the oysters.”

“If you can listen quietly, you can listen to the oceans,” Whitehouse said. “They speak to us, the oceans do. They speak to us through thermometers, and they say: We are warming. They speak to us through tide gauges, and they say: We are rising along your shores. They speak to us through the howl of hurricanes powered up by their warmer sea surfaces. They speak to us through the quiet flight of fish species from their traditional grounds as the seawater warms beyond their tolerance.”

“We can go out and check and see the corals and the oysters and the pteropods corrode and die before our eyes,” said Whitehouse. “It is happening.”

“The climate change problems we are causing by failing to act are a sin, as Pope Francis has flatly declared, but that is not the only sin,” said Whitehouse.

“To jam Congress up, fossil fuel interests are interfering with and corrupting American democracy, and to corrupt American democracy is a second and a grave sin,” he said.

“The science denial apparatus—to mount a fraudulent challenge to the very enterprise of science, that is a third grave sin,” he said.

“Perhaps worst of all is that the world is watching,” he said. “It is watching us as the fossil fuel industry, its creepy billionaires, its front groups, its bogus think tanks all gang up and debauch our democracy.”

SOURCE

Scientist declares Sen. Whitehouse is ‘a complete moron, scientifically’

A prominent scientist is pushing back on Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) for his lecture on the Senate floor that anyone skeptical of man-made global warming is guilty of “grave sin” and “listening to evil voices.” See: Sen. Whitehouse: ‘Climate deniers’ guilty of ‘grave sin’ & ‘LISTENING TO EVIL VOICES’ – Instead ‘listen to the oceans’

“I am really getting sick and tired of this blowhard Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) lecturing us for being sinners,” Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen, an MIT educated physicist and author of the book “An Introduction to High-Temperature Superconductivity,” told Climate Depot. Sheahen is the writer of the popular newspaper column “Ask the Everyday Scientist.” Sheahen is featured in the new book,
‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ by Marc Morano.

“Senator Whitehouse is a complete moron, scientifically. He doesn’t know any real science at all. He believes in the mythology initiated a generation ago by Al Gore, where CO2 emitted by mankind is entirely to blame,” Sheahen explained.

Sheahen continued: “Here’s the reality:   There is no such thing as a ‘climate denier.’ That category doesn’t exist. There are certain facts that we all agree on: a) the climate is always changing; b) the globe is warming; c) there is a finite human contribution (e.g., the urban heat island effect). Where disagreement begins is on the role of CO2 in heating the planet. There is great scientific controversy about that point, because of factors such as how molecules absorb and re-radiate photons at various altitudes in the atmosphere, because of flow via convection of warm air from the surface to the upper atmosphere; and more. It’s a really complicated field of science.”

Sheahen added: “Sheldon Whitehouse has no intention whatsoever to engage in any scientific debate at all. Instead, he quotes the entirely false and manufactured statistic that “97% of scientists agree…” and goes from there to further faulty steps:

     1) he asserts that he knows the truth perfectly;

     2) he asserts that anybody who disagrees with him is a sinner.

      I say it’s high time that our religious leaders stepped forth and shouted “Stop!” to Senator Whitehouse and similar bloviators.”

Sheahen concluded: “No way is Whitehouse capable of defining some action as a ‘sin.’ His scientific acumen is so weak that he cannot even defend the position he holds but instead resorts to the ‘argument from authority’ to brush off any scientific disagreement.”

SOURCE

Low-Cost Natural Gas, the Environmentally Friendly Fuel

If you want to know the state of America’s environment today, a good place to start is with the dramatic decline in airborne emissions from power plants over the past decade.

As they generate electricity, hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants across the country emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide into the air. The first two substances cause acid rain and contribute to respiratory ailments and are the emissions of most concern to public health. The third is the principal greenhouse gas that accompanies the burning of oil, natural gas and coal because of their carbon content.

According to the Energy Information Administration, there has been a sharp reduction in power-plant emissions over a 10-year period. Since the start of the shale revolution in 2006 and leading up to 2016, annual sulfur-dioxide emissions dropped 81 percent, from 9.5 million metric tons to 1.8 million tons, and nitrogen oxides fell from 3.8 million metric tons to 1.63 million tons, a reduction of 57 percent.

And over the same period, annual carbon-dioxide emissions dropped 22.5 percent, from 2.5 billion metric tons to 1.9 billion tons. Today carbon-dioxide emissions from power production are at late-1980s levels. Think about it: Even as electricity production has risen, carbon emissions fell.

These numbers should bring home a clear message: The fossil fuel revolution in the United States is profoundly changing not only the economics of oil and gas production but also the environment. When it comes to electricity, the economics increasingly favor low-cost abundant natural gas.

Moreover, natural gas is replacing coal, not only in the United States but also in China and India, two countries with fast-growing economies that are beginning to use imports of liquefied natural gas for electric power production. It’s a powerful demonstration that the significant benefits of the shale revolution are beginning to reach other countries and that the United States has the know-how and resources to play a major role globally in reducing carbon emissions.

Everyone seems to recognize this except U.S. environmental groups and those politicians who are eagerly courting their endorsement by supporting efforts to ban the production and use of fossil fuels. Environmentalists participating in the keep-it-in-the-ground movement want to replace natural gas with renewable energy sources like solar and wind. That misguided approach would unnecessarily send energy costs soaring, is technologically unfeasible, and far from the most efficient way to achieve environmental progress.

Greater use of clean natural gas has already helped us take a significant environmental leap forward. While solar and wind power will continue to become more market competitive, we ought to lean on the resources that are already winning in the marketplace today.

Regrettably, the proposition that reducing the U.S. carbon footprint can be done without natural gas has been gaining ground in political circles. Democrats in both the U.S. Senate and the California Assembly have proposed legislation calling for a full transition to solar and wind.

But relying entirely on renewables is both foolish and unrealistic. Solar and wind are growing as energy sources and a case can be made for investing in renewables. But sacrificing natural gas is ill-advised. Given that solar and wind energy are intermittent, it would require a fundamental change in our energy system and impose enormous costs on the nation’s economy.

Those who cling to the belief that natural gas can be replaced forget that the reason you hear so little about acid rain these days is that sulfur-dioxide emissions have declined significantly over the years. Climate change is still a concern to some.

However, the significant reduction in power-plant emissions to the lowest level in almost 30 years proves that we can grow the economy and have a healthy environment, too. And it’s a demonstration that the technology revolution — and a dose of reason and resolve — can address climate challenges without changing the way we live.

SOURCE

The Renewable Fuel Standard is beyond repair; it is time to repeal it

By Printus LeBlanc

For several years the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has placed an undue burden on the consumers and producers of transportation fuel. It became clear early in the implementation of the RFS it had significant flaws, but special interests have fought reform for fear of losing their gravy train. The RFS has turned nothing more than a government subsidy for the farmers. It is time to return competition to the transportation fuel market and repeal the RFS.

In 2005, Congress passed, and President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among the many new regulations created in the legislation, the RFS was birthed. The RFS mandated a certain amount of renewable fuels, mostly corn ethanol, be blended with gasoline. The amount was 4 billion gallons in 2006 with a rise to 7.5 billion in 2012.

In 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was passed. The bill increased the amount of renewable fuel to be blended. It required 9 billion gallons be blended in 2008 with an increase to 36 billion gallons in 2022. The increase amounted to a massive government ordered subsidy to be paid to biofuel producers.

Each refiner has a Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) that is given to them by the EPA. A Renewable Identification Numbers (RIN) is a tracking number used for biofuels. To ensure every refiner is following the laws outlined in the 2005 and 2007 acts the EPA devised a way to track each batch of biofuel. Refiners must have a certain amount of RINs to meet its RVO. If a refiner does not have the capability to blend biofuel, it must purchase a RIN from another refiner that can produce RINs. A government mandate forcing a private company to buy a product it doesn’t need or want, where have we heard this before?

The largest refinery on the East Coast was just bankrupted by the RFS. The refinery belonging to Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) was forced to declare bankruptcy in January. The 335,000 barrel per day refinery was over $600 million in debt, much of that due to the RFS. PES stated it spent $218 million in 2017 for RINs, more than it spent on personnel.

Even the U.S. Energy Information Agency knows the RFS isn’t worth it, stating, “The energy content of ethanol is about 33 percent less than pure gasoline. The impact of fuel ethanol on vehicle fuel economy varies depending on the amount of denaturant that is added to the ethanol. The energy content of denaturant is about equal to the energy content of pure gasoline. In general, vehicle fuel economy may decrease by about 3 percent when using E10 relative to gasoline that does not contain fuel ethanol.”

This begs the question, why is the U.S. government mandating consumers purchase a less efficient fuel?

Not only is ethanol less fuel efficient, but it also acts as yet another tax on the consumer. A 2014 study by the Congressional Budget Office found the RFS adds between $0.13 and $0.26 per gallon of regular gasoline and $0.30 to $0.51 for diesel.

Now the environmental lobby is turning against the RFS. Writing for The Hill, David DeGennaro of the National Wildlife Federation, noted the carbon pollution released by farmers plowing more than 7 million acres between 2008 and 2012 released emissions equal to 20 million cars.

The renewable fuel standard is a complete failure. It did not reduce dependence on foreign oil, fracking did. So are electric cars that don’t use fuel. The RFS did not help the environment; it made it worse. If it did nothing that it was supposed to do, then why is the Obamacare mandate of energy still around? If the special interests are unwilling to reform it, the RFS must be repealed. At this point, it is nothing more than a tax on the consumer and a subsidy for big business.

SOURCE

Ice-Free Arctic Fantasies Melting Away As Temperatures Plummet…Sea Ice Mass Grows Impressively

German skeptic and weather expert ‘Schneefan’ here writes how climate activist Mark C. Serreze recently announced this year’s sea ice extent was at the smallest all-time area. But since then Arctic temperatures have plummeted and sea ice area has grown to over 14 million square kilometers:

At the sea ice portal, the development is clearly shown.

On March 103 2018 sea ice extent in the Arctic reached 14.55 million km² and so the end of Arctic sea ice growth had in fact not been reached.

The plunge in the mean temperature north of 80°N to -25°C can be seen in the plot by the DMI, and so a growth in sea ice was expected.

After an increase to about -10°C in February (due to a weather pattern) the average temperature above 80°N latitude has since fallen to -25°C. Source: DMI.

Naturally the German mainstream media such as ARD television pounced on the news and set off the climate catastrophe alarms, and thus ended up reporting totally falsely again on the real sea ice development in the Arctic:

A heat wave at a mean temperature of -10°C?

SOURCE   (See the original for links and graphics)

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

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

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16 March, 2018

Boom... Nature study admissions undercut almost all climate studies:

1. Correlation not causation.
2. Historical record inadequate.
3. Physical mechanism not understood.

SOURCE

Sustainable Energy: At this rate, it’s going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system

Here are the real reasons we’re not building clean energy anywhere near fast enough.

Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.

Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 ?C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That’s only enough to power roughly 125,000 homes.

At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries. In the meantime, temperatures would soar, melting ice caps, sinking cities, and unleashing devastating heat waves around the globe (see “The year climate change began to spin out of control”).

Caldeira stresses that other factors are likely to significantly shorten that time frame (in particular, electrifying heat production, which accounts for a more than half of global energy consumption, will significantly alter demand). But he says it’s clear we’re overhauling the energy system about an order of magnitude too slowly, underscoring a point that few truly appreciate: It’s not that we aren’t building clean energy fast enough to address the challenge of climate change. It’s that—even after decades of warnings, policy debates, and clean-energy campaigns—the world has barely even begun to confront the problem.

The UN’s climate change body asserts that the world needs to cut as much as 70 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions by midcentury to have any chance of avoiding 2 ?C of warming. But carbon pollution has continued to rise, ticking up 2 percent last year.

So what’s the holdup?

Beyond the vexing combination of economic, political, and technical challenges is the basic problem of overwhelming scale. There is a massive amount that needs to be built, which will suck up an immense quantity of manpower, money, and materials.

For starters, global energy consumption is likely to soar by around 30 percent in the next few decades as developing economies expand. (China alone needs to add the equivalent of the entire US power sector by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.) To cut emissions fast enough and keep up with growth, the world will need to develop 10 to 30 terawatts of clean-energy capacity by 2050. On the high end that would mean constructing the equivalent of around 30,000 nuclear power plants—or producing and installing 120 billion 250-watt solar panels.

There’s simply little financial incentive for the energy industry to build at that scale and speed while it has tens of trillions of dollars of sunk costs in the existing system.

“If you pay a billion dollars for a gigawatt of coal, you’re not going to be happy if you have to retire it in 10 years,” says Steven Davis, an associate professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine.

It’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to see how any of that will change until there are strong enough government policies or big enough technology breakthroughs to override the economics

SOURCE

Another Expensive Failure: UK’s Green Bank Sold Off On The Cheap

The UK’s former Green Investment Bank (GIB) failed to live up to its original ambitions and now there is no guarantee it ever will.

That’s according to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which says the government’s sale of the GIB to Macquarie for £1.6 billion last year prioritised reducing public debt over the continued delivery of the organisation’s sustainable objectives.

It claims the measures put in place to protect the GIB’s green purposes are not sufficient to ensure it will still be able to support the government’s energy policy or continue to have an impact on climate change goals.

The PAC says it was a misjudgement for BEIS to have so little assurance over the Green Investment Group’s (GIG) future investments, which it says are likely to prove crucial to meeting the UK’s green commitments.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Deputy Chair of the PAC, said:

“Government set up the GIB to grow investment in the green economy and thus help the UK meet its climate change obligations. The manner in which it was sold off is therefore deeply regrettable. Government did not carry out a full assessment of the bank’s impact before deciding to sell, nor did it secure adequate assurance over the bank’s future role.

The protracted sale process put Government on the back foot; had it been shrewder, it could have secured a better return for taxpayers.”

SOURCE

Environmentalists May Be the Biggest Climate Culprits of All

Recently, the American people have witnessed a rash of lawsuits targeting energy companies for their alleged role in causing climate change. As the National Association of Manufacturers has revealed, as part of its "Manufacturers' Accountability Project," these lawsuits are fueled (as it were) by massive lawyers' fees. For example, a contract between trial lawyers and the city of San Francisco revealed that the plaintiffs firm would receive a 23.5 percent payday in the case of a favorable judgment, which could translate into millions of dollars in profits for trial lawyers. Democratic-led cities, counties, and state governments are suing these energy companies to make them pay for what they claim are the anticipated ill-effects of climate change, which would not exist, they say, if these evil corporations were not selling energy based on fossil fuels.

The weaknesses of this argument, legally and logically, are apparent. Why would companies that sell energy be held liable for climate change, when consumers are not? Why are these "blue" municipalities and states only suing American companies, when, say, Russian, or Saudi, or Chinese carbon is just as, well, carbonized? Why are these jurisdictions not suing themselves, since they emit plenty of carbon on their own? Most importantly, how can one assess how much adverse weather is the fault of "climate change," and how much would be occurring naturally?

The idea that one can assign legal liability in such cases is frankly laughable, and fortunately no court has yet ruled in favor of such claims. The purpose of these lawsuits, however, may not be to win giant cash settlements. It may be instead to shame and intimidate energy companies. In other words, these lawsuits are mostly PR, but unfortunately that does not make them any less dangerous to our economy and our way of life.

But, for the sake of argument, let us descend down the rabbit hole of climate change liability a little further. As you will see, responsibility for climate change may arguably be shouldered by the very people who are now hectoring America about "protecting the planet".

Let us return to the heady days of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when various "space age" technological advances seemed to hold great promise. Among the most exciting of these developments was the use of nuclear power to create electricity. Governments around the world were giddy with the prospects for creating an endless, cheap, flexible new source of power. President John F. Kennedy was on hand in 1963 at one plant opening, heralding our country's role as a leader in the peaceful exploitation of nuclear energy, and looking forward to a time when nuclear plants would provide half of the electricity that Americans used. As a result, in the ensuing years, nuclear plants were built at a breakneck pace, and nuclear energy began to blossom, offering serious competition to fossil fuels.

And then came the environmentalists. Citing concerns about the toxicity and long half-life of nuclear waste, and about the possibility of "meltdowns", the rising environmental movement made opposition to nuclear power a litmus test for being "earth-friendly". In 1979, an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which harmed neither the environment nor any human being, was spun by environmentalists into a harbinger of nuclear-fueled catastrophe.

A massive propaganda campaign against nuclear energy ensued, in which Jane Fonda's film The China Syndrome figured prominently, which led in turn to a flood of lawsuits as well as political pressure to suspend the construction of new nuclear plants. Plant construction duly ground to a halt, and, from the late 1970s to today, no new nuclear facilities have been approved in the United States.

For our purposes, though, the bigger point is this: nuclear power does not create carbon emissions of any kind. Instead, it produces small quantities of nuclear waste, which are relatively easy to store. In torpedoing the nuclear energy industry, therefore, liberals and environmentalists destroyed the only viable alternative to our civilization's dependence on fossil fuels for energy production.

What does all this mean? First, it means that the environmental movement is not wholly based on "reason" and "science," as it claims. It can also be based on group think, NIMBYism, and raw emotion. This blinkered outlook can cause environmentalists to support causes that, in the final analysis, prove counterproductive to their own ends.

Second, we can conclude that, if one wishes to assign blame for the problem of climate change, there is plenty to go around. One could assign blame only to energy producers, yes, and this would be convenient for liberals. The truth, however, is that there are equally valid reasons to blame humans, who, as energy consumers, are responsible for emissions. As we have seen, a strong case can also be made that environmentalists and liberals are the real problem, due to their demonization of nuclear power.

Perhaps, therefore, Democratic municipalities and states suing energy companies for causing climate change might wish to revise their strategy. Instead of targeting ExxonMobil, or Chevron, or Shell, why not sue the real climate culprits: Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader, Jerry Brown, Greenpeace, etc.?

Or, better yet, call off the lawyers altogether, stop vilifying people who think differently, and concentrate on finding workable solutions. That's an approach to climate change we can all live with.

SOURCE

Massive Flaw Found in Global Warming Models

Major studies projecting massive economic harm from future global warming rely on "overheated" economic models and poor underlying assumptions, according to a new report.

"Studies that produce very high estimates of the economic and social costs of projected climate change" while "ignoring or downplaying the possibility of adaptation and obscuring the inaccuracy of underlying estimates - are distinctly unhelpful," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass wrote in a March report.

Cass examined the models and assumptions used in major economic studies of global warming, including two relied upon by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to estimate damages by the end of the century.

One of those study's poor assumptions, relating temperature with economic growth, led to projections that global warming would turn Mongolia, Finland and Iceland into the world's wealthiest countries on a per-capita basis.

The results were highly "flawed," Cass said.

"Properly understood, temperature studies do not offer useful predictions of the future costs of projected human-caused climate change," Cass wrote in a study published Monday, adding that while flawed "these studies have gained rapidly in prominence" and "now account for the overwhelming share of costs in climate assessments."

Cass took particular issue with a 2015 study published in the journal Nature that predicted global warming could reduce per-capita gross world product 23 percent by 2100.

In other words, the study predicted every person in the world would be 23 percent poorer by the end of the century. Media outlets breathlessly reported the study's results, warning millennials they could "lose trillions of dollars in lifetime income" to man-made warming.

However, Cass pointed out some glaring issues with the study's underlying assumptions and modeling.

For starters, the 2015 study projects Mongolia would become a global economic superpower by the end of the century and boast per-capita income of $390,000, which is four times higher than America's at that point.

In fact, Icelanders become the richest people in the world in that study's projection. Iceland gets a "per-capita income of $1.5 million, more than twice that of any other country besides Finland ($860,000), with annual economic growth above 5% and accelerating," Cass wrote.

Canada's economy grows to be the world's second-largest behind the U.S.'s by the end of the century, the study found. Canada's economy is estimated to be a totally implausible seven times larger than China's. India, conversely becomes the world's poorest country by 2100.

Cass pointed out that "one must believe that a gradual rise in average temperature from 0ø (32øF) to 5øC (41øF) will turn Iceland and Mongolia into the leading economies of the 21st century," which is not only highly implausible but also a highly illogical way to view economic growth.

The Nature study suggests "the Cambodian economy is far more dynamic than its American counterpart, held back from world domination by its latitude," Cass said, noting a "more plausible conclusion is that responses to large, gradual temperature changes are qualitatively unlike responses to small temperature fluctuations."

In other words, the Nature study is seriously flawed.

"Temperature studies insist that even marginally warmer temperatures make people and the economy worse off; yet for generations, the American population has insisted on migrating southward," Cass wrote. "Are people doing so against their best interests, or are the statistical analysts missing the bigger picture?"

SOURCE

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

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

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15 March, 2018

Swedish Scientists & Geologists: Fossil Fuel Theory Busted

I have always regarded as a crock the designation of oil and natural gas as "fossil fuels". I mostly refer to them as hydrocarbons, after their chemical structure. Hydrocarbons are abundant in inter-stellar space so how did anyone get fossils up there?

What would happen if it were proven that “fossil fuels” weren’t the result of decaying plant and animal matter, were actually created within the Earth due to simple chemistry and you could not be scared into believing that we were “running out” of oil and natural gas?

1. Why the Big Lie about ‘fossil fuels’ was needed:

In a video interview (below) Col Fletcher Prouty, former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. explains how oil was falsely classified a “fossil fuel” in 1892.

Prouty reveals how that deception was advanced further in the 70’s by Kissinger and Rockefeller. Prouty also explains that Nixon/Kissinger/Rockefeller were seeking a ‘world oil price’.

Estimates of how much crude oil we have extracted from the planet vary wildly. As late as May of 2009 a report published in the International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology suggested that we may have used more than we think.

The idea that we are running out of oil is not a new one. Scientists have told us that oil is a limited resource which was formed millions of years ago by the decaying vegetation and biomass of extinct species of plants and animals. With an estimated 1- trillion barrels of oil already extracted from deep wells since commercial drilling began around 1870, many predict that we are nearing the mid-point of remaining oil on the planet.

But there have always been those who claim that oil is a natural substance that forms automatically in the Earth’s mantle. They say that it is virtually everywhere, if you can drill deep enough to tap it.

Proponents of so-called “abiotic oil” claim that the proof is found in the fact that many capped wells, which were formerly dry of oil, are found to be plentiful again after many years, They claim that the replenished oil is manufactured by natural forces in the Earth’s mantle.

Critics of the abiotic theory disagree. They claim that capped wells may appear to refill after a few years, but they are not regenerating. It is simply an effect of oil slowly migrating through pore spaces from areas of high pressure to the low-pressure area of the drill hole. If this oil is drawn out, it will take even longer for the hole to refill again. They hold that oil is a non-renewable resource generated and deposited under special biological and geological conditions.

2. New science from Sweden proves oil comes naturally from rocks:

Until now these believers in “abiotic oil” have been dismissed as professing “bad science” but — alas — a new study has proven them correct!

Reported in ScienceDaily, researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for crude oil and natural gas to be generated. The findings are revolutionary since this means, on the one hand, that it will be much easier to find these sources of energy and, on the other hand, that they can be found all over the globe.

“Using our research we can even say where oil could be found in Sweden,” says Vladimir Kutcherov, a professor at the Division of Energy Technology at KTH.

Together with two research colleagues, Vladimir Kutcherov has simulated the process involving pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner layers of the earth, the process that generates hydrocarbon, the primary component in oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, the findings are a clear indication that the oil supply is not about to end, which researchers and experts in the field have long feared.

The abiotic oil formation theory suggests that crude oil is the result of naturally occurring and possibly ongoing geological processes. This theory was developed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as the Union needed to be self sufficient in terms of producing its own energy. The science behind the theory is sound and is based on experimental evidence in both the laboratory and in the field. This theory has helped to identify and therefore develop large numbers of gas and oil deposits. Examples of such fields are the South Khylchuyu field and the controversial Sakhalin II field.

In its simplest form, the theory is that carbon present in the magma beneath the crust reacts with hydrogen to form methane as well as a raft of other mainly alkane hydrocarbons. The reactions are more complicated than this, with several intermediate stages. Particular mineral rocks such as granite and other silicon based rocks act as catalysts, which speed up the reaction without actually becoming involved or consumed in the process.

Experiments have shown that under extreme conditions of heat and pressure it is possible to convert iron oxide, calcium carbonate and water into methane, with hydrocarbons containing up to 10 carbon atoms being produced by Russian scientists last century and confirmed in recent US experiments. The absence of large quantities of free gaseous oxygen in the magma prevents the hydrocarbons from burning and therefore forming the lower energy state molecule carbon dioxide. The conditions present in the Earth’s mantle would easily be sufficient for these small hydrocarbon chains to polymerise into the longer chain molecules found in crude oil.

Vladimir Kutcherov adds that there is no way that fossil oil, with the help of gravity or other forces, could have seeped down to a depth of 10.5 kilometers in the state of Texas, for example, which is rich in oil deposits. As Vladimir Kutcherov sees it, this is further proof, alongside his own research findings, of the genesis of these energy sources — that they can be created in other ways than via fossils. This has long been a matter of lively discussion among scientists.

“There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil,” says Vladimir Kutcherov, who adds that this is true of land areas that have not yet been prospected for these energy sources.

But the discovery has more benefits. The degree of accuracy in finding oil is enhanced dramatically — from 20 to 70 percent. Since drilling for oil and natural gas is a very expensive process, the cost picture will be radically altered for petroleum companies, and in the end probably for consumers as well.

To identify where it is worthwhile to drill for natural gas and oil, Vladimir Kutcherov has used his research to arrive at a new method. It involves dividing the globe into a finely meshed grid. The grid corresponds to fissures, so-called ‘migration channels,’ through underlying layers under the surface of the earth. Wherever these fissures meet, it is suitable to drill.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these research findings are extremely important, not least as 61 percent of the world’s energy consumption derives from crude oil and natural gas.

The next step in this research work will involve more experiments, but above all refining the method will make it easier to find places where it is suitable to drill for oil and natural gas.

Vladimir Kutcherov, Anton Kolesnikov, and Alexander Goncharov’s research work was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

SOURCE

Trump Administration Pulls Organic Livestock Care Rule

President Donald Trump’s administration Monday canceled an organic livestock rule finalized in the last hours of former President Barack Obama’s administration, in an effort to simplify organic food classifications and reduce burdens on farmers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rescinded the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule because it would have exceeded the department’s authority and been a costly burden on organic producers, the government said.

“The existing robust organic livestock and poultry regulations are effective,” USDA Marketing and Regulatory Programs Under Secretary Greg Ibach said in a statement. “The organic industry’s continued growth domestically and globally shows that consumers trust the current approach that balances consumer expectations and the needs of organic producers and handlers.”

The rule would have required meat and poultry producers, including egg farmers, who sell under certified organic food labels to comply with certain methods for raising livestock. The rule covered animal care from production practices to transport, slaughter and living conditions for organic livestock and poultry.

The final rule, published Jan. 19, 2017, prohibited farmers from docking pig tails, something the industry views as necessary for hygiene and animal safety, if the product was to be marketed as organic. Producers were required to provide access to outdoor spaces, particularly for poultry.

The USDA found “significant” legal and policy issues with the rule; after accepting several round of public comment, the department announced in December 2017 it intended to withdraw the rule outright rather than update it.

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing agency, which runs the National Organic Program responsible for the “certified organic” labels, does not have the legislative authority to regulate all aspects of animal care within the organic program, the department’s marketing branch said in withdrawing the rule.

Current law allows for regulation in narrow areas of animal care, including the types of food animals ingest, the antibiotics and vaccines used (absent illness), and anti-parasite treatments, the USDA said, interpreting law more narrowly than Obama’s administration.

Other animal care practices, like requiring poultry to have access to outside spaces and the ability to spread their wings as Obama’s rule dictated, did not fall under the government’s authority.

Organic labels are more about advertising. Perdue slowed the government’s push to change the food industry through organic incentive programs and regulations, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue commented in the past. (RELATED: Ag Secretary Says GMO Labeling Is ‘All About Marketing’)

Kansas GOP Senator and Senate Committee on Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts praised the USDA’s decision in December. “With USDA’s wise decision to withdraw this rule, organic livestock and poultry producers can rest assured that they will not be forced out of business by another costly and burdensome regulation,” Roberts said.

SOURCE

Climate change is ‘the biggest scientific fraud ever perpetrated’: scientist

Social scientist and author Steven Mosher called the global warming movement an enemy of the sanctity of innocent human life at an international symposium that began online Tuesday to address the anti-Christian nature of population control.

Mosher, long recognized as an expert in China’s domestic policy, started his address by explaining that the earth’s temperature has always fluctuated, sometimes dramatically.

“I did a historical study of climate change in China, which shows that the climate in China 2,000 years ago was several degrees warmer than it is today,” Mosher said, adding, “And of course that was a long time before we started hearing about climate change and global warming.”

The bestselling author, who went through a Ph.D program in Oceanography at the University of Washington, further noted that during the Jurassic period, the earth was 15 degrees warmer on average than it is today.

Criticizing global warming fearmongers, Mosher said not long ago the same “experts” were frantically making the exact opposite claims. “In the 1970s … the climate ‘experts’ were warning about a coming ‘ice age,’” he said. “Now it has flipped over 180 degrees to be global warming.”

“The truth is, nobody really knows what’s going to happen to the climate in the future,” Mosher explained. “We’ve seen extremes of temperatures on the cold side and on the warm side that make any projection of one or two degrees pale in comparison.”

Mosher spoke on “Environmentalism and Climate Change as an Avenue for Population Control.” The International Conference on Population Control is sponsored by the Lepanto Institute. Its theme is “How Radical Enemies of Life are Pushing Their Global Agenda to End Poverty by Eliminating the Poor.”

“We had global warming and ice ages a long time before human beings invented the internal combustion engine, and a long time before there were a million or us running around the planet giving birth to little ‘carbon dioxide emitters,’“ he quipped, quoting how climate change activists refer to children.

Turning to his compromised colleagues, Mosher said too many are swayed by the government dole. “I’m really appalled at how the scientific community has sold out for big research grants and to get their name highlighted in the faculty journal and get invited to U.N. conferences,” Mosher said. “This is the biggest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the family of man.”

Mosher accused “experts” of jumping on the global warming bandwagon because “they are well paid to do so.” “When you spend billions of dollars subsidizing research, you generally get what you pay for,” he charged. “The climate scientist who gets the million dollar grant and says, ‘After study, there’s really no danger of global warming,’ doesn’t get his grant renewed.”

“But the guy who gets 10 million dollars for ‘finding’ global warming probably gets a hundred million after that,” Mosher illustrated.

Mosher, who received the Blessed Frederic Ozanam award from the Society of Catholic Social Scientists for “exemplifying the ideal of Catholic social action,” mentioned that meteorologist Anthony Watts has tallied government payouts related to global warming. Watts estimates $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion are “tied up in the climate hoax.” ClimateDepot‘s Marc Morano described the racket as the “Great Climate Hustle.”

But even if the earth’s temperature is rising, Mosher says that does not translate into the doomsday predictions of Al Gore — that the state of Florida sinks into the ocean in a decade.

“In my view, a little bit of warming is not necessarily a bad thing,” Mosher claimed. “Even if the earth does warm in the next hundred years, I argue it will be a good thing for humanity.”

A warming planet will open up land for much needed farming. If temperatures rise, “we will see Canada be able to bring vast areas of land under cultivation. We will see Siberia bloom. We will see food production go up,” Mosher said.

“More people die in the winter of cold than die of heat in the summer,” he explained. “We’ll see mortality rates among the very young and the very old go down. Lives will be saved,” Mosher said. “There will be less hunger in the world.”

Other speakers at the conference include Child Advocacy attorney Lis York, LifeSiteNews’ John-Henry Westen, Human Life International’s Dr. Brian Clowes, HLI president Fr. Shenan Boquet, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana’s Riccardo Cascioli, Italian economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, Sacred Heart Institute’s Raymond De Souza, and Dr. Philip Chidi Njemanze.

