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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30 May, 2014
British Antarctic survey dynamites W. Antarctic scare
Glacial retreat shown to be a recurring natural phenomenon. Journal abstract follows article below
Media reports have hyped the collapse of several large western Antarctic
glaciers, quoting scientists who said the melting ice could raise sea
levels by another 4 feet. Left-leaning news outlets ran with headlines
like “This Ice Sheet Will Unleash a Global Superstorm Sandy That Never
Ends” and “Global warming: it’s a point of no return in West
Antarctica.”
“The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be
unstoppable,” said NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, whose research on the
collapsing ice sheets made waves.
“The fact that the retreat is happening simultaneously over a large
sector suggests it was triggered by a common cause, such as an increase
in the amount of ocean heat beneath the floating sections of the
glaciers,” Rignot said. “At this point, the end of this sector appears
to be inevitable.”
But as BAS research shows, the collapse of Antarctic glaciers is nothing
new. In fact, studies show this has been happening for thousands of
years — without the help of mankind.
“Our results show that the large isotopic warming… since the 1950s is
not unusual, with equally large warming and cooling trends observed
several times over the past 308 years,” BAS scientists found. “This is
consistent with a study from continental West Antarctica [Steig et al.,
2013] which concluded that this recent warming is not unprecedented in
the context of the past 2000 years.”
“The record reveals a reduction in multidecadal variability during the
twentieth century and suggests that the warming since the late 1950s has
not yet taken the system outside its natural range” the scientists
continued. “This is not inconsistent with the exceptional recent global
warming, during which approximately 20% of the observationally covered
Earth’s surface still does not show 100 year trends that are
signi?cantly larger than internal variability.”
SOURCE
A 308-year record of climate variability in West Antarctica
By Thomas, Elizabeth R et al.
Abstract/Summary
We present a new stable isotope record from Ellsworth Land which
provides a valuable 308-year record (1702-2009) of climate variability
from coastal West Antarctica. Climate variability at this site is
strongly forced by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and atmospheric
pressure in the tropical Pacific and related to local sea ice
conditions. The record shows that this region has warmed since the late
1950s, at a similar magnitude to that observed in the Antarctic
Peninsula and central West Antarctica, however, this warming trend is
not unique. More dramatic isotopic warming (and cooling) trends occurred
in the mid-19th and 18th centuries, suggesting that at present the
effect of anthropogenic climate drivers at this location has not
exceeded the natural range of climate variability in the context of the
past ~300?years.
Geophysical Research Letters, 40 (20). 5492-5496.
EPA To Unilaterally Push Cap And Trade On Carbon Emissions
Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon
get its U.S. encore — but not in Congress. The Obama administration will
likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide
emissions trading systems.
The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil regulations for existing
U.S. power plants early next month. For months, onlookers have been
speculating about what could be included in the EPA’s rule for existing
power plants.
But over the past few days it has become clear that the Obama
administration will use the EPA to push cap-and-trade systems and other
anti-fossil fuel policies on U.S. states. Administration insiders have
told news outlets that cap-and-trade will likely be one of the options
the EPA gives states to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.
The Wall Street Journal reported the EPA’s proposal will “include a
cap-and-trade component where a limit is set on emissions and companies
can trade allowances or credits for emissions” to meet new federal
rules. The Journal added that power plant “operators could trade
emissions credits or use other offsets in the power sector, such as
renewable energy or energy-efficiency programs, to meet the target.”
The plan is being sold as a “flexible” one. By allowing states a menu of
policy options to meet federal mandates, the standards will ostensibly
meet the unique needs of each individual state. But the stark reality
behind the proposal is that it will be a boon for states that have
already imposed cap-and-trade systems — which are overwhelmingly
Democratic states.
The Washington Post reported last week that “the measure will spur
regional carbon-trading programs on the East and West coasts” according
to “several individuals briefed on the matter”.
The Democratic governors of California, Oregon, Washington have all
signed executive agreements to tax on carbon dioxide. California already
operates a cap-and-trade system that went into effect in 2012.
Washington’s Democratic governor Jay Inslee recently signed an executive
order to impose cap-and-trade and phase out coal power.
“This is the right time to act, the right place to act and we are the
right people to act,” Inslee said last month. “We will engage the right
people, consider the right options, ask the right questions and come to
the right answers — answers that work for Washington.”
Several eastern U.S. states and Canadian provinces have already started
their own regional cap-and-trade system called the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative (RGGI). Currently nine states participate in RGGI —
Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Only one of the nine states is led
by a Republican.
News reports say that the EPA will require states to reduce their carbon
dioxide emissions from power plants by a whopping 25 percent in the
coming decades. The new rules are set to be unveiled next week by
President Obama himself, underpinning the significance of the new rules.
The EPA’s emissions limits for existing power plants will put new
burdens on coal-reliant states and raise electricity prices as more coal
plants are retired. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to release a
study on the economic costs of the EPA’s carbon dioxide regulations,
which will likely be staggering.
“We anticipate it to be unprecedented in complexity and cost,” Dan
Byers, senior director for policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s
energy arm, told an audience last week.
Environmentalists have argued that emissions limits for existing power
plants would not only prove environmentally beneficial, but would also
be a boon to the economy.
“This is a magic moment for the President — a chance to write his name
into the record books,” Frank O’Donnell, director of Clean Air Watch,
told the Post. “But history will ultimately judge this less by an
excellent speech than by the final contents and outcome of this
initiative.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council, like the Chamber, is preparing to
release its own study this week on the economic benefits of carbon
dioxide regulations.
NRDC argues that mandating emissions limits would spur jobs in energy
efficiency and green energy and lower power bills and pollution levels.
But the coal industry disagrees. They have already seen the Obama
administration effectively ban the building of new coal-fired power
plants unless they use costly clean coal technology.
“The impact will not only be to greatly increase electricity rates,
putting U.S. manufacturing at a competitive disadvantage, but [also to]
jeopardize reliability of the nation’s electric grid,” said Hal Quinn,
president of the National Mining Association.
Coal currently generates about 40 percent of the country’s electricity —
a share which has declined in recent years because of stricter
environmental regulations and increased competition from natural gas.
Hundreds of coal plants have already been slated for early retirement
across the country, according to industry data. And many more are sure
to follow once the Obama administration cracks down on emissions from
existing power plants.
Retiring coal plants are already set to help increase power prices by 4
percent this year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
By 2020, power prices are predicted to rise another 13 percent — not
including the cost impacts of the EPA’s upcoming power plant rules.
“While President Obama continues to pedal around his climate agenda in
the hopes of solidifying a presidential legacy, concerns about how
American businesses and consumers will actually meet these costly rules
have been met with only silence,” said Laura Sheehan, spokeswoman for
the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electrcity.
“Given the current path we’re on, the administration is gambling with
the livelihoods of hardworking Americans and is threatening to tip our
country over the edge in costly and unreliable energy policies,” Sheehan
said. “And once we go over that ledge, there’s no coming back up.”
SOURCE
Germany’s Green Jobs Miracle Collapses
From: "Die Welt"
Renewable energy was supposed to create tens of thousands of green jobs.
Yet despite three-digit Euro billions of subsidies, the number of jobs
is falling rapidly. Seven out of ten jobs will only remain as long as
the subsidies keep flowing.
The subsidization of renewable energy has not led to a significant,
sustainable increase in jobs. According to recent figures from the
German Government, the gross employment in renewable energy decreased by
around seven per cent to 363,100 in 2013.
Counting the employees in government agencies and academic institution
too, renewable energy creates work for about 370,000 people.
This means, however, that only to about 0.86 percent of the nearly 42
million workers, which are employed in Germany, work in the highly
subsidized sector of renewable energy. Much of this employment is
limited to the maintenance and operation of existing facilities.
Further job cuts expected
In the core of the industry, the production of renewable energy systems,
only 230,800 people were employed last year: a drop of 13 percent
within one year, which is primarily due to the collapse of the German
solar industry.
There is no improvement in sight, according to the recent report by the
Federal Government. It says: “Overall, a further decline of employees
will probably be observed in the renewable energies sector this and next
year.”
15 years after the start of green energy subsidies through the Renewable
Energy Sources Act (EEG), the vast majority of jobs from in this sector
are still dependent on subsidies.
Hardly any self-supporting jobs in Green energy
According to official figures from the Federal Government, 70% of gross
employment was due to the EEG last year. Although this is a slight
decrease compared to 2012, seven out of ten jobs in the eco-energy
sector are still subsidized by the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
Around 137,800 employees work in the wind sector which was the only
eco-energy sector, besides geothermal, that increased employment. About
56,000 employees in photovoltaic sector depend on EEG payments.
Investments drop by 20 percent
Subsidies for the generation of green electricity have been paid for
almost 15 years and have piled up into a three-digit billion sum, which
has to be paid over 20 years by electricity consumers through their
electricity bills. This year alone, consumers must subsidize the
production of green electricity to the tune of around 20 billion Euros. A
lasting effect on the labour market is not obvious.
The report, “Gross employment in renewable energy sources in Germany in
2013?, commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Energy, was
jointly written by the institutes DLR, DIW , STW , GWS and Prognos.
According to the researchers, the cause of the decrease in employment is
the declining investments in green energy systems.
The investments in renewable energy sources in Germany fell by a fifth,
to 16.09 billion Euros in the past year. Only about half as many solar
panels were installed in Germany as the year before. Investment in
biomass plants and solar thermal dropped as well.
“Nothing left from the job miracle“
The researchers do not expect that the production of high quality green
energy systems will still lead to a job boom in Germany. For this year
and the next they expect a further decline in employment instead.
Thereafter, low-tech sectors such as “operation and maintenance” as well
as the supply of biomass fuels are expected to „stabilise the
employment effect”.
„A few years ago the renewable sector was the job miracle in Germany,
now nothing is left of all of that,” said the deputy leader of the
Greens in the Bundestag, Oliver Krischer.
The Green politician is sceptical about the attempts by the Federal
Government to reduce the subsidy dependence of the green energy sector:
„The brakes on the expansion of renewables by the previous
conservative-liberal government is now fully hitting the job market,”
said Krischer: “Thanks to the current EEG reform by the Union and SPD,
the innovative and young renewables industry will lose more jobs. “
The bottom line, no jobs remain
The report by the Federal Government explicitly estimates only the
„gross employment“ created primarily by green subsidies. The same
subsidies, however, have led to rising costs and job losses in many
other areas, such as heavy industry and commerce as well as conventional
power plant operators. For a net analysis, the number of jobs that have
been prevented or destroyed as a result would have to be deducted from
the gross number of green jobs.
Official figures for the net effect of renewables on employment in
Germany were originally supposed to be presented in July, according to
the Federal Economics Ministry. However, the presentation has now been
delayed until the autumn.
Researchers such as the president of the Munich-based IFO institute,
Hans-Werner Sinn, believe that the net effect of subsidies for renewable
energy on the labour market is equal to zero:
“Whoever claims that net jobs have been created must prove that the
capital intensity of production in the new sectors is smaller than in
the old ones. There are no indications for that. ”
“There is no positive net effect on employment by the EEG,” said Sinn:
“Through subsidies for inefficient technologies not a single new job has
been created, but wealth has been destroyed. “
SOURCE
They were warned
Article below from September, 2009
One of the UK’s leading energy and environment economists warns that the
government’s promise that green energy policies will create tens of
thousands of jobs and stimulate competitive industries is an illusion.
In his report
The Myth of Green Jobs, published today by the
Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Gordon Hughes (Edinburgh
University) dispels this assumption by finding that
* The government target for generating electricity from renewable energy
sources will involve a capital cost that is 9-10 times the amount
required to meet the same demand by relying upon conventional power
plants.
* The extra investment required for renewable energy – about £120 bln –
will be diverted from more productive uses in the rest of the economy.
* Increases in the cost of energy together with the diversion of
investment funds means that many manufacturing firms will either go
bankrupt or relocate.
* It is impossible for the UK to acquire a long-term comparative
advantage in the manufacture of renewable energy equipment by any
combination of policies that are both feasible and affordable.
* Policies to promote renewable energy could add 0.6-0.7 percentage points per year to core inflation from now to 2020.
* The cumulative impact of these policies could amount to a loss of 2-3% of potential GDP for a period of 20 years or more.
“Claims by politicians and lobbyists that green energy policies will
create a few thousand jobs are not supported by the evidence. In terms
of the labour market, the gains for a small number of actual or
potential employees in businesses specialising in renewable energy has
to be weighed against the dismal prospects for a much larger group of
workers producing tradable goods in the rest of the manufacturing
sector,” Professor Hughes said.
SOURCE
The Obama Administration’s Hypocritical Environmental Policy
Congress and the federal government have enacted policies and made
decisions in the name of protecting the environment. The problem is, now
those decisions have backfired — and made us worse off environmentally.
Here are five examples:
1. Keystone Delay Means More Rail: Stating concern for the environment,
President Obama delayed and rejected the initial Keystone XL Pipeline
permit even though the State Department found no environmental
complications. After five years of political dodges and delays from the
president, TransCanada is now seriously considering using railroads to
deliver the oil to refineries – an option the State Department did find
less environmentally safe. Carloads of crude oil have increased from
9,500 in 2008 to more than 407,000 last year. The State Department
determined that rail delivery had a higher likelihood of spills and
higher CO2 emissions than pipelines. Rail transport should be an option,
of course. But if Obama’s top concern is the environment, he should opt
for the pipeline – and not drive TransCanada to rail transportation.
2. Biofuels are an ecological and human disaster: As part of his climate
change agenda, Obama has praised alternative fuels as the way of the
future and condemned oil-based transportation fuels for tying the U.S.
to dependence on CO2 emissions and foreign countries. But evidence
continues to mount that ethanol, the largest source of alternative
fuels, is at best accomplishing nothing in the way of efficiency or
energy independence. Not only are biofuels an economic loser, the
Department of Energy funded a recent report that found biofuels actually
increase CO2 emissions. Other studies have shown our biofuels policy
results in poorer land and water quality, not to mention higher food
prices. Though America’s biofuels policies predate Obama, there’s no
reason to support a policy that even environmental organizations have
called “an ecological disaster.”
3. Wind Power and Bloody Bird Baths: There is no end to what the Obama
administration will do to protect critters such as lesser prairie
chicken, but it has a funny way of protecting the environment when it
comes to politically correct renewable energy projects such as wind. For
example, the Obama administration has worked to cut red tape for wind
projects by allowing them a higher kill rate of bald and golden eagles
during a project’s first 30 years of operation, which is conveniently
the approximate lifetime of a wind generator. Who needs America’s bird
when you can have an intermittent power source propped up with the
taxpayer’s money?
4. Killing Nuclear Energy: Obama and his administration have expressed
support for nuclear power, which fits neatly into their carbon-less
vision for America’s electricity supply. Nuclear power is
emissions-free. It also has a small physical footprint and waste stream
compared to the massive amount of energy it generates. But one look at
the state of the industry would tell you otherwise.
Because of the Department of Energy’s complete failure to meet its
responsibilities to collect and dispose of nuclear waste, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission has stopped all licensing activities. Through no
fault of the industry or technology, this means no new plants or life
extensions for existing ones. This has been a failure of many
administrations and congresses, but Obama has distinguished himself by
abandoning the waste plan Congress passed and replacing it with no plan
at all. If that weren’t enough, an antiquated and onerous regulatory
regime has only become more antiquated and onerous on Obama’s watch.
Between his policies on nuclear waste and regulation, Obama is
effectively killing an affordable, CO2-free energy source.
5. Global Warming Poverty Obama has set into motion regulations that
severely limit CO2 emissions from electricity generation (as well as
vehicles). If successful, these regulations will effectively phase out
some 40 percent of the nation’s electricity, which is generated by coal.
A Heritage Foundation study found that doing this will cause energy
prices to rise (along with everything else that depends on energy) and
jobs to be lost, particularly in manufacturing. One doesn’t have to look
far or hard to see that some of the poorest countries in the world are
those that struggle to provide affordable and reliable electricity,
which is a basic building block of economic growth and human wellbeing.
And energy poverty leads to environmental poverty, whether in Germany or
in Africa. If these regulations hurt America’s economy, the long-term
effect on America’s environment may well be negative – no matter how
well-intentioned the original regulations were.
SOURCE
Australia: Vegetation-clearing curbs in fire-prone regions to be eased
Greenies trumped; Californians ought to be envious
Residents in bushfire-prone regions of NSW will be given greater scope
to clear vegetation close to homes to reduce fire risks under laws
proposed by the Baird government.
Households will be allowed to clear trees with 10 metres and shrubs and other vegetation within 50 metres of their homes.
"We’re putting people before trees," Premier Mike Baird told reporters in Sydney on Thursday. "This is empowering individuals."
The laws were first mooted late last year after bushfires in the Blue
Mountains in October destroyed more than 200 homes and damaged more than
100 others. They also come as the prospects of an El Nino weather event
in the Pacific increase; the resulting dry, warm conditions would raise
the chances of another early and busy fire season.
"We have worked closely with the (Rural Fire Service) to develop these
new rules which will empower landowners who are taking responsibility
for minimising the fuel loads near their homes – a key fire prevention
goal," Mr Baird said.
A report following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria by
Philip Gibbons from the Australian National University found that
clearing trees and shrubs within 40 metres of homes was the most
effective method of fuel reduction.
Ross Bradstock, from the University of Wollongong’s Centre for
Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, said land clearing could be
beneficial in reducing the threat fires pose to houses but only if
residents avoid planting gardens that nullified the benefits.
"There’s certainly evidence that clearing of this kind can contribute to
a significant reduction of risk," Professor Bradstock said. "However,
things like garden design particularly close into the house - which are
not necessarily captured by this [policy] - can be very, very
important."
RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers welcomed the new laws: "We need to
ensure the community is as prepared as possible for bushfire and these
changes will give residents the flexibility they need to clear their
property from bushfire risk."
Downsides
Trent Penman, a senior research scientist at the Wollongong centre,
agreed that vegetation clearing near homes could reduce the risk of a
second ignition source other than from ember attack.
Land clearing, though, has the potential to destabilise slopes and
ridges, creating other threats to properties, particularly in the Blue
Mountains, Ku-ring-gai Chase and the Illawarra Escarpment region near
Wollongong.
"You might remove the trees but then you end up with unstable land
surface that might slip under heavy rain," Dr Penman said. While
ridge-tops could be undermined, "at the bottom of the ridge you don’t
want things falling on your head, either", he said.
Councils and the RFS could also find themselves with additional
monitoring roles without the extra resources needed to manage them. "It
will create a lot of extra work for them," Dr Penman said.
The RFS's Mr Rogers said residents would be able to identify whether
clearing posed any land-slip risks from maps that will be made available
once the laws are passed.
He said that there was "no silver bullet" when it comes to reducing fire
risks and residents in bushfire prone areas should continue to keep in
contact with their local RFS unit and maintain a bushfire survival plan.
Threatened communities, species
Greg Banks, a former RFS staffer and now the bushfire policy officer for
the NSW Nature Conservation Council, said the loosening of clearing
rules could make communities less prepared.
"Under the existing process, it requires people to engage with the RFS
so that they come out and have a look at their property before issuing a
hazard-reduction certicate to clear," Mr Banks said.
Contact with fire experts can also assist homeowners to identify
evacuation routes and even the preservation of some vegetation that
might now be cleared, he said. "Some vegetation can prove very useful in
providing a barrier to embers."
Tensions may also increase among residents of areas fringing bushland,
such as Hornsby, Mosman and the Sutherland shire, many of whom have
chosen to live in those regions because of the natural environment.