Mosher calls the current politically correct environment a billion-dollar a year “giant propaganda effort” against science and common sense. “This is a myth of guilt,” he said. “This is a myth that drives population control. This is a myth that will decrease the use of energy that will literally kill poor people.”

“This is ultimately about radical environmentalists (engineering) their idea of paradise before man,” Mosher charged, saying radicals believe that people “ruined it.” “They have seized upon global warming as an excuse to justify their war on people to promote abortion, sterilization, and contraception around the world.”

Mosher emphasized that the ultimate goal of global warmists is population control. “They cheered China’s one-child policy from the very beginning,” he mentioned.

The Q&A session then turned to Catholic leaders’ part in the anti-life global warming movement.

“Catholic teaching promotes stewardship of the environment,” Mosher reminded listeners, “but some of the participants of recent Vatican conferences have a history of promoting population control (and) abortion. That’s in opposition to Catholic teaching. I’m surprised they were invited to these conferences (and) given a platform by the Vatican itself to propagate views to directly violate Catholic teaching.”

According to Michael Hichborn, president of conference sponsor the Lepanto Institute, pro-abortion population control activists have established a foothold inside the Catholic Church under the pretext of environmental protection. Now they are “actively working to undermine and subvert the Church and her teachings from within” in an “unprecedented attack.”

Mosher agreed. “The radical environmental movement is using the borrowed authority of the Vatican to propagate its false view of humanity (and) its false view of the relationship between man and the environment,” he charged. “Unfortunately, some in the Vatican are allowing themselves and the Catholic Church to be misused in this way.”

The pro-life researcher and social activist questioned the motivations of those in the Vatican who would give pro-abortionists a voice. “I’m afraid there are certain people in the Vatican who are more interested in winning applause from the world than … evangelizing and getting as many people home to heaven as possible,” he said.

Mosher quoted one Vatican guest speaker, former colleague Paul R. Ehrlich, who claims “the biggest problem that we face is the continuing expansion of the human enterprise.” Mosher quoted Ehrlich as saying, “Perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell.”

Mosher criticized Ehrlich for his extremist view of population growth and for “comparing it to a cancerous growth. I can hardly imagine a more derogatory description of the human family than comparing it to a cancer cell,” Mosher said.

“When my wife and I had nine children, we didn’t think that they resembled cancer cells. We thought that we were new souls into existence, cooperating with God in populating this world and hopefully in the next,” Mosher commented.

Mosher then took on worldwide abortion promoter Bill Gates. “Bill Gates tried to argue that he was only funding population control programs in countries where the population was increasing at three percent a year,” Mosher quoted, adding that he disagreed that high birth rates are a problem in the first place. “But I said, ‘Bill, there are only a few small islands in the Pacific where the birth rate is still that high.’”

Then Mosher got to his point with Gates. “If you’re worried about high birth rate, cure childhood diseases, reduce the infant mortality rate, and the birth rate will come down naturally,” he told the Microsoft billionaire. “The reason why families in Africa still have four and five children is because they expect to lose one or two children to disease before they reach adulthood.”

Mosher went on in his address to assert that climate changers have the solution all wrong. “This is all done under the false assumption that if you reduce the number of people on the planet you will somehow increase the number of seals and whales and trees and other things that the radical environmentalists seem to value more than human beings,” Mosher revealed. “What we need to have is continued economic growth, because once a country gets above $2,000 per capita, they have the resources to set aside natural parks and nature preserves and national forests and so forth.”

“It’s poverty that’s the enemy of the environment, not people,” he summarized.

“It’s poverty that leads the poor to cut down the last tree, as they have in Haiti, to build a house or cook their food,” Mosher pointed out. “It’s poverty that leads them to pollute the water that they need to drink because they can’t afford to dig a well or build a sewage treatment plant. It’s poverty that leads them to plant the last square foot of land because they … can’t afford fertilizer or they can’t afford proper irrigation.”

“Poverty is the enemy of the environment,” the human rights advocate said. “And we know how to cure poverty: You have the rule of law, you have property rights, you have an open and free economic system. And once you cure poverty, people will take care of the environment.”

But the radical environmentalists’ have it backward, Mosher claimed. Their “more people equals less of everything else” narrative is not true, he said. “More people as good stewards of the environment means more of everything else: more whales, more trees, more land set aside.”

The author described the global warmist movement as “anti-people.” “Here we almost have a demonic hatred of our fellow human beings,” he said. “They cry copious tears over a mistreated dog or cat, but they ignore that 4,000 babies are being brutally killed -- torn limb from limb -- in wombs across the United States today.”

“The other side of the evangelization coin,” Mosher said, “is allowing the human beings to come into existence in the first place.”

Back on the subject of Catholic response to global warming threats, Mosher said the Christian response cannot be legislated. “The questions of how we should be good stewards of the environment are prudential questions that will never be settled dogmatically,” the Population Research Institute president concluded.

Part of the Catholic solution is the Pontifical Academy of Science should invite as contributors “only people who were Catholic,” Mosher offered.

“If you do not have a Trinitarian worldview,” he explained, “then your position on many of these issues are going to be radically different than what the Catholic Church teaches.”

Global warmists “are people who have radically different views of what humanity is,” Mosher said. “It makes a real difference if I think that mankind is only a little lower than the angels, created in the image and likeness of God. Paul Ehrlich believes that we’re only a little higher than the apes, and it’s necessary now to thin the herd. He believes that we’re only animals, (so) there’s no moral question to be answered; it’s just a simple question of numbers and power.”

“Such a radical reductionist view of what human beings are should not be endorsed by the Vatican,” he opined.

Mosher commented that after listening to some of the non-Catholic Vatican conference speakers, Pope Francis himself has talked about climate change as the cause of world hunger. “That gets the facts exactly backwards,” he said. “I think we need to go to Rome … and talk and educate people.”

Hichborn noted the significance of the issue today. “Population Control is an agenda that ties together nearly every major cause of the anti-family left,” he said. “Homosexuality, environmentalism, poverty reduction, foreign aid, and even mass immigration are connected to the population control agenda.”

“For the sake of souls, lives, and the family, it is vitally important for everyone who calls themselves pro-life to stand up now,” Hichborn added. “If we don’t fight this now, it won’t be long before there won’t be a civilization left to defend.”

SOURCE

California Has Too Much Green Energy

California has frozen development on any more renewable energy sources as it wrestles with what to do with all the extra electricity it’s currently producing, Quartz reported.

Solar energy production has risen from less than one percent of California’s energy mix in 2010 to around 10 percent in 2017. On certain days when conditions are favorable, solar has supplied as much as half the energy used by Californians, according to Quartz.

The California Public Utilities Commission has proposed the state hold off on any further investment into renewable energy as individuals and businesses throughout the state continue to buy their own private sources of energy, such as solar panels secured to the tops of buildings. As more individuals invest in private energy, demand on the state’s grid lessens, Greentech Media reported.

California also has trouble predicting how much renewable energy will be needed at a certain time and controlling the power supplied. On several occasions, California paid Arizona utilities and others to take excess solar energy to avoid overloading its own grid, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s really disappointing,” Independent Energy Producers Association CEO Jan Smutny-Jones told Greentech Media about California’s decision to halt renewable energy investment. “They’re basically saying, ‘There’s too much going on; we don’t know what to do, so we’re not going to do anything for a while.'”

A mixture of popular sentiment and legislation has led to California investing heavily in renewable energy in recent years. The heavy investment has been hard for ratepayers, however, as their energy bill has increased to 50 percent more than the national average, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Renewable energy also poses another hurdle in its predictability. For solar and wind, the energy produced relies on the weather, which is predictable to an extent and impossible to control. The inconsistency with which renewables produce power is one of the reasons California state taxpayers have footed the bill for their state’s energy to be pushed out to neighboring states.

SOURCE

Australia: Conservative backbenchers urge end to solar subsidies

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg faces a backbench revolt with pressure building to end subsidies for solar panels.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott is demanding action after revelations that the subsidies could cost consumers more than $1 billion this year.

Mr Abbott led a chorus of Coalition backbenchers urging the government to end the small-scale renewable energy scheme, with Liberal MP Craig Kelly declaring the policy was more economically damaging than the Rudd government’s home insulation scheme.

“The cost to the economy in dollars is far greater than what the (home insulation) scheme was,” Mr Kelly said.

The scheme was also criticised by Grattan Institute director Tony Wood because it did not reduce subsidies to solar panels as they became more affordable.

Mr Abbott cited a report in The Australian that revealed the big increase of solar panels could drive up costs by $100 per household.

“Australians are paying far too much for our emissions obsession. Government must end subsidies for new renewables,” Mr Abbott said yesterday.

Nationals senator John Williams said the policy forced struggling families to subsidise rich people’s solar installations. “Renewable energy is good in that it is renewable and it goes on forever,” Senator Williams said.

“However, the subsidies they cost us is enormous, renewable energy should be made to stand on its own two feet. We’ve got all the users of electricity paying for this.’’

Queensland senator Ian MacDonald said the small-scale renewable energy scheme pushed up electricity prices but did nothing to reduce climate change. “Nothing we do in Australia will make any difference, we could open up new mines, new power stations it would not make one iota of a difference to what they say is climate change,” he said.

“I think we should be at least making renewable energy compete on a different basis with other forms of energy and that means phasing out subsidies for an expensive form of power.”

The small-scale renewable scheme, which is unaffected by the proposed National Energy Guarantee, gives financial incentives for homes and small businesses to install solar panels or hydro systems on their property.

Certificates, worth a maximum of $40, are provided for each megawatt hour of renewable electricity that would be created from a solar panel until the scheme ends in 2030. Electricity retailers are required to buy the certificates, passing the cost on to consumers.

Industry analysis obtained by The Australian showed the subsidy was expected to more than double from $500 million last year.

Mr Kelly, chairman of the Coalition backbench committee for energy and the environment, said the government should halve the maximum certificate price to $20, followed by another halving in its value next year before it is phased out a decade early in 2020.

Mr Wood, from the Grattan Institute, said the problem with the renewable energy target was that it did not have any “self-correcting mechanism”.

“The idea the subsidy stays in place regardless of what happens to the thing you are subsidising is asking for a problem in the long term,” he said.

“If people continue to put in more small-scale solar the retailers, more or less, are forced to support it with a price that is capped at $40 MWh.

“That means that, despite the cost of solar coming down dramatically, there is nothing that means that subsidy comes down with it, and that business in effect becomes more profitable.”

SOURCE

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

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

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14 March, 2018

NOAA Caught Adjusting Big Freeze out of Existence

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has yet again been caught exaggerating ‘global warming’ by fiddling with the raw temperature data.

This time, that data concerns the recent record-breaking cold across the northeastern U.S. which NOAA is trying to erase from history.

If you believe NOAA’s charts, there was nothing particularly unusual about this winter’s cold weather which caused sharks to freeze in the ocean and iguanas to drop out of trees.

Here is NOAA’s January 2018 chart for Northeast U.S. – an area which includes New England along with NY, PA, NJ, DE and MD.

You’d never guess from it that those regions had just experienced record-breaking cold, would you?

That’s because, as Paul Homewood has discovered, NOAA has been cooking the books. Yet again – presumably for reasons more to do with ideology than meteorology – NOAA has adjusted past temperatures to look colder than they were and recent temperatures to look warmer than they were.

We’re not talking fractions of a degree, here. The adjustments amount to a whopping 3.1 degrees F. This takes us well beyond the regions of error margins or innocent mistakes and deep into the realm of fiction and political propaganda.

Homewood first smelt a rat when he examined the New York data sets.

He was particularly puzzled at NOAA’s treatment of the especially cold winter that ravaged New York in 2013/14, which he describes here:

The cold weather really began on Jan 2nd, when an Arctic front descended across much of the country, and extended well into March.

The NWS wrote at the end of the winter:

The winter of 2013-14 finished as one of the coldest winters in recent memory for New York State. Snowfall across Western and North Central New York was above normal for many areas, and in some locations well above normal. This winter comes on the heels of two previous mild winters, making the cold and snow this winter feel that much harsher.

Temperatures this winter finished below normal every month, and the January through March timeframe finished at least 4 degrees below normal for the two primary climate stations of Western New York (Buffalo and Rochester)…..

Relentless cold continued through the month of January across the region.

So why, he wondered, did NOAA have this marked down as only the 30th coldest winter (since 1895) on its New York State charts, with a mean temperature of 16.9F?

Homewood compared the local records for January 1943 and January 2014 – months which, according to NOAA’s charts, had very similar average temperatures.

What he found was that NOAA’s charts were deeply inaccurate. The 2014 local temperatures had been adjusted upwards by NOAA and the 1943 local temperatures downwards.

He concludes:

On average the mean temperatures in Jan 2014 were 2.7F less than in 1943. Yet, according to NOAA, the difference was only 0.9F.

Somehow, NOAA has adjusted past temperatures down, relatively, by 1.8F.

Now, Homewood has given the same treatment to the most recent Big Freeze – the winter of 2017/2018.

Yet again, he has found that NOAA’s arbitrary adjustments tell a lie. They claim that January 2018 was warmer in the New York region than January 1943, when the raw data from local stations tells us this just isn’t true.

So at the three sites of Ithaca, Auburn and Geneva, we find that January 2018 was colder than January 1943 by 1.0, 1.7 and 1.3F respectively.

Yet NOAA say that the division was 2.1F warmer last month. NOAA’s figure makes last month at least 3.1F warmer in comparison with 1943 than the actual station data warrants.

He concludes:

Clearly NOAA’s highly homogenised and adjusted version of the Central Lakes temperature record bears no resemblance at all the the actual station data.

And if this one division is so badly in error, what confidence can there be that the rest of the US is any better?

Well indeed. The key point here is that while NOAA frequently makes these adjustments to the raw data, it has never offered a convincing explanation as to why they are necessary. Nor yet, how exactly their adjusted data provides a more accurate version of the truth than the original data.

One excuse NOAA’s apologists make is that weather stations are subject to changing environmental conditions. For example, when the station sited at Syracuse in 1929 was located at what was originally just a sparse aerodrome. Since then, however, as Homewood notes, it has grown into a large international airport with two runways servicing two million passengers a year. Its weather station readings therefore will certainly have been corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect: that is, its temperature readings will have been artificially elevated by the warmth from the surrounding development and aircraft engines.

So you’d think, wouldn’t you, that to compensate for this NOAA would adjust the recent temperatures downwards. Instead, for no obvious reasons, it has adjusted them upwards.

This is a scandal. NOAA’s climate gatekeepers are political activists not honest scientists and the U.S. taxpayer has no business funding their propaganda.

SOURCE

Alarmist Climate Researchers Abandon Scientific Method

So-called “consensus” climate science reaches new lows nearly every day, with many researchers now better resembling dogmatic, fire-and-brimstone preachers — the kind of people who burnt heretics at the stake during the Middle Ages and suppressed scientific discovery — than scientists engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.

I don’t begrudge scientists who either believe their own research shows, or who believe the dominant number of peer-reviewed papers indicate, humans are causing climate change and the changes will be dangerous. But I do disagree with many of the assumptions made by proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Data and evidence show most of their projections concerning temperatures, ice, hurricanes, species extinction, etc. have failed. As a result, I don’t think their projections of the future climate conditions are trustworthy, especially not to make the kind of fundamental, wrenching, costly changes to our economy and systems of government that have been proposed as necessary for fighting climate change. I don’t think climate scientists can foretell the future any better than the average palm reader.

Making matters worse, AGW proponents discount, or ignore entirely, powerful studies that seem to undermine many of their assumptions and refute most of their conclusions.

Admittedly, I start with a position of skepticism, and indeed suspicion, when climate alarmist scientists release a new study purporting to reinforce or provide further evidence AGW is true. This isn’t because I don’t want to hear what those who disagree with my assessment have to say. Rather, it’s based on my understanding of the lengths to which AGW true believers have manipulated temperature data and tried to shoehorn or force the data to support AGW theory to match their dire projections.

It’s reasonable, and even expected, for educated people to disagree with one another on this issue in the way described above. I think this back-and-forth exchange is common historically, and often occurs when science is operating as it should.

Where many AGW believers abandon the scientific method is when they revert to various logical fallacies to manipulate the average person’s emotions in order to gain support for AGW and its associated anti-fossil-fuel political program. AGW advocates commit the fallacy of ad hominem when they call researchers who disagree with their assessment of the strength of the case for AGW “deniers” — an obvious attempt to link them in the public’s mind with despicable Holocaust deniers. That is not science, it’s rhetoric. I know of no one who denies the fact that climate changes, but there are legitimate disagreements concerning the extent of humanity’s role in present climate change and whether it will be disastrous. Scientists who refuse to admit that highly regarded scientists disagree with AGW are the ones who should be labeled “deniers,” and thus suffer the opprobrium rightfully attached to that label.

AGW proponents also commit the fallacy of appeal to numbers, when they say the case for dangerous human-caused climate change is settled because some high percentage of a subset of scholars agrees humans are causing dangerous climate change. Consensus is a political, not a scientific, term. The world once thought Earth was flat. Galileo said he disagreed and that he believed it was round (and he suffered for saying so). And you know what? He was right and the consensus of the time was wrong. At one time, the people, including the intellectual elite, believed Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun revolved around it. Copernicus said just the opposite. He was right, and everyone else was wrong.

Knowledge acquisition succeeds not through bowing to some so-called “consensus” in thought and opinion, but through questioning previously received wisdom and continuously testing scientific theories against data. “Because the vast majority of us said so” is not a legitimate scientific response to research raising questions about all or some part of AGW.

AGW researchers commit the fallacy of appeal to motive when they say a particular study or the work of a particular scientist or group of scientists should not be taken seriously because of who funded them. Truthfully, this fallacy is committed by both sides, since climate skeptics often question AGW research of being biased based on the fact it was funded by government, which history shows has a bias toward finding reasons to enact additional government controls.

Research should be judged based on the validity of its assumptions, whether its premises are true, and whether its conclusions follow from this premises, not on who funded the research. Data, evidence, and logic are the hallmarks of science, not motives.

Beyond data manipulation and their heinous logical fallacies, AGW advocates’ own e-mails show they have tried to suppress the publication of research skeptical of AGW. And they have routinely attempted to interfere with the career advancement of scholars who refuse to completely toe the AGW line. In numerous instances, AGW proponents have tried to get scholars fired for their deeply held beliefs.

AGW fanatics also try to suppress the teaching of a balanced, accurate understanding of the current state of climate science, with all it uncertainties, in the nation’s schools. This is the tool of the propagandist, not the scientific researcher seeking the truth.

All these reflections came to a head in recent years, as AGW true believers have fought in court to prevent the release of the data underpinning their own research, attempted to suppress free speech by accusing those with whom they disagree of committing libel, and even on occasion called for the prosecution and incarceration of climate skeptics for daring to question AGW orthodoxy. Some AGW proponents have openly admired various authoritarian regimes for their ability to “get things done” without the interference of democratic institutions. Real scientists know truths do not bloom under authoritarianism.

Most recently, more than 400 AGW scolds wrote an open letter to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) urging the museum to remove Rebekah Mercer from its Board of Trustees. Ms. Mercer and/or her family’s foundation have donated generously to the museum over the years, and I suspect she has convinced her friends and business relations to give as well. (That’s typically how one gets a seat on a museum board.)

Ms. Mercer’s crime is not that she interfered with the AMNH’s policies or dictated exhibits. Nor is it that she unjustifiably interfered with the museum’s management or influenced its displays or purchases. Rather, AGW true believers say Mercer should be booted unceremoniously from the board after years of helping AMNH thrive because she “and her family were important backers of President Trump. She has a stake in Breitbart News, and the family foundation has contributed millions of dollars to climate-change-denying [there’s that ad hominem] politicians and organizations like the Heartland Institute, which says, ‘Global warming is not a crisis.’”

Or, simply put, Mercer has to go because she disputes the AGW dogma and supports politicians who agree with her assessment. Hypocritically, the authors of the letter stress calling on the board to remove Mercer is not a partisan issue, yet they specifically list her family’s support of Trump as one reason to remove her. It doesn’t get much more partisan than that!

Full disclosure: I’ve never met Ms. Mercer, though I did glimpse her across the room at a conference once. Frankly, I don’t know in what industry her family made its money, and I steadfastly refuse to research it, because I don’t want to be wrongfully accused of being a shill for any particular industry or company, a problem I already have to deal with regularly. Though I don’t know for sure, since fundraising is not within my purview, I will assume she or her family has given as much to the Heartland Institute, my employer, as the angry AGW letter claims. But so what?

Working with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, the Heartland Institute is actively engaged in the scientific debate surrounding the causes and consequences of climate change, having published a number of volumes of peer-reviewed climate research and having hosted 12 international climate change conferences. We are also involved in an educational effort to get an accurate and balanced portrayal of the state of climate science in our nation’s schools. Thus, like her support of the AMNH, Ms. Mercer’s support for the Heartland Institute expands the dissemination and improves the understanding of science and knowledge. The Heartland Institute is part of the climate debate, but for the AGW crowd, there is no room for debate. No dissent will be tolerated.

Their letter says: “We are concerned that the vital role of science education institutions will be eroded by a loss of public trust if museums are associated with individuals and organizations [in this case, Ms. Mercer] known for rejecting climate science, opposing environmental regulation and clean energy initiatives, and blocking efforts to reduce pollutants and greenhouse gases.”

To my knowledge, Mercer does not reject climate science, and based on her support for a variety of high-quality organizations, she appears to have a more complete and honest view of what we can say about climate change than the letter’s signatories do. They assume all environmental regulations are worthwhile, even though many clearly are not and/or violate the Constitution and existing law because they impose huge costs for little or no benefit. One should expect anybody — other than a radical, partisan, environmentalist, of course — to reject such foolish regulations.

Concerning clean energy initiatives: They harm the poor by raising energy prices, and often impose greater environmental harms than the fossil fuels they are meant to replace.

Finally, while I don’t know if Mercer and her family have fought against rational efforts to restrict legitimate pollutants, carbon dioxide is, in fact, not a pollutant. It is a naturally occurring gas necessary to all life on Earth. Historically, when it has been more abundant, life has thrived. Fighting against restrictions on carbon dioxide is literally fighting for human well-being and environmental flourishing.

Fortunately, not all scientists have abandoned their fealty to the scientific method in favor of authoritarian climate dogma. More than 300 researchers, scientists, and scholars responded to the AGW letter with their own letter and documentation advising trustees of AMNH not to cave into AGW agitators and remove Mercer from the board. They argue “the agitators are not defending science from quackery — quite the contrary! They demand that the Museum support a party line, thinly disguised as science.” In addition, the signatories of the letter defending Mercer’s continued association with the museum also said the original letter “is itself anti-science and ideologically-driven.” This is a succinct and accurate assessment.

The truth is, if anyone is putting AMNH’s credibility at risk, it is the AGW true believers now demanding the museum drop Mercer from its board. Before their letter and the op-ed the New York Times published in support of Mercer’s removal, few people, if any, who visited the museum or admired its work could have named a single member of the museum’s Board of Trustees. Indeed, despite the media hype, most people who go to the museum still can’t name its board members; the kerfuffle is beneath the notice of the average museumgoer, who attends simply to be amazed and learn and doesn’t care a whit about the politics of its trustees.

However, the controversy surrounding the letter and the public protests that accompanied it, raised the issue’s profile significantly, meaning those who share the anti-science view of the letter’s authors, now knowing Mercer is associated with AMNH, may have lost trust in the museum — even if they never had reason to question the messages of its displays and exhibits before. And if the museum caves in to the anti-Mercer crowd, it will spark mistrust from those who recognize, in demanding Mercer’s ouster, the AGW crowd is further polarizing society, bringing partisanship into yet another area of life that should be beyond politics.

If Mercer is shown the door, who else among the board or the museum’s list of donors might be targeted for ostracism next because of his or her political beliefs?

The public loses when science and its institutions’ of learning are politicized. Thus, the anti-Mercer campaign is just one more instance of AGW true believers demeaning the very scientific method they claim to be defending. Shame on them, and shame on AMNH if it caves in to this pressure. Only by standing by Mercer and asking her to remain on the board can AMNH be seen as truly upholding its mission “to discover, interpret, and disseminate — through scientific research and education — knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.”

SOURCE

"Sustainable Development"

It’s in every community in the nation. We hear it talked about in county commission meetings and state legislatures. It’s even used in advertising as a positive practice for food processing and auto sales. It’s used as the model for building materials, power sources and transportation policy. It’s sold as the bold visionary plan for the future. The nation is being transformed under the banner of “Sustainable Development.”

We are assured by elected officials that Sustainable Development is simply a tool or a guideline to help direct the carefully-planned growth of our cities and rural areas while protecting our natural resources for future generations. “We must guard against a chaotic, unregulated growth in our cities,” say its earnest proponents as they sell the concept through familiar, non-threatening words and beautiful pictures.

Citizens are assured by their community leaders that all such plans are just local, local, local, created with the participation of the whole community. Sustainable Development policy, they say, is just an environmental land conservation policy, a sensible development policy. Sustainable…what’s wrong with that?

As usual, the answers are hidden in the details. Are we hearing the truth? What are the consequences of the policy that has taken over every level of government? Are there hidden dangers most just can’t see? Or, as its proponents claim, is opposition to Sustainable Development really just a silly, overblown conspiracy theory found in a twenty-year-old meaningless document called Agenda 21?

The UN’s Brundtland Commission on Global Governance described Sustainable Development as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.” It’s just common sense to assure we don’t overuse our resources, say proponents. If everyone will do their part, we can achieve total sustainability.

A couple of years later, in 1992, at the UN’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates approved a plan describing in great detail how to meet those future needs. They issued a document called Agenda 21, which the UN labeled as a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” The UN sold Agenda 21 as a “soft law” policy, meaning it was an idea that nations would need to take up and impose through their own mechanisms.

To that end, in 1993, newly elected President Bill Clinton created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Serving on the Council were the representative of nearly every federal agency, along with representatives of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) who had helped to write Agenda 21 on the international level. Also on the Council were representatives of major global corporations. Their task was to create the policies to turn the Agenda 21 goals into official government policy and provide the means to fund it.

The President’s Council released a report describing its Sustainable Development goals, saying, “Sustainable communities encourage people to work together to create healthy communities where natural resources and historic resources are preserved, jobs are available, sprawl is contained, neighborhoods are secure, education is lifelong, transportation and health care is accessible, and all citizens have opportunities to improve the quality of their lives.”

It all sounds pretty neat. Nothing to fear here! It sounds like Utopia is truly ours for the taking. Again, what are the details? How do we put such ideas into action? What are the consequences? Is the environment better off? Are we better off? Well, let’s take each of these glowing ideas one at a time and just see where it all leads!

* “Sustainable communities encourage people to work together…” There certainly are members of our society who take the whole Sustainablist agenda to heart and love to get involved improving their community. They clean out riverbanks, collect trash along roadways, recycle, watch their thermostats, and ride their bikes whenever possible. Good for them. That’s their decision and they are free to make it.

But there are others who may have a different vision on how they want to live. Perhaps they don’t agree with the dire predictions that we must comply or face environmental Armageddon. How do they fit in the Agenda for the 21st Century?

They are dealt with. Children in the public schools are pummeled with the political correctness of being proper environmental stewards, as detailed in Agenda 21. Guilt plays a huge part in that indoctrination. It’s necessary that everyone think alike without questioning policy so future generations will be prepared to “work” together in their communities. In addition, in many schools now, the children are required to fulfill a certain number of hours of community service in order to qualify for their diploma. In a Sustainable world, proper attitude is more important than academic scholarship. Today’s curriculum to ensure proper citizenship is called Common Core. It is the curriculum of Agenda 21 and is intended to be “life-long, ” and the key focus is Sustainability.

Cooperation from adult citizens is just as structured. In the recent past, public meetings to discuss new policy were based on the guidelines called “Roberts Rules of Order” through which everyone got a fair chance to have their say and then a vote was taken. Today, in the Sustainable world, we have “facilitators” trained in psychology to assure they lead a gathering in exactly the direction needed for the predetermined and desired outcome of the community planners. If the facilitator is really good at his job, everyone in the meeting will believe the outcome was their idea. And those in charge hail the meeting as a huge success in which all in the community “worked together” to put these plans in place.

*…to create healthy communities…” This can mean many things. Healthy? We see the growing power of the food police today who have declared many things in our diet unhealthy. We see the Mayor of New York declaring large sodas unhealthy and banning their sale. We see fast food establishments picketed for selling fries made with grease or hamburgers that are cruel to animal rights. There are mandatory vaccinations, without which children can’t be enrolled in schools and parents are charged with child abuse. New policies are beginning to arise that lean toward mandatory exercise and controls on diets. These are called Blue Zones.

Local governments enforce grand comprehensive plans designed to pack and stack people on top of each other in massive highrise buildings. Is that what they mean by healthy? History would show that forcing people into massive containers reduces quality of life, spreads disease and promotes violence. These aren’t healthy communities. The Russians called them Gulags.

*… Natural resources are preserved… The message is that over-consumption will bring shortages of natural resources, and so the sustainable plan is to erect endless forests of windmills. That is the natural way, we are told. Man will live on the surface of the Earth doing no harm. Of course, they never seem to mention that the huge wind turbines will take more energy to build than they will ever generate in their lifetime. In addition, to bring the power online so it can be used by society requires a massive infrastructure of wires, cement and roads. While one nuclear power plant located on ten acres can supply enough energy for a megacity, wind power would require thousands of acres of clearcut, cement wastelands. Then the power proves to be unstable and unreliable, causing the power grid to falter, forcing controls on home thermostats that fail to hear or cool the homes when needed. How is that healthy for our communities? Moreover, there is the not insignificant side effect of millions of birds that are chopped up in the turbines, including “endangered” raptors like eagles. And they call that environmentally sound?

And one more question comes to mind as we lock away resources for future generations. At what point would these locked away resources ever be allowed to be used by a society so afraid of itself? Won’t there always be a future generation that might need them? Meanwhile, science keeps discovering that the dire predictions of resource depletion are outrageously overblown. It has recently been discovered that the United States has the largest oil and gas supplies in the world. Hydraulic fracturing is a benign American technology that is ecologically sound and economically advantageous. But it has been deemed “unsustainable” by those enforcing Sustainable policy as they quickly oppose any source of cheap energy. Yet, fracking stretches our energy reserves several hundred years into the future. That would certainly give science ample time to come up with new workable technology.

“…historic resources are preserved…” Frankly I have no idea what a historic “resource” is. But I do know that Sustainablists prey on America’s love of history as an excuse to lock away any land where once a historic person may have taken a walk. And they use it to generate massive federal grants so planners can stop development, even in towns where nothing of historic significance ever occurred. It’s a growth industry in the world of sustainable lock-aways.

* “…jobs are available…” What will magically happen in a Sustainable Community to suddenly create jobs that aren’t there now? Government doesn’t create jobs. Creative, driven, free people create jobs to fill needs they have discovered. No government-controlled economy would ever have created a factory that makes designer clothes, dandruff shampoo, or little pieces of plastic that go on the ends of your shoe laces. Bureaucrats don’t think that way. They only think in terms of need, urgency – bare minimum. Luxury is never part of the government plan. The fact is, Sustainable Development is one of the biggest killers of jobs. Its rules and regulation make it near impossible for many companies to survive. The EPA, enforcing Sustainable policies, is killing power plants, mines, and farms. They’re destroying economies of whole states. So where will these glorious Sustainable jobs come from? Government jobs! Perhaps the highrise apartments in the mega cities will need lots of NSA type eavesdroppers for mandatory surveillance to assure people are following the rules for compulsory health policy!