"Are they going to be pressured...to do something on those properties because their neighbours already have?," Mr Banks said.
The Greens said the new laws would also give a "carte blanche" to the destruction of sensitive native habitat.
"Trees and scrub are essential vegetation for native animals, especially
as effects of climate change continue to take place, so it is essential
to retain oversight over clearing," said Greens MP and environment
spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi .
SOURCE
***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here
*****************************************
29 May, 2014
Stranded on an ice floe
Polar bears on ice floes prove global warming so I guess this does too
(A recent photo from lake Superior)
SOURCE
Antarctic began melting 5,000 years earlier than first thought: Ice
sheet's volatile past reveals an unstable future, claims study
The Warmists will try to spin this but the plain fact is that the
Antarctic undergoes large natural fluctuations and nobody knows why.
Attributing recent changes to global warming is therefore tendentious, a
claim without evidence
The Antarctic ice sheet is more unstable than first thought with a new
study suggesting melting began 5,000 years earlier than previously
believed.
The study reveals that shrinking of the vast ice sheet accelerated
during eight distinct periods between 20,000 and 9,000 years ago causing
a rapid sea level rise.
During one period 14,600 years ago, melting glaciers released so many
icebergs into the ocean that sea level rose 6.5ft (2 metres) in just 100
years.
The results provide the first clear evidence for dramatic melting in
Antarctic's and reflect predictions for the region's future.
It also follows recent news that destabilisation of part of the West
Antarctic ice sheet has already begun and could be 'unstoppable.'
The study was conducted by an international team including researchers from Germany, Canada, Hawaii, Lapland and Australia.
The group examined two sediment cores from the Scotia Sea between
Antarctica and South America that contained ‘iceberg-rafted debris’.
This is debris that has been scraped off Antarctica by moving ice and deposited via icebergs into the sea.
As the icebergs melted, they dropped minerals into the seafloor
sediments, giving scientists a glimpse into the past behaviour of the
Antarctic ice sheet.
Periods of rapid increase in iceberg-rafted debris suggest that more icebergs were being released by the Antarctic ice sheet.
The researchers discovered increased amounts of debris during eight
separate episodes beginning as early as 20,000 years ago, and continuing
until 9,000 years ago.
Up until now, the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet wasn't thought to have started until 14,000 years ago.
‘Conventional thinking based on past research is that the Antarctic ice
sheet has been relatively stable since the last ice age, that it began
to melt relatively late during the deglaciation process, and that its
decline was slow and steady until it reached its present size,’ said
lead author Michael Weber, a scientist from the University of Cologne in
Germany.
‘The sediment record suggests a different pattern – one that is more
episodic and suggests that parts of the ice sheet repeatedly became
unstable during the last deglaciation,’ Professor Weber added.
The research has provided the first solid evidence that the Antarctic
ice sheet contributed to what is known as ‘meltwater pulse 1A’,
Meltwater pulse 1A was a period when sea levels rose rapidly from between 52 to 79ft (16 to 24m) around 14,600 to 13,500 years.
The largest of the eight episodic pulses outlined in the new Nature study coincides with this event.
‘During that time, the sea level on a global basis rose about 50 feet in
just 350 years – or about 20 times faster than sea level rise over the
last century,’ said Professor Peter Clark, an Oregon State University.
‘We don't yet know what triggered these eight episodes or pulses, but it
appears that once the melting of the ice sheet began it was amplified
by physical processes.’
Some 9,000 years ago, the episodic pulses of melting stopped, the researchers say.
‘Just as we are unsure of what triggered these eight pulses,’ Professor Clark said, ‘we don't know why they stopped.
‘Perhaps the sheet ran out of ice that was vulnerable to the physical changes that were taking place.
‘However, our new results suggest that the Antarctic ice sheet is more unstable than previously considered.’
Today, the annual calving of icebergs from Antarctic represents more
than half of the annual loss of mass of the Antarctic ice sheet – an
estimated 1,300 to 2,000 billion tonnes.
Earlier this month, Nasa said vast glaciers in West Antarctica seem to
be locked in an irreversible thaw linked to global warming that may push
up sea levels for centuries, according to scientists.
In a few hundred years they say the irreversible melt that has already
started could eventually add four to 12 ft (1.2 to 3.7 metres) to
current sea levels.
SOURCE
The Myth of the Climate Change '97%' consensus
What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that
almost all scientists agree about global warming? A survey of the
relevant claims below
Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at
Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change.
"Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us
this is urgent."
Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President
Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists
agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from
NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website,
"Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming
trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a
man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes
from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been
contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay
published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now
at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles
published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that
75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of
the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly
dissented.
Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out
"dangerous"—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as
Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who
question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A
study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of
academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the
papers.
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in
"Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall
Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's
thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question
online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman
claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global
temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing
factor.
The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists
who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would
answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the
human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include
solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists,
meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be
aware of natural causes of climate change.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the
views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of
expertise and said they published more than half of their recent
peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the
3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.
In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford
University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most
prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in
Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg
found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change
believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for
'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how
dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers
out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate
is not evidence of consensus.
In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends
reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011.
Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or
implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming.
His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August
2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the
University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic
Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook
and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0
percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had
been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of
the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso,
Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research
questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or
misrepresented their work.
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis
Bray and Hans von Storch —most recently published in Environmental
Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists
disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of
climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate
processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently
understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged
consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members
who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is
dangerous.
Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which
claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientists—is probably the most
frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that
"human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate
change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few
have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key
question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes
observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas
emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant
chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and
natural radiative forcing."
Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by
scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and
physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most
signatures—more than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most
recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed
since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific
evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other
greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause
catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the
Earth's climate."
We could go on, but the larger point is plain. There is no basis for the
claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a
dangerous problem.
SOURCE
America's Highest Ranked Climate Charlatans: Obama and Kerry
By Alan Caruba
John Kerry, our Secretary of State, continues to provide reasons to
believe he is either too stupid to hold such a high position or too
willing to tell lies to keep pace with President Obama.
Their views on “climate change” are so lacking in scientific fact that
they are telling people we’re all doomed if we don’t abandon vast
traditional U.S. energy resources and continue to throw more billions at
“renewable energy” that provides a very costly three percent of the
nation’s huge energy needs. Meanwhile, nations in Europe, China, India
and elsewhere are abandoning solar and wind, and building coal-fired
plants.
At a Boston College commencement speech on May 19, Kerry outdid himself
talking about climate change. “If we make the necessary efforts to
address this challenge—and supposing I’m wrong or scientists are wrong,
97 percent of them all wrong—supposing they are, what’s the worst that
can happen?” The worst is more wasted billions spent on something
mankind can do nothing about and the administration’s continued efforts
to control every inch of land in the U.S. and all of its waters.
In the May 27 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Joe Bast, the
president of the free-market think tank, the Heartland Institute, and
Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist for the University of
Alabama, teamed out to write about “The Myth of the Climate Change 97%.”
While demolishing this Big Lie, they noted that “Surveys of
meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus.
Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who
responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is
dangerous.”
Obama’s and Kerry’s problem, along with all the other climate change
charlatans, is that is the Earth is now into its 17th year of a natural
cooling cycle based on lower radiation from the Sun, itself in a natural
cycle. It is the Sun, not mankind that determines the climate of the
Earth.
The Petition Project in which 31,073 U.S. scientists, over 9,000 of whom
have a Ph.D. in a scientific field, participated says “There is no
convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide,
methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will in the foreseeable
future cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and
disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
“The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of
‘settled science’ and an overwhelming ‘consensus’ in favor of the
hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological
damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists.”
In his State of the Union speech, Obama said “climate change is a fact.”
Well, yes, if you keep in mind that climate change is measured in
centuries, not decades or years. Claiming that every hurricane or
tornado is evidence of climate change ignores this. His claim that
climate change is “settled science” is just one more lie.
The Obama administration recently released a Climate Assessment report
that was nothing more than a repeat of the lies the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been telling since 1983.
They have all been based on computer models rigged to produce a global
warming outcome. This process continues in several U.S. government
agencies.
Following the last mini-ice age that lasted from 1300 to 1850, the Earth
quite naturally warmed, most of which occurred prior to 1945.
Meanwhile, the ice sheets of both the Arctic and Antarctica have been
growing, particularly at the South Pole. The rise of oceans is measured
in mere centimeters, posing no threat to polar bears or the island of
Manhattan.
To Kerry’s question, “What’s the worst that can happen?” a recent Wall
Street Journal opinion said that answer is “we spend trillions of
dollars trying to solve a problem that we can’t do anything to stop:
that we misallocate scarce resources in a way that slows economic
growth; that slower growth leads to less economic opportunity for Boston
College grads and especially the world’s poor; and that America and the
world become much less wealthy and technologically advanced than we
would otherwise. All of which would make the world less able to cope
with the costs of climate change if Mr. Kerry is right.”
Mr. Kerry isn't right and that makes him and President Obama a national and a global problem.
SOURCE
After Election Drubbing, UK Government Climate Adviser Backs Down On Wind, Tones Down Rhetoric
Britain has approved enough onshore wind turbines to meet climate change
targets, leaving the public to choose other ways to cut emissions in
future, the government’s chief climate adviser has said.
Lord Deben of Winston appeared to contradict forecasts by his own
Committee on Climate Change of a tripling in the number of wind farms by
2030 — equivalent to almost 10,000 more turbines.
There are 4,400 onshore turbines operating with a capacity of seven
gigawatts, while a further six gigawatts have received planning
permission and are being built or awaiting construction. Last year the
committee published four plans for cutting emissions by 2030, all of
which included 25 gigawatts of onshore wind.
However, the Conservative peer, who was environment secretary in John
Major’s government, said that there were enough wind farms with planning
permission to meet a legally binding target for renewable energy by
2020. After that date the public may choose other methods of cutting
emissions, he added.
Lord Deben also said that it was wrong to label people such as Lord
Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor, as “climate change deniers”.
They should be called “dismissers”, he said.
Lord Lawson said this month that the phrase “climate change denier” was
“deliberately designed to echo ‘Holocaust denier’ — as if questioning
present policies and forecasts of the future is equivalent to casting
malign doubt about an historical fact”.
Lord Deben said: “The dismissers are people who do not deny that climate
change is happening, do not deny that human beings are largely [causing
it], but who think you can dismiss its urgency and seriousness. That
case only stands up if you ignore the vast majority of scientists.”
The peer, better known as John Gummer, said that Britain needed “a
portfolio of different mechanisms” and “you have got to keep the
portfolio in balance”. He added: “I’m happy that we have already got
enough onshore wind to 2020 to meet that part of the portfolio.”
Asked if more onshore wind farms should be approved after 2020, he said:
“It is likely that [onshore wind] will continue to play a part in our
renewables after 2020, but it is not a decision we have to make now, and
there are circumstances in which it might not. The public will decide
what the balance is.” He added that power from offshore wind was
“falling in price very significantly”.
The Conservatives pledged last month to end subsidies for new onshore
wind turbines if they win the next election. Lord Deben declined to
comment on the move, saying that he spoke as an independent on climate
change. He appeared, though, to support the government’s announcement
this month that it would end subsidies for large solar farms in the
countryside. Lord Deben said that he backed the exploitation of shale
gas and criticised campaigners who regarded fracking as “a sin against
the Holy Ghost”.
SOURCE
Europe’s Energy Death Wish
Arthur Herman
Maybe the Ukraine crisis will awaken the Europeans to reconsider
fracking and realize the danger their enviro fanatics have put them in.
Want to understand why Europe won’t stand up to Vladimir Putin’s
dismemberment of Ukraine? Look at the recent meeting of the G-7’s energy
ministers in Rome.
It’s common knowledge that Europeans are dependent on Russia’s state-run
Gazprom for their natural-gas needs — up to 30 percent for the European
Union as a whole, more for Eastern Europe. The threat of cutting off
this vital supply allowed Putin to get away with annexing Crimea, cowing
our NATO allies into quivering passivity in the face of naked
aggression.
The energy ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain meeting
in Rome know this, too. As the Brit representative at the Rome meeting
put it, Europe desperately needs a plan “to prevent energy being used as
a weapon in the future” — and to wean themselves off Gazprom.
But their “answer” is pathetic.
The draft 13-point plan includes everything from stockpiling more
supplies of natural gas in case of a cutoff and diversifying supply
sources (meaning not just buying from the Russians) to promoting more
“clean and sustainable energy technologies” (meaning more windmills).
Everything, that is, except the most obvious solution of all: tapping into Europe’s own huge natural-gas reserves.
According to our Energy Information Administration, Europe sits on
reserves equaling 639 trillion cubic feet of gas — roughly equal to half
of Russia’s reserves (the world’s largest) and more than enough to make
Europe independent of Putin and Gazprom.
But that tapping those reserves means embracing fracking, the technology
that has revolutionized the US energy industry by unlocking vast
amounts of shale gas and oil.
Like environmentalists here, Europe’s greens have made fracking a dirty
word — and the European fanatics have more political clout.
For example, Exxon Mobil began fracking to harvest natural gas in
Germany in 2008 — but had to stop when the government issued a
moratorium. France has banned fracking outright. The United Kingdom has
proven gas reserves of 200 trillion cubic feet in Lancashire alone — but
with even the Cameron government pushing, it may be years before
permits to drill get granted.
This is insanity in action. Every government in Europe knows fracking
would produce enormous government revenues, create tens of thousands of
jobs, reduce natural-gas prices there to something approaching the price
here (which is about a quarter of what Germans or Italians pay), all
while using the same technology that for 60 years has drilled 1.2
million wells in the United States without producing a single case of
contaminated ground water.
But Europe’s environmentalists still see natural gas as a dreaded
“fossil fuel” and so won’t let it happen. And so Putin is empowered to
increase his grip over the continent’s future — even though the solution
sits directly under everyone’s feet.
It’s a good lesson for us here, too. Letting the greens dictate your
energy choices, whether it’s halting the XL Pipeline or fracking in New
York, isn’t just bad economics. It can also leave your rivals and
enemies controlling your energy destiny.
SOURCE
You know all those resources we're about to run out of? No, we aren't
Tim Worstall, a rare earth trader, displays the crass ignorance of Greenie resource scare-mongers
Among the more surprising things that the BBC revealed to us last week
was that the UK was going to run out of coal within the next five years.
Given that the island is pretty much built on a bed of coal, this is
something of a puzzler.
The article states:
In just over five years Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas, researchers have warned.
A report by the Global Sustainability Institute said shortages would increase dependency on Norway, Qatar and Russia.
As your intrepid mineral resources correspondent (aka El Reg's dodgy
metals dealer) I thought I'd better have a look at the report that
claimed this. As it happens, it appears to be an update of maps to this
report from last year from the Institute And Faculty Of Actuaries that
led to the claim.
Given my background, obviously I looked at the minerals rather than the
fossil fuels part of it. And in this writer's opinion I have to say that
the people who wrote it betray a baffling ignorance of the subject
under discussion.
They appear to work under the impression that mineral reserves are
somehow the definition of the number of minerals we have left to us,
when in fact reserves are the working stock of extant mines (more or
less). They also seem confused about mineral resources, which are the
piles of stuff where we know their location, how to get them out, that
we can do so while making a profit at current prices and with current
technology, though we may not have got around to proving that to the
required legal standard. When we have proven it, they will move from
being resources to reserves.
Given that phosphate rock and potassium as resources are good for 1,500*
and around 7,000** years to therefore claim that, as this report does,
that they were in very scarce supply in this last decade just gone is
thus, well, it's not very accurate is it?
Given that the two are also 0.2 per cent and 2.5 per cent of the entire
crust of our planet the idea that we'll ever run out of either with
future technologies also seems a tad suspect.
And then I spotted this one. It's a piece from New Scientist, a place I
was knew as a seriously interesting magazine (Dedalus certainly used to
make me larff).
In detail:
Without more recycling, antimony, which is used to make flame-retardant
materials, will run out in 15 years, silver in 10 and indium in under
five. In a more sophisticated analysis, Reller has included the effects
of new technologies, and projects how many years we have left for some
key metals. He estimates that zinc could be used up by 2037, both indium
and hafnium - which is increasingly important in computer chips - could
be gone by 2017, and terbium - used to make the green phosphors in
fluorescent light bulbs - could run out before 2012.
This prediction was made in 2008. You recall how Apple stopped shipping
iPads last year as the indium tin oxide to make the screens ran out?
That we've been completely bereft of CFL lightbulbs for two years now as
the terbium disappeared? No and no? Exactly.
For a metals guy, the one that stands out most is that reference to
hafnium. It betrays a complete and total ignorance of how mining
actually works. It's true that there are no mineral reserves of hafnium,
nor are there any mineral resources. So, our guys looked at what was in
stockpiles, saw there were no reserves nor resources and concluded that
it will run out.
However, "resources" and "reserves" are a legal and economic
description, not one of actual availability. And given that Hf doesn't
form any interesting ores, we can't go digging for it and make a profit
by having done so. This is not the same as stating that there's not
plenty available though.
For when we go digging for zircon (the mineral sand) from which we
extract zirconia (the oxide) and ultimately zirconium (the metal), we
find that it contains two to four per cent Hf. We don't care though, Zr
and Hf are so chemically similar that we just don't bother to separate
them.
Except when we try to make nuclear-grade Zr: then we do care because Zr
is transparent to neutrons and Hf opaque. So, to make those fuel rods
for reactors, we extract the Hf from the Zr: and that's where the global
supply of some few hundred tonnes a year (perhaps 500) of Hf comes
from.
So yes, there are no reserves and no resources because we cannot mine
for it directly or profitably. But we can still produce it profitably.
There's some 18,000 tonnes a year of Hf in the 600,000 tonnes a year of
Zr we do process and there's some thousands of years of that Zr out
there for us to process. And we only use 500 tonnes a year of Hf... so
it's not going to run out by 2017, is it?
This display of ignorance doesn't stop here:
Take the metal gallium, which along with indium is used to make indium gallium arsenide.
This is the semiconducting material at the heart of a new generation of
solar cells that promise to be up to twice as efficient as conventional
designs. Reserves of both metals are disputed, but in a recent report
René Kleijn, a chemist at Leiden University in the Netherlands,
concludes that current reserves "would not allow a substantial
contribution of these cells" to the future supply of solar electricity.
He estimates gallium and indium will probably contribute to less than 1
per cent of all future solar cells - a limitation imposed purely by a
lack of raw material.
Sigh. Gallium is another one of these byproduct metals. We can't get it directly and profitably.
Fortunately we mine for aluminium by sticking bauxite into a Bayer
Process plant, where we boil it in caustic soda. If you put the right
doohicky on the side of this plant then you get the gallium out. It's at
about 100ppm, 100 grammes per tonne of bauxite processed. Some 8,000
tonnes a year passes through those plants, which is useful because only a
few of those BP plants have the doohickeys and globally we only use
around 400 tonnes of gallium a year. And yes, we do know that there's
around a 1,000-year supply of Ga in the bauxite that we already know
that we'll process for the aluminium content.
We simply don't have any meaningful shortage of these metals that they're worrying about.