* “…Sprawl is contained…” Evil sprawl (suburbia to normal folk) — those areas of community growth where people run to escape the mega cities. In nearly every case, those new homes in their shiny developments are a place where families first opened the front door with smiles on their faces because this was their home. They have backyards where the kids can play. They have a real sense of community. And those terrible strip malls that spring up around the new developments that supple goods and services for the new residents also create jobs and enhance the economy. Stack and pack cities are not livable if you actually believe in fresh air and a place for the kids to play. Cities are full of government regulations, high taxes, drugs, and disease. Do the Sustainablists focus on stopping murders by drug cartels and beatings by gangs of illegal aliens? You never seem to hear anything about that in their plans. All of these facts were actually exposed in a report by the American Planning Association on the effects of Smart Growth. The report revealed that it doesn’t work. But that hasn’t changed the APA’s policies because Smart Growth is full of government grants. And that’s the real game – Sustainable income for Non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

* “…Neighborhoods are secure…” How is this done? Massive police control? Cameras on every corner? Gun control? TSA in the subways and bus stations? NSA listening in on every conversation, and computer keystroke? Security over privacy and individual choice? Certainly, there is no Sustainable “freedom” in such a scheme.

* “…Transportation is accessible…” This one is easy. Public transportation. Trains for long distance, bikes for the quick run to the store. No cars. You will rarely leave your neighborhood. Imagine the hassle involved in taking the family on a trip to the beach using inconvenient train schedules? Of course, humans flocking to the beach are an unsustainable danger to the environment. Ban that too. Stay in the city.

*”…Healthcare accessible…” Well, we used to have accessible healthcare, then government got into the game. Perhaps you think it’s unfair to mention Obamacare in an article about Sustainable Development. Simply Google “Sustainable Medicine” and find more than 5,850,000 references on the subject, and you will find almost all the provisions of Obamacare.

*…all citizens have the opportunity to improve the quality of their lives…” Really? What part above leads to improvement of the quality of life? We used to call it tyranny – now we call it quality of life. As George Orwell said in his landmark book, 1984, it’s all called doublespeak. Look around you now as Sustainable policy is being forced on us. America’s economy is in shambles and not improving. Costs of everything, especially healthcare, food and energy are skyrocketing. These industries are the very first to be impacted by Sustainable Development. How will it improve under a policy of planned shortages and locked away resources? What or who are they counting on to pull us out? Answer: individuals who will continue to produce no matter how many shackles they lock them in. Eventually, even the most determined give up.

The Sustainablists use such innocent, attractive sounding descriptions of their plans for us. Then they deny they are even doing it, and anyone who calls them on it is labeled a fringe nut. But there is another way to say it, a much older description of Sustainable Development that explains the motivation behind the policy in a much more direct manner: “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” If you recognize that quote, then you fully understand the true nature of Sustainable Development.

Here are two more quotes that will drive reality into daylight of the true purpose of Sustainable Development.

First, does this sound like something your local planners may have said? “The chaotic growth of cities will be replaced by a dynamic system of urban settlement…The region is formed by the economic interdependence of its development, from the industrial complex to the industrial region. The region has a single system of transportation, a centralized administration, and a united system of education and research.” This was written in 1968 by Alexei Gutnov. He was a Soviet Russian architect writing in a book titled The Ideal Communist City.

And finally there is this very recent quote from New York City Mayor William DeBlasio from an interview in New York magazine. “What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to lie in it, what the rent shall be.”

These quotes represent the true origin and process of Sustainable Development and its goal to reorganize human society. In such a process, there is no room for the independence of free enterprise, private property ownership or individual choice. This is why we fight to stop it.

SOURCE

Green Ideology’s Failed Experiment

The national grids of developed nations were masterpieces of design and function until eco-ideologues and professional warmists opened the powerhouse door to rent-seekers and wreckers. The result: blackouts, price-gouging and a modern world no longer quite so modern

At a February 2000 press conference, the first man to walk on the moon announced the National Academy of Engineering’s twenty most significant engineering achievements of the twentieth century. The aeroplane took third place; the automobile second; in first, the vast networks of electricity that power the developed world. None of the other nineteen would have been possible without electricity, Neil Armstrong declared. “If anything shines as an example of how engineering changed the world during the twentieth century,” he said, “it is certainly the power we use in our homes and businesses.”[1]

The twentieth century’s bequest of cheap, reliable electrical energy is now being undone. For the past decade or so, Australia and other industrialised countries have been conducting a vast experiment on their electrical grids. Tried, tested and refined technologies — predominantly based on coal-fired generation — are being replaced by weather-dependent wind and solar farms. Western societies are moving from industrial means of generating their electricity, with the precision, reliability and economies of scale that implies, to intermittent sources that, like agriculture, depend on the weather, with all that implies for cost and reliability.

The green energy revolution – counter-revolution would be more accurate – did not come about because wind and solar are superior generating technologies. If they were, they wouldn’t have needed the plethora of costly political interventions. These have turned the electricity market into an Aladdin’s cave for rent-seekers while destroying the market’s function to allocate capital sensibly and serve customers efficiently. Instead, the origins of the renewable experiment lie in a deeply ideological reaction against the Industrial Revolution, which, in one of the most important developments of our age, almost imperceptibly became the boilerplate of elite opinion.

Now the results of that experiment are in and they’re not looking good. Australians formerly enjoyed one of the world’s lowest-cost energy markets. Not anymore. In nine years, retail prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM) are up 80-90%. In just two years, business electricity costs doubled, even tripled, resulting in staff lay-offs, relocations and industry closures.[2] ‘The requirement is for efficient prices and affordability for “a healthy NEM,” the Energy Security Board states in its first annual report.[3]

green tyrannyWhat are Australians getting for these cost increases? Last year saw an unprecedented increase in the number of tight supply/demand notices.[4] The constraints now required for system security are estimated to be costing ‘tens of millions of dollars,’ according to the Energy Security Board.[5] Even this is likely to be a serious underestimate. Comparing average electricity prices with those during January’s two-day heat wave – a by no means abnormal occurrence – suggests total extra electricity cost of $400m in Victoria and South Australia.[6]

Regulatory economist Alan Moran has graphed the cost of the renewables counter-revolution.[7] It shows that after inflation, retail electricity prices steadily falling for 25 years from 1955 to 1980. Then, with some bumps up and down, prices flat-lined until around 2005, when the rapid growth of wind and solar sees the near doubling of electricity prices in a little over a decade, more than reversing the post-1955 decline.

You don’t have to be a Thomas Edison or a Nikola Tesla to see that putting large amounts of intermittent capacity into the grid while keeping the lights on will result in higher costs. Wind and solar suffer the obvious shortcoming that they respond to the weather and not to customer demand, something that should have killed off the experiment right at the start.

It gets worse. The Energy Security Board points out that the ability of the grid to cope with sudden supply/demand imbalances is determined by the inertia in the power system, which in the twentieth century was provided by big, heavy turbines spinning at near constant speeds. Before they were taken off the grid, coal fired power stations provided grid stability at no extra cost. Coal turbines are 600 tons and spin at 3,000 rpm. Wind and solar photovoltaics (PV) are non-synchronous and have low or zero physical inertia. As South Australians are finding out, taking coal offline while putting more wind and solar online makes for a fragile grid.

There is now more than enough evidence to show that renewables do not work. We’re at the stage of the revolution where rationalisations for failure have to be found to explain why it’s not working as advertised. It’s a familiar pattern. Apologists for the Communist experiments of the last century used to argue that the idea was noble; the problem was the way the revolution was implemented. Similarly, evidence that the renewable energy experiment isn’t working indicates, we’re told, that the experiment hasn’t been implemented properly. A tweak here, a stronger policy commitment there, and somehow it will all come right — the revolution able to proceed as even more wind and solar is added to the grid.

Policymakers never interpret the ample available evidence as demonstrating the renewable-energy experiment’s failure, nor that it needs to be halted before further damage is done. Oligopolistic market structures, illiquid wholesale and hedging markets, consumer confusion, incoherent policy design – all the factors that have been variously held responsible for high electricity prices and a fragile grid – could be solved, and the outcome would still be much the same.

It’s true that power companies, such as AGL, have perfected the art of price-gouging. Prematurely closing coal-fired power stations squeezes supply and gives incumbents more market power. Although AGL’s accounts are opaque – UK energy companies aren’t allowed to get away with the lack of detail in AGL’s segmental reporting – there is enough in its five-year summary to demonstrate how AGL can make money by selling less electricity at higher prices.

Between 2013 and 2017, AGL’s electricity volumes rose by 20.0%, but its revenue rose 50% faster, with a 29.5% increase, and its underlying profits climbed by 32.7%, whilst its total assets only rose by 8.2%.[8] Green energy policies have gifted AGL with a remarkable money-making machine at the expense of the Australian economy. Such market abuses could be cured and an optimal policy design adopted, but it wouldn’t overcome the destructive impact of having too much wind and solar on the grid. This is because their impact on electricity costs and grid reliability are inherent in wind and solar as generating technologies.

Cracking the storage problem — the horse to the wind and solar cart — is essential if intermittent generation is to be economically viable. Like the cavalry in Hollywood Westerns, low cost battery storage is always spruiked as being poised to come to the rescue of wind and solar’s intermittency. But as Steven Chu, Barack Obama’s first energy secretary, recently observed, the lithium-ion batteries Elon Musk is selling South Australia and Victoria cost around forty times as much as the equivalent reserve capacity of hydro-electric installations.[9] Hydropower remains the only renewable energy source that has been successfully integrated into the grid at scale — in 1895 generating the first electricity used for long-distance transmission. Even if the cost of battery storage were to halve, Chu says, it would still not be cheap enough to accommodate the big seasonable shifts in renewable power production.

Germany, the country that did more than any other to promote the renewables experiment saw it turn thoroughly sour in 2017. [10] Although wind and solar output exceeded nuclear and hard coal in Germany’s energy mix for the first time, greenhouse gas emissions were flat for the third year running.[11] Despite its cherished climate leadership, Germany is on course to miss by ten percentage points its 2020 target of a 40% cut in its greenhouse gas emissions.

But the most interesting of the pro-renewables think tank Agora Energiewende’s findings are on public attitudes. Reflecting the effect of wall-to-wall pro-renewable PR and compliant media coverage, an opinion survey found 75% supporting the statement that energy transition is a collective responsibility everyone should do their part to help succeed. Only 3% considered the energy transition a mistake.[12] Instead the high costs of the energy transition are blamed on implementation. Over two-thirds of those surveyed were ‘very’ dissatisfied (31%) or ‘somewhat’ dissatisfied (37%) with the energy transition policies of the federal government, with only five percent being very or somewhat satisfied.[13]

When first launched, the ex-Communist Green energy minister Jürgen Trittin claimed that supporting renewables would only add the equivalent of a scoop of icecream to monthly electricity bills. Nine years on, his CDU successor, Peter Altmaier, was saying Germany’s energy reforms could amount to one trillion euros (A$1.57 trillion) by the end of the 2030s.[14]

There is no rational explanation for Germany’s addiction to renewable energy. Lying closer to the North Pole than the Equator and subject to North Atlantic weather systems, Germany is hardly a natural for solar power, yet it installed more solar capacity than any other country. Rather, it is the product of ideology, of German culture and philosophy.

Coal and steel propelled Germany’s European ascendancy, but antagonism to industrialisation is a recurrent and irresolvable contradiction of German culture. Hermann Scheer, the German MP and renewable lobbyist behind Germany’s disastrous 2000 renewable energy law, liked to cite the 1909 Nobel Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald to the effect that a sustainable economy should be based exclusively on the regular utilisation of the amount of energy sent each year by the sun. Environmentalism was a prominent feature in Nazi ideology, and the Nazis were the first party anywhere in the world to have a wind power programme. See if what the Nazi daily paper Volkischer Beobachter reported on February 24, 1932 sounds familiar, from spruiking hydrogen production to falling prices and more jobs:

"In a sensational speech by the constructor of the biggest steel towers (right) in Germany, the well known engineer Hermann Honnef from the Rhineland, at the Institute of Physics of the Technical University in Berlin, mentioned that in the height between 70 to 90 meters [230 to 300 ft], a high wind zone can deliver energy…

… The surplus electricity from the windmills, situated along the sea coast, will be used for the production of very inexpensive hydrogen. This will make many products less expensive. Fertilizers will fall in price. The hydration of coal to liquids will be cost-effective. The cost can be reduced from 17 pfennig per litre [64 pfennig per gallon] to 7-8 pfennig per litre [26-30 pfennig per gallon]. In this way about one billion Reichsmark can be saved, which today goes abroad (for importing oil). The 300,000 workers in the coal mining industry can keep their jobs, 200,000 in the mines and 100,000 for the liquefaction of coal. The cost savings will make it possible that an additional 400,000 workers can be paid in the transforming process of the industry"

The Nazi dalliance with wind shows that we are barely any closer to solving the intermittency problem of renewable energy than the German engineers who advocated wind power in the 1930s. The solution, as noted above, was to convert wind energy into hydrogen and then store it.[15] Dismissing battery storage nine decades later, Obama-era energy secretary Steven Chu remarked that other technologies are needed to convert renewable energy into chemical fuel when the sun isnt shining and the wind won’t blow. ‘If you make really cheap hydrogen from renewables and store it underground, then you have something very different.’[16]

As the world’s second-largest exporter of manufactured goods, Germany cannot subsist on wind and solar energy. This is not a dilemma for the German Greens, as they want to reverse the Industrial Revolution. For them, the transition to a post-hydrocarbon world constitutes the third of mankind’s revolutions, the first being the Neolithic Revolution – the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled societies based on agriculture – and the second, the Industrial Revolution. Thus environmentalism in the 21st century is as much a radical ideological project to transform society as Communism was in the last. The difference is that Marxism only triumphed in pre-industrial societies whereas environmentalism is embraced by the elites of the West.

In the 1940s, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter saw that the values and sociology of capitalism would bring about its own demise. He could not have foreseen that environmentalism would unlock capitalism’s fortresses, its doors flung open and the enemies of capitalism invited in. Already in the late 1960s and early 1970s, business leaders and the people who do their thinking for them were debating how industrialization was going to destroy the planet. In 1970, a two-day seminar of opinion leaders at the Aspen Institute concluded that modern technology, greedy men and complacent governments were threatening the future of a decent and civilised world. ‘All insist that the human family is approaching an historic crisis which will require fundamental revisions in the organisation of society,’ the New York Times reported.[17] That they were wrong then hasn’t stopped their more modern successors preaching the same doomsday creed of imminent planetary catastrophe.

As it had been in Christianity and communism, the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, writes in The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse, the future has once again become ‘the great category of blackmail.’[18] This helps explain why sensible politicians have, with varying degrees of enthusiasm – or rather, lack of it – acquiesced in policies that, despite their manifest unsuitability, to put renewables onto the grid. The carbon blackmail worked.

Although the ransom Australia paid is steep, the carbon savings are puny. Carbon dioxide emitted by the NEM fell by 20 million tonnes over the last decade, all of it in the five years from 2009.[19] At the same time, China’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 2,293 million tonnes, an average increase of 38 million tonnes a month.[20] In other words, the painful savings made by the NEM are equivalent to less than 16 days of the increase in China’s carbon dioxide emissions – with more pain to come as more wind and solar is put on the grid and if AGL gets its way and closes more coal-fired power stations.

Germany’s manufacturers are partially insulated from the full effects of the renewable transition as they benefit from a cross-subsidy from consumers. Nonetheless by 2013, they were paying 26% more for electricity than the EU average. In 15 out of the previous 17 years, domestic investment by energy-intensive industries was less than depreciation, a situation Deutsche Bank described as a wake-up call to Germany’s political class on the economic harm caused by Germany’s pursuit of unilateral policies on energy and climate.[21]

If anything, these are even more problematic for Australia. As the world’s largest exporter of iron and coal, it powered through the GFC thanks to the commodities boom. At a very basic level of logic, if Australia maintains current volumes of iron ore and coal exports, worth $117.7bn this year,[22] then the carbon dioxide emitted from the smelters and power stations of China, Japan, South Korea and India will swamp any domestic reductions Australia makes. Seen in this context, pro-renewable, anti-coal policies simply make no sense. But they will continue until national politicians shift from saying renewable energy policy is a good idea badly implemented to saying simply accurately that it is a bad idea and calling time on the disastrous renewable energy experiment.

That takes courage, but then that’s what political leadership is supposed to be about.

SOURCE

Assertion in lieu of evidence

There are absolutely no facts advanced to support the assertions below. Even the IPCC says that extreme weather events cannot be linked to present levels of warming

YOU can forget about climate change being a future phenomenon, according to Professor Lesley Hughes.

“It’s a now phenomenon,” she said during her visit to Bathurst on Monday.

She says the effects of climate change are already being seen in Australia – from more intense droughts to a longer bushfire season – and those impacts are only set to grow so “the status quo is not an option”.

Professor Hughes, a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie University and a former federal Climate Commissioner, gave a lunchtime presentation on Monday hosted by Bathurst Community Climate Action Network and introduced by Councillor Jess Jennings.

She was brought to Bathurst courtesy of the Climate Council, whose Cities Power Partnership recently added Bathurst as a participant.

Speaking after her presentation, Professor Hughes was at pains to emphasise that the climate had already changed and would continue to change based on what was being put into the atmosphere now.

“What we will get for the next few decades is already on the way now,” she said.

SOURCE

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

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

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13 March, 2018

Wake up Britain or perish a starving shivering death

John A Brown writes from Scotland:

Although this is nothing compared to what some less fortunate than myself had to and who are still enduring I had to make a 16 mile round trip for milk. Putting this into perspective there is a convenience store just 75 yards from my back door, a supermarket 200 yards from my front door, another 10 supermarkets along with countless convenience stores along the way yet I had to drive out 8 miles for milk and even then I was lucky to get it.

Thankfully the direction in which the snow showers were coming from meant that locally we missed the brunt of it. However, a few miles inland it was a different story. Our First Minister Nicola Sturgeon addressed the Scottish Parliament lambasting lorry drivers for bringing the motorway network to a standstill citing that Police Scotland and the Scottish Transport Minister had warned the public not to travel unless absolutely necessary. The problem is that although they were warned, I bet you the very same folk who issued the warnings and lambasted the hauliers are the very same ones who are now grumbling about having no basic foodstuffs on the table. Bread, milk, fresh fruit, veg, and meat are either in short supply or non existent with fuel supplies dwindling.

For Pete’s sake get a grip. Three days of inclement weather and the country grinds to a halt. Before I was born in 1965 there were two notable winters with severe weather, 1947 and 1962 – 1963. Although the country did eventually succumb to the harsh winter conditions in 1947 and well as the winter of 1962 -63 it has to be noted that they succumbed in weeks not a matter of days.

My own personal view on the matter, and I could be wrong, is that years ago people weren’t as affluent as they are now. Personal transport was either your feet or an awkward bus journey. Food storage wasn’t great as things that required chilling were either placed on a marble slab in the pantry, or in our case, the end bedroom as it was freezing due to having no central heating. Now we drive out to the local supermarket or hypermarket, load up the car, and on returning home we freeze, chill and store whatever we want. Years ago your mother had to traipse down to the local high street on a daily basis for provisions.

Years ago most of our local retailers sourced the majority of their products locally all year round or whilst in season depending on the product from for example; farms, dairies, bakeries so forth. Nowadays everything is centralised and sourced out of season from overseas. This in turn exacerbates the situation we find ourselves in today. Although the winters of 1947 and 1962 – 63 saw the country eventually grind to a shivering halt, I believe that had things not been centralised (not forgetting communities having to travel further for employment then). Not as many people would have been on the transport network, neither would there have been as many hauliers out on the road when this weather system barrelled in.

If the climate is bucking the AGW mantra, which I think is indeed spiralling into a extreme cooling trend, governments need to address this forthwith. Although the governments of northern Europe invest heavily on snow and ice clearing infrastructure the UK government are of the opinion that as this only occurs once in a while, so it would not be cost effective to invest. Furthermore, by law European drivers must fit winter tyres but here in the UK we are not even encouraged to do so let alone required by law.

Wake up Britain and address the problem or perish a starving shivering death.

SOURCE

Greenpeace seeks in vain for climate change in the Antarctic: Less fishing recommended!

The Greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" stayed in January and February 2018 in the Antarctic Weddell Sea. Klimaretter reported on February 24, 2018:

Marine biologist Susanne Lockhart of the California Academy of Science led the expedition of the Greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" to Antarctica in January and February. In total, around 30 scientists, journalists, activists and filmmakers were on board.

klimaretter.info: Ms. Lockhart, you spent three weeks on a research expedition in Antarctica in January: do you see or feel anything about climate change there?

Susanne Lockhart: "I've been to research trips there many times. The changes can not be overlooked. Where a compact glacier used to be a few years ago, today, for example, a small river flows under the ice, hollowing out the glacier from below. There is a direct link between climate change and the ecosystem in Antarctic waters.

klimaretter.info: Which animals or plants are there?

Susanne Lockhart: It often starts with the smallest creatures that are at the very top of the food chain. So the population of the Antarctic krill is currently decreasing - these are small crustaceans that are pretty much the source of all fish in this region. Other animals, such as the jellyfish Salpidae, are increasing because they do not mind the warmer water. The krill crustaceans, on the other hand, can not handle even minimal temperature increases. [...] We have to protect the Antarctic waters so that the pressure does not come from all sides. There is less fishing or at least controlled fishing. We can not allow that, for example, by climate change anywaythreatened Krill is also threatened by expansive intensive fishing. The krill is the livelihood for the Antarctic animal kingdom - when its population goes down, it affects all other animals."

A quick look at the Antarctic temperature trend over the past 35 years, based on RSS satellite data, shows that it has not gotten warmer. Annoying.

SOURCE

CO2 Impact Analysis: Will Increased CO2 Be of Harm or Benefit To Major Grain Crops?

What does the science say in regards to the effect of elevated CO2 on major food sources across the globe?

It is well known that airborne CO2 acts as a vegetation fertilizer, which fortunately for the world, has produced a vast 'greening' of nature. Some 70% of greening is attributed to increased CO2 fertilization say the NASA researchers.

In regards to agriculture crops, a new study has again determined that increased CO2 will produce greater yields.

This peer-reviewed study focused on rice and maize.

"Rice is the most consumed staple crop in the world and maize is close behind in rank as the third most important cereal crop. Their annual yields are consumed by billions of persons worldwide.....Pingale et al. report that elevated CO2 positively influenced the growth and productivity of both crops. Plant growth and yield parameters such as leaf area, stem dry weight, panicle dry weight, cob dry weight and grain number per cob were all significantly increased under elevated CO2. And the end result of these several enhancements was a CO2-induced increase in both rice and maize grain yield."

SOURCE

I believe in global warming — and even I think carbon taxes are idiotic

Let me preface by saying that I believe the greenhouse effect is real. Therefore, I am for sensible policies that reduce global emissions. Sadly, carbon taxes aren’t sensible if our goal is to reduce global emissions. They cost too much and do too little. So how did we go so wrong on carbon taxes?

Carbon taxation was originally based on a right-wing, free-market theory. The simple idea, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, is that if you tax something, you get less of it. It could elegantly allow the markets to find the most efficient ways to reduce carbon without the need for government regulations. Many respectable conservative-minded people bought into this theory. Let’s look at the reality in practice.

Theoretically, carbon prices are supposed to reduce regulation. However, in every jurisdiction where carbon pricing has been implemented, it doesn’t reduce regulation — it increases it. Carbon-pricing schemes in Europe, California and Canada are all very complicated. The Canadian government just recently introduced 500 new pages of legislation and regulation. Another example, the Alberta Climate Leadership Plan, has a carbon-tax-credit program, but acknowledges the cost of regulatory compliance is likely too high for all but the largest companies.

Policies that not only eliminate some people’s jobs, but increase global emissions

Another problem is carbon leakage, which occurs when production and investment simply move to jurisdictions without a carbon tax. In this case, emissions are simply displaced in whole or in part.

Carbon leakage is worse than you think, as it can actually increase global emissions. Take the case of Canadian aluminum, which produces only two tonnes of carbon per tonne, versus American aluminum at 11 tonnes of carbon per tonne. In practice, no one should have to explain to an aluminum worker that they lost their job because “after all, we all need to do our part,” only to have global emissions increase 550 per cent as a result. (To generalize this example, Canada’s economy is 70 per cent reliant on trade, and 80 per cent of our trade is with the United States, which has not imposed a carbon tax.)

To try and mitigate carbon leakage, every carbon-pricing scheme uses output-based allocations (OBAs). Industries that are energy intensive and trade exposed (EITE) are given free permits to emit or a carbon-tax rebate to allow them to compete. For example, we would give the aluminum industry a tax exemption for carbon taxes based on its output.

However, as carbon-tax enthusiasts like to point out, people like to avoid taxes, so everyone will lobby for a tax rebate based on complicated formulas and models. Since government determines who will receive these massive subsidies, and how much they will receive, the process is inevitably politicized.

The other problem we find in practice: Demand for hydrocarbons is very inelastic. People will pay what it takes to heat their homes and get to work. The Conference Board of Canada found that even a $200/tonne carbon tax would only reduce 12 megatonnes of Canadian emissions before carbon leakage. Global carbon would likely only be reduced by 70 per cent of this amount. Meanwhile, just one large LNG plant could achieve more than that by replacing coal in China with natural gas.

Canada has a global comparative advantage in carbon in many industries because of our high environmental standards. A global approach to capitalizing on Canada’s environmental advantage would yield a double dividend of a stronger economy and a cleaner global environment. Carbon pricing, on the other hand, may create a green paradox — policies meant to reduce emissions that not only eliminate some people’s jobs, but increase global emissions.

So why do our left-wing friends love carbon taxes, when they say reducing emissions is their concern? The answer is the epitome of Reagan’s description of government, all wrapped up in one simple, marketable policy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And, if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Even many conservatives have let themselves be convinced that carbon pricing is an efficient, market-based policy. An acceptance of the theory without examining the practice is what got them there.

SOURCE

Australia: $1.3bn hit on electricity users as subsidies for solar panels surge

Energy consumers will be forced to pay more than $1 billion for rooftop solar installation subsidies this year, increasing power costs by up to $100 per household, according to an industry analysis.

Operators warn of a spike in the number of unscrupulous operators unless the green-power subsidy is wound back.

The Clean Energy Regulator has released figures showing that more than 1057 megawatts of capacity was installed last year, equating to 3.5 million solar panels being fixed to rooftops.

Industry analysis obtained by The Australian reveals the cost of small-scale technology certificates — created to increase the incentive to install rooftop solar — shows the value of the subsidies was $500 million last year.

The solar industry is expecting the subsidy to increase to about $1.3bn this year after the regulator estimated in January that 22 million new certificates would be created over the year. The certificates are granted to people installing solar panels, and electricity retailers are required to buy them.

Jeff Bye, founder and owner of Demand Manager in Sydney, a company that creates and trades the certificates, warned that the rebate was “overly generous” in many circumstances. “There are strong reasons to support installation of rooftop solar in Australia; however, it’s a question of the degree of support needed,” he said.

“The cost increase (this year) is about $800m and there are 8 million households … so there’ll be a cost impact of around $100 per household. The electricity impact might be $40 or $50 per household but businesses will pass through the additional cost too … That subsidy of $500m last year, or $1.2bn to $1.3bn this year, is added on to everyone’s bills.”

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the Australian Energy Market Commission had found the average cost to households over the past five years was about $29 a year, with the price peaking in 2012 at $44 for the year. “The AEMC forecasts residential electricity prices will fall over the next two years as renewable energy, including small-scale solar supported by the Renewable Energy Target, enters the system,” Mr Frydenberg said.

In last year’s Residential Electricity Price Trends report, the AEMC acknowledged that “costs incurred in purchasing certificates are assumed to be passed on to consumers through retail prices”.

Mr Frydenberg celebrated the solar rooftop take-up last year, saying Australia had emerged as a “world leader” and noted that one in five households used solar power.

NSW Liberal MP Craig Kelly, chairman of the Coalition backbench committee for energy and the environment, warned that the cost of rooftop solar subsidies was being carried by those who could least afford it.

He said the benefits of lower power prices were going to high-wealth households that installed the panels, while those without solar panels were hit with higher prices passed on by electricity retailers.

“It’s effectively a reverse Robin Hood scheme where we are increasing the electricity prices on the poor to reduce electricity prices for the rich,” Mr Kelly said.

“A woman rang me during the week and broke down on the telephone. She just got her electricity bill and it was $800. She was expecting a bill of $400 ... she’s got no way of paying for it.”

Mr Frydenberg faces calls to reduce rooftop solar subsidies by slashing the price of the certificates that electricity retailers are required to buy. He is expected to set a target for the calendar year by the end of this month.

Mr Bye said the number of certificates to be bought each year was set by the small technology percentage (STP), but warned the system was flawed and the certificates were overpriced.

“In recent history, the certificates have traded close to the maximum legislated price of $40 and the target-setting process, overseen by the minister, effectively leads to a continuation of that pattern,” Mr Bye said.

“However, there was a period last year when the market price dropped to $30 but the boom in solar installations continued.”

Mr Bye warned that the high STC price, coupled with growing demand for solar, could attract “unscrupulous operators”.

“It’s nowhere near what it was 10 years ago under the home insulation program but we should be wary of subsidies attracting the wrong people,’’ he said.

SOURCE

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

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

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12 March, 2018

The President of Iceland is a nit

There are some things so crazy that only an intellectual would believe them and Gudni Johannesson is dripping with academic qualifications -- none of which are in the sciences, unfortunately. He is basically an historian.

He recently went to a Greenie-dominated conference and apparently felt that he had to find some way in which global warming would be bad for Iceland -- a most unlikely task. Below you can see what he came up with -- basically nothing, just Warmist boilerplate.

He resorted to the very vague "harming biodiversity", with the example that cod are becoming rarer in the nearby ocean but mackerel are becoming more common. That's a problem?

Gudni is very popular in Iceland because he is a nice man who is good at having something nice to say about all parties in the country. He is himself politically centrist and belongs to no party. But his habit of having something for everyone has on this occasion reduced him to absurdity

Icelanders have long joked that global warming was something people on the chilly Nordic island could look forward to, but as ice caps and glaciers melt at record speeds, that gag is wearing thin, according to the country’s president.

Warming oceans around the North Pole are harming biodiversity and fish stocks, and causing acidification in the world’s northern regions, forcing countries like Iceland to adapt to a new reality, said President Gudni Johannesson.

“The common joke in Iceland is to say that on this cold and windy, rain-swept island, global warming is something we should cheer for - but it’s no longer funny,” Johannesson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

“Climate change affects us all on this globe, but you can see the effects in particular in the northern regions - the ice cap around the North Pole is melting at record rates, the oceans there are getting warmer,” he said.

On the flip side, climate change could bring some economic benefits to the country of just 340,000 people, which would become a natural trade hub if new routes opened up from Asia to the Atlantic due to melting Arctic ice, he said.

“The fact that the ice cap in the north is melting is no source for joy (but) the undeniable fact is that where there was ice, there will be a free waterway,” he said. “Who knows, as the century goes on, maybe we will see increased traffic via the North Pole with Iceland as a hub.”

Johannesson was speaking on the sidelines of the World Ocean Summit in the Mexican resort of Playa del Carmen on Friday, where environmentalists, politicians and business leaders met to discuss how to improve the state of the oceans.

While warmer temperatures are driving greater stocks of mackerel towards Iceland’s coasts, the cod that was once a mainstay of its fishing industry is likely to head north, said Johannesson, who wore a pink tie made of cod skin at the summit.

Changing patterns of fish migration will make it essential to reach deals with neighboring nations over fish catches, said the president, a former academic who has written about Iceland’s “cod wars”.

Iceland clashed with other states in the region several years ago as it upped the amount of mackerel it hauled in.

Iceland’s relations with places like the Faroe Islands and Norway are usually amicable, and “the only source of potential conflict lies in the distribution of fishing quotas”, Johannesson noted.

In 2016, mackerel was the third-largest catch for Iceland and its third most valuable fish, netting $103 million, or 8 percent of the nation’s total catch value.