More
HERE
***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here
*****************************************
28 May, 2014
Sophisticated attempt to MEASURE the influence of CO2 finds it to be negligible
Tiny warming of residual anthropogenic CO2
François Gervais
The residual fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions which has not been
captured by carbon sinks and remains in the atmosphere, is estimated by
two independent experimental methods which support each other: the
13C/12C ratio and the temperature-independent fraction of d(CO2)/dt on a
yearly scale after subtraction of annual fluctuations the amplitude
ratio of which reaches a factor as large as 7. The anthropogenic
fraction is then used to evaluate the additional warming by analysis of
its spectral contribution to the outgoing long-wavelength radiation
(OLR) measured by infrared spectrometers embarked in satellites looking
down. The anthropogenic CO2 additional warming extrapolated in 2100 is
found lower than 0.1°C in the absence of feedbacks. The global
temperature data are fitted with an oscillation of period 60 years added
to a linear contribution. The data which support the 60-year cycle are
summarized, in particular sea surface temperatures and sea level rise
measured either by tide gauge or by satellite altimetry. The tiny
anthropogenic warming appears consistent with the absence of any
detectable change of slope of the 130-year-long linear contribution to
the temperature data before and after the onset of large CO2 emissions.
International Journal of Modern Physics B, Volume 28, Issue 13, 20 May 2014.
Prince Charles has drunk the Kool Aid
Prince Charles has called for an end to capitalism as we know it in order to save the planet from global warming.
In a speech to business leaders in London, the Prince said that a
“fundamental transformation of global capitalism” was necessary in order
to halt “dangerously accelerating climate change” that would “bring us
to our own destruction”.
He called for companies to focus on “approaches that achieve lasting and
meaningful returns” by protecting the environment, improving their
employment practices and helping the vulnerable to develop a new
"inclusive capitalism".
The Prince was taking part in his first major UK public engagement since
sparking a diplomatic row last week by likening the behaviour of
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to Adolf Hitler.
In a politically-charged speech at the Inclusive Capitalism conference,
the Prince said: “I remember when the Iron Curtain came down there was a
certain amount of shouting about the triumph of capitalism over
communism. Being somewhat contrary, I didn't think it was quite as
simple as that. I felt that unless the business world considered the
social, community and environmental dimensions, we might end up coming
full circle.”
The Prince, who has long been outspoken about the need to tackle climate
change, said the world now stood at “a pivotal moment in history” ahead
of major UN summit in Paris next year on reducing global greenhouse gas
emissions.
“Over the next eighteen months, and bearing in mind the urgency of the
situation confronting us, the world faces what is probably the last
effective window of opportunity to vacate the insidious lure of the
‘last chance saloon’ in order to agree an ambitious, equitable and
far-sighted multilateral settlement in the context of the post-2015
sustainable development goals and the U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change,” he said.
“Either we continue along the path we seem collectively determined to
follow, apparently at the mercy of those who so vociferously and
aggressively deny that our current operating model has any effect upon
dangerously accelerating climate change - which I fear will bring us to
our own destruction - or we can choose to act now before it is finally
too late, using all of the power and influence that each of you can
bring to bear to create an inclusive, sustainable and resilient
society,” he said.
The Prince was addressing an audience of 200 business leaders including
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund,
and chief executives of multinational companies such as UBS,
GlaxoSmithKline and Unilever.
He called on businesses to focus on the long-term and make “an authentic
moral commitment to acting as true custodians of the Earth and
architects of the well-being of current and future generations”.
“It is only by adopting a broader sense of value that our finances will
be sustained and we can find new sources of profit,” he said.
His comments appear to align with those of Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, who has called for “responsible capitalism”.
The Prince suggested that companies must do more to put “young people
properly at the heart of companies' employment practices and planning
strategies, in order to tackle more effectively the world's growing
youth unemployment crisis”.
Businesses must also “account properly for carbon dioxide emissions, the
use of water and fertiliser, the pollution we produce and the
biodiversity we lose”, he said.
The Prince said that businesses would be unpopular with their peers in
the short term for going green but would reap “immense” rewards in the
long term.
SOURCE
45 senators, including vulnerable Dems, are asking the EPA to delay incoming emissions regulations
It’s only a small matter of time until the Obama administration finally,
rapturously releases what its hopes will be the crown jewel of its
rise-of-the-oceans-slowing climate-change agenda: Regulations capping
the emissions from existing power plants, a.k.a., stamping out coal
plants across the country. This set of regs is going to be even more
complicated and controversial than the regulations for only new power
plants the administration released last year, and as the AP obliquely
explains, we’re likely to start seeing those “necessarily skyrocketing”
energy prices Obama once mentioned pretty quickly here:
"Electricity prices are probably on their way up across much of the
U.S. as coal-fired plants, the dominant source of cheap power, shut down
in response to environmental regulations and economic forces.
New and tighter pollution rules and tough competition from cleaner
sources such as natural gas, wind and solar will lead to the closings of
dozens of coal-burning plants across 20 states over the next three
years. And many of those that stay open will need expensive retrofits.
Because of these and other factors, the Energy Department predicts
retail power prices will rise 4 percent on average this year, the
biggest increase since 2008. By 2020, prices are expected to climb an
additional 13 percent, a forecast that does not include the costs of
coming environmental rules.
The Obama administration, state governments and industry are struggling
to balance this push for a cleaner environment with the need to keep
the grid reliable and prevent prices from rocketing too much higher."
“Tough competition” from wind and solar? …That’s cute. Our egregiously
subsidized wind and solar industries account for about 4 percent of our
electricity generation and are terribly unreliable (just ask Germany,
which has lately had to bring more coal plants online to make up for
their faulty renewables), while coal still provides around 40 percent of
our electricity and is the most reliable mass source we have. Natural
gas is great with its cleaner-burning emissions, coming in with the
really stiff competition at around 30 percent, but it has some
infrastructural issues that are currently keeping it at second place in
terms of reliability.
Make no mistake — the Obama administration swooping in with major regs
that deeply affect 40 percent of our electricity generation is going to
take its economic toll, and 45 senators — Democrats and Republicans
included — would like the Obama administration to step back for a second
a perhaps more deeply consider that toll. Via The Hill:
"Forty-five senators are pressing the Environmental Protection Agency
to delay new rules on limiting carbon emissions from power plants. …
The senators are pressuring the EPA to set a 120-day comment period
rather than the standard 60-day comment period. That would double the
normal allotted for industry, consumers, businesses, and states to give
their two cents on the rule.
Fifteen Democrats signed the letter, including the four seen as most
vulnerable in the midterm elections: Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark
Warner (Va), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Mark Begich (Alaska). …
“Affordable, reliable, and redundant sources of electricity are
essential to the economic well-being of our states and the quality of
life of our constituents,” the letter to EPA chief Gina McCarthy said.
“While we all agree that clean air is vitally important, EPA has an
obligation to understand the impacts that regulations have on all
segments of society,” it said."
SOURCE
Greenie versus Greenie
Just what effect seismic testing will have along the Jersey Shore is in
question, but it seems that almost everyone except the Obama
Administration is opposed to taking a chance on any negative
consequences resulting from it during a study that hardly appears to be
of high priority.
Both recreational and commercial fishing representatives joined
environmentalists at a Point Pleasant Beach rally Friday morning in an
effort to postpone the Rutgers University project approved by the Obama
Administration as a climate change study designed to access deep sea
sediments. It's set to begin off the coast on June 3, and will utilize
high energy seismic blasting that could disturb fish and marine mammal
populations.
There probably wouldn't be so much opposition if the seismic blasting
were to be conducted in mid-winter, but running the program during the
prime inshore period of fish abundance doesn't seem to make any sense at
all.
The Recreational Fishing Alliance notes that only President Obama and
his Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, can postpone this study --
and they've been deaf to the bipartisan requests to do so. Gov. Chris
Christie and his Department of Environmental Protection have been
requesting a postponement along with many members of the N.J.
Congressional delegation. A petition is being circulated by Clean Ocean
Action, but it will take individual communications from voters to
pressure President Obama into avoiding any negative consequences to the
Shore and its economy during the prime season.
SOURCE
Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power
As the science on climate change and its impacts on the global economy
become clearer and more urgent, governments are increasingly looking for
ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The largest source of
these emissions comes from the combustion of fossil fuels—including
coal, oil and natural gas—to produce electricity, an effort that in 2012
made up about 40 percent of emissions globally and 32 percent in the
United States. More and more, countries are seeking to lower emissions
in the electricity sector by turning to low and no-carbon generation
options. However, until now, there has been little thorough, empirical
analysis of which of these technologies is most efficient, and which
provides the best “bang for our buck” as we seek to reduce emissions.
My new Brookings working paper breaks down the comprehensive costs and
benefits of five common low-carbon electricity technologies: wind,
solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, and gas combined cycle (an advanced,
highly energy efficient type of natural gas plant). Using data from the
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the paper asks the
question, “Which of the five low-carbon alternatives is most
cost-effective in lowering emissions?” The results are highly
policy-relevant, and offer enlightening answers to a number of questions
that can help governments aiming for a low-carbon future.
1. What’s it going to cost me?
This is an important question because energy costs are private and owed
by everyday consumers, whereas the benefits of reducing carbon use are
shared as a global public good. So, what would it cost you and I to move
toward a world where we generate electricity through mostly low-carbon
technologies? How would the cost per megawatt hour (MWH) and kilowatt
hour (KWH) change?
One of the best scenarios for our proposed low-carbon alternatives would
be for each of them to replace the use of coal-fired plants when
electricity demand is moderate, which is most of the time, and gas
simple cycle plants during shorter periods of peak energy use.
The table above compares the cost per kilowatt-hour (KWH) of each of the
five low-carbon technologies compared to the cost per KWH of the
high-carbon technologies that it replaces. All of the low carbon
technologies save on energy costs compared to coal and simple cycle gas
plants: wind, solar and hydro because the energy from wind, sun and
water is free; nuclear because uranium is cheaper than coal or gas per
unit of energy; and gas combined cycle because it is much more energy
efficient than coal or gas simple cycle. Four of the five low-carbon
technologies, excluding gas combined cycle, have a much higher net
capacity cost—that is, the cost of building and maintaining the
low-carbon power plants—because all four are much more costly to build
and maintain than a new coal or gas simple cycle plant. A gas combined
cycle plant saves on capacity costs mainly because it costs about
two-thirds less to build than a coal-fired plant.
Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five
low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It
costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas
plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It
costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH. Gas combined cycle is the least
expensive. It does not cost more than the cost of power from the coal or
less efficient gas plants that it displaces. Indeed, it costs about 3
cents less per KWH.
To place these additional costs in context, the average cost of
electricity to U.S. consumers in 2012 was 9.84 cents per KWH, including
the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity. This means a
new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce
electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH,
than using coal and gas technologies.
2. Are the additional costs of wind and solar justified by the benefits of reduced carbon dioxide emissions?
The additional costs of wind and solar could be worthwhile, provided
that the value of the emissions they avoid is great enough. However, as
the following table shows, if we value the reduced emissions at $50 per
ton of carbon dioxide, the benefits of wind and solar, net of their
costs, is less than the other three low-carbon alternatives.
The emission benefits of four of the five low-carbon alternatives per
KWH are roughly the same, about five cents per KWH. The benefits of wind
and solar, minus their additional costs, are negative. The net benefits
of the other three alternatives are positive and substantially higher.
Gas combined cycle ranks number one in terms of net benefits while hydro
and nuclear rank two and three.
A carbon dioxide price of $50 per metric ton places quite a high value
on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the price for carbon
dioxide emissions in the European Trading System reached a high of about
30 euros in 2006 and was trading around 5 euros at the end of 2013.
Recent prices in trading systems in California have been around $12 and
in several eastern U.S. states around $2 per ton.
3. Why are the costs per KWH of wind and solar so much higher, and the
benefits not much different, than the other three low-carbon
alternatives?
Costs are much higher for three reasons. First, the cost per MW of
capacity to build a wind or solar plant is quite high (and much greater
than that of a gas-fired plant). The cost per MW of solar capacity is
especially high. Reductions in the cost of solar-voltaic panels have
reduced the cost of building a solar plant by 22 percent between 2010
and 2012, but further reductions are likely to have a lesser effect
because the cost of solar panels is only a fraction of the total cost of
a utility-scale solar plant.
Second, a wind or solar plant operates at full capacity only a fraction
of the time, when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. For
example, a typical solar plant in the United States operates at only
about 15 percent of full capacity and a wind plant only about 25 percent
of full capacity, while a coal plant can operate 90 percent of full
capacity on a year-round basis. Thus it takes six solar plants and
almost four wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity as a
single coal-fired plant.
Third, the output of wind and solar plants is highly variable—year by
year, month by month, day by day and hour by hour—compared to a
coal-fired plant, which can operate at full capacity about 90 percent of
the time. Thus more than six solar plants and four wind plants are
required to produce the same output with the same degree of reliability
as a coal-fired plant of the same capacity. In the paper we estimate
that at least 7.3 solar plants and 4.3 wind plants are required to
produce the same amount of power with the same reliability as a
coal-fired plant.
By way of contrast, a new low-carbon gas combined cycle or nuclear plant
can operate also at 90 percent of full capacity and can replace a
coal-fired plant on a one-to-one basis. A hydro plant with storage can
operate at 100 percent capacity during peak periods and more than 40
percent during non-peak periods. In dollar terms, it takes a $29 million
investment in solar capacity, and $10 million in wind capacity, to
produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1
million investment in gas combined cycle capacity.
The benefits of reduced emissions from wind and solar are limited
because they operate at peak capacity only a fraction of the time. A
nuclear or gas combined cycle plant avoids far more emissions per MW of
capacity than wind or solar because it can operate at 90 percent of full
capacity. Limited benefits and higher costs make wind and solar
socially less valuable than nuclear, hydro, and combined cycle gas.
4. How can we be sure that a new low-carbon plant will replace a high-carbon coal plant rather than some other low-carbon plant?
We cannot be sure. If electricity producers do not have to pay a price
for the carbon dioxide they emit, the likelihood is great than a new
low-carbon plant will replace an existing, low-carbon gas combined cycle
plant. The cost of running an existing coal plant is typically much
less than running an existing combined cycle plant and the combined
cycle plant will be shut down before the coal plant. The reduction in
emissions will be far less than if the coal plant is shut down because a
coal plant emits about three times as much carbon dioxide as a gas
combined cycle plant.
However, if electricity producers have to pay a high enough price for
the carbon dioxide they emit, then a coal plant will be shut down before
a gas combined cycle plant. The price of carbon dioxide emissions
required to tip the balance between shutting down coal and shutting down
gas depends on the price of gas relative to that of coal. It also
depends on whether we are talking about the short-term choice of running
an existing gas plant rather than an existing coal plant or the longer
term choice of investing in a new combined cycle gas plant rather than a
new coal plant.
In the United States, where the price of natural gas is low compared to
most other countries, the price for CO2 emissions had to be about $5 or
more in 2013 in order to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting
down coal. At current U.S. gas prices, investment in new gas combined
cycle is more profitable than an investment in a coal plant even without
any price penalty attached to CO2 emissions.
In Europe, where the price of natural gas is much higher than in the
United States, a CO2 emission price of $65 to $85 per metric ton is
required to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting down coal,
far higher than the current price of CO2 emissions in the European
Trading System. However, the price of CO2 emissions need only be about
$12 to $22 per metric ton to tip the longer-term balance in favor of
investing in a new gas combined cycle plant rather than a new coal
plant.
5. What does this paper have for policymakers interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions at a reasonable cost?
First, renewable incentives that are biased in favor of wind and solar
and biased against large-scale hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle are
a very expensive and inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions.
Second, renewable incentives in the absence of a suitably high carbon
dioxide price are even less effective, because without a carbon price
renewable energy will replace low-carbon gas plants rather than
high-carbon coal plants.
Third, renewable incentives should be based not on output of renewable
energy but on the reduction in CO2 emissions by renewable energy. They
are not the same thing.
Fourth, a carbon price is far more effective in reducing carbon
emissions precisely because it is not biased toward any one technology
but rewards any technology that reduces emissions at a reasonable cost.
Fifth, the benefits of a natural gas combined cycle plant are not
dependent on the natural gas fracking revolution in the United States.
Combined cycle plants are highly beneficial even in Europe, where
natural gas prices are higher and fracking more limited. The problem in
Europe is that the price of CO2 emissions in the European Trading System
is far too low to encourage production of electricity by gas rather
than coal.
Sixth, even though the electricity sector accounts for only 40 percent
of worldwide carbon emissions, cleaner electricity can reduce CO2
emissions in other sectors, for example by reducing the carbon footprint
of electric vehicles and home heating.
Finally, the electricity sector offers one of the simplest and most cost
effective ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Simply replacing
all high-carbon U.S. coal plants with any of the five low-carbon
alternatives can reduce U.S. CO2 emissions in the electricity sector by
50 to 70 percent. The potential reductions in other countries, such as
China where coal is more important, are even greater.
SOURCE
Why Renewables Haven't Destroyed the Grid - Yet!
By Davis Swan
Most supporters of renewable energy development are probably pretty
comfortable with the way things are going. Wind and Solar generation has
been increasing both in "nameplate capacity" and in actual production
of electricity. There have not been any significant grid failures that
can be blamed on renewables. Apart from a consolidation within the solar
cell manufacturing sector there have not been any notable bankruptcies
within the electricity generating sector. All visible signs are positive
for a continued expansion of renewable resources.
When I talk to groups about renewable energy I start off with a Youtube
video which demonstrates testing the compression strength of a concrete
block. For 2 minutes and 40 seconds this is the most boring video you
could imagine. The block shows absolutely no sign of stress. At 2:41 the
concrete block fails and is utterly destroyed. As far as I am concerned
we are at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds with respect to the electrical
grid.
In order to understand what I believe to be the serious risks facing the
electrical generation and distribution system it is necessary to review
the structure of the system as it was before renewables began to be
developed in a significant way. The chart below shows hypothetical load
profiles for a peak demand day during the spring/fall, winter and summer
as well as a line that represents the overall generating capacity in
the system.
It can be observed that the system demand/load varies considerably
throughout the day and throughout the year. It is also clear that there
is a great deal of excess supply available for most hours on most days.
In fact, only on the highest peak demand days of the entire year will
the demand come close to the supply. That is by design as every
well-managed electrical generation system in the world requires a
reserve margin of 8-15% above peak demand.
This reserve is meant to provide resiliency for the grid to accommodate
scheduled maintenance shut-downs at major facilities such as nuclear
plants, natural gas-fired and coal-fired plants as well as unscheduled
outages due to storms or switching problems or other operational issues.
(Note: I appreciate that many people will raise objections to the demand
curves presented in that their local situation might be very different.
That is one of the challenges facing every Independent System/grid
Operator. Local demand curves can be all over the map due to the mix of
commercial, residential, and industrial users. My point is not that
these particular curves are the most typical in all locations. The point
is that demand varies significantly over the course of the day and
through different seasons.)
So before we began to develop renewable energy there was plenty of
generation capacity within the system. In fact, many generation
facilities were not running at anything close to capacity most of the
time.
Because of a public policy decision to reduce the burning of
hydro-carbons (and the associated production of CO2 emissions) wind and
solar generation sources have been subsidized through a variety of
financial instruments including capital grants, tax credits, and
feed-in-tariffs. Renewables have also been given preferential access to
the grid in most jurisdictions.
These measures have achieved the stated policy goal. Wind and solar now
make up a significant percentage of generation capacity in a number of
jurisdictions and at times provide a large percentage of electrical
production.
For example, Germany has developed over 30 GW of solar power and over 30
GW of Wind. On a blustery spring day in Germany renewables can meet up
to 40% of the total electrical demand for a few hours at mid-day. There
are regular announcements of "new records" for both solar and wind
generation. A similar situation exists in Texas with regards to wind and
in parts of Hawaii with regards to solar.