Iceland is also weighing up how to expand its salmon-farming industry, while considering its potential environmental impact.

“Fish farming is a part of the blue economy now and... will expand,” said Johannesson. However, it has to be “as safe as possible because nature comes first”, he added.

As one of just a handful of countries in the world that permits commercial whale hunting, Iceland’s whale catch is “sustainable”, said Johannesson, who declined to comment on whether he personally supported the industry.

Whale-watching has boomed alongside the tourism that has underpinned Iceland’s economic rebound, he said, with no sign visitors are staying away in protest at Iceland’s continued hunting of minke and fin whales.

“Sustainability and the miniscule amount of whales being caught in recent years (are) based on scientific advice and way below any figures potentially threatening the future of the two whale stocks in question,” he said.

SOURCE

Jordan Peterson has One for the Greenies

There was no shortage of entertaining moments during Jordan Peterson’s first Australian lecture last week, but the best was surely when he strode onto the stage and the audience gave him a standing ovation. He hadn’t even spoken.

Dr Peterson will tell you that happens everywhere he goes as he pretty much tours the planet full-time, the 21st century’s first rock-star psychologist.

His lectures are sold out. Ask why, and he says, confusingly: “Because I like them.”

The audience? “Yes. I like them, and they know it. Damn right they do,” he says in that accent, now so familiar to so many, courtesy of 50 million YouTube views. “They are people who don’t get much encouragement. I know that, because I get thousands of letters from them. To have someone say ‘there is more to you than you think’ — it feels good to them. They know I’m on their side.

“And it’s not common to find somebody on the side of humans. We keep getting told how appalling we all are. How the planet has too many people, and how we are wrecking everything. And I always think, there’s an easy solution if you think the planet has too many people. You could leave. But, of course, the people who most want to say that are never the ones who think they should be culled. It’s other people they want to cull.”

This tour he will speak about policies that keep indigenous Australians in poverty, the “victim mentality”, the “crisis in masculinity” that tries to make girls of boys and vice versa; “contemptible” Western feminism; the “murderous philosophy of radical leftists” and “morally and historically wrong” limits on free speech, including hate speech.

SOURCE



Study: ‘Fossil’ Fuels Everywhere In Outer Space

Calling hydrocarbons "fossil" fuels is absurd. Fossils in outer space?

A team of researchers carried out a series of experiments to study how complex hydrocarbons, an important class of molecules needed to create the building blocks for life, formed in space.

Hydrocarbons (“fossil fuel”), compounds made up of differing amounts of carbon and hydrogen, are common on Earth but also outside it. Some hydrocarbons, such as benzene or naphthalene, have been detected in meteorites floating around the solar system, leading scientists to wonder how they might have formed.

Now, a paper published in Nature Astronomy on Monday provides a possible answer. Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of California, Berkeley and Florida International University, have recreated pyrene, a hydrocarbon commonly formed during the combustion processes in car engines, in a lab.

Musahid Ahmed, co-author of the paper and a chemist at UC Berkeley, said: “Starting off from simple gases, you can generate one-dimensional and two-dimensional structures, and pyrene could lead you to 2-D graphene. From there you can get to graphite, and the evolution of more complex chemistry begins.”

A pressurised mixture of 4-phenanthrenyl – a hydrocarbon with one unpaired electron – another hydrocarbon compound acetylene were injected into a microreactor from a nozzle at supersonic speeds.

Next, a beam of UV light was directed at the gas to ionise the mixture and simulate similar conditions to those found around a star. The loss of electrons kickstarts a series of reactions that eventually create pyrene. Since it requires other hydrocarbons to make pyrene, it doesn’t quite explain how the first hydrocarbons were created.

But, Ahmed, said he believes this process could explain how “some of the first carbon-based structures evolved in the universe”.

Pyrene is part of a larger chemical group known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that are estimated to make up about 20 per cent of all carbon in the Milky Way. PAHs are composed of ring structures that are found in interstellar dust grains, leftover material flung from stars. They provide a chemical pathway for amino acids, peptides and sugars, some of the essential ingredients for life, to form.

Ralf Kaiser, co-author of the paper and an astrochemistry professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, explained to The Register that PAHs provide surfaces for other molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide or methanol to condense on.

“Molecules from the gas phase can condense on the cold grains – it’s similar when water ice builds up in your ice box from the water in the air.”

After these molecules build up on PAHs like pyrene, if they’re exposed to ionizing radiation it can fire up another series of reactions to create amino acids, peptides and sugars.

The next step is to find out if these life-bearing molecules can be formed from ionising a mixture of hydrocarbon gases. “Is this enough of a trigger? There has to be some self-organization and self-assembly involved to create life forms. The big question is whether this is something that, inherently, the laws of physics do allow,” Ahmed concluded.

SOURCE

Opposition to pipelines hurting Canada

Canadian oil producers can’t get a break. First it was the pipelines — there are not enough of them to carry the crude from Alberta’s oil sands to export markets. This pipeline capacity problem has been forcing producers to pay higher rates for railway transportation, which has naturally hurt their margins in no small way. Now, there is a shortage of rail cars as well.

The situation is going from bad to worse for Canadian producers who can’t seem to catch a break. Canadian railway operators are fighting harsh winter weather and finding it hard to supply enough cars to move both crude oil from Alberta and grain from the Prairies.

The harsh weather is just the latest factor, however. Before that, there was the 45-percent surge in demand for rail cars from the oil industry, Bloomberg reports, citing Canadian National Railway. The surge happened in the third quarter of last year, and Canadian National’s chief executive Ghislain Houle says that it took the company “a little bit by surprise.” This surprise has led to “pinch points” on the railway operator’s network, further aggravating an already bad situation.

As a result, crude oil remains in Alberta and prices fall further because Alberta is where the local crude is priced, Bloomberg’s Jen Skerritt and Robert Tuttle note. In fact, Canadian crude is currently trading at the biggest discount to West Texas Intermediate in four years, at $30.60 per barrel. The blow is particularly severe as it comes amid improving oil prices elsewhere driven by the stock market recovery.

The light at the end of the tunnel is barely a glimmer. Despite federal government support for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, it is still facing obstacles that may result in it never seeing the light of day. The project that would boost the current pipeline’s capacity from 300,000 bpd to 890,000 bpd, accommodating much of the increased Alberta bitumen production, is being challenged in court and Kinder Morgan has yet to collect even half of the necessary permits to proceed with it. There are no other major pipeline projects in Canada that have been approved.

Meanwhile, the news from the research front is not good, either. Back in September, media outlets reported on an accidental discovery that could make transporting bitumen by rail much safer by turning the crude into pellets. This would minimize the danger of a spill but, some said at the time, would increase transportation costs.

Canadian national Railway is also working on its own bitumen pellet technology it calls CanaPux, but for now it has not yet been commercialized, perhaps for the same reason of cost. Yet bitumen pellets, some observers note, could be the best solution to the current conflict between Alberta and British Columbia. The latter is doing everything it can to stall Trans Mountain’s expansion citing environmental concerns. Alberta stopped importing B.C. wines in retaliation.

But bitumen pellets are safe, their creators say, so B.C. would have nothing to worry about. And yet, like grain, these pellets would need rail cars to transport them should this option be chosen despite cost considerations. Canadian National says it plans to hike its capex to $2.6 billion this year in response to the shortage. The effect of the surprise jump in demand for railcar capacity from the oil industry should also subside eventually. The only question is how much all these factors would hurt Canada’s oil production growth in the meantime.

SOURCE

Chilling fact is most climate change theories are wrong

MAURICE NEWMAN comments from Australia

You have to hand it to Peter Hannam, The Sydney Morning Herald’s climate change alarmist-in-chief, for his report last month - “ ‘Really extreme’ global weather event leaves scientists aghast”.

Hannam is often the canary in the coalmine (er, wind farm) when there is a sense that public belief in man-made global warming is flagging. With Europe in the grip of a much colder winter than predicted and with the abnormal chill spreading even to Africa, he did his best to hold the line.

Earlier this year, Climate Council councillor Will Steffen also climbed on board — for The Sydney Morning Herald of course. Extreme cold in Britain, Switzerland and Japan, a record-breaking cold snap in Canada and the US and an expansion of the East Antarctic ice sheet coincided with a Bureau of Meteorology tweet (later retracted) that January 7 had set a heat record for the Sydney Basin. Steffen told us these seemingly unrelated events were in fact linked. “Climate disruption” explained both. Whether fire or ice, we’re to blame. No ifs, no buts.

Now a warming Arctic provides the perfect opportunity for Hannam to divert attention from the latest deep freeze. He ominously warns: “Climate scientists are used to seeing the range of weather extremes stretched by global warming, but few episodes appear as remarkable as this week’s unusual heat over the Arctic.”

It’s true, warm air has made its way up to the high Arctic, driving temperatures up to 20C above average. But Anthony Watts, who runs a climate change website, puts things into perspective. He observes: “Warm moist air from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans has warmed the Arctic above the 80th parallel. It should be noted, however, that the Arctic Circle actually starts at 66 degrees north, meaning the record heat is over a much narrower area.”

Cato Institute atmospheric scientist Ryan Maue reviewed high Arctic temperature data going back to 1958 and says: “Data before the satellite era … has some problems, so it’s hard to say the current spike is for sure a record.” He says that if the baseline is 1973, when the polar-orbiting satellites began recording the data, there is not much difference between today’s ice extent and then.

Indeed, we now have satellite confirmation that global air temperatures are back to the same level they were before the 2014-16 super El Nino event and, this January and February, the decline accelerated. Since 2015 satellites also have detected a fall in sea surface temperatures.

Solar expert Piers Corbyn, of British forecasting group WeatherAction and famous for his successful wagers against the British Met Office forecasts, predicts Earth faces another mini ice age with potentially devastating consequences. He notes: “The frequency of sunspots is expected to rapidly decline … reaching a minimum between the years 2019 and 2020.” Indeed, the present decline in solar activity is faster than at any time in the past 9300 years, suggesting an end to the grand solar maximum.

Critics say while “it might be safe to go with (Corbyn’s) forecast for rain next Tuesday, it would be foolish to gamble the world can just go on burning all the coal and oil we want”. That’s the nub of it. The world has bet the shop on CO2 warming and the “science” must be defended at all costs.

But while spinning unfalsifiable “climate disruption” slogans may sway readers of The Sydney Morning Herald and resonate with believers in their centrally heated halls, those in the real world, witnessing hundreds of people dying of the cold and thousands more receiving emergency treatment, will consider they’ve been duped.

Not feeling duped are successive Australian governments that have become committed members of a green-left global warming movement promoted by the UN. On dubious scientific grounds they have agreed to accept meaningless, anti-growth, CO2 emission targets that enrich elites and burden the masses.

And, true to label, a Green Climate Fund supported by Australia and 42 mostly developed countries will redistribute $US100 billion ($128bn) annually to poorer nations as reparation for the unspecified environmental harm the West has allegedly caused them.

Big emitters such as China, India and Russia are conspicuously absent.

Policing Australia’s targets and helping to spread confirmatory propaganda is a network of international and local bureaucracies. The world’s academies and meteorological organisations, frequently found to be unreliable and biased, keep the faith alive. They reject debate and starve nonconforming researchers of funds and information. Students are indoctrinated with unproven climate-change theories that an unquestioning media gladly reinforces.

Meanwhile, the country ingenuously surrenders its competitive advantage by refusing to embrace its rich endowment of affordable baseload energy. This it happily exports while lining the pockets of renewable energy rent-seekers with generous taxpayer subsidies.

Should the world enter a period of global cooling, we should expect concerted denial. Too many livelihoods, too many reputations and too much ideology depend on the CO2 narrative. Having ceded sovereignty over our economies’ commanding heights to unelected bureaucrats in Geneva, the West (Donald Trump excluded) repeatedly turns to expensive vanity projects to paper over this folly. If the iceman cometh, there can be no quick fix. Yet we know it takes twice as much energy to heat a home than to cool one. So pity the poor and infirm who respected medical journal The Lancet says are 20 times likelier to die from cold than heat.

While even to mention a mini ice age risks scorn and derision, recent research has shown a close correlation between solar activity and climate on Earth. That possibility alone should cause shivers. But it will take time and experience before we accept the global warming movement is really the triumph of ideology over science. Until then we will continue to commit life’s cardinal sin of putting too many eggs into one questionable basket.

SOURCE

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

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

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11 March, 2018

General Kelly killed EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s idea to publicly debate the merits and demerits of man-made global warming

President Donald Trump’s chief of staff killed EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s idea to publicly debate the merits and demerits of man-made global warming, according to a report Friday from The New York Times.

John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, put a screeching halt to Pruitt’s goal to craft a red team and blue team to challenge climate change science, three people familiar with the deliberations told TheNYT. Trump has expressed interest in the idea.

Pruitt, who famously sued the agency more than a dozen times as Oklahoma’s attorney general, spent more than a year championing the notion of holding military-style exercises to question the validity of climate change. He even floated the idea of televising the debates, all in an effort to bring transparency to the science.

Military and intelligence agencies use a similar debate tactic to expose vulnerabilities to strategic systems. The tactic would give needed balance to climate science, a field of research many believe has been monopolized by activists, skeptics say. Some in the administration were enthusiastic supporters, however, Kelly and others were skeptical about the proposal.

White House officials were in agreement that Pruitt’s idea was unwise, according to sources who attended a meeting discussing the proposal. Their main objection was that a public debate on the hot-button issue of climate science could create an unnecessary distraction as Trump seeks to pullback elements of former President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy.

Some inside the administration worried the debate would muddy the waters of Pruitt’s de-regulatory mission

The EPA has not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about the validity of TheNYT’s report.

SOURCE

Comment from a reader: "Kelly is correct. Do not debate something that will only give validity to the movement. We have seen what junk science has been submitted as evidence of cause of Global Warming. And besides the debate is already public. Trump has made his move and no need to drag him into another irrelevant issue. This year, Mother Nature has presented the best arguments using ice and snow and a late winter blow. Hard to accept Global Warming while shoveling 18 inches of snow."

The New Lukewarmers: Scientific American Turns Down The Heat Over Global Warming

Horgan of SciAm writes:

I work hard to maintain my optimistic outlook. Wishful thinking works. The first step toward building a more healthy, peaceful, just world is to believe we can do it. So how do I deal with all the bad news about climate change? U.S. officials are rolling back regulations designed to curb global warming even as reports flood in about its scale and potential consequences.

I have thus found solace in two new essays that offer upbeat takes on our environmental future. Both reflect the outlook of ecomodernism, a movement I have written about here and here. One essay, published in the ecomodernist Breakthrough Journal, is by mega-pundit Steven Pinker. I have knocked Pinker for his views on the roots of war and other matters, but in general I appreciate his empirically-based optimism.

His Breakthrough essay, “Enlightenment Environmentalism,” is adapted from his new bestseller Enlightenment Now. The book, which been praised and attacked, argues that we’ve achieved lots of progress, material and moral, and we should achieve lots more as long as we don’t succumb to fatalism.

In his Breakthrough essay, Pinker spells out a key assumption of ecomodernism. Industrialization “has been good for humanity. It has fed billions, doubled lifespans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts.”

Pinker contrasts the can-do ecomodernist spirit with “the lugubrious conventional wisdom offered by the mainstream environmental movement, and the radicalism and fatalism it encourages.” We can solve problems related to climate change, Pinker argues, “if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology.”

The bulk of Pinker’s essay consists of documentation of how we’ve handled environmental threats. We have reduced our rate of population growth; made agriculture, transportation and other key industries more energy-efficient; and increased the acreage of marine and terrestrial preserves. Here is a typical passage:

“Since 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the United States has slashed its emissions of five air pollutants by almost two-thirds. Over the same period, the population grew by more than 40 percent, and those people drove twice as many miles and became two and a half times richer. Energy use has leveled off, and even carbon dioxide emissions have turned a corner. These diverging curves refute both the left-wing claim that only de-growth can curb pollution and the right-wing claim that environmental protection must sabotage economic growth and standard of living.”

My mood got an even bigger boost from “The Conquest of Climate” by Will Boisvert, a journalist I met at an ecomodernist powwow a few years ago. My first exposure to Boivert’s dry, iconoclastic sensibility was a 2013 Breakthrough Journal article, “A Locavore’s Dilemma,” which asserts that “the linkage of local farming to efficiency and sustainability is dubious.” Boisvert’s new essay, which he posted on his blog “Progress and Peril,” deserves to be widely read. It is even broader in scope than Pinker’s essay, and I found its analysis strikingly original. Boisvert begins:

“How bad will climate change be? Not very. No, this isn’t a denialist screed. Human greenhouse emissions will warm the planet, raise the seas and derange the weather, and the resulting heat, flood and drought will be cataclysmic. Cataclysmic—but not apocalyptic. While the climate upheaval will be large, the consequences for human well-being will be small. Looked at in the broader context of economic development, climate change will barely slow our progress in the effort to raise living standards.”

Boisvert examines four consequences of climate change: water shortages, food shortages, rising air temperatures and rising seas. He contends that the negative effects of climate change will be offset by continued progress in technology and other realms. As an example, he examines a 2016 Lancet study that predicted that by 2050 climate change will cause food shortages that result in 529,000 deaths each year.

The food shortages, Boisvert points out, “are relative to a 2050 baseline when food will be more abundant than now thanks to advances in agricultural productivity that will dwarf the effects of climate change.” Even factoring in climate change, the Lancet study calculates that per capita food consumption will be higher in 2050 than in 2010. Newsweek’s story on the Lancet study was nonetheless headlined, “Climate change could cause half a million deaths in 2050 due to reduced food availability.”

Boisvert comments: “A headline like ‘Despite climate change, rising food production will save millions of lives’ isn’t great click-bait, but it would give a truer picture of a future under global warming.” He adds: “Global warming won’t wipe us out or even stall our progress, it will just marginally slow ordinary economic development that will still outpace the negative effects of warming and make life steadily better in the future, under every climate scenario.”

I also like Boisvert’s discussion of water shortages. Claiming that a drought sparked Syria’s terrible civil war, greens warn that global warming could provoke “water wars.” Boisvert points out that the drought that struck Syria also affected Israel. He continues:

“Shortages forced Israel to tighten its already stringent water conservation and recycling standards. More importantly, they prompted breakthroughs in reverse-osmosis desalination technology, cutting by half the energy needed to extract fresh water from the sea and dramatically lowering the cost to just 58 cents per cubic meter (1,000 liters) of drinkable water… The implications of cheap desalination are profound. By tapping limitless sea-water resources it could drought-proof agriculture and thus eliminate the greatest threat posed by climate change.”

More HERE

Free Market – Not Heavy Hand of Gov’t – Can Help Improve Environment

Over the past three years, China had become the new poster child for economists and environmentalists alike. The country seemed to attain the impossible by maintaining high growth in gross domestic product, while at the same time reducing reported carbon emissions.

However, the admiration went up in smoke after news that China returned to its old ways in 2017. With many economists thinking that the Chinese government had undersold the depth of the nation’s economic slowdown in 2015 and 2016, the reinvigoration of growth in 2017 predictably increased the use of energy and, as a result, increased carbon dioxide emissions to record highs.

It’s no surprise China remains a fervent supporter of the Paris climate accord because it can increase carbon dioxide emissions for the next 22 years, despite the fact that it already emits more than the U.S. and European Union combined.

Yet, China’s propensity to skew emissions data, as well as its past transgressions of underreporting the number of emissions-intensive energy plants online, highlights the feebleness of the Paris accord.

Environmental activist groups champion Beijing’s massive government-funded solar-power spending while looking the other way when it comes to China’s coal use.

Such behavior also reinforces the wise move by the U.S. to remove itself from an agreement that looked to finance government-mandated emissions reductions through American pocketbooks.

The Trump administration rejected an agreement that might have reduced the rate of warming by 0.2 of one degree Celsius by the year 2100. Even that projection is generous, as it assumes accuracy in the climate models and that every country will meet its intended emissions-reduction targets, a highly unlikely scenario.

Instead, the U.S. turned its sights on improving individuals’ access to energy rather than limiting it. Instead of agreeing to drastically stunt economic growth among its citizens while other countries would be afforded the opportunity to reduce their emissions slowly—or in some instances, increase emissions exponentially—the U.S. boldly asserted that it would continue along the path of affordable, reliable, and increasingly cleaner energy.

In fact, such a rejection paints a picture of confidence in the American people. Instead of mandating which sources of energy are sufficient for the country to consume, leaving the Paris accord behind allows individuals to control their own energy choices.

Much work at the domestic and state level needs to be done to empower energy consumers to control preferences for price, reliability, and source. But leaving the Paris accord and rolling back burdensome regulations that are devoid of any climate benefit are important steps in the right direction.

While some may say America’s energy dominance is coming at significant environmental cost, consider the progress already made.

Since 1980, the United States has drastically reduced harmful pollutants in the air. Nitrogen dioxide, which can inflame the lungs and weaken immunity, is down 57 percent. The equally harmful sulfur dioxide is down 80 percent. Lead, which has adverse neurological and cardiovascular effects, is down 98 percent.

While some of these decreases are undoubtedly a result of government standards that rightly recognized the detriments to health of those pollutants, much of the progress should be attributed to the market, which drives investment in new, cleaner technologies.

When harsh standards, such as those of the Paris accord, are applied, China exhibits a likely outcome: Countries are incentivized to cheat on their reporting, not innovate, and not progress.

By contrast, when governments reduce the market manipulation caused by subsidies and excessive regulations, all sources must compete on an even playing field and are incentivized to maintain economic viability. The byproduct is competitive energy prices, improved efficiencies, and reduced emissions.

For example, in 2015, during the early years of the shale revolution, the EPA reported that the U.S. saw a 2.2 percent decrease in greenhouse-gas emissions from the previous year. That was attributed primarily to energy production switching from coal to natural gas.

During the same period, the European Union experienced a slight 0.5 percent increase in greenhouse-gas emissions, owing to a marginally colder winter.

Of course, many differences exist among the climates, markets, and energy portfolios of the U.S. and Europe. However, the notion that countries must litter their energy sectors with mandates, regulations, and politically preferred energy sources, such as those dictated by the Paris accord and touted by European countries, rejects more beneficial market solutions.

Importantly, Paris elevates the distant, uncertain risk of global warming over the immediate, known risk of energy poverty for much of the developing world.

By empowering the energy industry to innovate through competition, the U.S. will avoid the economic pitfalls of costly agreements. At the same time, as consumers continue to demand energy that is both affordable and clean, allowing market responses to such demands independent of government coercion, it will enable the industry to continue its reduction of emissions.

Both developed and developing countries would be wise to follow suit.

SOURCE

Pruitt's $1 Billion Rollback at the EPA

His deregulatory endeavor has yielded $1 billion in cost savings after just one year

On Feb. 17, 2017, Scott Pruitt — formerly a conservative lawmaker and attorney general in Oklahoma — succeeded in becoming the new face of the EPA. Democrats didn’t take his ascension very well. In fact, Pruitt was forced to reinforce his security detail last autumn because of numerous death threats from ecofascists. The Left’s adversarial attitude toward Pruitt is better understood when you consider just how pivotal of a role he has in the Trump administration.

The EPA just revealed that Pruitt’s deregulatory endeavor has yielded $1 billion in cost savings after just one year. This was the direct outcome of nearly two dozen deregulations. More importantly, it’s also only a taste of what’s coming down the pipeline. The Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule are just two of the 44 additional deregulations that are currently on the agency’s docket. It’s estimated that the elimination of the Clean Power Plan could single-handedly save the economy upwards of $33 billion. With results like these, no wonder leftists loathe Pruitt with such tenacity.

Of course, this also speaks to the enormous influence of Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy. Much of the current administration’s work is geared toward fixing what she broke and the billions of dollars with which she unnecessarily burdened the economy. Pruitt’s progress could be even further along had he not had to first put out a massive inferno of McCarthy’s making. Even still, he is making significant headway, and that will give the economy more and more breathing room. It’s also a reminder that no government agency should ever have so much control over a free-market economy.

SOURCE

Australian Broadcasters Withhold Important Information from the Public Concerning Climate Change

Jennifer Marohasy

Australian politicians, and the media they sponsor, have been throwing their hands in the air and screaming unprecedented climate change – particularly over the last two weeks. A focus has been on the record number of new record hot days. But in all of this, there is no mention that the method used to actually measure hot days has changed.

This week’s Four Corners program began by interviewing Karl Braganza from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Braganza explained that it is really only since the 1990s that we have started to see the extreme heat. What he didn’t mention is that a totally new method of measurement came into effect on 1 November 1996 – with the transition continuing, so each new year, additional weather stations have their mercury thermometer replaced with an electronic probe taking one-second spot readings.

For example, the Bureau claimed a new record hottest day for September for the state of Victoria on 23 September 2017, which was actually a one-second spike from an electronic probe installed in June 2012. The Bureau reported this as the hottest September day back to 1889. Yet between 1889 and 1996 a completely different method was being used to measure maximum daily temperatures at Mildura.

According to the Guinness World Records, a record must be standardisable and verifiable. Yet the new record from Mildura was not measured according to world standards of calibration for the use of electronic probes which specifies that one-second readings be averaged over at least one minute. Meanwhile this questionable data is being used to justify ever more expenditure on Australia’s perceived climate catastrophe – without any questioning by leading Australian journalists Michael Brissenden or Sarah Ferguson, who presented Monday night’s program that lamented the new record hot days.

In not reporting that the incidence of “extreme heat” corresponds with a change in how maximum temperatures are measured, these two journalists, Brissenden and Ferguson, have withheld important information from the Australian public.

Given the new, very different, method of measuring temperatures, it would be assumed that there are dozens of reports published by the Bureau that document how comparable the measurements from electronic probes have proven at different locations, and under different conditions. Yet there are none!

The Bureau claims, when asked, that temperatures from its electronic probes and traditional mercury thermometers are comparable – without providing any actual evidence. My analysis of temperature data from Mildura indicates that there is a statistically significant different – with the first probe (in place from 1996 to 2000) recording too cool, and subsequent probes too warm relative to the mercury thermometer (often by up to 0.4 degrees Celsius).

I have been attempting to bring this to the attention of the media, particularly the ABC for some months. But their journalists turn-away. They don’t want any scrutiny of this much revered institution, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Even in the Australian parliament there is a closing-of-ranks. Rather than consider my evidence, Monday before last Senators Richard Di Natale and Anne Urquhart from the Australian Greens claimed that the questions I have been raising about the integrity of the temperature data amounted to ‘climate denial’ and harassment of the Bureau’s CEO, Andrew Johnson.

In reality, my few emails to Johnson have focused on the single issue of how temperatures are measured, which really has nothing whatsoever to do with denying climate change. Indeed, if we are to accurately quantify the magnitude of global warming, then the integrity of the temperature databases is paramount. Yet the number of documented anomalies continues to grow – as does the indifference of our political class.

SOURCE

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

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

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9 March, 2018

Dyer: Migrants will multiply with global warming

Canadian journalist Gwynne Dyer is a good military historian but he is not a deep thinker. He just parrots below the old line that global warming will lead to food shortages. He thinks that 2 degrees of warming will cause Africans to starve. He totally ignores the effect of higher CO2 levels on crops. If the desperately prophesied coincidence of slightly higher temperatures and elevated CO2 does arrive, crops will thrive. Crops LIKE warmth and LOVE CO2. A warmer climate should in fact cause Africans to eat unusually well.

It is in fact in Africa that we already see some of that. The Sahel desert area has greened noticeably in recent decades as global CO2 level have risen. Elevated ambient CO2 levels enable plants to survive with less water -- look it up, Gwynne. It's all to do with stomata.

CO2 levels are still steadily rising even though temperatures have been pretty flat in recent decades

Lucky old Italy just got two Donald Trumps for the price of one.

One of the big winners in last Sunday’s Italian election was the Five-Star Movement, whose 31-year-old leader Luigi di Maio has promised to stop sending out rescue boats to save migrants from drowning when their flimsy craft sink halfway across the Mediterranean. A “sea taxi service”, he calls it, and promises to send all the surviving illegal immigrants home.

So does Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, the other big winner in the election. “I’m sick of seeing immigrants in hotels and Italians who sleep in cars,” Salvini told supporters at a recent rally in Milan. He pledges to send 150,000 illegal migrants home in his first year in government.

What we are seeing now, however, is a foretaste of the time when the migrant flows grow very large and the politics gets really brutal. In the not too distant future, the Mediterranean Sea and the Mexican border will separate the temperate world, where the climate is still tolerable and there is still enough food, from the sub-tropical and tropical worlds of killer heat and dwindling food.

This is a regular subject of confidential discussions in various strategic planning cells in European governments, and also in the grown-up parts of the U.S. government. Ten years ago a senior officer in the intelligence section of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff told me that the U.S. army expected to be ordered by Congress to close the Mexican border down completely within the next 20 years. And he was quite explicit: that meant shooting to kill.

Global warming will hit the countries closer to the equator far harder than the fortunate countries of the temperate zone, and the main casualty will be food production in the tropics and the sub-tropics.

So the hungry millions will start to move, and the borders of the richer countries in the temperate parts of the world will slam shut to keep them out: the United States, the European Union, Russia, South Africa, Australia. If you think the politics is ugly now, just wait.

Of course, a miracle could happen. There could be early and very deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, so most of the catastrophe never arrives. But I’m having trouble even believing in the Easter Bunny any more. This is harder.

SOURCE

US Appeals Court Refuses to Dismiss Unusual Global Warming Suit

It would be GREAT to get this into court. The plaintiffs would have to prove damage

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the U.S. government by 21 young people who say climate change deprives them of their constitutional rights.

The youngsters, between the ages of 10 and 21, sued the Obama administration in 2015. They have carried their case over to the Trump administration, which is seeking to have it tossed out.

The three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the administration failed to meet what they call the "high bar" under federal law to have the case dismissed.

The group said U.S. administrations as far back as Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s have ignored the dangers caused by carbon emissions and pollution — including climate change — taking away from their constitutional right to life, liberty and the ability to pursue wealth.

U.S. attorneys argue the case could lead to long and complicated litigation and a "constitutional crisis" involving the federal courts and the White House.

Chief Judge Sidney Thomas disagreed. "Litigation burdens are part of our legal system," he wrote. "Claims and remedies often are vastly narrowed as litigation proceeds. We have no reason to assume this case will be any different."

The Justice Department has not yet responded to the appeals court's decision.

An attorney representing the young people called it "very exciting. It will be the first time that climate science and the federal government's role in creating the dangers will go on trial in a U.S. court."

SOURCE

Those fraudulent climate litigation shakedowns

Which aspects are most fraudulent? The cities’ lawsuits, junk science or bond offerings?

Paul Driessen

The ultra liberal enclaves of New York City and San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Marin, and Imperial Beach, California all claim to be deeply worried about manmade climate cataclysms. They detest petroleum, oppose pipelines, fracking and onshore and offshore drilling, and strongly support renewable energy and expensive electricity: already 17-18¢ a kilowatt-hour for families, rich and poor.

They also have huge government pension fund shortfalls (NYC alone has a pension debt of some $65 billion), and are suing BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhilips and Royal Dutch Shell. They’re gunning for a collective litigation windfall of several hundred billion dollars, to help bail them out. (They’d probably sue coal companies, too, but the Obama era war on coal drove many into bankruptcy.)

Their fundamental cause of action claims greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide) from burning oil and natural gas are disrupting Earth’s climate and weather, causing heat waves and frigid winters, floods and droughts, more frequent and intense hurricanes, melting ice packs and rising seas – costing the cities billions of dollars for repairs and adaptation. The calamities pose an “existential threat” to the cities, humanity and our planet. If they’re not happening already, they will within decades, the litigants assert.

The oil companies have known about these risks for decades, the cities and counties continue, but hid the information from the public and failed to disclose it in annual reports, stock offerings and other documents. They are thus guilty of fraud, negligent and deliberate failure to warn, product design defects, trespass with dangerous pollutants, and being a public and private nuisance.

The litigants seek compensatory damages, abatement of the alleged nuisance, attorneys’ fees, punitive damages and disgorgement of corporate profits. NY Mayor Bill de Blasio also wants his city to divest from fossil fuels (which generate revenues for pension funds, and invest more in wind and solar, which require subsidies) and “bring the death knell” to the entire oil industry. It’s a classic shakedown.

Nice companies ya got there. Sure’d be a shame if something was to happen to ‘em.

The ironies are delicious – ripe for being exploited in courtrooms, Congress and courts of public opinion.

Start with the fraud allegations. Much to the chagrin of scientists who say humans are not causing climate cataclysms, these oil companies’ reports and press releases have frequently said fossil fuel emissions are a real concern, and the companies haven’t funded climate chaos skeptics for years. Where’s the fraud?

Compare that to Marin County, whose court pleadings assert a 99% risk of catastrophic storm surges and flooding, because of oil and gas combustion. San Mateo County cites a 93% likelihood of climate-related surges, floods and sewer overflows. San Francisco claims an “imminent risk of catastrophic storm surges.”

But SF’s 2017 municipal bond offering downplayed the risks, saying it is “unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding will occur.” Marin and San Mateo made similar statements to current and prospective bond investors. Ditto for other litigants and climate chaos claims. Their panicked concern about devastating climate impacts has suddenly vanished.

Courts don’t like forked tongues, prior inconsistent statements, duplicity or fraud. Neither do investors or SEC commissioners. Watching this lawsuit vs. bond offerings tar baby schizophrenia play out in court will be entertaining, and perhaps even one more reason to dismiss the frivolous lawsuit with prejudice.

It’s also ironic that the litigants claim the oil companies are causing local, state, national, international and planetary havoc – but wanted to sue in state courts, where they hoped to get friendlier judges and juries than they might in a federal venue. Boulder, Colorado’s city attorney also promoted that approach, in suggesting that this equally liberal town join the litigation, to “propel change” and “put a price on carbon.”

However, a Federal District judge has ruled that the case must be tried in federal courts, since the claims “depend on a global complex of geophysical cause and effect involving all nations of the planet.”

Add to that the unrelenting efforts by these cities, counties and states, climate activists and modelers, and various politicians to stifle debate, assert that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is manmade and dangerous, and even use racketeering laws and Spanish Inquisition tactics against climate chaos skeptics – while profiting handsomely from climate hysteria. But now they want to haul oil companies into court, where they must present real-world evidence, prove their case against fossil fuels, reply to weighty evidence that contradicts their assertions, and endure brutal cross-examination by defense attorneys.

It will be interesting to watch them try to silence defense witnesses and keep inconvenient evidence out.

Two new books, by Marc Morano and Gregory Wrightstone, offer superb laymen’s guides to the real science of climate change today and throughout Earth’s long history – and how difficult (nigh impossible) it will be for the litigants to prove their allegations: That today’s climate fluctuations are unprecedented. That they pose an imminent threat to people and planet. That humans and (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide now control climate and weather processes, replacing the sun and other powerful natural forces that did so previously. That they can somehow separate and quantify human versus natural influences and impacts.

The cities and counties also want the courts to focus only on the alleged social, environmental and economic costs of carbon-based fuels and carbon dioxide emissions. They want no mention of the enormous benefits – to the cities, counties and their citizenry: lights, heat, clothing, transportation, communication, healthcare, employment, crops, parks, forests and much more. Indeed, a comprehensive, honest analysis shows the benefits of carbon exceed their costs by at least 50:1, to as much as 500:1.

The litigants demand that the targeted companies “disgorge” their profits. Perhaps the cities should first disgorge the trillions in benefits they received from using the companies’ products for the past century.

In the end, the case against the oil companies rests on bald assertions, selective evidence, revised and “homogenized” data, an assumption that industrialization caused modern global warming – and above all, computerized climate models that have been wrong about every temperature and other prediction. This may work in the “mainstream” media, universities and other liberal circles. It shouldn’t in a court of law.

As “logic of science” expert David Wojick observes, climate models are basically garbage in-garbage out, or GIGO: Input the assumption that rising CO2 levels cause climate change; output increasingly disastrous climate disruption scenarios. The process also involves constant circular reasoning: If all the drivers of climate change are assumed to be human-caused, all the observed changes must also be caused by humans.

That is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operates – and why we have so many disaster scenarios and demands for an immediate transition to renewable energy. It helps explain why these litigants oppose drilling, fracking and pipelines within their borders – but voice few concerns about the impacts of wind and solar installations on wildlife, habitats, and metals mining and processing in distant lands … or about the land, fertilizer and water demands, and CO2 emissions, associated with biofuels.

Two principles seem to guide the litigants: Whatever happens today or in the future – even if it happened many times in the past – is the oil companies’ fault, and it’s going to be catastrophic. Misrepresenting facts or failing to disclose relevant evidence violates anti-fraud laws – unless the cities and counties do it.

That is absurd. A lot is riding on these baseless climate lawsuits – and not just for the oil companies.

Every city, county, state, farm, manufacturer, hospital, business, worker and family whose operations, technologies, living standards, investments, pensions and hope for the future depend on the energy and petrochemicals that oil companies provide will be harmed by a court finding in favor of these litigants.

Every one of them should follow this case closely – and get involved deeply and personally in this crazy lawsuit, by intervening, providing evidence and expert witnesses, submitting amicus curiae briefs, and helping citizens, journalists and elected officials understand what is really at stake here. (Hint: It’s not Earth’s climate, which has changed often throughout history – beneficially, benignly or detrimentally.)

Via email

The Shocking True Story of How Global Warming Became the Biggest #FakeNews Scare of All

Here is this week’s latest in Climate Stupid:

Let’s “solve” climate change by halting economic growth, argues a paper from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, published in Nature Climate Change.

Texas Tech professor Katharine Hayhoe tells a summit in Edmonton, Canada that climate change is “the greatest humanitarian crisis of our times”; confides how shocked she was on discovering, six months into her marriage, that her husband did not believe in global warming. “You have somebody you respect and you also love and you also want to stay married. I said well, ‘Let’s talk about it.’” Apparently it took two years to convince him.

Activists at Cambridge University warn of “large scale disruption” if the university’s £6.3 billion endowment fund ignores their demands that it should divest itself of its fossil fuel investment holdings.

An ex-White-House staffer from the Obama era tells Washingtonian about the time her date with a man came to a sudden end when he said he didn’t believe in global warming: “I started laughing, because I’m from Colorado and didn’t realize people actually didn’t believe in global warming. But he was serious.”

Climate industrial complex in UK has wasted £100 billion and shut down debate to no useful purpose, warns Peter Lilley – one of Margaret Thatcher’s former ministers.

‘Stop blaming both sides for America’s climate failures’, argues Guardian columnist. ‘The fault lies entirely with the GOP.’

‘Blame consumers not China for climate change‘, warns Clinton-Climate-Initiative-backed pressure group.

I could go on but I wouldn’t want to bore you. Or myself. When you’ve been covering the climate/environment/energy beat for as long as I have, every day is Groundhog Day. Every day it’s the same bunch of troughers, spivs, second-raters, crooks, liars, half-wits, chancers, bottom-feeders and eco-fascists churning out the same old propaganda…

But these scare stories and demands for action are so relentless and ubiquitous that they do invite an obvious question: how can all these different people – from politics, from academe, from the media, from business – possibly be all wrong?

Isn’t it maybe time we listened more carefully to what they have to say?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!

Last week, I introduced you to the paper by Christopher Booker that explains why so many people – some of them highly ‘educated’ – can all be simultaneously wrong about so big an issue. They are all, Booker shows, the victims – or, if you prefer, the useful idiots – of a phenomenon known as ‘Groupthink.’

Groupthink was a phenomenon anatomized in the early Seventies by a U.S. sociologist called Irving Janis. As I explained in my piece, it has three rules:

Rule One. A group of people come to share a common view or belief that in some way is not properly based on reality.

Rule Two. Because their common view/belief cannot be subjected to external proof they have to reinforce its authority by claiming ‘consensus.’ The idea is to emphasize that all right-thinking people hold this view and that it is no longer open to challenge.

Rule Three: Anyone who disputes this ‘consensus’ must be excluded from the discussion: at best marginalized; at worst openly attacked or discredited.

I titled my piece The Shocking True Story of How Global Warming Became the Biggest #FakeNews Scare of All Time (Pt 1) a) because I wanted to grab your attention and b) because it’s true.

Even now, I find the chutzpah, the arrogance, the brazen dishonesty of those pushing this #FakeNews non crisis so utterly breathtaking I want to pinch myself in disbelief.

How do they get away with it? Because they can. Because they always have got away with it.

In this second part of my coverage of Booker’s illuminating paper, I want to give you some examples that show you how and why every day in the world of climate change scaremongering is Groundhog Day. Essentially, what you’ll come to realize is that the people who’ve been pushing this scam have been operating from the same playbook for well over three decades.

Inventing the ‘Consensus’

1992 was a long time ago. To give you an idea how long, the movies you may have watched in that year including Reservoir Dogs; The Crying Game; and The Bodyguard; the albums you bought – well I did – were the Orb’s UFOrb; Dr Dre’s The Chronic; Sugar’s Copper Blue. George HW Bush was U.S. president. We’re talking ancient history here. But one thing that remains fresh as a daisy is the paper written in that year by Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was titled “Global warming: the origin and nature of the alleged scientific consensus.”

No wonder Lindzen sounds so weary when he talks about this subject. He’s probably the world’s greatest professor of atmospheric physics. He’s been saying for over a quarter of a century that the whole global warming thing is a scam, but hardly anyone has been listening for reasons we’ll come to in a moment.

The flaws in the alarmist position Lindzen exposed in 1992 remain the same today: the global warming scare story depends on hopelessly inadequate computer models which place too much emphasis on man-made CO2 and which therefore produce a “disturbingly arbitrary” picture of the state of climate.

What Lindzen also noted in this paper was another thing that remains true today: the remarkable proclivity of all manner of diverse groups to leap on the climate bandwagon.

These include activist NGOs, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Union of Concerned Scientists; media organizations, such as the BBC, the New York Times and, as they then were, NBC, CBS and ABC; and Hollywood stars such as Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford who called for people to stop “researching” the warming threat and to “begin acting.”

This was the Groupthink pressure that prompted that previously skeptical George HW Bush White House to cave and, in 1989, authorize a staggering increase in the federal budget for climate change research. Over the next four years, this increased from just $134 million to a total of $2.8 billion.

Burning the Heretics

A key element in the survival of any Groupthink “consensus”, Janis noted, is that any disagreement must be ruthlessly suppressed.

Anyone who has dares to take on climate change Groupthink has to pay a terrible price. I don’t know a single scientist, journalist, or politician who has criticized the “consensus” and not been made to suffer personally.

The ruthlessness and zeal with which the alarmists pursue heretics borders on the psychotic. There is perhaps no more poignant, shocking, and dismal an example of this than the way Al Gore sought to destroy the reputation of the very man he had once claimed as his inspiration: Roger Revelle, the distinguished oceanographer at the University of California in San Diego. Revelle’s research into increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, Gore claimed in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, was what first alerted him to the “worst threat we have ever faced.”

What Gore hadn’t quite appreciated when he made his powerpoint propaganda movie was that, in the interim, his old teacher’s views on climate had changed.

In 1988, Revelle had written to (notoriously alarmist) Senator Tim Wirth: “We should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer.”

Revelle went still further in a 1991 article he wrote with fellow distinguished skeptic Dr. Fred Singer, then professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. Their article concluded: “the scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”

Gore’s response to the inconvenient truth of his supposed mentor’s change of heart?

He pressured one of his associates to put out the story that Revelle was a sick old man with failing mental capacities who had been pressured by Singer into signing the article. This was later the basis of a libel suit, which Singer won.

Gore – by then Vice President of the USA – also rang ABC News’ Ted Koppel urging him to expose Singer as being in the pay of sinister fossil-fuel interests which were funding an “anti-environment” movement. To his credit, Koppel called Gore’s bluff by reporting the Vice President’s attempted dirty tricks on air.

If you’ve read books like my own Watermelons, much of this will be familiar territory.

But in some ways that’s the most amazing thing of all about this extraordinary affair, which must surely represent the biggest peacetime waste of taxpayers money in history, the biggest scientific scandal in history, and the most extravagant and widely promulgated lie in history: the sheer brazenness of these tricksters’ enterprise.

Time and again, their junk science has been shredded, their lies exposed, their dirty tricks revealed.

Yet still they continue to get away with murder thanks to the power of Groupthink.

Too many people are still inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Too many people are distracted by the fallacious Appeal to Authority: “Who do you trust? 97 percent of the world’s scientists or Breitbart‘s James Delingpole?”

Well I know the answer to that last one. But then, like you, I’m not stupid.

SOURCE

Australia: ‘Kill Climate Deniers’ – Now Showing at a Sydney Theatre

Jennifer Marohasy

JUST two generations back, in the 1960s, mainstream Australian society shunned both unmarried pregnant women and also homosexuals. They were loathed, and it would have been considered reasonable for the local police to turn-a-blind eye should misfortune befall members of either group – should they be killed.

In my opinion, human-beings are not naturally hateful, though powerful institutions often look to squash dissent by turning the tribe against groups with certain characteristics – particularly those likely to possess special knowledge.

The loathing of unmarried pregnant women and homosexuals back in the 1960s was a consequence of preaching, particularly by the Catholic Church. During this period the church, while preaching abstinence, employed thousands of priests active in the community, many of whom were secretly molesting young boys and girls. No doubt getting some of them pregnant, and grooming others to be their homosexual lovers. Key findings from the recent child sexual abuse royal commission include: abuse mostly occurred in religious institutions (58%), most victims were male (64%), most of those perpetrating the abuse were male (94%), the average age of the victims is now 53 years.

After some decades, finally, Australian society has woken-up and owned-up to this scandal. Times have changed, and unmarried pregnant women and homosexuals are now embraced.

It is my observation that homosexuality is now almost revered; at least by those who consider themselves progressive, trend-setters, supporters of the arts – our most virtuous. So, what does it say about this same group, that they now actively support hatred of so-called climate change deniers?

The arts community successfully sought government funding for a play entitled ‘Kill Climate Deniers’ that has just now opened at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney.

What special knowledge could so-called ‘climate deniers’ possess that would turn the now most virtuous in our society so against us – against my group.

SOURCE

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

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

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8 March, 2018

Current deforestation pace will intensify global warming, study alerts

This may all be true but it assumes future net deforestation. But in the developed world, the trend ids to reforestaion. In Scotland at the moment, for instance, efforts are being made to reforest farm land -- to Greenie howls

Scientists affirms the prolongation of an annual deforestation of 7,000 square km can nullify the efforts for reducing GHG emissions. The study brings a new assessment on the importance of tropical forests in world climate regulation, and calculates a 0,8 °C rise on Earth's temperature in a scenario in which they are extinct.

The global warming process may be even more intense than originally forecast unless deforestation can be halted, especially in the tropical regions. This warning has been published in Nature Communications by an international group of scientists.

"If we go on destroying forests at the current pace -- some 7,000 km² per year in the case of Amazonia -- in three to four decades, we'll have a massive accumulated loss. This will intensify global warming regardless of all efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Paulo Artaxo, a professor at the University of São Paulo's Physics Institute (IF-USP).

Reaching the conclusion

The group reached the conclusion after having succeeded in the mathematical reproduction of the planet's current atmospheric conditions, through computer modeling that used a numerical model of the atmosphere developed by the Met Office, the UK's national meteorological service.

Such model included meteorological factors like levels of aerosols, anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ozone, carbon dioxide, methane, and other items that influence global temperature -- the surface albedo among them. Albedo is a measure of the reflectivity of a surface. The albedo effect, when applied to Earth, is a measure of how much of the Sun's energy is reflected back into space. The fraction absorbed changes according to the type of surface.

The work coordinated by University of Leeds (UK) researcher Catherine Scott was also based on years of analyses and survey over the functioning of tropical and temperate forests, the gases emitted by vegetation, and their impact on climate regulation. Collection of data regarding tropical forests was coordinated by Artaxo, as part of two Thematic Projects supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation -- FAPESP: "GoAmazon: interactions of the urban plume of Manaus with biogenic forest emissions in Amazonia," and "AEROCLIMA: direct and indirect effects of aerosols on climate in Amazonia and Pantanal." Data on temperate forests was obtained in Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Collection was coordinated by Erik Swietlicki, a professor at Lund University in Sweden.

Understanding how tropical forests control temperature

"After adjusting the model to reproduce the current conditions of Earth's atmosphere and the rise in surface temperatures that has occurred since 1850, we ran a simulation in which the same scenario was maintained but all forests were eliminated," Artaxo said. "The result was a significant rise of 0.8 °C in mean temperature. In other words, today the planet would be almost 1 °C warmer on average if there were no more forests."

The study also showed that the difference observed in the simulations was due mainly to emissions of biogenic VOCs from tropical forests.

"When biogenic VOCs are oxidized, they give rise to aerosol particles that cool the climate by reflecting part of the Sun's radiation back into space," Artaxo said. "Deforestation means no biogenic VOCs, no cooling, and hence future warming. This effect was not taken into account in previous modeling exercises."

Temperate forests produce different VOCs with less capacity to give rise to these cooling particles, he added.

The article notes that forests cover almost a third of the planet's land area, far less than before human intervention began. Huge swathes of forest in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas have been cleared.

"It's important to note that the article doesn't address the direct and immediate impact of forest burning, such as emissions of black carbon [considered a major driver of global warming owing to its high capacity for absorbing solar radiation]. This impact exists, but it lasts only a few weeks. The article focuses on the long-term impact on temperature variation," Artaxo said.

Deforestation, he stressed, affects the amount of aerosols and ozone in the atmosphere definitively, changing the atmosphere's entire radiative balance.

"The urgent need to keep the world's forests standing is even clearer in light of this study. It's urgent not only to stop their destruction but also to develop large-scale reforestation policies, especially for tropical regions. Otherwise, the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels won't make much difference," Artaxo said.

SOURCE

Global warming threatens Antarctica’s King penguins

Pronouncements about penguins are very unreliable. A large but previously unknown population of Adele penguins was recently discovered on an island off the Antarctic peninsula, for instance. There were only 1.5 million of them

Will our favorite flightless bird waddle off to the sunset?

Some 70% percent of all the king penguins on Earth — around 1.1 million breeding pairs — will be forced to relocate or die trying by the end of the century if global warming continues at its present rate, according to a new study published online Monday

"The species may disappear," study co-author Celine Le Bohec, a scientist at the University of Strasbourg, told Agence France Presse.

The king penguin is one of several threatened species of penguins in Antarctica. Previous studies have found that other species — such as the emperor, Adelie and chinstrap — are also in danger of extinction or severe population loss due to climate change.

More: There are 12 million penguins in Antarctica. This researcher says that's not nearly enough.

The reason the king penguins are in trouble is that as the oceans warm, their favorite food — fish — will move south to cooler waters, away from where the penguins live.

King penguins, the second-largest penguin species, primarily live on small islands around the main Antarctic continent.

When the fish move away from those islands, parent penguins are then forced to swim farther to find food, while their kids wait, fasting longer and longer on the shore.

This study predicts that, for most colonies, the length of the parents’ trips to get food will soon be so long that their children will starve, leading to massive King penguin crashes in population size.

Most problematic is that the penguins can't move with the fish. "The main issue is that there are only a handful of islands in the Southern Ocean and not all of them are suitable to sustain large breeding colonies," said study co-author Robin Cristofari, also of the University of Strasbourg.

Due to the burning of fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal, the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans are warming to levels that scientists say cannot be explained by natural variability.

More: Penguins losing habitat in Antarctica, could be decimated by 2099

Now, for the first time in the history of penguins, these human activities are leading to rapid and possibly irreversible changes in the Earth system.

In fact, the part of Antarctica where the king penguins live is "one of the most rapidly changing ecosystems of our planet," according to the study.

SOURCE

Climate change alarmists' arguments don't hold water

By Lorne Gunter

On Saturday, and then again on Sunday, as I shovelled off the latest 20 cm of global warming that fell on our driveway and sidewalks, I kept thinking about the 800 delegates coming from around the world to Mayor Don Iveson’s climate change summit: I sure hoped they weren’t fooled by the city’s handwringing over global warming into thinking they could come to Northern Alberta in shorts, in March.

On Saturday, we recorded the most snowfall on any March 3 in the past 25 years.

As delegates to the city’s sky-is-falling conference began bundling up Monday morning, so their extremities didn’t suffer frostbite on the short walk from their hotels to the Shaw Conference Centre, our temperature was just four degrees off our record low for the past quarter century.

Indeed, we were closer to the coldest temperature recorded here on any March 5 since 1996 (four degrees difference) than we were to our normal low, which is -9 (11 degrees off).

Fine, I know, weather is not climate.

But it’s too convenient when weather extremes fit the alarmists’ climate-change theory, we’re told it proves the environmental science is settled. But when the weather doesn’t reinforce their panicky message, it’s dismissed as meaningless.

Two years ago at this same time, our daytime highs were nearly 20 degrees different from where they are this year. They were 10 or more degrees above normal rather than 10 degrees below normal.

This kind of fluctuation is nothing new for this part of the world at this time of year. We’re in the transition from winter to spring (we hope), so sometimes we’re under the influence of March’s lion and sometimes the lamb.

But that’s precisely how average temperatures are arrived at.

Let me give you a local example of what I mean about how climate-change alarmists use weather selectively – “cherry picking” weather extremes to make their climate danger arguments.

On the eve of the city’s climate wail-in this week, Edmonton’s senior environmental project manager, Chandra Tomaras, told Postmedia that the city is 1.7C degrees warmer than it was a century ago. That’s within the range of normal climate fluctuation recorded around the world, but Tomaras insisted it made her worried about the future of the North Saskatchewan River and our city’s drinking water.

“I can’t speak to future flows,” Tomaras admitted, “but historically, according to paleo-climatic analysis, there have been episodes of zero flow in past centuries.”

So? Those zero flows couldn’t possibly have been caused by manmade carbon emissions. Neanderthals didn’t drive SUVs. There were no coal-fired teepees on the Plains.

Past zero-flow episodes must have had natural causes. So by what grand powers of divination can alarmists tell that future zero-flows will be caused by human activities, as opposed to all the natural ones in the paleo-climatic past?

After I’d done my best to remove the most recent snowfall from the cement around our home, the thin film that was left melted away.

But how could that be? The air temperature was -10C.

It was, of course, because the sun’s strength is returning.

And just as the sun’s influence on weather ebbs and flows with the seasons, it’s influence on climate raises and lowers with solar activity.

For decades now, the sun’s activity has been on the increase. Solar scientists predict it will now lessen for a couple (or three) decades. And as it lessens, global temperatures should fall, too.

We can shut every coal plant on earth, ban SUVs and force everyone to ride transit, convert whole neighbourhoods to geothermal heating, subsidize wind and solar farms, and spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars going “carbon free.” We can build the alarmists’ dream world and it will have negligible impact on climate

SOURCE

Global warming could cause key culinary crops to release seeds prematurely

If so, a small move poleward should fix the problem

Climate change is threatening crop yields worldwide, yet little is known about how global warming will confuse normal plant physiology. Researchers in the UK now show that higher temperatures accelerate seed dispersal in crop species belonging to the cabbage and mustard plant family, limiting reproductive success, and this effect is mediated by a gene called INDEHISCENT. The findings appear February 12 in the journal Molecular Plant.

"In many crops, such as oilseed rape, premature seed dispersal is one of the major causes of crop loss. In the context of climate change, this could become increasingly severe," says co-senior author Vinod Kumar, a plant developmental biologist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. "This study exposes the potential vulnerabilities of crop production in the warming world and paves the way for addressing this problem."

Plants have an extraordinary ability to adjust their life cycle to suit a range of environmental conditions. For example, despite day-to-day changes in weather and temperature, the release of seeds stays in tune with prevailing seasonal conditions.

"Seed dispersal is also a key trait that must be controlled when domesticating plants for food production," says co-senior author Lars Østergaard, a plant geneticist at the John Innes Centre. "With the prospect of climate change affecting crop performance, we wanted to understand how environmental signals such as temperature affect seed dispersal."

One clue came from the observation that Arabidopsis plants, which belong to the Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage) family, mature and open their seed pods faster when grown at elevated temperatures. Inspired by this observation, Xin-Ran Li, a postdoctoral researcher with Kumar and Østergaard and first author of the study, set out to investigate.

They found that a rise in temperature, from 22ºC to 27ºC, accelerated pod shattering and seed dispersal in Arabidopsis plants and important Brassicaceae crops such as oilseed rape, a key ingredient in vegetable oil. Moreover, elevated temperatures accelerated seed dispersal by enhancing the expression of the INDEHISCENT gene, which is known to regulate the development of seed pod tissue and promote fruit opening.

"We speculate that such mechanisms have evolved to facilitate proper seasonal timing of dispersal to ensure that seeds are released under conditions that are both timely and climatically optimal for germination," Li says. "There could perhaps be a selective advantage in early maturation and dispersal in the wild."

Beyond the evolutionary implications, the findings could have broad relevance for maintaining yields of important crops. Oilseed rape is one of the largest sources of vegetable oil in the world and is also used for biofuel and animal feed. More generally, the Brassicaceae family includes many economically valuable agricultural crops, including cabbage, mustard, broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, kale, turnip, radish, and rutabaga.

"We were excited by the discovery that what we found in the model plant Arabidopsis also holds true for both crop plants, such as oilseed rape, as well as non-domesticated species from the Brassicaceae family," Kumar says. "This highlights the significance of our findings both in the wild as well as in the field."

Based on their study, the research team suggests new strategies for preparing crops for global warming. For example, plant breeding efforts could focus on developing temperature-resilient varieties capable of coping with climate change. In addition, gene-editing tools, such as the CRISPR/Cas system, could be used to reduce the expression of the INDEHISCENT gene, thereby delaying seed release and reducing crop loss.

For their own part, Kumar and Østergaard plan to further investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying temperature-induced changes in seed dispersal. "We are hopeful that by understanding this in detail, we will be better equipped to devise strategies to breed for crop resilience to climate change," Østergaard says.

SOURCE

Some recent notes from Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef

Nothing like the disaster area that the Greenies predicted

The Great Barrier Reef’s resilience has been mightily challenged and it narrowly escaped being placed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in Danger last year. The one-two punch of Cyclone Ita in April 2014 and Cyclone Nathan just one year later left Lizard Island reeling. A coral bleaching event in the summer of 2016, resulting from a number of marine heatwaves on top of an already elevated sea temperature, dealt it a further blow.

Yet the reef displays a remarkable ability to regenerate and flourish. “There are a lot of people here studying recovery from disaster, and things are coming back after the cyclones and the bleaching,” Dr Anne Hoggett tells me during an afternoon tour of the research station.

She and her husband, Dr Lyle Vail, were appointed directors of the facility in 1990 and Anne has been working on the Lizard Island field guide, a constantly evolving resource detailing more than 7000 different species. “I think you could multiply that number of species by at least five, and people are discovering new ones here all the time,” she says.

Back at Clam Gardens, the cuttlefish has found a mate. Diaphanous skirts rippling, the pair frills up the side of a sherbet-coloured bommie, a stand-alone coral outcrop that’s been split like a watermelon by one of the recent cyclones. It looks like a tragedy, until Penny points out the crack has merely increased the surface area of the bommie and that the polyps, like busy little construction workers, are already starting to build on the foundations of their ancestors.

Drifting over the columns and canyons of reef we spy several thickets of staghorn coral, their tips a spark of pale, luminescent blue. “It’s nice to see,” Penny says, surfacing with a smile. “It’s encouraging.”

SOURCE

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

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

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7 March, 2018

Trump plan to allow oil drilling off New England unites foes in opposition

For decades, they have done battle — through street protests, in courtrooms, on Beacon Hill. It takes a lot, something broadly and viscerally opposed, to unite the traditional foes.

But the Trump administration’s new plan to allow drilling for oil and gas off the shores of New England has done just that, forging a bipartisan coalition of fishermen, environmental advocates, industry groups, and scientists against the plan.

At a recent press conference held to denounce the plan, Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation noted that the last time he stood on the same side as so many fishermen was some four decades ago, when the federal government last pressed such a proposal.

“It’s ridiculous, and very discouraging, that we’re back here 40 years later,” he said, noting that the previous coalition succeeded in blocking offshore drilling while opponents in other regions failed. “It didn’t make sense then, and it makes less sense now.”

When Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, spoke at the press conference last Monday at the New England Aquarium, she smiled at Shelley, a longtime proponent of fishing regulations.

“Here we are again,” she said, calling the drilling proposal “a disgrace.” “We’re not going to allow it to happen . . . Georges Bank is the richest fishing ground in the world. We have to protect it with our lives.”

In January, the Trump administration announced it was lifting a drilling ban and would allow prospecting for offshore oil and gas deposits in nearly all the coastal waters of the United States.

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which will oversee the permitting process, estimates that opening the proposed areas could tap some 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas, potentially a major boost to the nation’s energy reserves.

In the North Atlantic, the bureau estimates that there are about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 11.8 trillion cubic feet of gas that could potentially be recovered, although those estimates are highly uncertain.

As a result, the bureau may authorize surveys of the region’s waters, which environmentalists fear would disturb the Gulf of Maine’s delicate ecosystem and harm its marine life, especially mammals such as North Atlantic right whales, among the most endangered species on the planet.

At a public meeting in Boston Tuesday, bureau officials met with concerned residents and laid out their plan.

They explained how offshore drilling has been part of the nation’s energy policy since the 1970s, when Congress sought to reduce US reliance on oil imports after the Arab oil embargo. Since then, Congress has repeatedly reauthorized drilling in certain areas, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, they noted.

“The goal is for the nation to be more independent,” said Bill Brown, the bureau’s chief environmental officer, in an interview at the meeting. His team has been hosting similar meetings across the country to collect public opinion.

He said they would use the public comments to draft an environmental impact statement, which Brown expects to be completed by the end of the year.

“We’re looking at what areas should be excluded,” he said.

After that, the bureau intends to issue a plan that would be subject to additional public comments and permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which will review whether drilling could affect endangered species.

“It’s premature to judge what will happen,” Brown said.

SOURCE

Is fight against global warming mission impossible?

WASHINGTON — Anyone who tells you that dealing with climate change is simply a matter of sweeping away the obstructionism of oil companies is living in a dream world. The real obstacle is us — our vast dependence on fossil fuels and the difficulty of extricating ourselves without crippling the world economy.

It's true that the Trump administration has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, making any transition harder. But the problems transcend President Trump's disengagement, as a new study from the oil giant BP makes clear

Reading it, you might think it came from an environmental group. The study's central conclusion, writes BP chief executive Bob Dudley, is that many anti-global warming policies fall "well short of" what's "necessary to achieve the Paris climate goals. We need a far more decisive break from the past."

The study projects global energy supply and demand to 2040 to see if environmentally friendly policies make significant progress against global warming. It assumes a larger role for "renewables" — mostly wind and solar power — and other policies that would dampen fossil fuel consumption. Consider:

* Electric cars make large advances compared with a negligible role today. By 2040, the number of electric vehicles worldwide hits 300 million out of 2 billion total vehicles (roughly a doubling of today's total). More important, these electric vehicles account for a disproportionate share of driving, about 30 percent. As a result, there's no increase in oil and liquid fuel demand for cars and light vehicles, despite an assumed doubling in worldwide travel.

* There's a continued boom in solar and wind power. From now until 2040, these renewables are the fastest-growing source of energy, increasing five-fold. As a share of global primary fuel consumption, the gain is from 4 percent to 14 percent. Their impact on electricity generation is even greater, rising from 7 percent in 2016 to 25 percent in 2040.