Remembering that there was already a surplus of generation capacity in
the system before the development of renewables it is obvious that when
renewables hit their generation peaks most traditional thermal
generation plants are unable to sell electricity. That would not be a
problem if the construction of these plants had not been financed based
upon assumptions regarding how often they would be used and what
wholesale electricity prices would be. In fact, the economics of running
these plants has deteriorated to the point where many utilities,
especially in Europe, are on a "credit watch".
The rational response of companies trying to sell electricity into a
market that has a great over-supply would be to decommission some of the
oldest and most polluting plants to bring supply and demand into a
better balance. But there is a problem. Renewable resources cannot be
relied upon, particularly at peak demand times.
In this situation demand rose throughout the week as a strong high
pressure system spread across the state bringing with it colder
temperatures while at the same time shorter days required more lighting.
One of the more troublesome realities of meteorology is that large,
stable high pressure systems are often responsible for peak electrical
demand in both winter and summer because they are associated with clear
skies and temperature extremes. These systems are also commonly
characterized by very low winds across a wide area.
As a result while demand continued to climb wind energy faded away to
almost nothing. At this point most of the thermal generation assets
available within Texas had to come on-line in order to meet demand.
So it is impossible to decommission even the oldest and least efficient
thermal generation plants in the system regardless of how many wind
farms have been built and solar panels deployed. German utility E.on
came face-to-face with that reality in the spring of 2013 when they were
instructed by the local grid operator to keep an old plant operational
even though it would rarely be needed.
But a new day is dawning in the U.S. and it could be a darn cold (or hot) one.
The EPA announced regulations in December 2011 that will require
coal-fired thermal generation plants to clean up or shut down. The
reality is that for many of these plants it will not be feasible to
clean them up. In fact, in some cases the EPA will not even allow them
to be updated with modern pollution controls. As a result more than 40
GW of firm generation capacity will be decommissioned over the next
several years.
Plans to replace this loss are in some cases vague and have been
changing often. Increased conservation and better utilization of
existing plants are frequently included in Integrated Resource Plans. In
other cases greater reliance upon renewables is explicitly identified.
These are not really replacements for firm capacity.
A number of new Natural Gas fired plants are also under construction.
While current low gas prices make this an attractive option the threat
of future significant price hikes as well as the EPA's stated goal to
regulate CO2 emissions are worrisome and are impacting the ability to
secure financing of these plants in some cases.
As more and more coal-fired plants are retired it is likely that total
system firm generation capacity will drop resulting in smaller reserves.
This, in turn, will make the system more susceptible to storms or other
unplanned outages.
The degree to which grid security is compromised will vary from region
to region depending upon the penetration of renewables, number of
coal-fired plant retirements and the health of the local economy which
has a major impact on electricity demand. Based upon those factors I
believe Texas and the Mid-west are the areas most at risk.
It may be that the reduction in coal-fired generation will do nothing
more than cull excess capacity out of the system with no negative
impacts. But groups such as the Institution of Engineering and
Technology in the UK have issued warnings about the progressive stress
on a system that has taken decades to evolve and is now faced with
unprecedented challenges.
Like the concrete block in the Youtube video the system is not
displaying any outward signs of weakness. The question is this - will
the North American electricity system encounter its own version of
second 2:41?
SOURCE
***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here
*****************************************
27 May, 2014
Researcher hits media & admits West Antarctica ice sheet melt not traceable to humans!
And we've got 200 years before anything much happens anyway
"I have a problem with the widespread implication (in the popular press)
that the West Antarctic collapse can be attributed to anthropogenic
climate change," said Mike Wolovik, a graduate researcher at
Lamont-Doherty who studies ice sheet dynamics. "The marine ice sheet
instability is an inherent part of ice sheet dynamics that doesn't
require any human forcing to operate. When the papers say that collapse
is underway, and likely to last for several hundred years, that's a
reasonable and plausible conclusion."
But, he said, the link between CO2 levels and the loss of ice in West
Antarctica "is pretty tenuous." The upwelling of warmer waters that melt
the ice has been tied to stronger westerly winds around Antarctica,
which have been linked to a stronger air pressure difference between the
polar latitudes and the mid-latitudes, which have in turn been linked
to global warming.
"I'm not an atmospheric scientist, so I can't evaluate the strength of
all of those linkages," Wolovik said. "However, it's a lot of linkages."
And that leaves a lot of room for uncertainty about what's actually
causing the collapse of the glaciers, he said.
Researchers have been discussing the theory of how marine ice sheets
become unstable for many years, said Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer at
Lamont-Doherty who has studied ocean currents and their impact on ice
shelves for several decades.
"Some of us are a bit wary of indications that substantial new ground
has been broken" by the two new papers, Jacobs said. While ocean
temperatures seem to be the main cause of the West Antarctic ice
retreat, there's a lot of variability in how heat is transported around
the ocean in the region, and it's unclear what's driving that, he said.
And, he's skeptical that modeling the system at this point can
accurately predict the timing of the ice's retreat.
But, he added, "this is one more message indicating that a substantial
sea level rise from continued melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
could occur in the foreseeable future.
Cochran agreed: The papers' message is "that … over the next couple
hundred years, there's going to be a significant rise in sea level, and
at this point we can't stop it."
SOURCE
We Can Easily Adapt To Sea Level Changes, New Report Says
Attempts to stem sea level rises by reducing CO2 levels in order to
"combat" global warming are a complete waste of time says a new report
by two of the world's leading oceanographic scientists.
Over the last 150 years, average global sea levels have risen by around
1.8 mm per annum - a continuation of the melting of the ice sheets which
began 17,000 years ago. Satellite measurements (which began in 1992)
put the rate higher - at 3mm per year. But there is no evidence
whatsoever to support the doomsday claims made by Al Gore in 2006 that
sea levels will rise by 20 feet by the end of the century, nor even the
more modest prediction by James Hansen that they will rise by 5 metres.
Such modest rises, argue oceanographer Willem P de Lange and marine
geologist Bob Carter in their report for the Global Warming Policy
Foundation, are far better dealt with by adaptation than by costly,
ineffectual schemes to decarbonise the global economy.
They say:
"No justification exists for continuing to base sea-level policy and
coastal management regulation upon the outcomes of deterministic or
semi-empirical sea-level modelling. Such modelling remains speculative
rather than predictive. The practice of using a global rate of sea-level
change to manage specific coastal locations worldwide is irrational and
should be abandoned."
It is irrational not least because it is based on a complete
misunderstanding of the causes and nature of sea-level rises. There are
parts of the world where the sea level is rising, others where it is
falling - and this is dependent as much on what the land is doing
(tectonic change) as on what the sea is doing.
In other words - a point once made very effectively by Canute - it is
absurdly egotistical of man to imagine that he has the power to control
something as vast as the sea. The best he can hope to do is to adapt, as
previous generations have done, either by deciding to shore up eroding
coastal areas or abandon them and move further inland.
And for those still in doubt, here is what Vincent Courtillot, Emeritus
professor of geophysics at Paris Diderot University has to say in his
introduction to the report:
"Sea level change is a naturally occurring process. Since the last
glacial maximum, some 18,000 years ago, de-glaciation has taken place
and this natural global warming has led to sea-level rise of on average
120 m or so. At some times, pulses of melt water coming from large
peri-glacial lakes led to rates of sea level rise as high as 3 m per
century. The rate slowed down some 7000 years ago and since then has
been naturally fluctuating by only a few metres. The remaining global
sea-level rise has been about 20 cm in the 20th century. Has this led to
global disasters? The answer is no. If the projected rise over the 21st
century is double what was seen in the 20th, is it likely that it will
result in global disasters? Again, the answer is most likely no; human
ingenuity, innovation and engineering, and the proper material and
financial resources should solve local problems if and when they arrive,
as they have in the 20th century."
SOURCE
Well, I Guess Obama Hasn't Healed the Planet
When Barack Obama won his party’s presidential nomination in 2008, he
proclaimed that “generations from now, we will be able to look back and
tell our children that… this was the moment when the rise of the oceans
began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Six years later, the president is threatening to go around Congress and
upend the American economy in a misguided attempt to secure his legacy
on climate change. He’s gone from the candidate who said, “I face this
challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations” to
the president who says if Congress won’t act on this issue, “I will.”
Despite Americans’ keen interest in just about any issue except climate
change, the White House is encouraging climate hysteria to push the
Environmental Protection Agency’s coming regulations.
President Obama wants to use the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide
emissions. The two main problems with this: It would devastate the
economy and it would NOT heal the planet, so to speak.
“Even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gas emissions entirely, we
would not moderate the Earth’s temperature more than a few tenths of a
degree Celsius by the end of the century,” said Heritage’s Nicolas
Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow.
Read that again: A few tenths of a degree—from taking extreme measures.
And how well do these dire climate projections do in reality? In fact,
the climate models the administration relied on for its proposals
projected the earth would warm 0.3 degree Celsius over the past 17
years—which did not happen, Loris reports. During that time, carbon
dioxide emissions did increase—yet the projected warming did not happen.
That doesn’t bother the White House, which continues hyping the latest
climate report with “with bogus claims of past, current and predicted
climate impacts,” says David Kreutzer, Heritage’s research fellow in
energy economics and climate change.
You may not be able to count on the White House’s climate projections,
but there are several things you can count on from Obama’s action plan:
higher energy prices
lower incomes for Americans
slower economic growth
White House adviser John Podesta said this week that congressional
attempts to block the administration have “zero percent chance” of
working. Will members of Congress take that as a challenge and step up
to protect Americans from this wrongheaded plan that would bring only
economic harm for no environmental benefit?
SOURCE
The Slow, Sure Death of "Climate Change" Lies
By Alan Caruba
Even though President Obama continues to lie about “climate change” and
employs the many elements of the federal government to repeat those
lies, this huge hoax is dying.
Obama is on record saying that climate change “once considered an issue
for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present” and is
“affecting Americans right now.” Climate change as studied by
climatologists is measured in terms of centuries whereas the weather is
what is happening today. It has been happening before and since the rise
of civilization. Obama’s claim that “climate-related changes are
outside of recent experience” and “have become more frequent and/or
intense” is a lie from start to finish.
The White House recently released its latest “National Climate
Assessment.” It is 841 pages of outlandish claims that reflect the lies
generated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. When you consider that the federal government spends an
estimated $2.6 billion annually in grants for climate research, about
the only beneficiaries are those “scientists” employed to further the
hoax.
The UN’s IPCC was created in 1983 and has issued a series of reports
whose sole intention has been to frighten people around the world with
claims of global warming that are scientifically baseless.
The Heartland Institute, a non-profit market-based think tank, responded
by creating the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
(NIPCC) and by sponsoring a series of international conferences. The 9th
conference will be July 7-9 in Las Vegas. That effort began in 2003 in
cooperation with the Science & Environmental Project led by Dr. S.
Fred Singer and was joined by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change.
I am an advisor to the Institute, having written about environmental and energy issues for several decades at this point.
Calling on thousands of scientists around the world, in 2013 the NIPCC
published the first of a three-volume response to the IPCC’s fifth
assessment. This year, it has published a volume of Climate Change
Reconsidered devoted to biological impacts, a 1,062 page opus. The NIPCC
is an international panel of scientists and scholars with no government
affiliation or sponsorship, and it receives no corporate funding.
Writing in the Financial Post in October 2013, Lawrence Solomon, the
executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group,
noted that “solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time
in the last 10,000 years.” The Earth’s climate is primarily a
reflection of solar radiation or the lack of it. From 1300 to 1850, the
Earth was subject to a mini-ice age. While the global warming hoax began
in the late 1980s, Solomon noted that, in the 1960s and 1970s, the
scientific consensus was that the Earth “was entering a period of global
cooling. The media in those years was filled with stories about a
pending new ice age.
It was only the intervention of the UN’s IPCC that changed the
“consensus” to one of global warming. A cooling cycle that began around
fourteen years ago could lead to another mini-ice age or the planet
could be on the cusp of a full-fledged one. On average, the interglacial
periods of the Earth have lasted about 11,500 years and we are at the
end of such a period.
Climate Change Reconsidered II devoted to biological impact features scientific studies that conclude:
# “Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.” Considering
that all vegetation on Earth depends on it, it is not surprising that
another conclusion was that the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content is
causing a great greening of the Earth.
# As a result, “there is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity
due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels and that
terrestrial ecosystems have thrived throughout the world as a result of
warming temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Multiple
lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting, and in some
cases, evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era.”
# In addition, “rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels to no
pose a significant threat to aquatic life and that a modest warming of
the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from
temperate-related events.”
The irony of the latest NIPCC report, of course, is that it responds to
the claims of global warming and carbon dioxide’s role at a time when
the Earth is cooling. It makes one wish that all the talk about
“greenhouse gases” is true enough to help us escape from the present
cooling.
One thing we do know for sure is that the Greens talk of climate change
has lost its grip on the public imagination and attention. As the
cooling cycle continues, people around the world will be far more
focused on increased evidence of massive ice sheets at both poles, on
frozen lakes and rivers, on shortened growing seasons, and on the
desperate need for more fossil fuels to warm our homes and workplaces.
SOURCE
Obama and EPA Use “National Security” to Block Independent Investigations!
The executive branch has an enormous amount of power and thanks to
President Obama’s time in office, that power has expanded over the past 6
years.
The result of this extended power is that an overbearing executive
branch comes into conflict with individual rights and liberties as it
continues its expansion. The IRS scandal is an excellent example of how
executive bureaucracy will go to any length to protect and perpetuate
its own existence.
While the President does have extraordinary power over the executive
branch, there are safeguards in place to prevent fraud and abuse.
Inspectors general serve as a watchdog element to stop these bloated
bureaucracies from devolving into tyranny and lawlessness. But what
happens when these Inspectors General are shut out? What happens when
members of the President’s inner circle deliberately try to thwart
investigations into the Executive branch bureaucracies?
That is exactly what is happening at the Environmental Protection
Agency! EPA Assistant Inspector General Patrick Sullivan testified
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the
EPA’s Office of Homeland Security, run by EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy, is currently acting as a “rogue law enforcement organization.”
A unit run by Barack Obama’s political staff has been blocking
independent investigations for years and preventing the Inspector
General from doing his job.
Time and time again, when the Obama administration is forced to choose
between transparency and opacity, it chooses the latter. This is
corruption at its absolute worst!
This isn’t just a story about the EPA. Yes, that part of the story is
important and should serve as a smoking gun, showing just how corrupt
the Obama administration has become. But the story is much larger than
just this one agency. Across the board, government agencies’ corrupt
elements are being revealed. Not through legitimate investigation, but
through the Obama administration’s resistance to oversight efforts.
The greatest comedy over the past six years is that as lawless as the
Obama administration may be, many of the checks and balances designed to
curtail White House abuses happen to have a serious conflict of
interest.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is charged with determining whether
executive orders and bureaucratic regulations are constitutional. Last
year, Harry Reid abolished the filibuster to allow Democrats to pack
this court with Obama supporters. That check has been all but
eliminated.
The Attorney General is supposed to enforce the law of the land.
Unfortunately, Eric Holder has no intention of upholding anything. He
refuses to enforce our immigration laws and has refused to defend laws
passed by Congress when they come up before the Supreme Court. When
Congress held Eric Holder in contempt, they turned the case over to…
Eric Holder! As if this corrupt Obama appointee would ever police
himself…
Now we have a branch within the Environmental Protection Agency that
refuses to cooperate with independent investigators. The EPA already has
a number of excuses that it uses to avoid oversight. The agency uses
“public health” and “environmental protection” as excuses to explain
away its actions. These latest discoveries show that the White House
actually staffed the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security with Obama
supporters for the sole purpose of blocking oversight investigations.
First of all, why on earth does the EPA need an Office of Homeland
Security? The actual Department of Homeland Security is redundant enough
as it is… why does the EPA need its own miniature, in-house version?
The answer is simple. Now, whenever the Obama administration wants
something to go away or for an investigation to stop, this small unit of
Obama staffers can claim that a program or regulation is in the name of
“national security.”
A lot of this is the Republicans’ fault. Both parties have contributed
to the rise of national security justifications for illegal actions. We
have been conditioned to just accept that whenever the goal is national
security, the ends always justify the means. This couldn’t be farther
from the truth.
The Obama administration’s politicization of this EPA unit shows just
how corrupt our government has become. When confronted over
environmental regulations and the EPA’s inner workings, the White House
has actually tried to claim immunity and confidentiality by arguing the
agency protects national security. The only things that the EPA protects
are the wallets and bank accounts of the environmental lobby.
The Obama administration is out of control. But quite frankly, party
affiliation has nothing to do with it. The Executive branch has grown to
be so corrupt that it will stop at nothing to protect itself and shield
itself from investigations. Even if it means claiming “national
security” to stop investigations into the Environmental Protection
Agency, the modern Presidency knows no shame.
This is completely absurd, but it is unfortunately our fault. We have
allowed the Executive branch to become so bloated and corrupt. We have
been conditioned by both political parties to accept “national security”
as an excuse for practically anything
SOURCE
Australia: Green anti-coal seam gas activists at work
Anti-gas activist’s camp relies on gas cylinders, six drums of diesel and electric generator. Go figure.
Less than a week after a council vowed to shut down a large anti-coal
seam gas protest camp in the state's north and promised police would be
called in to send it packing, the activists have been told they can
stay.
The Bentley camp, near Lismore, is a temporary home to between hundreds and thousands of people, depending on the day.
It was established in February on private land adjacent to the site where Metgasco plans to begin exploratory drilling for gas.
Richmond Valley Council announced last Wednesday the camp's approval
would expire at the end of that week and not be renewed due to its
burgeoning numbers, the length of time it had been there, and the
"ongoing breach of many of the approval conditions".
The mayor, Ernie Bennett, said police would be required "for sure" to move the campers on.
But on Thursday morning, Mr Bennett said the protesters would not be
moved, despite their occupation of the land being "illegal".
"I don't think it would be appropriate to remove them at this point," he said.
"Council is working with them to put an appropriate DA [development application] before council."
The Greens have said the police should not be used to break the protest.
“The NSW Police Force should not be used as private security to allow a
coal seam gas company to force its way into a community that has
overwhelmingly rejected the presence of gas fields in the Northern
Rivers,” Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said this week.
SOURCE
***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here
*****************************************
26 May, 2014
UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: IN A MESS
University of Queensland (UoQ) stumbles into self-inflicted ethical
dilemma by issuing legal threats to block scrutiny of a celebrated but
now discredited global warming study. The infamous "97 percent
consensus" paper created by cartoonist and self-styled climate expert,
John Cook, on behalf of UoQ has been shown to be fraudulent after
independent analysis.
An open letter addressed to the university
from lawyer, Rud Istvan JD, on behalf of the public interest details how
it betrayed its own openness policy in what appears to be a
self-serving ploy to avert exposure and ridicule. Istvan’s letter to UoQ
in full below:
Prof. Alistair McEwan, Acting-Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland
Ms. Jane Malloch, Esq. Head Research Legal, University of Queensland
Mr. Graham Lloyd, Environmental Editor, The Australian
Prof. Richard Tol, University of Sussex
5/22/2014
Prof. McEwan:
On May 20, 2014, you issued a formal statement concerning the
controversy published byThe Australian on 5/17/14 surrounding Cook et.
al, 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024, ‘Quantifying the Consensus’,
hereinafter QtC. That statement presents the University of Queensland
(UQ) with an ethical and legal dilemma. I call your attention to it
expecting UQ will do the right thing.
Your statement makes it quite clear that UQ considers QtC was done under
the sponsorship of and with support from UQ. This is indisputable. The
solicitation for volunteer raters for the analysis that became QtC was:
survey.gci.uq.edu.au/survey.php?c=5RL8LWWT2YO7. UQ released a statement
about the importance of QtC in the UQ News on January 16, 2014
headlined, “UQ climate change paper has the whole world talking.”
Your 5/20/14 statement said in part:
“Only information that might be used to identify the individual research
participants was withheld. This was in accordance with University
ethical approval specifying that the identity of participants should
remain confidential.”
And that is precisely your dilemma.
The published paper itself identified all the individual research
participants (raters). They were either named authors (with affiliations
provided, for example second author Dana Nuccitelli affiliated with UQ
associated website SKS, as noted in UQ’s 1/20/14 news release, or were
specifically named without affiliation in the paper’s acknowledgement.
Lest you doubt this, following is that portion of the paper as
originally published.
Your dilemma is this. If the UQ ethical approval exists as you
officially stated, then the paper as published grossly violated it. QtC
is therefore unethical according to UQ policy, and should be withdrawn
forthwith.
We need not cite here all the governing Australian principles that UQ is
obligated to follow under such unfortunate circumstances. Those include
but are not limited to
www.uq.edu.au/research/integrity-compliance/human-ethics
There is 2014 retraction precedent concerning another unethical climate
related paper from the University of Western Australia. If, on the other
hand, there was no such ethical approval, or that approval did not
require concealing rater identities, then you have officially
misrepresented grossly invalid grounds for withholding the anonymized
additional information needed for replication, such as date and time
stamped ratings by anonymous rater. Said information has repeatedly,
formally been requested by Prof. Richard S.J. Tol (Sussex University
(U.K.), and an IPCC AR5 lead author) for his legitimate research
purposes concerning what UQ said is a seminal paper. That data should
still exist, and should be provided to Prof. Tol under UQ Policy
4.20.06a §8.2 and §9.1 (as last approved 11/28/13).
Either way, you and UQ both appear in a very bad light. It appears that
UQ congratulates itself on gross ethical breaches (especially when
basking in so much notoriety), while at the same time withholding
anonymized primary data underlying a self admitted important research
paper in contravention of UQ written research data policy. Either
retract the admittedly unethical paper, or retract the grossly mistaken
excuse and release the requested data to Tol.
I note in passing there is a third possibility, to wit Tol’s requested
data does not exist. In which case, QtC should be retracted for being
unsupportable if not also unethical. As you are probably aware, there
have been many recent instances of unsupportable research subsequently
retracted. These include but are not limited to papers from Ike Antkare
in 2010, and many recent papers from the SCIgen group (which
interestingly bears surficial similarities to SKS) now being retracted
by Springer and by IEEE. Those two precedents may be particularly
germane to UQ’s instant dilemma.
This letter is as copyrighted as those Ms. Malloch writes concerning
this matter on UQ behalf. You and anyone else in the whole wide world
are hereby granted permission to freely reproduce it in whole or in
part. I suspect some may.
I look forward to whichever decision (retraction or data provision) you think best for UQ under the aforesaid circumstances.
Sincerely yours, s/s
Rud Istvan, Esq., JD/MBA
SOURCE
Russia's gas king laughs at Europe's "sustainable" energy sources
Europe has lost the global scramble for reliable energy supplies and
faces a long-term queeze as Siberian gas is diverted to the fast-growing
markets of Asia, Russia's gas chief has warned in scathing comments
aimed at EU political leaders.
Alexey Miller, chairman of the state giant Gazprom, said Russia's $400bn
deal this week to supply gas to China for 30 years is a black moment
for Europe and will change the geo-strategic balance in the world. "The
global competition for Russian gas resources started yesterday. Let
there be no mistake about that. We have untapped the Asian market and
this is going to have an impact on European gas prices," he said.
Mr Miller said the 38bn cubic metres (BCM) contract from 2018 is larger
than the entire volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) sold in the world.
"You don't find that sort of contract on the side of the road in
Europe," he told the St Petersburg Economic Forum.
Relishing his theme, he said China's gas demand is growing exponentially
and would surge past Europe's total consumption to reach 400 BCM in
"the very near future" as the Politburo tries to wean its polluted
mega-cities off coal-powered plants. A large proportion of this will
come from the vast Siberian fields, crowding out supplies for buyers in
Europe deemed "less reliable".
Describing Europe's energy shortage as "scary", he ridiculed the EU's
push for wind and solar power as a shambles, and said its LNG venture
had gone nowhere with capacity use collapsing to 22pc. "Europe has lost
the competition global for LNG, and in a single day it has just lost the
competition for the world's pipeline gas as well," he said.
The comments reflect the fury in Russia over a string of hostile
measures by Brussels following the Ukraine crisis, including a de facto
freeze on the South Stream gas pipeline through the Black Sea and plans
being developed by a team at the European Commission to slash reliance
on Russian gas as quickly as possible.
The China prize has given Russia a dramatic means of fighting back,
though it is far from clear what the Memorandum of Understanding between
the two sides actually means. Most analysts say it is highly unlikely
that China would wish to become too dependent on Russian supplies after
witnessing the skirmishes in Europe.
SOURCE
Medical body not interested in the scientific facts when it comes to wind turbine noise
Australian Medical Association rebuked by leading acoustics expert, Dr
Bruce Rapley, for their latest “cherry-picked” assessment of the dangers
of noise emissions from wind farms.
In a comprehensive and worrying letter of rebuttal Dr Rapley accuses AMA
of turning a deaf ear on the best science on the biological reception
of low-frequency sound. Principia Scientific International herein
publishes Dr Rapley’s letter to demonstrate how AMA is lying by omission
to the general public about the health impacts of wind turbines.
28 March 2014
Dr Steve Hambleton, President,
Prof. Geoffrey Dobb, Vice-President,
Australian Medical Association,
P.O. Box 6090,
KINGSTON, A.C.T. 2604
Dear Dr Hambleton, Professor Dobb and AMA members,
I recently became aware of your position statement on wind farms and health dated 14 March, 2014.
I have to say that this public statement has given me great concern with
respect to a number of points which I will outline for you.
Your opening statement:
“Wind turbine technology is considered a comparatively inexpensive and effective means of energy production. ”
This raises a number of issues that I feel are inappropriate for a
medical organisation to comment on. Firstly, line one is a statement
regarding the economics of wind turbines which has no place in a
statement regarding potential health effects. It is not within your
organisation’s professional competence to comment on economic matters
and to do so raises questions regarding your credibility and apparent
bias. How would your organisation feel about the OECD (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development) making statements about medical
practice?
Secondly, your position statement then passes comment on acoustic immissions:
“Wind turbines generate sound, including infrasound, which is very low
frequency noise that is generally inaudible to the human ear.”
To the best of my knowledge, medical practitioners are not generally
known for their skill or expertise in acoustics, other than that
directly associated with audiometry. To pass comment on areas beyond
your knowledge is dangerous and leaves you wide open to serious
challenge. Purporting to be experts in areas outside of medicine does
not serve your credibility well.
The statement goes on to comment on infrasound, comparing immissions
from different sources, yet lacking any sort of scientific credibility
because of the significant lack of detailed evidence. Rather, the
statements are reckless generalisations that provide no basis for
comparison, let alone comprehension, other than in the broadest sense.
“Infrasound is ubiquitous in the environment, emanating from natural
sources (e.g. wind, rivers) and from artificial sources including road
traffic, ventilation systems, aircraft and other machinery.”
Such broad comparisons do not enhance scientific debate and offer little
enlightenment to the uninformed, rather, they are more likely to
mislead due to their lack of specificity. It is a well-established fact
that low frequency and infrasound immissions from industrial wind
turbines differ significantly in a number of critical ways, compared to
natural sources like wind and water. Further, man-made sources such as
road traffic all differ significantly from natural sources of
infrasound. The most significant difference relates to the amplitude
modulation of the signal due to blade pass frequency. This phenomenon is
not apparent in natural or many other man-made sources: your comparison
is without scientific foundation.
Next you appear to have become experts in engineering:
“All modern wind turbines in Australia are designed to be upwind, with
the blade in front of the tower. These upwind turbines generate much
lower levels of infrasound and low frequency sound.”
The first statement is factual. The second statement leaves out an
important fact; when turbulent air is fed into the ‘modern’
upwind-bladed industrial turbines, they can generate significant
quantities of infrasound and low-frequency noise. This was established
in 1989 in Hawaii by NASA researchers Hubbard and Shepherd. Turbulence
resulting from wind turbines being installed too close together, without
complying with the international standard for turbine separation
distances, is thought to be contributing to the infrasound and
low-frequency noise problems at number of Australian wind development
sites. Based on the evidence, it would not be unreasonable for the
general public to assume that wind developers and turbine manufacturers
are more concerned with maximising profit and income from renewable
energy certificates (RECS) than from achieving engineering efficiency
and safeguarding public health.
While the profit motive is an integral part of normal, accepted business
practice, profiteering at the expense of public health is unacceptable.
When profit overrides public health and well being of the general
public, in the face of clear scientific/medical evidence, the practice
is doubly damnable and ethically indefensible. To quote the obvious:
“The devil is in the detail”. The fact that upwind industrial turbines
create sounds that affect animals and humans is abundantly obvious and
to compare this version of industrial wind turbine to older technology
is of no benefit to those who suffer from the acoustic immissions from
the current machines.
Your second paragraph alludes to such ‘devils’. While you state that:
“Infrasound levels in the vicinity of wind farms have been measured and
compared to a number of urban and rural environments away from wind
farms. The results of these measurements have shown that in rural
residences both near to and far away from wind turbines, both indoor and
outdoor infrasound levels are well below the perception threshold, and
no greater than that experienced in other rural and urban environments.”
the reality is that these statements misrepresent the facts. In essence,
what you have done is to ‘cherry-pick’ the data. Further, your
statement leads the reader to believe that as long as sound levels are
below conscious, and perhaps audible perception, there is no problem.
This could not be further from the truth.
A significant problem with the determination of environmental noise
relates to the inappropriate use of the A-weighting, still so commonly
applied. As it significantly underestimates frequencies below 1,000 Hz
and above 3,500 Hz this negates its usefulness in measuring low
frequency and infrasound. The point should be obvious. Unfortunately
regulation so often lags behind scientific knowledge.
Medicine, while based on a good deal of science, remains, as practiced,
an ART. The reason for this is that the practice of medicine involves
human beings. Human beings are not simply a collection of chemicals,
cells and tissues, randomly existing in the biosphere. Rather they are
sentient beings that are subject to multiple stimulatory mechanisms.
This is one instance where a holistic viewpoint is nearer the truth than
the traditional reductionist viewpoint. The consequence of this view
needs further elaboration which you have chosen to omit . . .
The scientific method is something which is much talked about, but
little understood, even by some scientists! The fact of the matter is
that science begins with observation. This observation then gives rise
to a question: how is that so? What caused that? How does that work? How
did that happen?
The question, which usually has some practical relevance, leads to the
creation of a ‘model’ of the ‘how’. That model is referred to as the
hypothesis. And of course a hypothesis leads to the development of a
testing methodology to see if it can be used to explain the facts. The
testing usually takes place in a controlled environment where the idea
(hypothesis) is put to test by way of practical experiments. With good
design, these should attempt to limit the number of variables (things
that can be manipulated/changed) and keep all other factors the same. In
an ideal world, a control situation could be used to compare the test
circumstances to the ‘normal’ condition.
A perfect example is a drug trial. Subjects would be randomly assigned
(so as not to bias the results) to one of two groups. One group would
receive the ‘test substance’ while the other, the control group, would
receive a placebo. That is, they would receive a substance (for example a
pill) but it would be inactive, that is, lacking the chemical species
under test. The strength of the findings is further enhanced if the
experimenter and the subjects are both blinded as to who got the real
drug. That is the basis of the modern scientific method.
Another perfectly legitimate and accepted method of study for obtaining
comparative data is that of the case crossover design, where people act
as their own controls. This design is used to demonstrate a causal
relationship in situations like allergic reactions to some foods and
particular drugs, for example. People living with industrial wind
turbines are conducting this experiment all the time. They go away, and
notice their symptoms ameliorate. They come back home, and under certain
predictable wind and weather conditions, their symptoms recur. This is a
clear demonstration, using the scientific method, of a direct and
causal relationship between exposure and response. This is why some
doctors are advising their patients to move away. It is clear that the
exposure to wind turbine noise is damaging their patient’s health, and
there is nothing else they can suggest.
A common mistake, when selecting scientific data, relates to a process
of choosing what to include. When selection bias exists in data
selection, this is colloquially known as ‘cherry-picking’. When this
occurs, it necessarily introduces a bias that affects the results. This
is apparent from your statement above relating to human perception of
sound. If you scan the literature more widely, then a plethora of papers
appear which contradict the basis of your argument. To only present one
side of the argument is to short-change the readers and the general
public. It also facilitates the generation of false impressions.
To return to the scientific method for a moment: when an observation has
been made; a question arisen; a hypothesis created; a series of
experiments formulated to test the hypothesis and ultimately the results
analysed, there are two relevant tests that need to be applied. First,
the results have to either support or reject the hypothesis. That means
that the hypothesis needs to be able to be falsified and results
obtained which are relevant to support or rejection the hypothesis’s
claim. Variables need to be measurable.
The second test, and equally important, is that the consequences of the
results, i.e. acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis, have to be
consistent with what is already known. To take an example: If the
results of an experiment lead to the conclusion that the ‘conservation
of momentum’ did not always occur, then there would be a great deal of
concern. Physicists are most unlikely to let go of such a well-supported
observation as the conservation of momentum. So, the new findings of an
experiment have to fit with our existing reality.
In order to fit with our current reality, or paradigm, there needs to be
both internal (within the experiment) and external (in relation to what
is already generally known and accepted) consistency to be valid. This
is not to say that one day we might not reject the generally accepted
view of the conservation of momentum, only that there would need to be
extraordinary evidence to cause us to reach that conclusion.
What assists us with comprehending new knowledge and integrating it into
our existing understanding of how the universe works is the existence
of a mechanism. That is, a way in which we can explain the circumstances
we discover through our experiment within the current bounds of
knowledge. For your stance to be accepted, there would need to be not
only no evidence to the contrary, but also the lack of any
understandable mechanism of action. Neither are in fact the case.
Many scientific papers expound the observation that stimuli below
conscious perception do, in a number of instances, result in
physiological response. This is the case for the effects of low
frequency and infrasound, and was noted by Kelley 1987, Chen, Qibai
& Shi 2004, Swinbanks 2012, and Schomer 2013 in addition to the work
of Professor Salt, a leading neurophysiologist working in this area.
Further, there are many plausible mechanisms to explain how
sub-conscious perception threshold stimuli may interact with living
organisms. The old notion that perception is the threshold above which
biological effects occur is not only out-dated, it is a non-sequitur.
Take x-rays for example, they are not readily consciously perceivable
yet can be quite harmful. Light is in a similar category. Sound is
another physical phenomenon that does not need conscious perception to
be received by an organism or for that organism to react.
The work of Professor Alec Salt has done much in recent years to
elucidate theory on the biological reception of low-frequency sound,
complimenting this with extensive laboratory experimentation. To ignore
this work is a travesty and is tantamount to lying by omission to the
general public. It is another example of cherry-picking the data that
effectively distorts the final impression. To add to this work, the
research of Dr. Carey Balaban has done much to throw light on the
neuronal mechanism of sound reception by the human body. We now have
theory, experimental evidence and empirical observation, all pointing in
the same direction. To blithely ignore such a body of science and come
up with a generalisation of ‘no harm’ is not only lying to the general
public but supports a point of view that is largely sympathetic to the
commercial, industrial profit motive. This commercial bias has no place
in medicine or public health.
The most recent article to come out of Washington University, St. Louis,
Missouri, from Professors Salt and Lichtenbaum is worthy of mention
here. Their landmark paper appears in Acoustics Today, Volume 10, Issue
1, pp 20-28, Winter 2014. In their paper: How does wind turbine noise
affect people?, they succinctly describe the results of their recent
work on the effects of low frequency and infrasound on the cochlea
mechanism. It appears that the roles of the inner and outer hair cells
differ in many significant ways. In particular, the outer hair cells
account for only 5 % of the afferent nerve fibres in the acoustic nerve
and are of Type II in comparison to the inner hair cells which equate to
95% of the acoustic nerves and are of Type I. Further, the inner hair
cells, which are largely responsible for the faculty of hearing in the
accepted frequency spectrum of 20 to 20,000 Hz, do not touch the
tectorial membrane. They operate by way of transducing movements in the
fluid below the membrane into nerve impulses. The outer hair cells, by
contrast, are directly connected to the tectorial membrane and are far
more responsive to low frequency and infrasound.
The point that Salt and Lichtenbaum are making is that the energy that
enters the ear canal as low frequency and infrasound is readily
translated into neural impulses which reach the brain, albeit they may
not be consciously interpreted as sound, but they still reach the
cognitive engine. Another critical point concerns their findings that
biologically generated amplitude modulated signals occur in the pulse
trains of nerve impulses from the inner hair cells as a result of
stimulation from a 500 Hz tone summed with 4.8 Hz. (Their Figure 2.)
Their work is a clear demonstration of a biologically-generated
modulation to a non-modulated stimulus. The cochlear microphonic
response is generated by the outer hair cells,responding to both the
high and low frequency components. This occurs either by saturation of
the mechano-electric transducer or by cyclically changing the mechanical
amplification of the high frequencies. Being insensitive to the lower
frequencies, the inner hair cells detect only the high frequency
component, which is amplitude modulated at twice the infrasound
frequency, in their example. Thus, the inner hair cells essentially
‘see’ the effect of a high-pass filtered version of what the outer hair
cells perceive. This is the most clear demonstration of the effect of
infrasound on the cochlea. The biophysics of the ear creates an
amplitude-modulated signal from a non-amplitude modulated source of two
pure tones. This is a neurophysiological explanation of the effect
reported by subjects who complain of adverse effects from living too
close to industrial wind turbine installations. To ignore such clear
evidence is to deny the very substance of the scientific method in
favour of a biased commercial approach to public health.
The deliberate exclusion of empirical data, failure to acknowledge
existing scientific knowledge and theory is to effectively lie by
omission. Such distortion of reality is to degrade science, medicine and
discredit the practitioners of those disciplines. I take exception to
such biased reporting and the distribution of such misinformation. It is
to degrade my profession as a scientist, researcher and consultant.
I urge you and your colleagues to rethink your position with all due
speed. Simply put: do not comment on areas beyond your own boundaries of
knowledge. Do not tell half-truths, present commercially biased
information in the name of health care and stop lying directly and by
omission to your patients and the public at large. This matter needs to
be urgently addressed to minimise the fallout and retain the
respectability that the practice of medicine deserves and the good name
of your organisation.
Sincerely yours,
Bruce Rapley BSc, MPhil, PhD.
Principal Consultant, Acoustics and Human Health,
Atkinson & Rapley Consulting Ltd.
More
HERE
Woods Hole: Principles for sale
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is playing a leading role in
raising the climate alarm — and scientific understanding — of the perils
of climate change. Now it is helping oil and gas companies identify new
sources of fossil fuels and signing agreements with Saudi Aramco to
study the potential for “hydrocarbons” in the Red Sea.
Its famed research vessels and scientists are arrayed across the globe,
installing weather instruments off the Cape, tracking water currents in
the Labrador Sea, monitoring monsoons in India, and measuring melting
ice in Antarctica.