* Electric utilities continue to switch to natural gas as their primary fuel from coal, which has much higher carbon emissions. About half the growth in natural gas consumption reflects this switching.

Against this backdrop, you'd expect significant progress in curbing greenhouse gases. Not so.

Just the opposite: Total use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) is projected to increase almost 20 percent between 2016 and 2040. The electric cars, renewables and fuel switching merely offset some — but not all — of the added energy demand from population and economic growth. The BP study assumes a world population of 9.2 billion in 2040, up from 7.4 billion in 2016. Over the same period, the global economy doubles its output.

What this means is that greenhouse gases are still pouring into the atmosphere, albeit at a slower rate. There's a slight shift away from fossil fuels. In 2016, these fuels provided 85 percent of world energy. The projection for 2040 is 74 percent, even with favorable assumptions about renewables and electric vehicles.

Virtually all the energy increase is projected to come from developing countries for factories, offices, homes, air conditioners and heaters. India and China alone account for half the increase in energy use by 2040.

Governments, says Spencer Dale, BP's chief economist, should discourage the use of fossil fuels through either a carbon tax or a "tax and trade" system. That could unleash hordes of companies and entrepreneurs to find ways to limit emissions. "If we don't like something [greenhouse gases], the easiest way to get less of it is to put a price on it," Dale says.

Indeed, this could herald a "decisive break" from the past. But it might also break public opinion, at least in the United States. How high would prices have to go to prove Dale's point? To succeed, the price increase might have to be fairly stiff — say, $2 or $3 a gallon for gasoline — and that might be far more than Congress would adopt or many Americans would accept.

Suppressing greenhouse gases is, at best, a thorny policy issue encompassing technology, atmospheric science, international relations and practical politics. Put them all together and, at worst, it could be mission impossible.

SOURCE

Some Christians Giving Up Carbon for Lent to Combat Global Warming

Belief in the resurrection offers eternal life. Belief in global warming not so much

Lent — the 40 days ahead of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, representing the time Christ fasted in the wilderness — is a time for Christians to prepare for the holy Easter season.

“Lent is a time of repentance, fasting, and preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time of self-examination and reflection. In the early church, Lent was a time to prepare new converts for baptism. Today, Christians focus on their relationship with God, often choosing to give up something or to volunteer and give of themselves for others,” the United Methodist Church website states.

But, according to Yale University’s Yale Climate Connection website, this year, some Christians have decided that global warming is such an important issue they are giving up carbon for Lent.

Yale Climate Connections reports:

The weeks just before Easter are known as Lent. It’s a time when many Christians fast or give up luxuries. Now, some churches and faith groups are encouraging Christians to reduce activities that contribute to global warming.

Leah Wiste is director of outreach and advocacy at an organization called Michigan Interfaith Power and Light.

Wiste: “Lent is a state of preparing for rebirth … And so we focus on transformation.”

In that spirit, her group helps Christians use this time to develop more environmentally friendly habits.

“We propose a Lenten Carbon Fast,” Wiste said. “We’ve created a calendar that suggests one activity each day that folks can do in order to reduce their ecological footprint.”

That “to do” list includes using LED light bulbs, eating local food rather than food shipped long distances, forgoing very hot water, and driving slower.

“The hope is that this several week exercise won’t just end at Easter but that these actions actually seed a more fundamental transformation that people can then continue,” Wiste said.

The organization Wiste spoke on behalf of describes itself as a “faith response to global warming.”

Its mission statement says, in part: “Foster and create an educated faith constituency that’s committed to proactive solutions to decreasing harmful coal plant emissions through energy efficiency [and] renewable technologies.”

SOURCE

Is Germany’s Energiewende Coming To An End?

Germany’s new coalition deal was a “bitter disappointment” for those looking for a modern climate and energy policy, said outgoing energy secretary Rainer Baake

Germany’s energy state secretary Rainer Baake has quit after four years in charge of the country’s flagship Energiewende policy.

Baake made his stand as Germany’s democratic limbo was finally resolved, 162 days after the 2017 federal election. A grand coalition of conservative and Social Democrats (SPD) will return, along with chancellor Angela Merkel.

Baake, a Green Party politician whose appointment by then economy minister Sigmar Gabriel was a surprise at the time, criticised the new government’s energy and climate plans in a resignation letter seen by Clean Energy Wire.

The plans for the energy transition (Energiewende) in the new coalition agreement were a “bitter disappointment”, Baake wrote to incoming energy and economy minister Peter Altmaier.

The new government was “missing out on the opportunity to thoroughly modernise Germany’s economy”, Baake said, adding that forces who wanted to preserve old and “climate-damaging” structures had apparently been stronger.

During his time in office, Baake oversaw the reform of the core Energiewende legislation, the renewable energy act EEG, which included the shift from feed-in tariffs to a tender system, a move heavily criticised by the renewable energy industry.

Baake, who has been dubbed “Mr Energiewende” by German media for his expertise and his key role in the country’s energy policy, also repeatedly locked horns with utilities and the coal miners’ union. He proposed a “coal levy” in order to cut emissions from coal power plants. Instead, some lignite plants were transferred to a paid “security standby” reserve, before being closed down permanently.

Ever since Merkel decided to hand the energy ministry in the coalition government with the Social Democrats to her close ally Altmaier, Baake’s future at the ministry had been uncertain. Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer called for Baake’s resignation last week, saying that he was responsible for “ideologically charging up energy policy”.

SOURCE

Kangaroo meat industry slams documentary for 'crazy' claims that the native animals' numbers are plummeting in Australia

The Kangaroo meat industry is up in arms over a documentary that claims the native animals are a 'disappearing resource' in Australia, even comparing them to 'rhinos, tigers, cheetahs and whales'.

The documentary, currently making its way across Europe and the US, shows activists mourning the lives of kangaroos shot in the outback and asks 'how did we get so hoodwinked into believing it was OK to kill our national icon?'.

The documentary called Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story, has enraged the peak body for kangaroo harvesters, with top researchers slamming it as 'dangerous' and a 'major disservice to Australia and the welfare of kangaroos'.

The documentary, which will premiere in Sydney next week, uses 'shock tactics' to ask if harvesting kangaroos is unethical.

The documentary gives voice to a range of people including animal rights activists who claim the industry is 'cloaked in secrecy' and 'local extinction and regional extinction has happened'.

In 2016 there were almost 45 million kangaroos in Australia, almost double the human population
In 2010 there were about 27 million
In 2007 there were 23 million

Government data shows the population neared 50 million in 2017
These claims have been rubbished by ANU College of Science Dr George Wilson, who has worked on kangaroo management for 45 years.

'The film's full of beautiful looking red kangaroos and it pulls at the heartstrings. That affects me just as much as anyone else, but how it relates to population ecology I don't know,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday.

'A lot of these animals are killed every year, but it's not at all connected to whether they're threatened. There are 600 million chickens killed per year, are they seriously going to suggest chickens are in danger?'

If the film gained traction, and brought the production of kangaroo meat to a halt, Dr Wilson (right) said it would have a devastating impact on the welfare of Australia's kangaroo population

If the film gained traction, and brought the production of kangaroo meat to a halt, Dr Wilson said it would have a devastating impact on the welfare of Australia's kangaroo population.

'If this animal rights mob shut it down, populations will get higher and higher to the point they starve to death, and die out during the drought,' he said.

'They're doing themselves, Australia and the kangaroos a major disservice. 'These people are really concerned about animals, so am I, but they're completely off the wall.'

Dr Wilson said the filmmakers were jeopardising the welfare of kangaroos, and hoped viewers could look past the 'shock factor' and 'emotion' of the documentary.

'It's hard to imagine a more animal friendly meat,' he said.

National Farmers Federation President Fiona Simson backed Dr Wilson and said the industry was one of the most humane.

'It is inconceivable to think that anybody would see the humanity in allowing hundreds, possibly thousands of kangaroos die a prolonged and painful death caused by starvation and dehydration, while rallying against a pain-free and instant option available via the controlled, regulated culling,' she told The Australian.

Not only could the film jeopardise the welfare of kangaroos, locals claim it could devastate outback towns and enterprises.

Brad Bales and Chantalle Allwood, who work at a Queensland processing factory, said 'it'd be a shock to the community if it shut down'.

'I've seen the industry through droughts, floods… it's the non-professional shooters, the city people who think they can make money out of it, who ruin it for a lot of people,' Mr Bales told The Australian.

Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon travelled to Belgium on Monday to help promote the film in Europe, where Australia exports 1780 tonnes of kangaroo meat funnelling more than $10 million into Australia's economy.

'We will use the evidence to show that kangaroos are in trouble,' Senator Rhiannon said in a statement on Monday. 'There's a big question mark over the data the government uses… I've called for kangaroo protection; what we want is accurate research. '(Near extinction) is a risk, and that's why we need to be responsible.'

The documentary will premiere in Australia in Sydney next Tuesday.

SOURCE

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

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

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6 March, 2018

Why what we eat is crucial to the climate change question (?)

Ruth Khasaya Oniang'o is a bit confused below. Global warming will reduce food availability? Canadian farmers would love a couple of degrees of warming. It would open up countless hectares of mid-Northern Canada to grain cropping -- unleashing a FLOOD of food onto the world. And the rest of Ruth's generalizations are equally tendentious. Greenies can only regurgitate their talking points. They are incapable of critical thought

Did you know that what’s on your plate plays a larger role in contributing to climate change than the car you drive? When most wealthy people think about their carbon footprint, or their contributions to climate change, they’ll think about where their electricity and heat come from or what they drive. They’ll think about fossil fuels and miles per gallon, about LED lights and mass transit – but not so much about combine harvesters or processed meals or food waste. Few consider the impacts of the food they eat, despite the fact that globally, food systems account for roughly one quarter of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the entire transportation sector, more than all industrial practices, and roughly the same as the production of electricity and heat.

Meanwhile, the most immediate threat of climate change for most of the global population will be at the dinner table, as our ability to grow critical staple crops is being affected by the warming we’ve already experienced. Between 1980 and 2008, for instance, wheat yields dropped 5.5 % and maize yields fell 3.8% due to rising temperatures. Climate change threatens the food security of millions of poor people around the world. Young people are increasingly keen to protect the environment by shifting to animal-product-free diets. They seek plant proteins which taste like meat, while insects are also growing popular as an alternative.

What these inverse challenges – that food and agriculture are both enormous contributors to climate change, and massively impacted by it – really tell us is that our food systems, as currently structured, are facing major challenges.

There is a much larger problem that implores us to look beyond farm and agricultural practices. We need to open our eyes to solutions that address the full scope of the challenge to create more sustainable and equitable food systems. That way, we can provide healthy food for all people while we protect our planet’s resources at the same time.

So what are food systems? Everything from seed and soil to the supermarket to the plate to the landfill. Food systems include the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items.

While farming alone accounts for 10-12% of global greenhouse gas emissions, when we look at entire food systems the contributions to climate change more than double. A recent report published by the Meridian Institute lays out the many factors throughout food systems that spell trouble for the climate, and also explains why a broad systems-wide perspective is necessary for implementing effective changes.

Consider deforestation and soil. A narrow view of agriculture alone would neglect the fact that a full 80% of the forests that are clear cut or destroyed are done so to create farmland. Forests are massive carbon sinks. So is soil, locking away two to three times as much carbon as there is present in the atmosphere. But farmers can help restore ecosystem functions and build resilient communities by producing crops and livestock in productive ways that sequester carbon and protect forests.

Or consider food waste. Not just the scraps that you throw away, but throughout the entire food system. A staggering 30-40% of the food produced in the world is never eaten. Some never gets harvested, some spoils before it reaches consumers, and a lot is tossed away by retailers, restaurants, and at home. For the sake of comparing emissions, if food waste were its own country it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, after only China and the United States.

This says nothing of the gross injustice of wasting so much food while so many in the world go hungry. In the developing world, improving infrastructure along the food chain – including cold storage – would prevent much good food being lost. In the developed world, retailers can prevent large amounts of waste by finding outlets for slightly blemished goods and consumers can limit waste by buying food in amounts they actually want and need.

There are countless more examples of challenges and solutions all throughout the food system — from production of fertiliser to distribution systems to the production of dried and purified foods that make up processed meals to the diets and lifestyles of the public. Everyone has a role to play; these challenges cannot be solved in a vacuum.

The complex, dynamic, and widely diverse forms of the world’s many food systems yield some wildly divergent outcomes in terms of nutrition, health, and environmental and climate impacts. It is critical that we start to better examine what works in some systems and what must be improved in others, in order to produce more equitable, just, and sustainable outcomes around the world.

Just as there’s no universal crop that grows everywhere, there’s no “one size fits all” model food system to implement across the world. A broader systems-wide perspective is necessary if there is any hope for truly transformative change. It’s time to look beyond farming and agriculture and to see the whole picture, to create systems that cause less harm to the climate and are more resilient to the impacts we’re already suffering from global warming.

Food is a fundamental human need and to eat is a basic human right. Our food systems must deliver that need, fairly and equitably, without worsening the impacts of climate change.

SOURCE

Neonicotinoids: EFSA’s coded plea for help

What a sad, sorry state we see for science in the European Union!

We are now in a situation where a European scientific advisory authority (EFSA) is being forced to base its advice on a scientifically worthless document and has to resort to sending out coded messages pleading to the scientific community for help (or forgiveness).

In a recent press release on neonicotinoids, EFSA had to publish the advice they were told to produce: that there was not enough evidence to declare with certainty that neonicotinoids are not harmful to bees. This conclusion was baked into the European Commission’s original request for advice and EFSA chose its press release to acknowledge, in a coded manner, why they were not too pleased with the process thrust upon them.

Paragraph 3 of EFSA’s press release: letting the scientific community know their advice was useless.

Why would EFSA choose to mention (in the third paragraph of their press release) just one tool among many in their review methodology?

The draft Bee Guidance Document (BGD) has not been accepted into law by the Standing Committee, meaning that any decisions based on its use would not be legitimate.

Why, after five years, has the draft bee guidance document not been adopted?

The BGD set parameters that were impossible for field tests to comply with. It demanded an acceptable test mortality rate of 7%, far below the average 15% bee mortality rate under normal conditions. The BGD also set a minimum contiguous field test size – at least 168km² – that was much larger than possible to track bees… No field test data could comply, and without data, there was no way to be certain neonicotinoids were safe.

Furthermore, the BGD working group that had set these impossible parameters was infiltrated with anti-pesticide activist scientists with an agenda – with Poudelet in Sanco directing the process, the BGD was nothing else but corrupted and unscientific. EFSA is fully aware of the hidden conflicts of interest but seems unable to use this as a basis to review the entire BGD process. Perhaps if Arnold had worked for Monsanto rather than a bee NGO, things would have been different.

As readers of this blog may recall, I have shown repeatedly how the bee guidance document was not scientific and misused by anti-pesticides activists. It was designed to reject all credible field test data, not only for neonicotinoids, but for any pesticides, including those approved for organic farming. And with this fabricated block to any available field data, a precautionary approach was presented as the only possible conclusion.

The head of EFSA, Bernhard Url, has tried to wash his hands of the bee guidance document, but it seems stickier than that mythical insecticide-laden honey. See the clip in the European Parliament where Url exonerated EFSA and admits that he has no choice but to use the flawed bee guidance document. He admits someone in the Commission forced him to. Note that Dr Url did not defend the validity of the bee guidance document. I think it would be very hard for anyone to come to a legitimate defence of that miserable piece of activist science.

So EFSA was stuck in a frustrating position, where they had to answer an inappropriate question. Agencies and authorities work to serve the European policy process so when they receive a question that is politically-driven, they are not in a position to send it back and request a better question. So after wasting much time, EFSA’s press release answered the inappropriate question using the useless guidance document as instructed, but at least they could send out their coded plea for help.

The irony is that EFSA was very clear how their decision on the safety of glyphosate was based on all available data (while IARC restricted themselves), but with neonicotinoids, they have let their hands be tied by a politically-motivated guidance document that arbitrarily rejected any data that would show the insecticide’s safety. Wouldn’t it be nice if Dr Url stood up for scientific integrity in all cases and demanded a review of the rejected DRAFT bee guidance document. That would have to come as a request from the Commission though.

Junck-Science and Regulatory Failure

I wrote a paper last year showing how Juncker has imposed his interests on the policy process related to both glyphosate and neonicotinoid legislation arguing how it reflected a casual ignorance towards evidence. I called it Junck-science. What the blog did not cover was what policy tools have been quietly abandoned by this present Commission.

The anticipated banning of neonicotinoids will set a new high-water mark in European regulatory failure. I cut my teeth on responsible policymaking during the Delors period where certain regulation process standards were put in place to ensure legitimate policies were determined. Juncker has abandoned many of these accountability tools and has turned Brussels into a cesspool of influence, king-making and special interests. In the case of neonicotinoids, the following responsible regulatory tools were not used and we have ended up with yet another policy disaster that has destroyed trust in Brussels and fostered economic and trade uncertainty.

We no longer rely on evidence-based policy, impact assessments or inter-service consultations. Instead, Brussels now has its own Bismark, pulling strings from behind the sunken shadows of a weak, aging leader.

SOURCE

Health savings outweigh costs of limiting global warming: study

The usual rubbish. A warmer climate would REDUCE illness overall. Winter is the season of death

The estimated cost of measures to limit Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions can be more than offset by reductions in deaths and disease from air pollution, researchers said on Saturday.

It would cost $22.1 trillion (17.9 trillion euros) to $41.6 trillion between 2020 and 2050 for the world to hold average global warming under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a team projected in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

For the lower, aspirational limit of 1.5 C, the cost would be between $39.7 trillion and $56.1 trillion, they estimated.

But air pollution deaths could be reduced by 21-27 percent to about 100 million between 2020 and 2050 under the 2 C scenario, the team estimated, and by 28-32 percent to about 90 million at 1.5 C.

"Depending on the strategy used to mitigate climate change, estimates suggest that the health savings from reduced air pollution could be between 1.4-2.5 times greater than the costs of climate change mitigation, globally," they wrote.

Health costs from air pollution include medical treatment, patient care, and lost productivity.

The countries likely to see the biggest health savings were air pollution-ridden India and China, said the researchers, who used computer models to project future emissions, the costs of different scenarios for curbing them, and the tally in pollution-related deaths.

"The health savings are exclusively those related to curbing air pollution," study co-author Anil Markandya of the Basque Centre for Climate Change in Spain told AFP.

"Other health benefits are not included, which of course makes our figures underestimates of the total benefits."

The costs of limiting warming, Markandya explained, included higher taxes on fossil fuels like oil and coal, which in turn raise the costs of production.

The world's nations agreed on the 2 C limit in Paris in 2015, and undertook voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.

These pledges, even if they are met, place the world on a 3 C trajectory, scientists say.

To date, the average global temperature is thought to have increased by 1 C since the Industrial Revolution.

"We hope that the large health co-benefits we have estimated... might help policymakers move towards adopting more ambitious climate policies and measures to reduce air pollution," said Markandya.

Air pollution from fossil fuel emissions, particularly fine particulate matter and ozone, has been linked to lung and heart disease, strokes, and cancer.

SOURCE

Time to Cool It: The U.N.’s Moribund High-End Global Warming Emissions Scenario

The amount of future warming is predicated on the amount of emitted greenhouse gases and the sensitivity of earth’s surface temperature to changes in their concentrations. Here we take a look at the emissions component.

The U.N. currently entertains four emissions scenarios, all expressed as the change in downwelling radiation (in watts/meter-sq, nominal year 2100) towards the surface that results from an increase in the atmospheric concentration of certain greenhouse gases. They are called “representative concentration pathways,” or RCPs.

As can be seen in Figure 1, there are four, given as 2.6, 4.5, 6(.0) and 8.5. The ranges of associated warming for over 1000 total scenarios are given on the right axis.

Figure 1. Approximately 1000 scenario runs for four RCPs. From Fuss et al., 2014.

Figure 1. Approximately 1000 scenario runs for four RCPs. From Fuss et al., 2014.

It’s not surprising that those making the case for climate action most frequently reference the highest (RCP8.5), embedding it in most climate scenarios, assessments, and international agreements (the Paris Agreement being a prime example). Here is a summary of Google Scholar citations for the different RCPs, published on February 9 by Eric Roston in Bloomberg:

Figure 2. Although increasingly untenable, RCP8.5 draws the most attention.

Figure 2. Although increasingly untenable, RCP8.5 draws the most attention.

RCP8.5 is obsolete. It was obsolete when it was first published in the journal Climate Change by Riahi et al. in 2011. By then the shale gas revolution was underway, as can be seen from the plot below of shale gas production. By 2011, abundant shale gas had begun a wholesale displacement of coal for electrical generation, increasing natural gas’s portion of our energy portfolio and decreasing that of coal.

Figure 3. U.S. shale gas production, 2007-2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Figure 3. U.S. shale gas production, 2007–2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Riahi et al. RCP 8.5 continues to be the favorite for analysts. It completely dominates the draft of the upcoming fourth “National Assessment” of climate change, created by our U.S. Global Change Research Program. Here is the fanciful “wedge chart” for various energy sources in RCP8.5:

Figure 4. Energy contributions (in Joules X 1018, or EJoules) in RCP 8.5.

Figure 4. Energy contributions (in Joules X 1018, or EJoules) in RCP 8.5.

There are at least two notable errors in RCP8.5, which both serve to exaggerate its radiative forcing. The first is an incorrectly modest growth in natural gas use, and the second is the massive growth in coal combustion. According to the International Energy Agency (2017):

The global natural gas market is undergoing a major transformation driven by new supplies coming from the United States to meet growing demand in developing countries and industry surpasses the power sector as the largest source of gas demand growth…[emphasis added]

The evolution of the role of natural gas in the global energy mix has far-reaching consequences on energy trade, air quality and carbon emissions…

Global gas demand is expected to grow by 1.6% a year…China will account for 40% of this growth.

British Petroleum (BP) recently estimated the global fuel mix through 2040 in its 2018 Energy Outlook. Under their “Evolving Transition” assumption, natural gas usage passes coal worldwide around 2030, and oil use levels off at the same time. A comparison to RCP 8.5 (above) shows how wrong it is, even in the near future.

Figure 5. British Petroleum’s fuel outlook from its most recent (2018) Energy Outlook. Note the color scheme is somewhat different than in Figure 4, with natural gas now red, instead of blue.

Figure 5. British Petroleum’s fuel outlook from its most recent (2018) Energy Outlook. Note the color scheme is somewhat different than in Figure 4, with natural gas now red, instead of blue.

The substitution of shale gas for coal continues to drive down the “carbon (dioxide) intensity” of developing and developed economies. This is the amount of carbon (dioxide) emitted per unit of GDP, usually normalized to 2010 dollars adjusted for their purchasing power in a given economy. In the United States, in the quarter-century beginning in 1990, the drop was a remarkable: from 0.9kg of carbon dioxide/dollar to 0.35, or over 60%.

The imminent dethroning of King Coal is obvious in the BP data, which leads to another problem: Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi from University of British Columbia recently found there simply isn’t enough coal to support RCP8.5. Nor were they conservatively looking at so-called “recoverable” reserves; instead, they toted up all geologically identified coal around the planet.

They then adjusted RCP8.5 for the twin errors of increasing carbon (dioxide) intensity by a huge growth in coal use over natural gas (recall that IEA indicates large scale industrial as well as electrical switchover), and the fact that there isn’t enough coal, and modified RCP8.5 to look like this:

By comparing the contribution of oil, coal, and natural gas (the greenhouse gas sources) between RCP8.5 and what is likely to happen, we can estimate the total downwelling radiation change: it drops from 8.5 watts to roughly 5.1. (Recognizing there is a lot of fine print—this is certainly a ball-park number.)

It is the nature of climate models to scale global warming with percentage changes in emissions; i.e. a quadrupling of emissions has almost exactly the effect of doubling prospective warming over that forecast from an initial doubling of the concentration. Reducing emissions by 40%, which is the difference between Rihai’s RCP8.5 and Ritchie’s modification, similarly reduces total warming.

There’s the further problem of model overprediction of warming that we recently documented in our public comments on the upcoming Fourth National Assessment of Climate Change. Generally speaking, we find the data-based sensitivity of temperature to be about 56% of the average of the 105 climate models in the UN’s most (2013) science summary.

Multiplying everything through, we take the mean 20th and 21st century RCP8.5 warming of 4.3?C, adjust by 60% to get the difference with the modified RCP, and then adjust for the 56% sensitivity and we find a 21st century warming a teense under 1.5?C—very, very close to the sensitivity just calculated by University of Alabama-Huntsville’s Roy Spencer.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)

Will Congress finally get tough on junk science?

House hearing investigates a UN cancer agency accused of misusing US taxpayer funds

Paul Driessen

A growing problem for modern industrialized Western societies is the legion of government agencies and unelected bureaucrats and allied nongovernmental organizations that seem impervious to transparency, accountability or reform. Their expansive power often controls public perceptions and public policies.

Prominent among them are those involved in climate change research and energy policy. In recent years, they have adjusted data to fit the dangerous manmade climate chaos narrative, while doling out billions of taxpayer dollars for research that supports this perspective, and basing dire predictions and policy demands primarily on climate models that assume carbon dioxide now drives climate and weather (and the sun, water vapor, ocean currents and other powerful natural forces have been relegated to minor roles).

Reform is essential. Meanwhile, another troubling example underscores the scope of the problem and the difficulties Congress and other government administrators face when they try to rein in rogue agencies.

In November 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) a letter raising questions about scientific bias, secrecy and corruption at the agency. When IARC obfuscated the issues, the committee sent a second letter, seeking answers within a week.

Otherwise, the Committee said, it would consider “whether the values of scientific integrity and transparency are reflected in IARC monographs and if future expenditures of federal taxpayer dollars need to continue.” The United States is the IARC monograph program’s biggest contributor, having given it nearly $50 million to date.

Agency director Dr. Christopher Wild bided his time four weeks before replying (many would say rather testily and condescendingly) and concluding: “IARC would be grateful if the House Science Committee would take all necessary measures to ensure that the immunity of the Organization, its officials and experts, as well as the inviolability of its archives and documents, are fully respected.” [emphasis added]

Refusing to be cowed, on February 6 the committee held a hearing, “In Defense of Scientific Integrity: Examining the IARC Monograph Programme and Glyphosate Review.” Evidence presented revealed that the monograph program is an antiquated approach that simply tries to determine from laboratory studies whether a particular chemical might cause cancer in test animals, even if only at ridiculously high levels that no human would or could ever be exposed to in the real world.

IARC performs no actual risk assessments that examine the potency of a substance to humans or the level of exposure at which the substance might actually have an adverse effect on people. It thus places bacon, sausage, plutonium and sunlight together in Group 1, its highest risk category: “definitely carcinogenic.” This provides no useful information from a public health perspective, but does give ammunition to activists who want to stoke fear and get chemicals they dislike banned.

IARC’s Group 2B carcinogens include caffeic acid, which is found in coffee, tea, and numerous healthy, must-eat fruits and vegetables, including apples, blueberries, broccoli, kale and onions. This group also includes acetaldehyde, which is found in bread, ginkgo balboa and aloe vera, lead Science Committee witness Dr. Timothy Pastoor noted in his testimony.

As Pastor also pointed out during the hearing, countless chemicals could theoretically cause cancer in humans at extremely high doses – but are completely harmless at levels encountered in our daily lives.

But it’s not just IARC’s overall approach that raises questions. As investigative journalists David Zaruk and Kate Kelland discovered, serious allegations have also been raised regarding the integrity of IARC’s review process. These include evidence that IARC deleted or manipulated data – and covered up major conflicts of interest by agency panel members who were employed by environmental activists and mass tort plaintiff attorneys who are targeting the very chemicals the panelists were reviewing and judging.

IARC’s latest quarry is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. The principal ingredient in the weed killer RoundUp, glyphosate is vital in modern agriculture, especially no-till farming.

The European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German Institute for Risk Assessment, US Environmental Protection Agency and other experts all found that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic. So did the 25-year, multi-agency US Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which analyzed data on more than 89,000 farmers, commercial applicators, other glyphosate users and their spouses.

IARC alone says glyphosate is likely a cancer-causing agent – contradicting every other regulatory and reputable scientific body around the world. How could it possibly reach such a different conclusion?

According to Zaruk, Kelland and committee members, IARC deliberately ignored the AHS analysis. The chairman of the IARC working group on glyphosate later admitted in a sworn deposition that this study would have “altered IARC’s analysis.”

When an animal pathology report clearly said researchers “unanimously” agreed glyphosate had not caused abnormal growths in mice they had studied, IARC deleted the problematical sentence.

In other cases, IARC panelists inserted new statistical analyses that effectively reversed a study’s original finding, or quietly changed critical language exonerating the herbicide.

Meanwhile, Dr. Christopher Portier, the “consulting expert” for the working group that labeled glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing, admitted in his own sworn testimony that – just a few days after IARC announced its guilty verdict – he signed a contract to serve as consultant to a law firm that is suing the chemical’s manufacturer (Monsanto) based on that verdict. Portier collected at least $160,000 just for his initial preparatory work.

Adding to the confusion and collusion, say Committee members, Linda Birnbaum’s $690-million-per-year National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (in the National Institutes of Health) has been collaborating with the same government agencies, pressure groups, trial lawyers and yet another anti-chemical activist organization, the Ramazzini Institute in Italy.

This is not science. It is corruption distortion and fraud – supported by our tax dollars and used to get important chemicals off the market.

The end result, if not the goal, is to undermine public confidence in science-based risk assessments, lend credibility to activist campaigns claiming numerous chemicals contaminate our foods and poison our bodies, and enable predatory tort lawyers to get rich suing manufacturers and driving them into bankruptcy.

Dr. Wild’s letters clearly suggest that IARC views the Science Committee’s concerns about the agency’s lack of scientific integrity and transparency as irrelevant – as a mere irritant, a minor threat to his agency’s unbridled power … and something the US government will ultimately do nothing to correct.

We will soon find out whether IARC is right – or if Congress is finally ready to play hardball with this unethical UN agency.

It’s also an important test for congressional oversight, spine and intestinal fortitude on holding other deep state agencies accountable for how they spend our money, what kind of science or pseudo-science they support and conduct, and how they will affect or even determine the public policies that in so many ways are the foundation of our economy, livelihoods and living standards.

PS: The Science Committee has also discovered that Vladimir Putin’s Internet Research Agency engaged in significant hacking, to inflame social media and instigate discord over US energy development and climate change policies – while Putin cronies laundered millions to fund radical green organizations. That too must be addressed by Congress and administrative agencies, including the Justice Department.

Via email

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

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5 March, 2018

Warmists admit their data is crap

But they have to do so carefully, of course. They go to great lengths to show that available meteorological data is too rough to make precise and fine-grained quantitative generalizations.

But bad as the data is, it does truly show global warming happening, they say. But that it ridiculous. The generalizations put out by Warmists are very fine -- in hundredths of a degree Celsius. They would normally be able to show no net climate change at all without reference to such very fine measurements.

Yet it is precisely such fine measurements that the authors below show as unjustifiable with the existing data

By "Towards a global land surface climate fiducial reference measurements network" they mean that we badly need a truly scientific network of temperature monitoring stations

Towards a global land surface climate fiducial reference measurements network

P. W. Thorne et al.

Abstract

There is overwhelming evidence that the climate system has warmed since the instigation of instrumental meteorological observations. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the evidence for warming was unequivocal. However, owing to imperfect measurements and ubiquitous changes in measurement networks and techniques, there remain uncertainties in many of the details of these historical changes. These uncertainties do not call into question the trend or overall magnitude of the changes in the global climate system. Rather, they act to make the picture less clear than it could be, particularly at the local scale where many decisions regarding adaptation choices will be required, both now and in the future. A set of high-quality long-term fiducial reference measurements of essential climate variables will enable future generations to make rigorous assessments of future climate change and variability, providing society with the best possible information to support future decisions. Here we propose that by implementing and maintaining a suitably stable and metrologically well-characterized global land surface climate fiducial reference measurements network, the present-day scientific community can bequeath to future generations a better set of observations. This will aid future adaptation decisions and help us to monitor and quantify the effectiveness of internationally agreed mitigation steps. This article provides the background, rationale, metrological principles, and practical considerations regarding what would be involved in such a network, and outlines the benefits which may accrue. The challenge, of course, is how to convert such a vision to a long-term sustainable capability providing the necessary well-characterized measurement series to the benefit of global science and future generations.