In these and other ways, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is
playing a leading role in raising the alarm — and scientific
understanding — of the perils of climate change.
But now the nonprofit institution, facing a severe budget crunch as
federal research funding is slashed, has a very different sort of
venture in the offing: helping oil and gas companies identify new
sources of the very fossil fuels believed to be damaging the
environment.
The potential that Woods Hole’s world-renowned expertise in deep water
exploration could become a new tool for oil firms — through its newly
established Center for Marine Robotics — is troubling to some
environmental groups and others who worry the institution’s scientists
could be co-opted by private interests if they are forced to rely too
heavily on their support for research.
“It is a real problem,” said Walter H. Munk, a professor of oceanography
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., which
is part of the University of California, San Diego. His university has
received money from corporate sponsors. “You have to be quite sure you
are getting the money in circumstances that don’t limit your
[scientific] freedom,” Munk said.
In the coming days, according to officials at Woods Hole, the
institution is set to sign agreements with Saudi Aramco, the primary oil
company owned by the Saudi government, to study the potential for
“hydrocarbons” in the Red Sea. It is also preparing to ink a deal for a
“simulation study” on behalf of the Italian oil company Eni, while it
has half a dozen other proposals in the works with unnamed corporations,
the officials said.
Yet earlier this month, Woods Hole coauthored the Obama administration’s
National Climate Assessment, which partly blamed hydrocarbons for
causing climate change and damaging oceans.
“In addition to causing changes in climate, increasing levels of carbon
dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities have
a direct affect on the world’s oceans,” the report found, particularly
an increase in levels of acidity, which it said are a threat to marine
life.
SOURCE
At Last: EU To Speed Up Shale Development In Response To Ukraine Crisis
Draft European Commission briefing note shows jitters over dependence on Russian gas
The European Union aims decisively to shift away from dependence on
Russian gas imports, following previous failed attempts, according to a
draft European Commission document on energy security.
The Ukraine crisis has deepened European jitters over gas imports, where Russia is its single biggest supplier.
The European Commission note mentioned the word “solidarity” seven
times, in a draft note whose final version would be published in June,
titled “European Energy Security Strategy – Comprehensive plan for the
reduction of EU energy dependence.”
“The EU and its Member States have an overriding priority: ensure that
best possible preparation and planning improve resilience to sudden
disruptions in energy supplies, that strategic infrastructures are
protected and that the most vulnerable Member States are collectively
supported,” it said.
The EU relies on imports for 70% of its gas consumption. Six member
states depended on Russia as their single external supplier for their
entire gas imports, the Commission said.
It called for increased gas storage in the short-term, to prepare for
possible disruption in the coming winter to Russian gas transiting
through Ukraine, and the development of reverse flows through gas
pipelines to allow a more flexible routing of gas to where it was most
needed.
It also underlined the need for a diversification of gas supplies. That
included exploitation of domestic shale gas, and imports from
alternative suppliers, with more imports of liquefied natural gas, for
example from Qatar and in future the United States.
“Producing oil and gas from unconventional sources in Europe, and
especially shale gas, could partially compensate for declining
conventional production, providing issues of public acceptance and
environmental impact are adequately addressed.”
It also emphasised a greater role for energy efficiency, especially in buildings and industry.
It said that the Commission would prepare efficiency goals for 2030, in a
sign that it would propose a concrete EU energy saving target as
already agreed for 2020.
“Energy demand in the building sector, responsible for about 40% of
energy consumption in the EU and a third of natural gas use9 could be
cut by up to three quarters if the renovation of buildings is speeded
up.”
Shifting energy politics were visible also on the Russian side, as it
signed on Wednesday a major gas supply contract with China, reducing its
dependence on sales to Europe.
Priority
The Commission saw closer ties between EU member states as the critical factor for improving energy security.
It showed impatience with resistance from Russian gas supplier, Gazprom,
to EU competition legislation which limits ownership of both energy and
transmission assets. Gazprom sees such rules as a threat to its new
proposed gas pipeline through southern Europe.
“The recent experience of certain non-EU operators challenging the
application of EU legislation on EU territory might call for a stricter
approach and a reinforcement of the applicable (competition) rules at EU
and Member states level,” the Commission said.
“Antitrust and merger control rules must continue to be vigorously
enforced since they ensure that the EU security of supply and industry
bargaining position is not weakened through anticompetitive behaviour
from and/or excessive consolidation or vertical integration of non-EU
energy companies.”
The Commission detailed a long list of “key actions”, and said that the
bloc had done too little to improve its security since previous
disruptions of Russian gas, in 2006 and 2009, following gas price
disputes between Russia and Ukraine.
“The EU needs, therefore, a hard-headed strategy for energy security
which promotes resilience to these shocks and disruptions to energy
supplies.”
SOURCE
Australia: Lying Greenie faces jail
And his fellow Greenies don't like that prospect at all. They think they should be able to do anything without penalty
The campaigner behind an ANZ-Whitehaven Coal hoax email has pleaded
guilty to disseminating false information. Jonathan Moylan, 26, of
Newcastle was accused of sending out a fake ANZ press release claiming
the bank was withdrawing from a $1.2 billion loan facility to
Whitehaven's open-cut coalmine in Maules Creek, New South Wales, for
ethical reasons.
The hoax email temporarily wiped more than $314 million off the value of
Whitehaven's sharemarket value and was reported by a number of news
organisations.
Mr Moylan, who had originally pleaded not guilty, appeared at a
directions hearing in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Friday and
pleaded guilty to charges relating to disseminating false information
that was likely to induce a person to "dispose of financial products",
the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said.
He was released on unconditional bail and will return to the NSW Supreme Court for sentencing on July 11.
Mr Moylan faces up to ten years in jail and a fine of $765,000 under the breaches of the Corporations Act.
He first appeared in court in July last year but was not required to
enter a plea. At a later hearing in November, he entered a not guilty
plea.
The hoax email was sent to media outlets in January last year.
The Maules Creek mine has been the subject of legal action by
conservation group the Northern Inland Council for the Environment. The
group claimed in court the former environment minister Tony Burke
breached the law by hastily granting the project conditional approval.
The Federal Court rejected the claims and Whitehaven begun construction
on the mine, in the Gunnedah Basin near Tamworth in northern NSW, in
December.
Nicola Paris, the coordinator of Mr Moylan's support campaign, We Stand
with Jonathan Moylan, said Mr Moylan would not be commenting until after
submissions were made to the Supreme Court on July 11.
The Lock The Gate Alliance said last year that it was "extraordinary" Mr Moylan was facing jail.
"We are asking ASIC to reconsider their decision and withdraw the
prosecution - the penalty is clearly disproportionate to the offence and
Mr Moylan has apologised to anyone affected by his actions," Alliance
president Drew Hutton said at the time.
SOURCE
***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here
*****************************************
25 May, 2014
Record Antarctic Ice Extent Throws Cold Water On Global Warming Scare
Antarctic polar ice extent has set another new record, defying
alarmist global warming claims. Surpassing the greatest month-of-April
ice extent in recorded history, the new record throws cold water on
alarmist claims that the Antarctic ice cap has crossed a melting point
of no return.
The most recent Antarctic ice sheet alarm began
with a paper examining a particular glacier in West Antarctica that “has
long been considered prone to instability.” The paper speculates that a
collapse of this particular glacier is unavoidable, though it will not
actually collapse for at least a couple centuries and possibly not until
2900 AD.
Notably, while the majority of Antarctica is getting
colder and the Southern Hemisphere polar ice cap is expanding, West
Antarctica is a smaller portion of the continent that is experiencing
modest warming. Taking advantage of this outlier trend in a smaller
portion of the continent, the media has a long history of highlighting
modest warming in West Antarctica or a small retraction of West
Antarctic sea ice and falsely claiming this is caused by global warming
and is representative of Antarctica as a whole.
Guess what?
Global warming alarmists and their media allies are at it again. Here is
a representative sample of how the media have reported the new paper:
“Irreversible collapse of Antarctic glaciers has begun, studies say” – Los Angeles Times
“How Washington coastal cities will look when the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts” – Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Catastrophic collapse of Antarctic ice sheet now underway, say scientists” – Christian Science Monitor
Let’s
do a side-by-side comparison. A paper speculates that a long-unstable
glacier in one part of West Antarctica is inherently unstable and may
collapse several hundred years from now. Compare that finding to the
ridiculous alarmist headlines above.
The good news, beyond the
less-than-alarming truth about the paper’s findings, is real-world
scientific facts show Antarctic ice extent is undergoing a long-term
expansion. Alarmists try to scare people into believing a “Catastrophic
collapse of Antarctic ice sheet [is] now underway” at the very time that
the Antarctic ice extent is setting record after record.
It’s
not just the Antarctic, either. Precise satellite measurements of both
polar ice caps show absolutely no decline in polar ice since the
satellite instruments were launched in 1979. Not only is total polar ice
extent currently greater than the long-term average; polar ice extent
has been greater than the long term average for nearly all of the past
16 months.
SOURCE State Waivers from EPA RegulationThe
federal environmental regulatory system is broken. Thousands of pages
of flawed environmental rules and regulations exist, with no reasonable
chance they’ll ever be reformed given the entrenched special interests
that benefit from them. The inherent subjectivity of environmental
standards also allows these rules to grow without a scientific basis for
them. They cannot be efficiently and cost-effectively enforced given
the overwhelming amount of information they demand.
The emergence
of capable state-level environmental agencies in all 50 states –
agencies that did not exist when the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) was created in 1971 – reduces the need for a federal
environmental agency to have such control. States are already
responsible for up to 90 percent of all environmental enforcement
actions in the nation, yet they are allowed little flexibility for
innovation.
Congress could effectively scale back the
increasingly costly and bureaucratic federal EPA by allowing states to
apply for regulatory waivers. Case Western University law professor
Jonathan Adler and Cato Institute Vice President Jerry Taylor have
written articles suggesting implementation of an EPA regulatory waiver
similar to Section 160 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which allowed
telecom companies to submit requests for regulatory waivers from the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Applied to environmental
policy, such a mechanism would allow states to apply for forbearance
from any EPA rule or regulation by submitting supporting material
“detailing the basis for the request and explaining why the waiver would
serve the public interest. EPA would then provide public notice, seek
comment from interested parties, and make a call one way or the other
within one year pending judicial review under aegis of the
Administrative Procedure Act,” Taylor writes.
Congress and the
president should decentralize environmental regulation by allowing
states to apply for regulatory waivers from EPA. This would allow
greater regulatory experimentation at a lower cost, while also enabling
greater containment of risk, thereby facilitating much-needed innovation
in environmental regulation.
SOURCE The Liberty and Energy ConnectionMarita Noon
Following
my appearance on the Daily Show, I’ve received emails and phone calls
from people who don’t agree with my views about energy and the
advantages America’s energy abundance provides—benefits that drive both
progress and prosperity.
Some of the emails can’t be read in
polite company, but one that can asked: “Please explain how energy from
mountain top removal, fracking, and tar sands makes America great.” The
word choices Greg selected tell me that he isn’t truly seeking
enlightenment and is instead aiming to antagonize me. The next day, he
sent another: “I have yet to hear back on this simple question. Please
respond.” It does seem like a simple question. One I should be able to
answer in an instant. But I didn’t want to offer platitudes. I felt the
question deserved a thoughtful answer. So, Greg, here you are.
I’ve
spent the past couple of days at a conference on “Energy, Economics and
Liberty.” There discussions took place on the energy debate,
government’s role, market solutions, and the geo-politics of energy.
About twenty men—all experts in various aspects of energy—attended. I
wasn’t just the only female I was the only energy advocate. The topics
brought Greg’s request to mind and the conversations helped form the
answers.
One of the participants, Jim Clarkson, wrote an article
titled: “The Shale Gas Paradigm,” in which he states: “Increased access
to energy is a key to economic progress in the undeveloped world.”
Similarly, in my book, Energy Freedom, I quote Robert Bryce, author of
Power Hungry, who says: “Electricity is the energy commodity that
separates the developed countries from the rest. Countries that can
provide cheap and reliable electric power to their citizens can grow
their economies and create wealth. Those who can’t, can’t.”
Senate
Major Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) once said: “Oil and gas are making us
sick.” But I contend that they—along with coal—are the very things
keeping us well. In Energy Freedom’s introduction, I point out: “Energy
saves lives. When fire strikes or hurricanes are bearing down upon a
city, it is energy—in this case in the form of gasoline—that allows
people to drive away and escape death. … When weather is extreme, it is
energy—usually in the form of electricity (most frequently from coal or
natural gas)—that keeps people alive. Air conditioning allows people to
live in comfort in Arizona in the summer. Heating keeps people from
freezing to death in Alaska in the winter. Energy keeps us well. Energy
makes us comfortable.”
The Energy, Economics and Liberty
conference was hosted by the Liberty Fund. On its website, it offers
this definition of liberty: “the beginning and the source of happiness
from which all beneficial things flow in return.” Much like liberty,
energy is the source from which many beneficial things flow. Energy has
been a source of America’s freedom, a big part of what has made America
great.
The conflicts in Ukraine have made the importance of
energy freedom clear. Because of being on the Daily Show talking about
fracking, I’ve been given other opportunities to address the topic. One
was with former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura for his show Off the
Grid. At the end of the twenty-minute interview, he asked me for closing
comments. I said something like: “Because of fracking, OPEC would never
be able to use energy as a weapon as it did to America in 1973 and as
we see Russia doing to Ukraine today.”
Greg’s email to me used
terms that lead to three different energy sources: coal, natural gas,
and oil—and each have been big contributors to America’s progress and
prosperity. Each has made the personal lives of Americans more pleasant
and less painful. Together these energy sources have made America energy
secure.
The email used the term “mountain top removal,” which is
a method by which coal can be mined. It is safer than underground mines
because it removes the risk of mine accidents, the horror of which
we’ve recently witnessed in Turkey. (Note: America has far more
stringent mining regulations today than does most of the world.) Greg
likely selected the term “mountain top removal” because it sounds harsh.
In fact, in the mountainous regions of Eastern Kentucky and West
Virginia, this surface mining process allows for hospitals, housing
developments, shopping centers to be built—all which bring more economic
development and much needed jobs.
I’ve toured regions where
“mountain top removal” is being done and stood on top of the massive
coal seam. The procedure is amazing. Picture the region like lots of
upside down ice cream cones next to each other. Hills and valleys—but no
place to create a community. In that mountain is a thick layer of coal
that goes all the way through the mountain, north to south, east to
west. To access it, the dirt, the tip of the ice cream cone, is taken
off and the coal is removed.
In the past, when the coal had been
extracted, a private landowner could ask the mining company to level out
the land—making it economically productive. However, today’s
regulations take away that property owner’s rights and require that the
mountain be rebuilt and put back to its original condition. If the
landowner wants to turn his land into a housing development, he then has
to incur the expense of, once again, removing the peak and leveling the
land.
The coal provides, and has provided, America with
low-cost, base-load electricity—which, as we’ve already addressed, has
given us a competitive advantage in the global marketplace and unmatched
personal progress. And, therefore, energy from mountain top removal
makes America Great.
Fracking—short for hydraulic
fracturing—combined with the amazing technology of horizontal drilling,
has brought America into a new era of energy abundance. Clarkson states:
“Gas using industries are expanding while we enjoy a distinct advantage
over the rest of the world.” He explains: “Shale gas lay worthless
beneath the earth’s surface for the whole of man’s previous existence
until human intelligence made it valuable”—and that was done with
fracking.
One of the definitions of liberty found at
Dictionary.com is: “freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or
control.” Clarkson points out: “There were no federal programs with
subsidies, tax breaks, and mandated markets to favor the shale industry.
…The new shale order of things is a triumph of free enterprise over
government planning. The shale revolution shows that the good old
American know-how and individual initiative that made this country great
have survived the burden of big government and can still create
economic miracles.” Clarkson closes with: “Some observers are already
calling this the century of natural gas. This could also be the century
of prosperity, free markets, and optimism as America regains its energy
mojo.”
Unlike the pariah Greg presumes fracking to be, it is responsible for the shale gas phenomena.
Last,
Greg asked about tar sands and how they make America great. Tar sands,
or oil sands, allow America to get oil from our friendly Canadian
neighbor and reduce our need to import OPEC’s oil. We then refine that
oil into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that fuels our transportation
fleet—something that wind and solar power cannot do.
I have been
to the oil sands of Canada and what they are doing there is, like
fracking and horizontal drilling, a technological miracle.
If you
have ever walked on a California beach and stepped on a tar ball
(created when the oil seeps out of the ground and is washed ashore mixed
with sand), you have a clue what the tar sands are like. The naturally
occurring tar sands are a layer in the earth (much like coal). This
layer has raw crude oil mixed with the dirt/sands. I recall driving to
the tar sands from the town where we stayed. As the elevation increased,
I noticed that trees reached a certain height and then died. It was
explained that as soon as the roots hit the bitumen (or tar) it kills
the tree.
At the extraction site, the tar sands are bulldozed and
dumped into giant trucks (much like surface coal mining). The tar and
sand mixture is processed to separate the oil and the sand. (Think of
taking that tar ball from the beach and boiling it. The oil melts and
floats while the sand drops to the bottom.) The oil is now available for
use and the clean sand is put back into the earth—only now the trees
can actually grow. The reclaimed land is teeming with wildlife that
lives in the healthy forest the extraction process provides. As a
result, when the Keystone pipeline is approved, America would be far
less dependent on people who aim to do us harm and OPEC couldn’t cause
an instant recession as it did in 1973. Plus, Keystone will be safer and
cheaper—not to mention creating more jobs—than shipping the oil via
rail as we are currently doing.
And that, Greg, is how tar sands can make America greater.
Yes,
mountain top removal—or coal; fracking—or natural gas; and tar sands—or
oil, make America great. The use of natural resources are a part of
liberty: “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction,
hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking,
etc., according to choice.”
People like Greg want to interfere,
restrict, and hamper North America’s energy abundance—which will take
away America’s ability to provide cheap and reliable power to her
citizens and take away the ability to grow the economy and create
wealth. Why would anyone want to do that?
SOURCE Super PAC targets GOPers who deny human role in warmingAs usual, they exaggerate skeptic spending and downplay their ownRetired
hedge fund manager Tom Steyer is setting his sights on Republicans who
reject climate change. The billionaire environmentalist is unveiling
plans to spend $100 million this year in seven competitive Senate and
gubernatorial races, as his super PAC works to counteract a flood of
conservative spending by the Koch brothers.
The retired hedge
fund manager’s super political action committee, NextGen Climate Action,
announced plans Wednesday to plunge $100 million into seven
congressional and gubernatorial races, where Democratic candidates face
opponents who have publicly expressed doubts about anthropogenic climate
change or who receive donations from the fossil fuel industry.
"The
debate on climate change is settled," Mr. Steyer told Reuters. "It is
here, it is human-caused, and it is already having a devastating impact
on our communities, but we need to accelerate the level of political
support to address this critical issue before it's too late."
Steyer
has thrown his financial backing behind Democratic candidates in the
past, including President Obama and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, but
the NextGen campaign represents a more concerted effort to counter the
massive sums being spent on Republican candidates by billionaire
brothers Charles and David Koch’s super PAC, Americans for Prosperity,
according to NextGen's chief strategist, Chris Lehane.
"We're
spending a drop in the big-oil bucket compare to what the fossil fuel
industry is spending,” Mr. Lehane told the Associated Press. “All Tom is
trying to do is really to level the playing field."
Steyer has
already pledged $50 million of his own funds to NextGen and hopes to
entice likeminded donors to match his contribution. Still, it is unclear
if Democrats will be able to compete with Republican super PACs. The
Koch brothers reportedly poured $400 million into the 2012 elections.
What
NextGen lacks in spending power, it plans to make up for in pointed
strategy. NextGen strategists will focus calculated ad campaigns that
play on issues central to local constituencies in seven states.
Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, and
Pennsylvania are all in the super PAC’s sights.
“We are not going
to be talking about polar bears and butterflies,” Lehane told the Los
Angeles Times. “We are going to be talking about how this issue of
climate impacts people in their backyards, in their states, in their
communities.”
In Colorado, NextGen plans to capitalize on
existing energy and environment concerns and urge voters to defeat Rep.
Cory Gardner (R), who is running for the US Senate. Representative
Gardner, who rejects the role of human activity in climate change,
opposed new rules combating carbon pollution.
In Florida, NextGen
is planning television ads that will highlight the potential impact of
climate change on voters' budgets by way of soaring flood insurance
premiums in an effort to turn voters against Gov. Rick Scott.
In
New Hampshire, ads will likely target Republican Senate candidate Scott
Brown’s recent oped backing the Keystone XL pipeline that "spouted
regular Republican talking points that are absolute misinformation,"
NextGen's political director Sky Gallegos told the Associated Press.
In Iowa, NextGen will focus on the role of climate change in the drought that has plagued the state, the LATimes reports.
The
idea is to initiate “a long-term conversation with voters,” Mr.
Gallegos told the Times. “We want to talk to them and make a real
connection of how climate hits them at the household level.
SOURCE Tedious Warmist doomsaying is just another foolish squawkOptimism isn't just an attitude—it's an accurate assessment of how well the human race has fared over the past several centuriesJohn Stossel
Are
you worried about the future? It's hard not to be. If you watch the
news, you mostly see violence, disasters, danger. Some in my business
call it "fear porn" or "pessimism porn." People like the stuff; it makes
them feel alive and informed.
Of course, it's our job to tell
you about problems. If a plane crashes—or disappears—that's news. The
fact that millions of planes arrive safely is a miracle, but it's not
news.
So we soak in disasters—and warnings about the next one:
bird flu, global warming, potential terrorism. I won Emmys hyping risks
but stopped winning them when I wised up and started reporting on the
overhyping of risks. My colleagues didn't like that as much.
In
England, science journalist Matt Ridley also realized he had focused on
the wrong things. That realization led to the more positive outlook in
his book The Rational Optimist. Now Ridley gives lectures about why he's
an optimist. It's not just an attitude; it's an accurate assessment of
how well the human race has fared over the past several hundred years.
"I discovered that almost everything is getting better, even the things that people thought were getting worse," says Ridley.
He
was taught to think the future was bleak. "The population explosion was
unstoppable. Famine was inevitable. Pesticides were going to shorten
our lives. The Ice Age was coming back. Acid rain was killing forests
... All these things were going to go wrong."
Yet time and again,
humanity survived doomsday. Not just survived, we flourish. Population
increases, yet famine becomes rarer. More energy is used, yet the
environment gets cleaner. Innovation and trade keep improving our lives.
But the media win by selling pessimism porn. "People are much
more interested in hearing about something that's gone wrong," says
Ridley. "It sounds wiser to talk about what might go wrong than to talk
about what might go right."
Or what already went right. Over the
past 40 years, murder dropped by 40 percent, rape by 80 percent, and,
outside of war zones, Islamic terrorism claims fewer than 400 lives a
year. The last decade saw the fewest lives claimed in war since record
keeping began.
One unnecessary death is tragic, but the big picture is good news.
Our
brains just aren't very good at keeping track of the good news.
Evolution programmed us to pay attention to problems. Good news often
happens slowly. The media miss it.
There is, however, one big
problem that threatens our future: the political class. Politicians
offer us unsustainable debt and incomprehensible regulations. So far the
economy has survived that because of what the Mercatus Center's Adam
Thierer calls "permission-less innovation."
No one got approval
from Washington to do Google searches, create Facebook profiles, or
invent apps for Apple. If we did, they probably would never have
happened. It's fortunate entrepreneurs keep making things faster than
worried, control-freak government can smother them.
Google now
informs us about most anything within seconds for free. Today people in
the poorest countries have access to more information than the rich used
to have. Email is free. So are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Skype.
The
new "sharing economy" improves our lives. Companies like Roomorama and
Airbnb let us share homes. Uber, Sidecar and Lyft let us share cars.
EatWith.com lets us share a home-cooked meal.
Government
regulators reflexively move to crush or control every such development,
fearing that rooms rented online will be disruptive to neighbors, rides
from Lyft too dangerous, and meals found through EatWith unhealthy.
There's always some reason to worry—even though these same politicians
don't worry too much about the risks of excessive government and its $17
trillion in debt.
Progress now depends on innovators finding
customers faster than sleepy politicians can regulate. Better to beg
forgiveness later than ask permission now. By the time bureaucrats wake
up, entrepreneurs have lots of happy customers who lobby for the
survival of those businesses.
You might call it "entrepreneurial
civil disobedience." It's what it takes to win in today's
hyper-regulated America. It's a good thing—and our best hope of having
more good things in the future.
SOURCE Key to the modern world – the sinister groupthinkChristopher Booker
All
around us these days we see illustrations of what I have come to think
of as one of the more illuminating insights into much of what goes on in
our modern world. Consider one or two random examples. Some time back,
under the heading “Thought police on patrol”, a well-known US
journalist, Charles Krauthammer, reported how his newspaper had received
a petition signed by more than 110,000 people calling on it not to
carry any more articles questioning the fact of man-made global warming.
He went on to recall how the new CEO of a leading media company,
Mozilla, was recently forced to resign by the furore that erupted when
it was revealed that, six years earlier, he had made a modest donation
to a campaign in California to amend the state’s constitution, defining
marriage as being between a man and a woman. Nearer home we have lately
seen the extraordinary and unprecedented campaign by so much of the
media to demonise and smear the UK Independence Party in general and
Nigel Farage in particular (it appears he may have had the last laugh).
Some
time back, a reader drew my attention to the book in which, 40 years
ago, a Yale professor of psychology, Irving Janis, analysed what, with a
conscious nod to George Orwell, he called “groupthink”. It is a term we
all casually use (which even he derived from another writer), but he
identified eight symptoms of groupthink. One is the urge of its victims
to insist that their view is held as a “consensus” by all morally
right-thinking people. Another is their ruthless desire to suppress any
evidence that might lead someone to question it. A third is their urge
to stereotype and denigrate anyone who dares hold a dissenting view.
Their intolerance of “independent critical thinking”, as Janis put it,
leads them to “irrational and dehumanised actions directed against
outgroups”.
Of course, there is nothing new about this. Hostility
to heretics and dissenters has characterised the more extreme forms of
religious and political belief all down the ages. But as someone who
tends often to come to views differing from those held by many other
people – what Ibsen called that “majority” that is “always wrong” – I am
quite sensitive to the power and prevalence of groupthink in our own
time. It is particularly evident in views widely held on several
subjects I regularly write about here, from climate change and
“renewable energy” to everything its acolytes like to describe as
“Europe”. It is their groupthinking intolerance that prompts them to
stereotype anyone daring to disagree with their “consensus” as
“deniers”, “flat-Earthers”, “creationists”, “xenophobes”, “homophobes”,
“bigots”, “racists” or “fascists”.
But another characteristic of
groupthink that Janis doesn’t fully explore in his book is that those
caught up in these mindsets have never actually worked out their
thinking on the subject for themselves. They have taken on their
belief-system, and the reasons for supporting it, ready-made and
wholesale from others. That is why it is impossible to have any
intelligent dialogue with, say, zealots for man-made climate change or
the European Union, because they have not really examined the evidence
for themselves but have come to a set of opinions that are skin-deep and
second-hand. They can only parrot the mantras they have picked up from
others.
That is why, as we see illustrated on every side (not
least in much of the output of the BBC, or, for that matter, the online
comments below this column), they cannot tolerate or offer rational
arguments, or explore the three-dimensional truth of a subject. They
quickly resort just to dismissing anyone who disagrees with their
beliefs as an “idiot”, “hopelessly ignorant”, “wildly inaccurate” or
“anti-science”. Or they appeal to what Gustave Le Bon called “prestige”,
citing supposedly respected authorities, such as the reports of the
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which are only voicing
the “consensus” views of other adherents of the same groupthink.
When
Ed Davey, our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, recently called on
climate-change sceptics to “shut it”, he was merely reflecting the fact
that absolutely nothing of all the nonsense he talks on this subject
derives from his own independent thinking. He is merely repeating the
nonsense he has been told by other people. But on this, as on so many
other subjects these days, people like Mr Davey are just classic victims
of groupthink. Because they don’t have any proper understanding of what
they are talking about, they merely lash out with intolerant smears and
ad hominem insults at anyone who does not inhabit the same “irrational
and dehumanised” bubble in which they themselves have become, albeit
quite unwittingly, trapped.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
23 May, 2014
Fraction of the Globe in Drought: 1982-2012None of the upsurge constantly asserted by Warmists. A slight decline in fact![](gremay14_files/sdata20141-f51.jpg)
The
graph above shows the proportion of the planet in drought, by
intensity, 1982-2012. The graph comes from a paper in a new Nature
publication called Scientific Data and is open access.
SOURCE House votes to defund Warmist nonsenseWith
a mostly party-line vote on Thursday, the House of Representatives
passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) that seeks
to prevent the Department of Defense from using funding to address the
national security impacts of climate change.
The full text of McKinley’s amendment reads:
"None
of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available
by this Act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research
Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21
sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the
Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive
Order"
In other words, the House just tried to write climate
denial into the Defense Department’s budget. “The McKinley amendment
would require the Defense Department to assume that the cost of carbon
pollution is zero,” Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) said
in a letter to their colleagues before the vote.
The amendment
forces the Defense Department to ignore the findings and recommendations
of the National Climate Assessment and the IPCC’s latest climate
assessment, specifically with regard to the national security impacts of
climate change. It would also do the same for the Social Cost of
Carbon, which provides a framework for rulemakers to take into account
the societal, security, and economic costs associated with emitting more
carbon dioxide.
Earlier this month with the release of the
National Climate Assessment, 300 leading climate scientists and experts
told Americans in no uncertain terms that time is running out to
confront the dangerous impacts of climate change.
This week, 16
military experts agreed, telling Americans in a report that climate
change is already threatening national security and the economy. The CNA
Corporation Military Advisory Board authored the report, titled
“National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change.”
“Civilian
and uniformed leaders of our military know it is increasingly risky to
depend on a single fuel source; these leaders are diversifying the
military’s sources of power to make our bases more resilient and our
forces more effective,” said Vice Admiral Gunn.
The Defense
Department is beginning to take action. It recently started work on its
largest solar project to date, and has been making progress on its “Net
Zero” energy initiative. The goal? For bases to produce as much energy
as they consume, and for forward combat operations to not have to rely
on oil-heavy supply lines.
The McKinley amendment was added to
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which later passed,
325-98. Only three Republicans (Garrett, Gibson, LoBiondo) voted against
the amendment, and four Democrats (Barrow, Cuellar, McIntyre, Rahall)
voted for it.
The Senate held first markup of their version of
the bill on Wednesday. The NDAA sets out the budget for the Department
of Defense, and details the expenditures it can make, though this is
different than the budget that actually awards the appropriations. That
will happen later this year.
The NDAA is one of the few pieces of
legislation that actually work close to normal — the House passes its
version, and the Senate passes its version. It remains to be seen if the
Senate will take up and pass a similar amendment, but even if it does
not, the final decision will come during conference. The two chambers go
to conference to iron out the differences before final passage and the
president’s signature.
SOURCE Billions
of barrels of oil found below Sussex. Hampshire and Kent: Analysis
reveals vast scale of energy reserves underneath the countiesThe Greenies will hate this. Where's "Hubbert's peak" gone?Billions of barrels of oil have been found beneath the south of England, according to a report due out today.
The
official analysis by the British Geological Survey (BGS) revealed the
vast scale of energy reserves lying under parts of Sussex, Hampshire and
Kent.
Last year the first BGS study exceeded even the most
optimistic calculations – estimating that there is 1,300trillion cubic
feet of gas underground in the north of England.
Today's report
is expected to do the same for the south, although it is unclear how
much oil could be extracted as some of it is under built-up areas.
But
the revelation comes just weeks after the Mail revealed ministers are
preparing controversial plans to change the trespass law, giving energy
firms the right to frack beneath homes and private land without the
owners' permission.
It has been suggested that the Weald Basin, a
vast area covering around 3,500 square miles in the south, could
contain up to a third of the oil discovered in the North Sea.
This
would offer Britain greater energy security and help drive down fuel
prices, but extracting it will involve fracking – a controversial
drilling technique used to split rocks below ground and release their
stores of oil or gas.
Professor Richard Selley, from Imperial
College London, said earlier this year that the discovery of oil in the
Weald 'should not be a surprise'. There are already a number of
oilfields around the North and South Downs which have been known about
for decades.
And southern England has Europe's biggest onshore
oilfield at Wytch Farm, a forest area in Dorset. However the prospect of
oil drilling across a swathe of southern England will heighten tensions
over whether fracking can go ahead in the face of local opposition.
The
oil-rich area revealed today is thought to include a large swathe of
the South Downs National Park and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The
National Trust has called for fracking to be banned in national parks.
Green protesters say the drilling for gas and oil will harm the
Government's commitment to green forms of energy. And local campaigners
in the area, which has several Tory MPs, have raised fears about noise,
traffic and water contamination
It was also revealed last night
that communities which agree to shale wells being sunk are to get more
cash – an average of £800,000. A source at the Department for Energy and
Climate Change said: 'At the exploration stage?…?communities will
receive £100,000.
'And then if a well site goes ahead, they will
receive 1 per cent of gross revenue every single year – around £1million
per well over ten years. 'And today we can announce, in addition to
this, communities will receive £20,000 for each unique lateral well put
in place underground. This is likely to mean an average of £800,000.'
SOURCE Famous false prophet dreams up a new scareA controversial Stanford professor has claimed overpopulation could lead to humanity having to eat the bodies of the dead.
Paul
Ehrlich, best known for his prediction of human 'oblivion' 46 years
ago, says that current population trends are on a course that could
leave cannibalism as one of the only options.
Ehrlich claimed
that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need to
drastically change our eating habits and agriculture.
Ehrlich
claimed that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need
to drastically change our eating habits and agriculture.
'We
will soon be asking is it perfectly okay to eat the bodies of your dead
because we’re all so hungry?,' he told HuffPost live host Josh Zepps.
He
added that humanity is 'moving in that direction with a ridiculous
speed. 'In other words between now and 45 years from now, 2.5 billion
people will be added to the planet. 'We are moving towards resource
wars.
Ehrlich is widely known for his 1968 publication of 'The
Population Bomb' which called for 'population control' to prevent global
crises from overpopulation.
'In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death,' he predicted.
'our
children will inherit a totally different world, a world in which the
standards, politics, and economics of the 1960’s are dead.'
Ehrlich
claims that the dangers of overpopulation are once again growing,
blaming Republicans and the media for failing to take action.
'We all have to eat, and it's very destructive.
The
ethical issues around the way we raise cattle are important, but
relatively trivial compared to the wrecking of our life support systems.
'I can much more about people, because I'm a person.'
In his new
book, called 'Hope On Earth,' Ehrlich worked with Michael Tobias.
'There's a tremendous amount of optimism in the book,' said Tobais. 'I
really think we have a capacity to come to the aid of individuals.'
Tobias
believes that young investors could hold the key to solving the
problem, by investing in technologies to solve the problem.
SOURCE The Fascist nature of Warmism is becoming more and more obviousBut historical Fascism was actually popular!by Mark Steyn
My
compatriot David Suzuki, CC, OBC, was on PBS with Bill Moyers the other
day and re-iterated for Americans his previously stated position in
Canada that climate-denying politicians should be jailed:
"Our
politicians should be thrown in the slammer for willful blindness!" he
asserted. "If we are in a position of being able to act, and we see
something going on and we refuse to acknowledge the threat or act on it,
we can be taken to court for willful blindness."
Suzuki seems to
be willfully blind to his own ignorance: after his spectacular
know-nothing performance on the ABC's Q&A Down Under last year, I'm
amazed his minders still let him do TV, even with tongue-bath
interrogators like Moyers. As I said a couple of days ago, a lot of
these guys are a planet wide and an inch deep - especially those at the
eco-totalitarian end. (Ezra Levant and I discussed the Suzuki beclowning
about halfway through this show.) I suppose we should be grateful the
ayatollah of alarmism only wants deniers "thrown in the slammer" rather
than, as Professor Richard Parncutt favors, executed.
The climate
mullahs don't seem to grasp that this is why they're going nowhere. As
James Delingpole points out, "climate change" is the biggest PR
flopperoo of all time:
"It was once conservatively estimated (by
blogger Richard North) that the cost of propping up the global warming
industry since 1989 was equivalent in real terms to five Manhattan
Projects. But that was back in 2010, since when spending on green
boondoggles (eg the Obama 'stimulus') has risen exponentially, so we're
likely looking at ten Manhattan Projects now.
A good chunk of that spending has, of course, gone towards "educating" the public.
This
"education" takes many forms: from blatant propaganda, like the UK
government's £6 million "drowning puppy" ad campaign, the Obama
administration's recent Climate Assessment Report and the one released
by a group of compliant senior US military figures calling themselves
CNA Military Advisory Board, to more subtle brainwashing ranging from
school trips to wind farms and ice cream containers with pictures of
wind farms on the side and oil company adverts illustrated with wind
farms (to show they're not just "all about oil") to, well, pretty much
everything these days from supermarket delivery vehicles boasting about
how much biofuel they use to Greenpeace campaign ads involving polar
bears to Roger Harrabin's reporting for the BBC to Showtime's Years Of
Living Dangerously...."
I happen to be writing this in a rather
attractive hotel room disfigured by signs everywhere about how the hotel
is "committed" to "going green" and "saving the planet" by not changing
my sheets and towels unless I arrange them in a designated fashion in
the bathtub (presumably the internationally agreed symbol for a
towel-change denialist, and possibly on page 734 of the Kyoto Treaty).
And
yet, as James says, no one's interested. The numbers of people
seriously worried about "climate change" are as flat as the handle of
Mann's hockey stick, and the numbers who are worried enough to do
anything more about it than suffer the same smelly, damp towel for their
fortnight's vacation are even smaller.
The way to get those
numbers up is through persuasion and argument, and seeking common ground
with partial allies. Instead, the cultists demand 100 per cent
ideological purity, and blacklist, sue or call for the imprisonment and
execution of anyone who fails the test. You can bully Lennart Bengtsson,
you can sue me, maybe one day you'll be able to jail and hang us. But
you'll be as far away as ever from persuading the millions of ordinary
citizens desensitized by two decades of shrieking hysteria.
Michael
E Mann, liar, cheat, falsifier and fraud, is at the very center of this
ever more witless thuggery. I'd been saving this Shakespearean headline
for an upcoming piece on the fake Nobel Laureate, but The Prussian beat
me to it: "What A Piece Of Work Is Mann." It's well worth a read, not
least for its at-a-glance guide to some of the many versions of Mann's
"hockey stick"*. But, as a scientist who thinks that anthropogenic
global warming is real, The Prussian is less concerned with Mann's
science (which seems to take up very little of his time) than with his
general conduct:
"This behaviour isn't that of someone trying to gain rational agreement but of one enforcing a faith-based creed.