SOURCE

Zambia taps climate fund to battle worsening drought

What a lot of crap. You can't forecast droughts and floods. If you can, every farmer in Australia would like to hear from you

Zambian farmers facing more extreme weather are set to get better early warning and weather information to help them cope, as part of a new grant from the Green Climate Fund.

In a funding round announced this week, the international climate fund approved $32 million(R381.53 million) toward a broader effort by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme to help shore up food security and keep farmers from slipping into poverty.

The UN agencies had already raised $125 million toward the effort, which aims to help fight poverty among about 940,000 farmers hit by extreme weather in Zambia, according to Janet Rogan, a UNDP representative in the country.

The effort aims to help farmers plan for climate risks, make their farming more resilient and diversified and give them better access to markets, said Simon Pollock, a spokesman for the Green Climate Fund (GCF), in an email interview.

“In addition, this intervention is specifically designed to create economic opportunities for women,” Pollock told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The project targets 16 particularly climate-vulnerable provinces in the country, where worsening droughts and flooding have been a problem.

Zambia, like many of its southern African neighbours, is struggling with strengthening climate impacts in the face of already widespread poverty.

According to the 2016 UNDP Human Development Report, about 60 percent of the country’s people live below the poverty line, more than 40 percent of those in extreme poverty.

The report says 70 percent of Zambians rely on agriculture for a living, and agriculture, forestry and fishing contribute 24 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Eric Chipeta, an energy and environmental analyst in Zambia for UNDP, said the effort would, for instance, provide Zambian farmers with insurance that issues automatic payouts when certain rainfall or temperature thresholds are passed, and crops are presumed dead or damaged.

“The initiative will go a long way to strengthen the capacity of farmers to plan for climate risks (and) provide the opportunity for weather index insurance even in times of poor rains,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Zambia has seen increasingly unpredictable weather, including drought this year that hit at the time when maize – the country’s staple crop – began putting out tassels, Chipeta said. Drought at that point can cut harvests significantly, experts say.

In many areas of Zambia, “there is a high rate of poverty, meaning efforts to end hunger and poverty are at risk if we don’t take immediate action to adapt agricultural practices to changing climate conditions”, Chola Chabala, Zambia’s permanent secretary for National Development Planning, said in a press statement.

Chipeta said that the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather already has severely affected Zambian farmers.

The GCF-backed initiative will be rolled out with support from national institutions such as Zambia's Ministry of Agriculture and the Zambia Meteorological Department, Chipeta said.

SOURCE


Manufacturers CEO: “Suing oil companies is a waste of time”

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) President and CEO Jay Timmons authored an op-ed in the Washington Times where he highlighted New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deeply misguided and politically-motivated plan to sue manufacturers and divest public pension funds of fossil fuel investments.

Ignoring the fact that manufacturing jobs have been on the rise in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been insistent in driving his agenda forward in an effort to score political points with well-connected activists and wealthy donors by filing a frivolous lawsuit. Timmons writes:

As for Mr. de Blasio’s new lawsuits against manufacturers, they, too, will do little to help the people of his city. Ultimately, there is no legal basis to support these politicized lawsuits, which attempt to use public nuisance laws to blame manufacturers in the United States for the impacts on infrastructure from climate change.

Climate change is a shared challenge, particularly in a city of more than 8.5 million energy-using residents. The courts have found time and again that the political branches of government — Congress and the executive branch — are the proper regulators of carbon emissions, not the courts.

Make no mistake: all of this is part of a larger effort designed by a cabal of activists to take down manufacturing in America while making plenty of headlines but little positive difference. That is why the National Association of Manufacturers recently launched the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, which aims to expose these bad actors and their efforts to expand their legal attacks from New York to Boulder to San Francisco.

During the NAM’s 2018 State of Manufacturing tour, Timmons appeared on John Catsimatidis’ New York radio show The Cats Roundtable, where he warned of the challenges the manufacturing sector may face should trial lawyers continue going after crucial sectors in the U.S. economy:

We’ve got this case where the mayor is trying to promote [public nuisance lawsuits] that literally will help no one but the politicians and the trial lawyers. It certainly doesn’t help the taxpayers, and doesn’t help the pensioners. We want to make sure that this is not just a template for trial lawyers to come after manufacturers of all types throughout the economy.

Timmons also participated in an interview with New York radio host Fred Dicker on the Fred Dicker: Focus on The State Capitol show where he called Mayor de Blasio’s lawsuit against manufacturers “malpractice by elected officials” and a “waste of resources”:

Climate change is a major problem that we all must work together to solve–but it is inappropriate to blame it entirely on the manufacturing companies that we all rely on. Mayor de Blasio should be looking out for his constituents, not enriching trial lawyers and appeasing environmentalists. His abuse of power takes away opportunities from the very people he’s supposed to lift up. The climate lawsuit is a waste of resources that sends a horrible message to New York job creators.

The NAM’s Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP) is taking a stand against politicians like Mayor Bill de Blasio and has just filed requests with the city under the New York Freedom of Information Law so that taxpayers are granted full transparency in these misguided efforts and can more fully understand the true objectives of the litigation.

SOURCE

Expedition to 'Hidden' Antarctic Ecosystem Turned Back by Global ~~warming~~ cooling

Scientists on their way to investigate a mysterious region of Antarctica's seafloor, hidden by thick ice for 120,000 years, have run into an obstacle: Their research ship has been forced to turn north, after dense sea ice prevented it from reaching the southern Larsen C ice-shelf.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) announced today (March 2) that the captain of the research vessel RRS James Clark Ross had made the "difficult decision" to turn back from the Larsen C region after encountering pack sea ice up to 16 feet (5 meters) thick.

The thick ice has slowed the ship to a few miles a day, and they were running out of time in the Antarctic's brief summer to reach the Larsen C area and complete a marine survey. The seafloor alongside the ice-shelf was exposed last year after the calving of the giant iceberg known as A-68. [In Photos: Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf Through Time]

"We knew that getting through the sea ice to reach Larsen C would be difficult," BAS expedition leader and marine biologist Katrin Linse said in a statement. "Naturally, we are disappointed not to get there, but safety must come first."

"The captain and crew have been fantastic and pulled out all the stops to get us to the ice shelf, but our progress became too slow, with just 8 kilometers [5 miles] traveled in 24 hours, and we still had over 400 kilometers [250 miles] to travel," Linse said. "Mother Nature has not been kind to us on our mission."

The expedition team on board the RRS James Clark Ross, hailing from nine polar research institutes in Europe and Australia, was put together at very short notice. They had hoped to be the first to survey the region of seafloor exposed by the 2,240-square-mile (5,800 square kilometers) iceberg, which separated from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in July of last year.

The ecosystems of the seafloor beneath Antarctica's floating ice shelves are unique and rarely studied: According to BAS scientists, the seafloor exposed by the A-68 iceberg has been completely covered by the ice shelf for up to 120,000 years, in total darkness and connected to the open ocean by only minimal currents.

The expedition scientists were rushing to carry out a marine survey of the exposed area before it becomes increasingly bathed in sunlight as the A-68 iceberg moves away. Although the sea ice in the area is thick enough to turn back the research ship, it won't be enough to stop sunlight from reaching the exposed seafloor, BAS spokesperson Athena Dinar told Live Science. "The wind will move the sea ice, and the sea will be exposed to sunlight."

Scientists will now have to wait out the Antarctic winter until the next attempt to reach the edge of the ice shelf early next year, by an expedition led by Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute on board their research vessel, the RV Polarstern, BAS representatives said in a statement.

SOURCE

New coal mine: Australian Labor Party leader shown up as an opportunist too smart by half

The Adani project has become a turning point in the contest over political, cultural and financial power in Australia. It is an iconic test of strength between the growing progressive/green lobby and the Turnbull government-backed pro-development forces with long-run consequences.

“This is the biggest environmental campaign ever run in this country and one of the biggest campaigns in the world,” former Australian Conservation Foundation director Geoffrey Cousins told The Australian. “It has got international attention from The New York Times to The Financial Times.

“It is a landmark event. The campaign is about climate change, global warming and protecting the Great Barrier Reef. Adani would be the biggest coalmine in this country. In my view the project is dead in the water, but you don’t stop until it sinks. Nobody is going to fund this mine. Financial institutions watch their reputation and if you damage your reputation then your shareholder value drops.”

The Labor Party, though beset by internal divisions, is essentially working to undermine Adani with its mantra that the project “doesn’t stand up financially” — a blatant appeal to no confidence that prejudges a commercial result about an approved project.

Political opponents are playing with fire. This issue has consequences for the viability of regulatory approvals, foreign investment, the coal industry and regional Queensland’s economic outlook.

The proof of the near triumph of anti-Adani sentiment is the convoluted, expedient yet unmistakeable shift of Bill Shorten. Once pro-Adani, the Opposition Leader has been galvanised by the Batman by-election and public mood to tilt his position against the project while still paying lip service to pro-coal opinion in regional Queensland.

Shorten’s character as an opportunist has rarely been so embarrassingly exposed. On display is his compulsion to offer conflicting messages to different constituencies for electoral gain, the antithesis of any politics of principle.

In the process, Shorten got caught out from his trip and dialogue with a calculating Cousins, whose ruthless skill as an environmental advocate is legend. The two principals have different versions but, according to Cousins, Shorten not only sought advice but signalled his willingness to change Labor policy — instead of letting Adani die from lack of funds, Shorten lurched towards a policy that he would revoke its licence as prime minister.

This would have been filled with traps — Shorten would have been cast as killing agent for a project that he feels cannot survive anyway. Whether Shorten reassessed or was persuaded by colleagues, by week’s end the flirtation with Cousins was in a polite retreat of sorts.

Cousins explained what happened from his dialogue with Shorten: “I believe he wanted to have a firmer policy on Adani but in some way he was held back by his colleagues. He had given me a precise timeline about the announcement of his stance. He told me he wouldn’t do it in his National Press Club address at the start of the year but that I shouldn’t be concerned about that. He said he would do it in Queensland and would make the announcement in Queensland the following week.

“He subsequently rang me to explain that he would need more time. I think he was having difficulty with his colleagues. I said OK. I mean, that’s his job. But I felt it was best to keep the pressure on. My experience is that keeping the pressure on is the only course that ever delivers anything.”

In late January, Cousins had hosted Shorten on a $17,000 tour of the reef and a flight over the Adani mine site. “Shorten could see precisely where he was snorkelling and what had happened to the reef,” Cousins said. “We flew over the mine site and there’s nothing there, just a couple of buildings, it’s a lot of nonsense.”

Given the delay, Cousins decided to turn up the heat. He dropped his bombshell on the ABC’s 7.30 with Leigh Sales on Tuesday night. Cousins said Shorten assured him “when we are in government, if the evidence is as compelling as it appears now, we will revoke the licence in accordance with the law”.

This is what Cousins wanted to hear: a different and tougher Labor stand that he hoped might settle the issue. Cousins said there was no mistake — the statement was delivered precisely this way at least a half-dozen times. Shorten believes this version is highly exaggerated: he wanted assistance and advice from Cousins; he has no time for the mine; he believes it will fall over; he wanted to explore options but he will not create sovereign risks or break contracts.

According to Cousins, Shorten said he would take the issue to the shadow cabinet. Cousins also gave Shorten legal opinions obtained by the ACF to the effect that under the law, revocation can occur if an issue is revealed that was not identified when approval was initially given that would otherwise have resulted in that approval being denied. Given this law, Cousins said, “in this situation the risk sits with the company — it is not a sovereign risk”.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg repudiates any claim the grounds exist for revocation. Frydenberg told Sky News this week his advice was that no such new information was available.

“Here’s the critical point,” Frydenberg said. “That information is not at hand. So there is now not a case for the revocation under section 145. Shorten knows that but because of the Batman by-election he’s trying to be all things to all people.”

Frydenberg’s advice exposes the high risk Shorten would run if he pledged revocation or to explore revocation in office. This would constitute a short-term fix but a major folly. A number of senior Labor figures warn of the serious political risks in this position. It would be a gift to the Turnbull government with the potential to swing sentiment against the anti-Adani camp.

Despite Cousins’s argument, it would raise certain issues of sovereign risk. The government would mount this argument. It would assert Shorten was prepared to pose a sovereign investment risk in the cause of winning green votes in the inner city.

The politically smart position for Labor is obvious — let the project expire because of lack of funding but avoid any pledge from opposition or act in office that sees Labor assume accountability for revocation. This would open a Pandora’s box — if Labor moved to kill the Carmichael mine then what other coal proposals or ventures would be safe and what would be the investment consequences?

As a governing party presiding over a substantial coal industry by world standards, Labor must build product discrimination from the Greens based on a coherent policy framework.

The Shorten-Cousins rapport has not been widely known within the Labor Party and is now an issue raising questions about Shorten’s judgment. The Carmichael mine has been through a protracted series of environmental law provisions and is approved subject to 36 strict conditions.

Under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, there are precisely defined circumstances that govern suspension or revocation of federal environmental approval. Opposition environment spokesman Tony Burke told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas this week that under the law, as minister, “you must never prejudge a decision”. If so, you risk legal action from the aggrieved company. No prizes for guessing where Burke is coming from.

As Frydenberg said: “The Carmichael mine has gone through the process. It has been challenged in the courts multiple times and has been upheld. It is a mine that is in the Galilee Basin, it’s 300km inland in a dry and dusty part of Queensland, and it has received strong support from local mayors, from the unions and local communities.”

In short, revocation of the Carmichael mine on environmental grounds is a daunting task loaded with traps. Comparisons with the Franklin dam under the Hawke government are nonsense. That predated the EPBC Act and the politics since are transformed — because of the EPBC Act, no political party can make a firm commitment to use environmental law to stop a project.

This was the message opposition infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese sent repeatedly this week to anyone with ears.

“The Adani coalmine has been approved,” Albanese said. “It has been approved under state and federal approvals. The question is what can Labor do? What Labor can do is … make sure that there is no subsidy of the rail line or other infrastructure for what is a private project. If that doesn’t occur, and the company has said it themselves, the project will fall over and be unable to get finance. At the moment, it just doesn’t have finance. They have tried to get it everywhere and it just doesn’t stack up.”

Shorten said of the project yesterday: “I make no secret that I don’t like it very much. I don’t think the project is going to materialise. The Adani mining company seem to have missed plenty of deadlines. It doesn’t seem to stack up financially, commercially or indeed environmentally.” But Shorten ruled out any breaking of contracts and that also meant any action as prime minister to revoke the licence.

Understand what is happening — federal Labor wants to destroy this project but keep its hands clean from any financial or political backlash.

It knows “Adani” is a dirty word from the focus groups. Indeed, Frydenberg knows as well and is careful now only to use the term “Carmichael”.

Labor’s hostility must become a material factor in the final assessments made by the company. With polls pointing to a change of government, Labor’s campaign makes successful financing a more remote possibility. Shorten’s tougher position only intensifies the stakes involved in the Batman by-election. How will Shorten look if Labor loses despite his intensification of the campaign against the Adani mine, his trip to the region, his dialogue with Cousins and the belief by the former ACF director that Shorten was ready to play the revocation card?

The green lobby is desperate to defeat the mine on environmental and climate change grounds. While these grounds have sway with public opinion, they are the weakest instruments to secure Carmichael’s defeat — the real pressure points are lack of finance and political “no confidence” from the alternative government despite Adani’s success in meeting the formal approvals.

The mine is a long way from the Great Barrier Reef. Yet arguments about its alleged proximity to the reef are irrelevant in climate change terms since to the extent emissions are corroding the reef that is a universal, not a local, phenomenon.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan attacked Labor’s hypocrisy, saying many of the delays have sprung directly from politics. “This mine is the cornerstone to unlocking the Galilee Basin,” Canavan told The Australian. “There is a window of opportunity at present in the world coal markets with the price high and renewed confidence. But the risk for Australia is that we will miss this window and this opportunity essentially because of political factors.”

Canavan said the decision by the Queensland Labor government last year to veto any potential loan from the $5 billion Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility for the rail line to the port had a “huge impact” on the overall venture. The company wanted the funds and wanted governments “to have skin in the game”.

“This wasn’t just a backflip,” he said. “The Queensland government gave Adani repeated assurances they would support federal government loans to the rail line.” This was now a lost option courtesy of a political decision.

Queensland Labor’s decision has been reinforced by Shorten’s tougher stance and the recent warning by opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler that Carmichael was not in the national interest and that proposed new mines in the Galilee Basin were also not financially viable.

Canavan concedes that Adani’s “financial options are limited”. He warns that “future investors will look at the way Adani has been treated and have to reconsider investment in Australia”. He fears that the opportunity presented by higher coal prices will be missed and is frustrated at the extent of opposition to Carmichael from other coal companies operating in Australia.

The objective of the Greens is to use Carmichael as the instrument to terminate any new coalmines in Australia. Victory will strengthen their hands for the next battle and solidify the hostility of local financial institutions to finance coal projects.

Meanwhile, there seems no end to Shorten’s dissembling — he declared yesterday that “we are a resource nation, we are a mining nation”, while he passes judgment as a politician on the finances of Adani in an effort to ensure its funding cannot materialise.

Cousins, who has lobbied the Indians and the Chinese against the project, said: “They have no money. They were briefing journalists they could get money from China but the Chinese banks have come out rejecting this. The financial community in Australia accepts climate change science totally. Adani’s business case just doesn’t stack up.”

If Cousins’s predictions are realised, the killing of Adani after it passed all state and federal approvals will bring progressive and green momentum to a zenith. On display will be its moral power, its ability to smash through government and court approvals, its capture of the financial sector and its delivery of a decisive blow to the once-strong pro-development, pro-coal ethos.

Can you imagine the scale of political conflict that will erupt in this country if Adani defies such hostility and somehow manages to proceed with finance?

It is also an insight into our morality as a nation — the moral case that Carmichael will help many thousands of poor people in India gets almost no traction; indeed, it is mocked by progressive politicians who insist there is an alternative over-arching morality — stopping the coal industry in the cause of saving the planet from global warming.

SOURCE

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

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

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4 March, 2018

Global Warming Fail: Winter Storm Humiliates Mayor Announcing Ban on Certain Cars

With her city under siege by one of the worse winter storms in years, and the army called out to deal with a rare snow paralyzing transportation systems, the mayor of Rome should have had plenty of things to do for her people.

But for Virginia Raggi, the most important thing was to be more than 6,000 miles away, in the sunny climes of Mexico, announcing a ban on one of her city’s most popular private forms of transportation.

In other words, the global warming gang was once again being humiliated by weather that refused to cooperate with the leftist agenda.

Even more humiliating for the citizens of Rome, though, was that Reggi chose the site on foreign soil to make the coming ban public on Monday — before she even made the announcement at home.

“Rome has decided to ban the use of diesel cars from its historical centers from 2024,” Raggi told the environmentalists, drawing a round of applause.

“My citizens still don’t know,” she added laughing. (The Daily Caller has the video here. The announcement comes about the 5-minute mark.)

While the might not have known what their 39-year-old mayor was up to in Ciudad de Mexico, Romans were getting a taste of global warming at home. (The environmentalist crowd has been trying to call it “climate change” ever since they realized the weather was something they couldn’t lie about, but everyone knows what they’re really selling.)

And this is what global warming looked like in Rome this week, while Raggi was regaling her fellow greens.

According to The Associated Press:

“The Arctic storm dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ saw temperatures across much of Europe fall Monday to their lowest level this winter and even brought a rare snowstorm to Rome, paralyzing the city and giving its residents the chance to ski, sled and build snowmen in its famous parks and piazzas.

“Rome’s schools were ordered closed, while train, plane and bus services were crippled. Italy’s civil protection agency even mobilized the army to help clear slush-covered streets as a city used to mild winters was covered by a thick blanket of snow.”

And this is the time Reggi uses to announce a ban on diesel engines – and do it thousands of miles from her shivering city.

That was no small order to spring on a supposedly free people. While diesel passenger vehicles are rare in the United States, about two-thirds of all cars sold in Italy are diesel engines, according to the U.K. Guardian.

And Rome has an unusually high number of automobiles – about 2.3 million — compared to its population. That works out to just more than 800 for every 1,000 inhabitants, Reggi told the conference.

(In the United States, by contrast, there were just under 450 private vehicles per 1,000 people in 2012, according to The Atlantic.)

One of the reasons the number of vehicles in Rome is so high is a previous, heavy-handed government action to control the population banned only cars with odd-numbered or even-numbered license plate on alternating days, according to the Guardian.

The Roman response? “To skirt the alternate days regulation, many families buy a used car with a different number plate,” the Guardian reported.

Now, Rome obviously has great number of treasures from antiquity – monuments of marble that are being damaged by air pollution mainly caused by vehicle exhaust. And if Roman authorities wanted to present the fight in that light, they might be on firmer ground. Tourism is a major part of the Roman economy, and everyone can understand that tourists won’t be spending money in Rome if the treasures aren’t protected.

But that kind of dollars-and-euros reasoning wouldn’t satisfy the virtue-signaling ethos of modern environmentalism, which presents its climate change/global warming stance as a measure of moral standing.

So, to fight global warming, in the middle of one of the worst winter storms her city can remember, the mayor of Rome jets to Mexico City to announce a ban on the type of vehicles her people drive the most.

Even after a previous attempt to limit half the vehicles ended up resulting in more of them on the roads.

It was a humiliating moment for Rome. It was a humiliating moment for the global warming gang, even if they should be getting used to this kind of thing by now.

And it should have been humiliating for Reggi, whether she realizes it yet or not.

SOURCE

BPA Safety Confirmed Again

Well, there’s yet more evidence out there that the hysteria about the chemical Bisphenol-A (more commonly called BPA) was just a bunch of hooey promoted by green activists who want BPA and many other useful and perfectly safe chemicals banned.

I’ve written about BPA (here, here, and here, and for a useful fact sheet, go here) for years, trying to explain that BPA isn’t the scary thing it’s made out to be and now a two-year government study of rats has found that there’s really nothing to worry about.

The study’s results are explained in an impressive 249-page report, which was a joint effort by the National Toxicology Program, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. The study’s researchers are clear: "BPA produced minimal effects" and that the effects they did see appeared to be "within the range of normal biological variation” which means they could have occurred by chance.

NPR reports:

The finding bolsters the Food and Drug Administration's 2014 assessment that water bottles and other products containing BPA are not making people sick.

"[It] supports our determination that currently authorized uses of BPA continue to be safe for consumers," said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, in a statement issued by the agency.

The study's findings are at odds with claims by advocacy groups that exposure to BPA is associated with a wide range of health effects including cancer, obesity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Indeed. Anti-chemical and environmental activists have, for years, been saying that BPA causes a whole host of health problems and have pointed to studies that suggest the same. Yet, those studies have always found correlations, not actual causation. Finding correlations between a substance and a disease can be helpful, but these sorts of studies are limited and are never viewed by the scientific community as “proof” that a substance is bad or harmful.

Consider this example of activists’ scary claims against BPA. Activists often say that BPA causes obesity because sodas are bottled in plastic containers that contain BPA. Okay, fine, plastic soda bottles do contain barely detectable levels of BPA, but those bottles also contain a whole lot of sugary drink. Might it be the cola that’s contributing to someone’s weight problem, over the trace amounts of BPA they’re ingesting by drinking a soda?

But, wait. Is it really the soda? One must also consider the fact that people who drink large quantities of high-calorie, sugary drinks usually don’t have great eating habits. Could it be the Big Mac or greasy pizza they’re eating along with that soda that’s causing this person’s weight problems?

Yes, it might be that, or it might be the fact that people who don’t care much about eating well, also tend not to exercise. Perhaps it’s the lack of exercise?

See how this works? It’s very easy to make correlations, but finding the actual causes of disorders, like obesity, is a bit tougher.

NPR also explains that many of the studies pushed by the anti-BPA crowd don’t meet the basics of scientific standards:

Critics of the chemical point to numerous small studies done by academic researchers. These studies, usually of rodents, have suggested that BPA can disrupt the body's hormone system in ways that affect health.

But studies that met the FDA's Good Laboratory Practice standards have suggested that BPA is safe at levels encountered by consumers. So the agency has approved its use in most consumer products.

This study should reassure consumers that BPA is a perfectly safe chemical that’s used by manufacturers to make products safer, more durable, and less expensive. But consumers should also consider who is to blame for this decade-long campaign of misinformation about BPA: anti-chemical activists groups like the Environmental Working Group, the Breast Cancer Fund, and the Safer Chemicals, Healthier Families Campaign (which is really just a collection of about 200 radical environmental and anti-business organizations), so called mommy blogs like Mamavation and so many individual activists who stoked consumer fears while ignoring the safety record of BPA. These groups are prolific pushers of junk science, they like and fabricate and terrorize all consumers in an effort to take product development and safety back decades—and they don’t care how many people they harm as a result.

Consumers should also pause to consider the cost of manufacturing changes as consumer demand grew for BPA-free products. Moms, in particular, should feel angry about all the false and baseless claims that children had been harmed, which lead not only to a whole lot of unpleasant anxiety but to the FDA banning BPA in all children’s products, and as a result increased the price on these products.

Consumers should also feel outraged that many manufacturers, instead of pushing back on the activists, capitulated to the demands and then simply switched out BPA for a chemical called BPS, which, as IWF Senior Fellow Angela Logomasini explained, is actually a more potent “endocrine disrupter” that the human body does not metabolize as easily as BPA. Is that improvement? No, that’s a cynical gesture by product manufacturers to give the activists a win while appearing to “care” for human health and mother earth. Wouldn’t it have been easier to fight back and stand up for product safety?

Moms should also be disgusted that they paid extra to get BPA-free products—money that could have gone into college funds or to pay for family vacations, for food, clothing, heat. Eventually, every thing became BPA-free, but consumers paid for those products to be redesigned and reformulated. Again, the consumer lost.

Who won? The anti-chemical activists who got rich off needlessly worried moms and other consumers who believed the myth that BPA was harmful because these groups refused to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that BPA is safe.

We can’t turn back the clock on the BPA farce, but hopefully consumers will be wise to the tactics employed by activists—tactics that do nothing to protect consumers or improve the environment.

SOURCE

UK Electricity prices hit 10-year high as cheap wind power wanes

The UK’s electricity market has followed the lead of surging wholesale gas prices this week to reach weekend highs not seen in a decade.

The power market has avoided the severe volatility which ripped through the gas market this week because strong winds helped to supply ample electricity to meet demand.

But as freezing winds begin to wane this weekend National Grid will need to use more gas-fired power plants to fill the gap, meaning the cost of generating electricity will surge.

Jamie Stewart, an energy expert at ICIS, said the price for base load power this weekend has already soared to around £80 per megawatt hour, almost double what one would expect to see for a weekend in March.

National Grid will increase its use of expensive gas-fired power by an extra 7GW to make up for low wind power, which is forecast to drop by two-thirds in the days ahead.

Wind speeds helped to protect the electricity system from huge price hikes on the neighbouring gas market on Thursday, by generating as much as 13GW by some estimates.

However, by the end of Friday this output will fall by almost half to 7GW and slump to lows of 3GW by Saturday, Mr Stewart said.

The power price was already higher than usual at £53/MWh last weekend even before the full force of the storms hit Britain. That was still well above the more typical "mid-40s” price for this time of year, Mr Stewart added.

The twin price spikes across the UK’s energy markets has raised fears of household bill hikes in the months ahead. One industry source said that smaller suppliers may be forced to shut under the pressure of the market surge.

Late on Thursday Big Six supplier E.on quietly pushed through a dual-fuel tariff increase of 2.6%, to drive the average bill up to £1,153 from 19 April.

Energy supply minnow Bulb also increased prices by £24 a year for its 300,000 customers, blaming rising wholesale costs.

The UK has suffered two gas price shocks this winter, which is the first since the owner of British Gas shuttered the country’s largest gas storage facility at Rough off the Yorkshire coast.

A string of gas supply outages this week cut supplies to the UK just as freezing conditions drove demand for gas-heating a third higher than normal for this time of year.

It was the first time in almost ten years that National Grid was forced to warn the market that supplies would fall short of demand unless factories agree to use less.

The twelve-year market price highs followed a pre-Christmas spike when the UK’s most important North Sea pipeline shut down at the same time as a deadly explosion at Europe’s most important gas hub, based in the Austrian town of Baumgarten

SOURCE

Ross ice shelf in Antarctica is freezing and not melting: Pesky!

The under-side of one of the largest floating ice shelves in the southern oceans is not melting as expected, according to experts.

Scientists drilling along the western coast of Antarctica found that the Ross Ice Shelf is actually freezing - but they have no idea why.

The finding might explain why the ice shelf is considered more stable than many of the region's other floating shelves.

If sea water freezes to the bottom of the ice periodically, this would help shore up the shelf and protect it from thinning.

Researchers from New Zealand used a hot water drill to dig deep into the floating ice shelf, roughly the size of Spain and around half a mile thick (1km).

Experts then lowered a camera into the hole they had melted, using a thermometer and other instruments to study the ice shelf's history.

Rather than finding the evidence they expected to confirm the recent melting, they came across jagged icy crystals.

If the shelf was melting, the sides of the borehole would have instead been smooth.

'It blew our minds,' said Christina Hulbe, a glaciologist from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, who co-led the expedition, speaking to New Scientist.

The team, which included hot water drillers, glaciologists, biologists, seismologists and oceanographers, set up camp around 200 miles (350 km) from the ice shelf's front.

They worked from November 2017 through to January, supported by tracked vehicles and, when the notorious local weather permitted, Twin Otter aircraft.

As with all polar oceanography, getting to the ocean was often the most difficult part.

In this case, the team faced the complex task of melting a bore hole, only 25 centimetres (ten inches) in diameter, through hundreds of metres of ice.

Writing in The Conversation, Dr Hulbe added: 'Once the instruments were lowered more than 300m (980 ft) down the bore hole it becomes the easiest oceanography in the world.

'You don’t get seasick and there is little bio-fouling to corrupt measurements.

'There is, however, plenty of ice that can freeze up your instruments or freeze the hole shut.'

It's not exactly clear why the Ross Ice Shelf is freezing, when others in the region are thawing and even sheering.

The team has left behind a number of instruments down the hole to continue to monitor the health of the ice shelf.

They are now looking for signs within the shelf to see if it has had past melting episodes.

If Ross and four other ice shelves in the south are unable to hold back the ice from melting, it is estimated global sea levels could rise by up to ten feet (three metres).

SOURCE

After uproar, EPA’s Pruitt says he plans to fly coach: ‘There’s a change coming’

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, facing ongoing criticism about his taxpayer-funded, first-class travels, says he plans to spend more time in coach.

‘‘There’s a change coming,’’ EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told CBS News in a podcast set to air Friday.

Pruitt has faced a public backlash and inquiries from Congress in recent weeks, after The Washington Post detailed dozens of first-class flights Pruitt had taken through last summer, and his penchant for staying at luxury hotels.

In the CBS interview, Pruitt stopped short of saying he plans to fly in coach on all future trips, and he reiterated that his personal security detail recommended last year that he begin flying first class because of the number of threats he has faced.

‘‘Look, there have been incidents on planes. There have been incidents in airports, and those incidents, you know, occurred, and they are of different types,’’ Pruitt said. ‘‘These threats have been unprecedented from the very beginning, and the quantity and type are unprecedented.’’

Pruitt said he had a ‘‘responsibility’’ to listen to the advice of agency security officials, including one who wrote a memo to superiors last May after an incident in which a fellow traveler allegedly approached the EPA leader using ‘‘vulgar’’ and ‘‘threatening’’ language. The memo argued that Pruitt should be allowed to fly first or business class to provide ‘‘a buffer’’ between him and the public.

‘‘Now, what I’ve done going forward is I’ve instructed those same individuals to accommodate those security threats in alternate ways — up to and including flying coach going forward,’’ Pruitt told CBS.

One option agency officials have explored is seating Pruitt in the bulkhead row, which has more legroom than a traditional coach seat and also would allow him to be among the first passengers to disembark.

The EPA has refused to release the written ‘‘waiver’’ that allows Pruitt to fly regularly in first or business class, based on security concerns. But since Pruitt began flying in upscale cabins last spring — a practice that sets him apart both from his predecessors and other current Cabinet members — he has logged numerous trips and amassed a hefty set of expenses.

On one occasion, he took a $1,641.43 first-class flight from Washington D.C. to New York for a pair of television interviews. Soon after, taxpayers paid roughly $90,000 for Pruitt and a group of aides to travel to an international gathering in Italy, including a visit with officials in Rome.

SOURCE

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

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

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

2 March, 2018

Tell a big enough lie often enough...

There's nothing new in the guff below and a lot of lies instead. He starts out claiming the ozone hole is dangereous to us but it has just fluctuated randomly since it was first observed. It is neither increasing nor decreasing. And the rest of his assertions are on a par with that.

A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.

In a recent speech at the University of Chicago, James Anderson — a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University — warned that climate change is drastically pushing Earth back to the Eocene Epoch from 33 million BCE, when there was no ice on either pole. Anderson says current pollution levels have already catastrophically depleted atmospheric ozone levels, which absorb 98 percent of ultraviolet rays, to levels not seen in 12 million years.

Anderson’s assessment of humanity’s timeline for action is likely accurate, given that his diagnosis and discovery of Antarctica’s ozone holes led to the Montreal Protocol of 1987. Anderson’s research was recognized by the United Nations in September of 1997. He subsequently received the United Nations Vienna Convention Award for Protection of the Ozone Layer in 2005, and has been recognized by numerous universities and academic bodies for his research.

While some governments have made commitments to reduce carbon emissions (Germany has pledged to cut 95 percent of carbon emissions by 2050), Anderson warned that those measures were insufficient to stop the extinction of humanity by way of a rapidly changing climate. Instead, Anderson is calling for a Marshall Plan-style endeavor in which all of the world takes extreme measures to transition off of fossil fuels completely within the next five years.

Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industry—an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles.

SOURCE

Why scientists have modelled climate change right up to the year 2300

This would be reasonable if their models showed some correspondence with reality. But the models have predicted nothing of 21st century temperature movements so far so why should we accept any further predictions from them?

The seas will continue to rise for 300 years. That’s the conclusion of a new study, published in Nature Communications, which projects how much the sea level will rise under varying degrees of success in tackling climate change right up to the year 2300.

But 2300 is almost three centuries from now. Three centuries ago the industrial revolution hadn’t even started. This raises the question of whether, when considering present-day climate policy, there is any value at all in considering such distant futures.

After all, the Paris Agreement on climate change hasn’t set its global temperature rise targets beyond the end of the current century. And even this appears too remote a horizon to motivate emissions cuts in the near future. Therefore, Paris focuses on five-year climate policy cycles starting in 2018, which are more in line with typical political and business cycles, and in tune with our everyday concerns.

Nonetheless, multiple climate studies do consider projections of the far future. For instance, one paper estimated that, if we fail to tackle climate change, the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free all year round somewhere between 2150 and 2250. Another study looked at carbon emissions from thawing permafrost as far out as the year 2500.

The obvious criticism is that such work is mere fiction, driven by the intellectual curiosity of a small group of highly specialised scientists, rather than anything relevant to daily life. And in any case, critics might argue, won’t we figure something out in the next century or two that could tackle climate change and prove all the predictions of doom and gloom unfounded?

As is often the case, the truth is a little bit more complex.

The first thing to note is that a certain amount of climate change is already “locked in”. Our use of energy and other resources is not going to slow down any time soon, as poorer countries race to industrialise and catch up with the global leaders, while more affluent nations aim to maintain and further improve their living standards. Most people can relate to these aspirations, even if the upshot is they ensure that global emissions stay at their current high levels.

Solar and wind power will of course help, but the reality is that such technologies are still nowhere near enough to radically alter the link between emissions and economic expansion. Despite the renewables boom, 2017 saw a 2% rise in global emissions following a three-year plateau. Experts argue that making serious emissions cuts will require much more ambitious efforts across nearly all economic activities, including energy, urbanisation, infrastructure, transport, heavy industries and land use.

This brings us back to the very long-term scenarios used by climate scientists. These scenarios are actually based on credible assumptions about a large set of long-term socio-economic and technological drivers that define contrasting futures for the world as a whole. And it turns out that things which will affect future emissions and climate, like the rates of technological progress, or population and wealth growth, are likely going to be constrained within a reasonably predictable range. Even if one includes the possibility of “game-changing technologies”, for example a hypothetical new generation of much cheaper and more effective batteries for electric cars, the world is almost certainly going to stay within this range of scenarios.

SOURCE

A California Judge May Have Just Sunk All Those Climate Lawsuits Against Energy Companies

A California district court ruled Wednesday that two lawsuits to hold energy companies responsible for weather affected by climate change are more appropriate for federal court.

Judge William Alsup sent lawsuits from San Fransisco and Oakland into federal court, stating that the issue at hand was outside the state’s prevue. The move, sought by defendant fossil fuel companies, may spell disaster for the plaintiffs who argued the lawsuits should be judged under California common law.

“The scope of the worldwide predicament demands the most comprehensive view available, which in our American court system means our federal courts and our federal common law,” the ruling states, according to a Manufacturers Accountability Project (MAP) press release. “A patchwork of 50 different answers to the same fundamental global issue would be unworkable.”

The venue of three other lawsuits against energy companies are currently being considered by California District Court Judge Vince Chhabria. No indication of when Chhabria’s ruling should be expected has been given. Defendant companies have indicated they will appeal a decision that places the lawsuits in state court, however, according to Climate Liability News.

MAP, an industry initiative to uncover ties between environmental activists, lawyers and public and political figures against fossil fuels, said Alsup’s ruling “is a significant setback” to the plaintiffs and a sign that the lawsuits are “a legal dead end.”

“Precedent shows that similar cases heard in federal court have been unsuccessful for plaintiffs looking to pin the global challenge of climate change on manufacturers,” MAP Executive Director Lindsey de la Torre said in a statement.

SOURCE

National Grid warns UK is 'running out of gas' as England is put on snow red alert - Britain's highest ever weather warning - for the first time as South West faces almost TWO FEET of snow and thousands of travellers in Scotland are stranded

National Grid has warned it may not have enough gas to meet demand in Britain today, as sub-zero temperatures, icy blasts and 'blizzard-like' conditions left drivers stranded for more than 13 hours and airport passengers stuck.

The Met Office has put England under a red weather warning for snow for the first time ever, amid concerns that up to 1ft 8in could fall in the South West along with very strong winds leading to severe drifting.

Storm Emma, rolling in from the Atlantic, is meeting the Beast from the East's chilly Russia air - causing further widespread snowfall and bitter temperatures after the mercury fell as low as -16C (3F) last night.

On the first day of meteorological spring today, temperatures will drop to -11C (12F) during the day as Scotland also remains under a 'red alert' - and London Paddington train station was closed due to 'severe weather'.

British Red Cross workers provided blankets for people stranded at Glasgow Airport, which has cancelled all flights until at least 3pm today, and conditions could worsen with 60mph gusts bringing 'blizzard-like' weather.

Drivers on the M80 near Glasgow were stranded for up to 13 hours as others abandoned their vehicles, while police said 'most roads' in Lincolnshire were impassable and even snowploughs could not get through.

British Red Cross emergency response volunteers have been at Glasgow Airport supplying bedding for up to 100 people

Virgin Trains East Coast warns anyone travelling north of Newcastle should defer their journey.

TfL Rail cancels or amends services.

Northern says severe weather has left routes blocked, with delays and cancellations across whole network.

East Midlands Trains also reported alterations and cancellations.
Flights

Scottish airports have been hit by the heavy snow, with no flights to and from Glasgow Airport until 3pm.

Edinburgh Airport tweeted that most airlines had cancelled services until lunchtime.

London Gatwick Airport said it was expecting a 'large number' of cancellations and delays

London Heathrow Airport urged passengers to check with their airline before travelling

Southern trains said that due to an 8ft icicle in a tunnel at Balcolmbe, services between Brighton and Gatwick Airport were subject to delay, although engineers were working to remove it.

Major UK airports saw many flights cancelled, including Glasgow which halted all routes until 3pm today. British Red Cross emergency response volunteers were at the airport supplying bedding for up to 100 people.

Lincolnshire Police have warned people that 'most roads' in the county are impassable, and urged people not to make journeys 'unless absolutely necessary'.

The force's control room tweeted that the weather was especially bad in rural areas, adding: 'We are receiving reports that remote villages are totally cut off under 2ft of snow.'

Ten RAF vehicles are going to be used to try to take nurses and doctors to vulnerable patients in the county.

Collisions on both the north and southbound carriageways of the A34 near Tothill Services have left the road closed in both directions, South Central Ambulance Service said.

Hampshire Police urged drivers to avoid the area as the closure would be 'in place for some time'.

SOURCE

Australian Greens call for their own by-election candidate to be axed

She is behaving like a typical far-Leftist. She's a snake and snakes bite

The Greens candidate attempting to win the seat of Batman and end a century of Labor representation in Melbourne’s north is accused by members of her party of intimidation, bullying, branch stacking, spreading “reckless false statements’’ and cultivating ALP-style factionalism within the party’s largest branch.

A complaint lodged by 18 Greens campaign volunteers, office-holders and elected representatives calls on the party’s state executive to disendorse Alex Bhathal as the Batman candidate and expel her from the party, warning that her election to federal parliament would pose a serious risk to the party’s future growth and unity.

The party said the complaint had been considered and dealt with.

The complainants are current or former members of Ms Bhathal’s Darebin branch, which controls preselections for the Darebin council, the state seats of Northcote and Preston, and the now winnable federal seat of Batman.

They are Greens who supported her previous campaigns, who attended branch meetings and party functions with her and who, since the 2016 federal election when she ran and lost in Batman for a fifth time, are concerned at her “increasingly malicious’’ behaviour towards anyone she perceives as disloyal.

The 101-page complaint and covering letter, seen by The Australian, depicts a power-hungry, perennial candidate who ruthlessly uses proxies to stifle debate, manipulate internal party procedures and undermine fellow members. It accuses her of “serious, repeated, often wilful misconduct’’ and demands the allegations be fully investigated.

“This misconduct has included systematic intimidation, and malicious and reckless false statements about members and party decisions,’’ the complaint reads.

“The attached statements include instances of direct intimidation and victimisation on the part of Alex, as well as the wider, more systematic operation of her political machine, which has been used to undermine consensus decision-making processes, attack and harass members considered to be ‘in the way’ and we believe, to recruit members for the purpose of swaying preselection results.

Alex’s behaviour has escalated markedly in the past year. Her tactics have become more aggressive and ruthless, her breaches of the code of conduct more flagrant and brazen, her behaviour many magnitudes more destructive. We believe she must be held to account and cannot be allowed to continue on as a representative and member of the Victorian Greens.’’

The complaint was made to the party’s state executive on January 15, two weeks before Labor’s David Feeney retired from the parliament and triggered the Batman by-election — a knife-edge contest in which early voting began this week.

The complainants, who requested their identities be concealed from Ms Bhathal, say the party’s interests would be better served by the Greens losing Batman than Ms Bhathal winning it. This would enable the party to preselect a new candidate for the next federal election.

It is understood Ms Bhathal has not been shown the full complaint. She declined to respond to the allegations and invited Batman voters to make their own judgment.

“The people of Batman have over 30 years experience of my character and I have faith that my community will rely on their first hand knowledge of me over the decades,’’ she said last night.

Ms Bhathal was strongly backed by the three Victorian Greens in federal parliament: Adam Bandt, Richard Di Natale and Janet Rice.

“Alex convincingly won the preselection,’’ they said in a joint statement to The Australian. “She is held in the highest regard by members and supporters within the broader community.

“It is disappointing that despite this support and the party resolving this matter, someone who is unhappy with the outcome has taken it to the media.’’

The co-convener of the Victorian Greens, Colin Jacobs, said the complaint had been considered and dealt with. “We take all allegations of this nature seriously,” he said. “The party considered these matters and found the material presented lacked sufficient evidence to reconsider Alex’s preselection.’’

This is disputed by the complainants. They say the allegations raised against Ms Bhathal prompted a review of her endorsement for Batman by a three-person committee but were not properly investigated by the party.

Ms Bhathal is a Tampa Green: the cohort of political activists who joined the Greens in the lead-up to the 2001 election motivated less by environmental concerns than opposition to immigration and border protection policies.

When she first ran for the Greens in Batman in 2001 it was an unwinnable, “dead-red’’ seat. In every election she has stood as a candidate, she has eroded Labor’s hold on it.

In 2016, after Mr Feeney ran a train-wreck campaign, Ms Bhathal got to within 1853 votes of entering federal parliament. She works as a social worker, lives in Preston, is a mother of two and is well known in the electorate.

Some of the allegations raised against her appear frivolous. She is accused of standing in front of another Greens representative at a media doorstop so she wouldn’t appear on TV, of passive aggression, of “unfriending’’ a party member on Facebook and in typical Greens-speak, of projecting, triggering and making the Darebin branch an unsafe space. The more serious allegations are:

? That she recruited a dramatic influx of new members to the Darebin branch early last year to stack the numbers in favour of her own preselection and marginalise perceived political opponents.

? That she orchestrated a campaign to undermine the preselection chances of City of Darebin councillor Susanne Newton in the state seat of Preston.

? That she waged a ruthless, intercine war against four Greens members of the Darebin council and used her social media accounts to support non-Greens candidates running against them.

The complaint does not contain grievous instances of bullying or harassment but documents a corrosive pattern of alleged behaviour including late-night phone calls, incessant text messaging and malicious backgrounding, reducing party members to tears and creating a bitterly divided Darebin branch. None of the allegations has been proven.`

The Greens state executive and its federal leadership have backed Ms Bhathal as the party’s best chance of securing a second lower-house seat in the federal parliament.

Labor has preselected Ged Kearney, the president of the ACTU, in an attempt to hold the seat. The Batman by-election will be held on March 17.

SOURCE

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

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

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1 March, 2018

The ‘evil twin of global warming’ is melting starfish and other sea creatures, scientists discover

The usual rubbish. Warming would cause the oceans to OUTGAS CO2, thus making the seas LESS acidic. Below is just an experiment which does not duplicate natural conditions. It must have been unpleasant for the sea creatures to have acid poured on them. Are Greenies allowed to do that? They pretend to be zealous about looking after nature

Sea creatures are literally being eaten away and ‘dissolved’ by pollution, scientists have discovered.

It’s feared that high levels of carbon dioxide in the water could cause irreparable damage to marine ecosystems after tests found acute levels of the gas cause starfish to dissolve.

A team of marine scientists conducted a four-day experiment at Loch Sween on Scotland’s west coast to measure the response to short-term carbon dioxide exposure.

Previously, tests had focused on the effect high levels of the gas had on individual plants or animals, leaving a gap in knowledge about how whole marine ecosystems respond to sudden influxes of carbon dioxide.

When high levels of carbon dioxide enters the oceans it causes them to become more acidic due to a process that’s been described as ‘global warming’s evil twin’.

Researchers from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Glasgow University pumped water enriched with carbon dioxide into chambers placed over the coralline algal ecosystem and monitored the community’s response before, during and after exposure.

The experiment revealed acute exposure led to net dissolution, meaning calcified organisms such as the coralline algae and starfish were dissolving.

Heidi Burdett, Heriot-Watt University research fellow, said: ‘We found that there was a rapid, community-level shift to net dissolution, meaning that within that community, the skeletons of calcifying organisms like starfish and coralline algae were dissolving.

‘If you think of pulses of carbon dioxide being carried on the tide to a particular site, it’s like a flash flood of carbon dioxide.

‘Our continued monitoring of the site directly after the carbon dioxide exposure found recovery was comparably slow, which raises concern about the ability of these systems to ‘bounce back’ after repeated acute carbon dioxide events.’

SOURCE

King Penguins' habitat threatened by global warming: study

This is just a modelling exercise with no new deata

Failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change, by the end of the century, could see 70 per cent of king penguins needing to either find a new home or die, according to new research.

King penguins inhabit islands scattered throughout the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica.

The birds depend on lanternfish, squids, and krill in the waters circling the continent. They can swim 310 kilometres into the waters for their food.

However, according to projections of climate models this food belt will move closer and closer to the South Pole, forcing the penguins to swim farther to catch their meals and by 2100, the penguins are expected to migrate to other islands or as many as 70 per cent of them could disappear, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Climate Change.

''Wow,'' says Michelle LaRue, a research ecologist at the University of Minnesota, who was not part of the study. ''That's not something I would have expected,'' The Verge reported.

Unlike their closest relatives, the emperor penguin, king penguins do not live on sea ice, rather they only live on ice-free islands. In a warming world, therefore, one would expect penguins that do not need ice to breed to fare just fine, LaRue told The Verge.

"The species may disappear," study co-author Celine Le Bohec, a scientist at the University of Strasbourg, told Agence France Presse.

The king penguin is among several threatened species of penguins in Antarctica. Earlier studies had revealed that other species, such as the emperor, Adelie and chinstrap are also in danger of extinction or severe population loss due to climate change.

What is also a greater problem is that the penguins cannot move with the fish. "The main issue is that there are only a handful of islands in the Southern Ocean and not all of them are suitable to sustain large breeding colonies," said study co-author Robin Cristofari, also of the University of Strasbourg.

SOURCE

A Teetering Consensus: 97 New Papers Amassed In 2018 Support A Skeptical Position On Climate Alarm

In just the first 8 weeks of 2018, 97 scientific papers have been published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise serve to question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and mainstream media sources.

These 97 new papers affirm the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes, emphasizing that climate science is not settled.

More specifically, the papers in this compilation support these four main skeptical positions — categorized here as N(1) – N(4) — which question climate alarm.

N(1) Natural mechanisms play well more than a negligible role (as claimed by the IPCC) in the net changes in the climate system, which includes temperature variations, precipitation patterns, weather events, etc., and the influence of increased CO2 concentrations on climatic changes are less pronounced than currently imagined.

N(2) The warming/sea levels/glacier and sea ice retreat/hurricane and drought intensities…experienced during the modern era are neither unprecedented or remarkable, nor do they fall outside the range of natural variability.

N(3) The computer climate models are not reliable or consistently accurate, and projections of future climate states are little more than speculation as the uncertainty and error ranges are enormous in a non-linear climate system.

N(4) Current emissions-mitigation policies, especially related to the advocacy for renewables, are often ineffective and even harmful to the environment, whereas elevated CO2 and a warmer climate provide unheralded benefits to the biosphere (i.e., a greener planet and enhanced crop yields).

In sharp contrast to the above, the corresponding “consensus” positions that these papers do not support are:

A(1) Close to or over 100% (110%) of the warming since 1950 has been caused by increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, leaving natural attribution at something close to 0%.

RealClimate.org: “The best estimate of the warming due to anthropogenic forcings (ANT) is the orange bar (noting the 1?? uncertainties). Reading off the graph, it is 0.7±0.2ºC (5-95%) with the observed warming 0.65±0.06 (5-95%). The attribution then follows as having a mean of ~110%, with a 5-95% range of 80–130%. This easily justifies the IPCC claims of having a mean near 100%, and a very low likelihood of the attribution being less than 50% (p < 0.0001!).”

A(2) Modern warming, glacier and sea ice recession, sea level rise, drought and hurricane intensities…are all occurring at unprecedentedly high and rapid rates, and the effects are globally synchronous (not just regional)…and thus dangerous consequences to the global biosphere and human civilizations loom in the near future as a consequence of anthropogenic influences.

A(3) The climate models are reliable and accurate, and the scientific understanding of the effects of both natural forcing factors (solar activity, clouds, water vapor, etc.) and CO2 concentration changes on climate is “settled enough“, which means that “the time for debate has ended“.

A(4) The proposed solutions to mitigate the dangerous consequences described in N(4) – namely, wind and solar expansion – are safe, effective, and environmentally-friendly.

To reiterate, the 97 papers compiled in 2018 thus far support the N(1)-N(4) positions, and they undermine or at least do not support the “consensus” A(1)-A(4) positions. The papers do not do more than that.   Expectations that these papers should do more than support skeptical positions and undermine “consensus” positions to “count” are deemed unreasonable in this context.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

Maunder Minimum Petri Dish

The global warming pseudo-scientists are desperately trying to keep their funding. Now these con artists are trying to claim that that the oceans’ surface water is cooling and below the water is warming. Those who stop driving to work, opting to walk or ride a bicycle instead, are perhaps speaking at least of what they believe, rather than crying that the planet is warming and we need to hand them billions of dollars to figure out some new technology to reverse the trend.

Meanwhile, real scientists who study the cyclical movement within nature are observing what we have been warning – a coming Ice Age, not global warming. We should see the collapse in temperatures faster than we suspect, for it will mimic a Waterfall Event in our market terminology. This is the true nature of how things simply move. Real scientists are starting to warn that we will see temperatures plummet by 2030. We are entering the Maunder Minimum Petri Dish of Political Change and nobody seems to comprehend the political ramifications ahead.

During my European tour, I packed only summer closes. I had to go buy sweaters for it rarely went over 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 Celsius). It did not get warm until I arrived in Italy and Spain.

Our model tracks everything including climate for that too is a major influence within the development of the global economy. It just seems that whatever could go wrong is going to go wrong in the coming 26 years from 2007 in many areas, so the other side of 2032.95 is going to be a different world. By the way, global warming peaked in 2007. So for all the supporter of global warming, try doing as you preach. Give up your cars and start walking.

The real problem is not global warming but global cooling. In fact, we are in crash mode. Our model confirms that as we move into the end of this current wave 2032.95, the other side of that appears to be a very serious famine that changes the political landscape as took place in the period known as the Maunder Minimum. This is a serious forecast for during the last such period, the further north you are the higher the probability of starvation. Indeed Prussia lost 40% of its population to famine at that time and Scotland lost about 15%.

Maunder Minimum is also known as the “prolonged sunspot minimum”, which was a period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. Consequently, based upon running the data through our model, it appears that this is crashing faster than any time previously. This would tend to warn that we may exceed the record of deaths of the 16th century and that is not good news. Yet this is just nature’s way of trimming back the population like hitting control-alt-delete in computer terms.

During the last Maunder Minimum in 17th century, longer winters and cooler summers disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests all across Europe. This was the coldest century in a period of glacial expansion that lasted from the early 14th century until the mid-19th century. The summer of 1641 was the third coldest recorded over the past six centuries in Europe and the winter of 1641–1642 was the coldest ever recorded in Scandinavia.

The Maunder Minimum produced an unusual cold trend that lasted from the 1620s until the 1690s most intensely and included ice on both the Bosporus and the Baltic so thick that people could walk from one side to the other. So much for global warming pundits who are putting out such bogus research it is amazing. This crowd of con artists has created such propaganda that the world population is totally unprepared; by the time they figure out these people are bullshitting everyone for grant money, it will be too late to prepare for the onslaught. We could realistically see famine reach the 33%–50% mortality level after 2032.95.

The Maunder Minimum created such a deep cold in Europe and extreme weather events elsewhere that what unfolds is a series of droughts, floods, and harvest failures. Historically, this leads to massive migrations, wars and revolutions. The fatal synergy between human and natural disasters eradicated perhaps one-third of the human population during the last event and this time we are crashing more rapidly than before. Therefore, we may exceed more than a reduction in population of one-third and reach the levels of the 14th century of 50%, which was also combined with the Black Plague.

What took place during the 17th century suggests that altered weather conditions can have catastrophic political and social consequences. Political systems are already in crash mode with BIG BANG. Add to this the crisis we see in weather cycles and the world will be augmented by unpredictable crises involving water, food, energy supply chains, and public health. States will unquestionably collapse as famine could overtake large populations and flood or disease could cross borders and lead to internal instability or international conflict.

There were three primary factors at work globally during the 17th century that combined to produce chaos. There were increases in volcanic eruptions, twice as many El Niño episodes (unusually warm ocean conditions along the tropical west coast of South America), and the virtual disappearance of sunspots, reducing solar output to warm the Earth. These three forces combined are acknowledge by real Earth science.

The 17th century saw a proliferation of wars, civil wars, rebellions, and more cases of state breakdown around the globe than any previous or subsequent age. This was the Petri Dish that brewed the revolution against the monarchy that would give birth to the American and French revolutions. In the year 1648, rebellions paralyzed both Russia (the largest state in the world) and France (the most populous state in Europe); civil wars broke out in Ukraine, England, and Scotland, and irate subjects in Istanbul (Europe’s largest city) strangled Sultan Ibrahim.

The Maunder Minimum did not cause all the catastrophes alone during the 17th century, but it most certainly exacerbated many of them. Outbreaks of disease, especially smallpox and plague, erupted as was the case during the previous episode that saw the Black Plague wipeout 50% of the population. Plagues correlate to periods when harvests are poor or have failed. When an uprising by Irish Catholics on October 23, 1641, drove the Protestant minority from their homes, no one had foreseen a severe cold snap with heavy frost and snow in a place that rarely has snow. Thousands of Protestants died of exposure, turning a political protest into a massacre that cried out for vengeance. Oliver Cromwell would later use that episode to justify his brutal campaign to restore Protestant supremacy in Ireland. This was the period of the British Civil War with the Puritans beheading Catholic King Charles I.

The Maunder Minimum did take a more direct toll as weather turned bitterly cold. Western Europe experienced the worst harvest of the century in 1648. Rioting broke out in Sicily, Stockholm, and elsewhere when bread prices spiked. In the Alps, poor growing seasons became the norm in the 1640s, and records document the disappearance of fields, farmsteads and even whole villages as glaciers advanced to the farthest extent since the last Ice Age. One consequence of crop failures and food shortages stands out in French military records: soldiers born in the second half of the 1600s were, on average, an inch shorter than those born after 1700, and those born in the famine years were noticeably shorter than the rest.

The Maunder Minimum impacted the entire planet for very few areas of the world survived the 17th century unscathed by extreme weather. Even in China, a combination of droughts and disastrous harvests, coupled with rising tax demands and cutbacks in government programs, unleashed a wave of banditry and chaos; starving Manchu clansmen from the north undertook a brutal conquest that lasted a generation. In 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital in Beijing. Rather than serve them, Ming general Wu Sangui made an alliance with the Manchus and opened the Shanhai Pass to the Banner Armies led by Prince Dorgon, who defeated the rebels and seized Beijing. The conquest of China was not complete until 1683 under the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722).

North America and West Africa both experienced famines and savage wars. In India, drought followed by floods killed over a million people in Gujarat between 1627 and 1630. In Japan, a mass rebellion broke out on the island of Kyushu following several poor harvests. Five years later, famine, followed by an unusually severe winter, killed perhaps 500,000 Japanese.

WorldEconomy

The famines that hit India wiped out millions, weakening the population and the economy, whereas India had been the financial capital of the world after the Byzantine Empire’s collapse in 1453 to the rise of Islam. Following this devastating Maunder Minimum period of the 1600s, we can see that India fell as the financial capital of the world, handing that crown to China. India was ripe for the picking. In the first half of the 18th century, the British were a trading presence at certain points along the coast of India. From the 1750s, the British began to wage war on land in eastern and southeastern India. To reap the reward of successful warfare, which was the exercise of political power notably over the rich province of Bengal. By the end of the century, British rule consolidated over the first conquests and extended up the Ganges valley to Delhi and over most of the peninsula of southern India. The British then turned to China and eventually established Hong Kong, which was handed back in 1998.

No human intervention can avert the Maunder Minimum or volcanic eruptions, halt an El Niño episode or delay the onset of drought, despite the possibility that each could cause starvation, economic dislocation, and political instability. So sorry, I do not ask for donations to prevent this from unfolding. We do possess both the resources and the technology to prepare for them. It is possible to grow food in your basement without land. Hydroponics may become a very valuable asset.

In the 17th century, the fatal synergy of weather, wars, and rebellions, killed millions amounting to about one-third of the population. A natural catastrophe of analogous proportions today would kill billions. It would also produce dislocation and violence, and compromise international security, sustainability and cooperation. Country borders will likely change or vanish altogether. This is part of our forecast on why the USA will break-up after 2032.95.

So while we argue over global warming, we should look at history rather than fake research that attributes everything to the invention of the combustion engine at the start of the 20th century and respect that there just may be long-term cycles at work that can be documented from real data. If history repeats, the global warming crowd will be the first to go since they will be totally unrepentant and unprepared.

SOURCE

Australia and East Timor agree on maritime border, 'pathway' to develop gas field

More natural gas!

East Timor and Australia have reached an agreement for a treaty on their disputed maritime border and on a "pathway" to develop the giant Greater Sunrise offshore gas fields, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague says.

Under the agreement, the share of revenue from the offshore gas field will differ depending on downstream benefits that arise from "different development concepts", the statement released following talks in Kuala Lumpur said.

The agreement would establish a maritime boundary in the Timor Sea for the first time.

Australia had sought a boundary aligned with its continental shelf, but East Timor argued the border should lie half way between it and Australia — placing much of the Greater Sunrise fields under its control.

In 2002 East Timor gained independence and the Timor Sea Treaty was signed, but no permanent maritime border was negotiated.

East Timor has long argued the border should sit halfway between it and Australia, placing most of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field in their territory.

The long-running dispute had led the owners of Greater Sunrise — Woodside Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Japan's Osaka Gas — to shelve the project.

The fields are estimated to hold 144 billion cubic metres of gas and 226 million barrels of condensates, which analysts have previously estimated could be worth up to $50 billion.

However, development could be at least a decade away, with Woodside looking at the latter half of the next decade.

Ending years of opposition, Australia agreed in 2017 to accept Dili's formal notice to terminate an agreement to split petroleum revenue equally from Greater Sunrise and set a 50-year timetable for negotiating a permanent sea boundary.

Dili had taken the long-running maritime border dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an intergovernmental organisation based at The Hague, which ordered compulsory arbitration between the two parties.

The court announced last year that the countries had reached an agreement "on the central elements of a maritime boundary delimitation between them in the Timor Sea" — but that details would remain confidential until the deal was finalised.

The two governments will meet in New York at the United Nations headquarters on March 6 to sign the new maritime boundary treaty, the statement said.

East Timor had been pushing for the building of an onshore processing plant to boost its economy rather than a floating plant.

According to media reports, East Timor could receive up to 80 per cent of revenue, but could agree to less if gas is piped to a terminal in the tiny country.

The Sunrise joint venture, led by Woodside, said it was aware the two governments had agreed on a new maritime boundaries treaty.

"We hope that the Commission's conclusions and the signing of the treaty will help to provide the fiscal and regulatory certainty required to develop Greater Sunrise for the benefit of all parties," a Sunrise joint venture spokeswoman said.

Australia's foreign ministry said the countries had "agreed [on] a draft treaty establishing our maritime boundaries and the sharing of revenue from the development of the Greater Sunrise resource".

In the emailed statement, the ministry said the countries would "continue to work towards a decision on the development concept for Greater Sunrise".

East Timor's oil minister, Hernani Filomena Coelho da Silva, said his country's preference was for the gas to come to his country to help development.

SOURCE

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

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

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BACKGROUND

Home (Index page)

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: 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. Yet 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.

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

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