I'm really, really not surprised that there's so much denialism around, if this is the public face of climate science...
There's
no such thing as specific censorship. You can't just hold down one
thing, you always end up holding down the things next to it. If you, for
example:
- Accept that global warming is real, but disagree about its extent, or
- Agree about the extent, but disagree about the rate, or
- Agree about the rate and the extent, but disagree about the effects or
- Agree about the rate, extent and effects, but disagree about how to deal with it, or
- Agree about all the foregoing, but disagree how to get those solutions done…
Mann's
goonshow tactics will be trained on you. Why do I say that? For the
simple reason that that is what is already happening. We will need the
best ideas we can get to deal with this issue, and the only way to get
those is to have the freest possible marketplace of ideas."
But
in the marketplace of ideas Mann's idea is to sue you, and Suzuki's idea
is to jail you, and Parncutt's idea is to execute you.
As for the latest goonshow hockey-sticking, Dr Judith Curry put it to him very directly on Twitter:
.@MichaelEMann Were you one of the U.S. scientists that pressured Bengtsson to resign from the GWPF?
Dr Mann seems to be in no hurry to respond.
SOURCE Nostalgia for the absoluteby Mark Steyn
Yale
law professor Stephen Carter has written an imaginary address to
America's Class of 2014, which is currently busy disinviting truckloads
of distinguished speakers from their graduation ceremonies. In the
course of his remarks, Professor Carter observes:
"The literary
critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book titled "Nostalgia for
the Absolute," long ago predicted this moment. We have an attraction, he
contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance.
We like systems that can explain everything. Intellectuals in the West
are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once held on the Western
imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought that are as
comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church."
Oddly
enough, Professor Carter doesn't so much as mention "climate change",
but "Nostalgia for the Absolute" fits, doesn't it? "Higher truths that
can sweep away complexity and nuance"? If you sweep them away as
thoroughly as climate absolutist Michael E Mann, you find yourself
sitting across the table from an interviewer who believes that, if it's
10 Celsius today and 15 Celsius tomorrow, that means it's 50 per cent
warmer. And you don't mind the company you're keeping, because when it
comes to your "higher truth" this guy believes, he believes absolutely -
which is all that matters.
Swedish climatologist Lennart
Bengtsson, on the other hand, tried to wiggle free of "the tight grip".
The story of what happened when the Clime Syndicate had to jump him in
the alley and hockey-stick him back into line has received big play in
Fleet Street, including the front page of yesterday's Times.I confess I
don't quite know what to make of Professor Bengtsson. As far as I can
tell, he's not a warmist-turned-denier so much as a warmist who thought
he might benefit from a wider range of acquaintances. So he joined the
advisory board of Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, which
he has now been forced to unjoin. Where he goes next is unclear. So put
him to one side. And also set aside the responses of Lord Lawson and
his GWPF colleagues, which are uniformly more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger,
deeply regret his decision but understand the enormous pressures, etc,
etc.
Instead, consider the self-proclaimed side of virtue in this
debate: the Conclave of Settled Scientists. Bishop Hill has a couple of
their reactions. First up, atmospheric scientist Bart Verheggen on
Bengtsson's charge of "climate McCarthyism":
Would it be McCarthyism if evolutionary biologists expressed dismay about a colleague joining the Creationist Institute?
Next
up, Peter Gleick, the American Geophysical Union's "scientific ethics"
chairman whose scientific ethics include using a false name to acquire
confidential documents from the Heartland Institute. Gleick on
Bengtsson:
Sailor joins flat earth society; doesn't understand why shipmates won't sail with him?
"Nostalgia
for the Absolute" runs rampant through the Settled Science reactions.
As Bishop Hill says, the only "scientific difference" between Gleick and
Verheggen, on the one hand, and the GWPF, on the other, is really on
the question of climate variability, a murky and imprecise topic. A
round earth and a flat earth are two stark, mutually incompatible
choices: one side is going to be 100 per cent right, and the other 100
per cent wrong. As the 17-year warming "pause" suggests, in climate
science nobody's 100 per cent right; it's a field of "complexity and
nuance", and somewhere in the grey blur people pick different points to
pitch their tents. There is no Team Round and Team Flat. Steve McIntyre
doesn't talk this way, nor does Nigel Lawson, nor does Richard Tol nor
Judith Curry. Only the Settled Science enforcers do.
Bishop Hill
calls this "the bigotry of the consensus". As one might expect, the
worst reaction from among the Warmanos, in both its shallowness and
repulsiveness, was that of Michael Mann. Yesterday morning, apropos the
Times front page on Bengtsson, he Tweeted approvingly:
REAL story via @NafeezAhmed "Murdoch-owned media hypes lone meteorologist's #climate junk science"
So
to Michael Mann Lennart Bengtsson is now "junk science"? For a decade,
he was director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology. For another
decade, he was Director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts. He's won the Descartes Prize, and a World Meteorological
Organization prize for groundbreaking research in numerical weather
prediction. Over the years, he and Michael Mann have collaborated on
scientific conferences. But a half-century of distinguished service to
climate science - the directorships, the prizes, all the peer-reviewed
papers, the shared platforms with the great Dr Mann - is swept into the
garbage can of history, and Bengtsson is now just another "denialist"
peddling "junk science."
What a sad dead husk of a human being Michael Mann is to do such a thing to a professional colleague.
And
who is this Nafeez Ahmed whose "REAL story" on Bengtsson's "junk
science" Mann enthusiastically promotes to his groupies? As with the
Irish Percentage Boy above, Mann's insistence on complete ideological
fealty leads him to keep some very odd company. Nafeez Ahmed is, in the
late Christopher Hitchens' summation, "a risible individual wedded to
half-baked conspiracy-mongering" last heard from promoting the theory
that climate change is responsible for kidnapping the Nigerian
schoolgirls. Mr Ahmed believes that al-Qaeda is "an instrument of
Western statecraft, a covert operations tool". He argues that ten of the
named 9/11 hijackers are still alive and on the big day had their
identities usurped by men trained by the US military and the CIA.
When
you enforce the ideological purity tests that Mann does, and wind up
casting Lennart Bengtsson, John Christy, Mike Hulme et al overboard,
eventually you find yourself in an echo chamber with only a 9/11
conspiracy theorist and a man who thinks the temperature is going to
increase by 25 per cent in the next 30 years for company. A Nostalgia
for the Absolute has led Michael Mann to consort with absolute loons.
But the damage he does to science and scientists is very real. Dr Judith Curry writes:
"As
a result of smearings by Romm, Mann, et al., I am excluded from serious
consideration for administrative positions at universities, offices in
professional societies, consideration for awards from professional
societies, a number of people won't collaborate with me, and anyone who
wants to invite me to be a keynote speaker has to justify this in light
of all the cr*p that shows up if you google 'Judith Curry'. Does any of
this really 'matter'? I've convinced myself that it doesn't (well not as
much as my own conscience and integrity), but I suspect that such
things would matter to most scientists."
Joe Romm engaging in
such practices is reprehensible, but it is an issue of much greater
concern when other scientists do it (notably Michael Mann).
Indeed
it is. And a person who does it on the scale that Mann does is not,
either principally or temperamentally, a scientist at all. He's
operating out there on the same fringes as his buddy Nafeez Ahmed,
peddling "systems that can explain everything", from Antarctic ice to
Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, Dr Nicola Gulley, the editorial director
at the Institute of Physics, purports to give us the real reason why
Environmental Research Letters declined to publish Lennart Bengtsson's
latest paper. Don't believe all that stuff from Bengtsson about it being
rejected because it was too "helpful" to "climate sceptics". Oh, no, Dr
Gulley eighty-sixed Bengtsson because his paper "contained errors, in
our view did not provide a significant advancement in the field, and
therefore could not be published in the journal".
So what were
these "errors"? The anonymous peer-review Dr Gulley appends to her
statement identifies only one: Professor Bengtsson's paper is about the
way reality refuses to agree with the climate models, and the reviewer
says this is a "false" comparison because "no consistency was to be
expected in the first place".
Oh.
As Steve McIntyre concludes his analysis:
"Given
the failure of the publisher to show any "error" other than the
expectation that models be consistent with observations, I think that
readers are entirely justified in concluding that the article was
rejected not because it "contained errors", but for the reason stated in
the reviewers' summary: because it was perceived to be "harmful… and
worse from the climate sceptics' media side".
The only "error"
here was Bengtsson's careless assumption that the "higher truth" of Mann
et al was subject to the same tests as real science.
This was
not a good week for the climate cultists. The Climategate intimidation
was done in the back rooms, sotto voce. This time they did it out in the
open, to an eminent 79-year old scientist. The ugly truth about Mann's
climate of fear is harder and harder to avoid.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
22 May, 2014
NYT wisdom: The Big Melt Accelerates
Muir
Glacier at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska is among
the many worldwide that are disappearing. Muir, left, as seen in August
1941, and photographed in August 2004.
SOURCEBUT:What
the NYT didn’t note is that the glacier has been shrinking since at
least 1794, which it was mapped by the Vancouver Expedition. That’s
according to a 1912 book published by the National Geographic Society,
and which is no longer in copyright. A page below:
The 1912 book says that Muir Glacier “extended 25 to 40 miles
farther to the south in 1794” and that there were “native legends of the
greater extension of the glaciers.” Muir Glacier receded 1.5 miles in a
single 10-year period between the time John Muir himself documented it
in 1879-1800 and H.F. Reid visited in 1890.
If this glacier has
been retreating for over 220 years, and likely for centuries before if
the native legends are accurate, how much of this is due to current CO2
production?
Weasel words about the Antarcticby Dr. Tom Sheahen
Q.
On TV I saw that the ice in Antarctica is collapsing, and that will
raise sea level and inundate cities. Others reports say this will take
thousands of years. How serious is the problem?
What you are
witnessing here is a result of confusion between the public perception
of the ordinary meaning of words, and the very special definitions used
in scientific discourse.
Geologists deal with changes in the
earth that occur over epochs of millions of years. Anything that happens
in less than 10,000 years is “sudden,” and something happening in only
1,000 years is “instantaneous.” To geologists, the word “collapse” is
appropriate for a 10,000 year process.
A hot-topic in the media
these days has to do with the West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS), a region
comprising about 8% of the ice covering Antarctica. Within that region,
there are two glaciers that are sliding down to the sea at a steady
pace, as glaciers always do. They comprise about 10% of the WAIS, less
than 1% of Antarctic ice. This descent has been in progress for several
thousand years, and is neither new nor man-caused. It will go on for a
few thousand more, after which they’ll be gone. In the parlance of
geology, those two glaciers are collapsing.
If that doesn’t sound
to you like your usual meaning of the word “collapse,” you’re
absolutely right. It’s a specialized geological term.
Unfortunately,
the major media overlook the distinction of meanings, and then make the
further generalization from two specific glaciers to the entire WAIS,
and moreover to Antarctica in general. Scientists who point out the
small actual glacier size (and volume of ice) are brushed aside in the
rush to get a headline or a flamboyant sound byte that will keep the
viewers tuned in. Words like unavoidable collapse carry a sense of
foreboding.
This isn’t just a problem from geology. Confusion
over the meaning of words used in science crops up frequently. Laws of
physics (e.g., conservation of energy) are said to be true in general,
meaning “always true.” But if a physicist says “that is generally true,”
a non-scientist hears “that is usually true” – meaning “most of the
time, but not always.” Neither is aware of the other’s interpretation.
The
word “average” is easily misunderstood. For any set of data, about any
topic, you can construct an average. But it may be irrelevant – a good
example being the “average temperature of the Earth.” Regional and
seasonal variations are so great that a single average number is
meaningless. And yet people have such familiarity with the word
“average” – batting averages, school grade averages, etc. -- that it’s
commonplace to believe that any statistic called an “average” represents
something real.
Via emailGreedy Greenie in Britain'Can't
afford NYC I'm afraid mate. Am in a big job but low pay': Councillor
slammed after he complained about his salary on Twitter - despite
earning £32,000 a year
A local councillor has been slammed after
he complained about the 'low pay' he gets for his public duties -
despite earning £32,000 a year as an assistant mayor.
Bristol
council cabinet member Gus Hoyt, 38, made the controversial remarks in a
Twitter conversation with a friend about a trip to New York.
Green
Party member Cllr Hoyt, who gave up work after he was elected, told the
friend: 'Can't afford NYC I'm afraid mate. Am in a Big job but low
pay...local government....'
His online remarks have since been blasted by political opponents, who branded him out of touch with ordinary people.
The
council's Lib Dem deputy leader Chris Martin asked him: 'Your combined
income is public record and is £32k - the question is how do you
consider that low pay?'
And Labour candidate Naomi Rylatt added: 'I'm appalled that Councillor Hoyt is ignorant enough to think £32,000 is low pay.'
The £32,000 Cllr Hoyt gets in allowances for his council work are £5,300 more than the average British worker's annual wage.
Mr
Hoyt, who is responsible for neighbourhoods, environment and council
housing, later attempted to defend himself against online critics by
writing: 'It's quite interesting how some people are only driven by
negativity and hatred. Must be horrible.'
University-educated
Hoyt receives a basic allowance of £11,530, which is paid to all
councillors, on top of which he gets an extra £20,266 for being an
assistant mayor.
He is not contracted to work a specific number
of hours but said that he regards being a councillor and an assistant
mayor as two full-time jobs.
Cllr Hoyt quit his job after being
elected and now receives a basic allowance of £11,530 as well as an
extra £20,266 for being an assistant mayor
The former labourer
has since insisted that for most of his working life he has been on
minimum wage and understood what it meant to exist on a low wage.
He
said: 'My comments were said in the context of my friend living in New
York and earning much more than me. 'I simply could not afford to go for
a week's holiday.'
But he has continued to attract disapproving
tweets from locals, with one Twitter user, Bristolgirl67, writing: 'If
32k is low pay I'd like to be low paid...I currently earn a quarter
approx of that.'
The criticism comes after it was revealed Cllr
Hoyt bought an ex-council house for £186,000 in an auction in 2012 -
despite it being Green Party policy not to sell off authority homes.
Reacting
to criticism over the purchase of the ex-council house, he said he
entered into a blind auction for the property and did not know it was
owned by the council until he had received official documents.
[Disputed]First elected to serve Bristol's Ashley ward in 2011, Mr Hoyt will have to contest his seat again next year.
The
national average wage for a full-time worker is £26,500, and the annual
salary for someone in a full time job on the national minimum wage is
£13,124.
SOURCEA celebration of SpringA fraternal greeting from Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser, German-born and now living in CanadaIf
you live in the northern climes, as I do, spring is an overpowering
force. After a long winter and weeks of nature seemingly in an eternal
slumber, spring arrives overnight, without warning and drawn-out
preludes.
One day it’s cold and dreary and the next day you wonder how life can re-emerge so exuberantly after a long hibernation.
In
much of this continent’s environs, spring is almost non-existent,
winter gives way directly to summer. Some voices say we have only two
seasons - winter and construction season.
In contrast to central
Europe, where spring starts in February or March with a slow but steady
progression of nature, the continental climate here goes from one
extreme to another in no time flat.
Yesterday you froze your
buns, today you feel the heat. The trees are budding, the weeds are
growing and everything else is forgotten.
Six months of drudgery
shovelling snow and scraping the ice off your car’s windshield are all
forgotten, swiftly becoming a distant memory. Welcome spring!
Enjoy the season!
SOURCE The secrecy continuesWarmism cannot stand the light of dayAttempts
to get critical information from agents of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) meet with little success. Why? They claim
immediate response to their work is mandatory for planetary survival and
time is running out.
Here is what Slater reported on March 30 2014.
"In
a new U.N. report released on Monday morning (Japan time) scientists
come to a stark conclusion: Unless the world changes course immediately
and dramatically, the fundamental systems that support human
civilization are at risk."
If true, surely the world has the
right to know every bit of information used for this conclusion, but
that hasn’t happened. There’s a contradiction between orchestrated
publicity raising the threat, but silence, obfuscation, and outright
denial regarding questions about important data, process, and
methodology. Suspicions are driven by natural curiosity and desire for
complete openness in science, but also by their behavior to date.
What
have they got to hide? A great deal, as the leaked Climate Research
Unit (CRU) emails attest. CRU countered challenges to their views by
setting up the PR web site RealClimate and controlling information such
as William Connolley’s editing of Wikipedia entries. Publicly they
played the victim card claiming they were ordinary scientists trying to
do their work but overwhelmed, possibly deliberately, by Freedom of
Information requests. The requests occurred because they refused to
provide answers and information. A siege mentality was apparent from the
start.
The Wegman Report investigation and analysis of the hockey stick fiasco provides an example in the critical paleoclimate group.
"Additionally,
we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was
haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was
too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.
Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this
community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing
credibility."
The latest effort to get information released was
thwarted by a court ruling regarding Michael Mann’s material. It said
Mann’s work was protected from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests due
to the “proprietary nature” of the information. How this impinges on
the Amicus Brief, filed by a consortium of media in Virginia to obtain
the same information, remains to be seen. The real issue is the data he
is withholding, but that is not the Amicus’ concern. The opening
paragraph of the Argument explains,
"Exemptions to VFOIA
(Virginia Freedom of Information Act) must be narrowly interpreted to
comply with the legislative intent behind the law and to ensure the
public and the news media sufficient access to the government to promote
an understanding of its operations. Public universities are necessarily
included in VFOIA and the media has a strong interest in being able to
monitor University spending operations. While truly proprietary
information in the possession of a public university should not be
subject to request under VFOIA and in fact is properly exempted, email
among professors is not entitled to a blanket treatment as proprietary.
Instead, such communications are an essential part of the functioning of
the University and must be subject to public scrutiny. Because such
communications have been held not to implicate academic freedom, and
because the type of email at issue here does not include unpublished
information in which the professors or the University have a competitive
interest, it must be subject to VFOIA. The lower court’s broad
definition of “proprietary nature” cannot stand if VFOIA is to retain
any meaning."
Openness and access for the media are important but
abrogation of that responsibility by the mainstream media (MSM) allowed
and encouraged CRU and IPCC behavior.
An appeal is necessary
because of the nature of the material; taxpayers funded its production;
and it is the basis of globally changing policy. State Attorney General
Ken Cuccinelli used the “Fraud against Taxpayers Act” against the
University of Virginia when seeking Michael Mann’s work. When an author
receives compensation does the ownership of the article belong to the
payee, unless otherwise agreed? Did any of the IPCC participants
contract retained ownership of their work? Participation in production
of a public document with global policy implications implies you will
provide full details in its derivation.
Leaked CRU emails
indicate important players, like Phil Jones, CRU Director, anticipated
the questions. He advised people how to hide and avoid FOI requests.
Here is an email he sent on 2 February 2005.
"Just sent loads of
station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this
time! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know
who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data
for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now
in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does
your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20
days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will
test it.We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.
Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought
people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from
UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can
see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must
adhere to it!"
On 10 December 2008 he wrote to Ben Santer;
"Haven’t
got a reply from the FOI person here at UEA. So I’m not entirely
confident the numbers are correct. One way of checking would be to look
on CA (Climate Audit), but I’m not doing that. I did get an email from
the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting
emails – unless this was ‘normal’ deleting to keep emails manageable!
McIntyre hasn’t paid his £10, so nothing looks likely to happen re his
Data Protection Act email.
Anyway requests have been of three
types – observational data, paleo data and who made IPCC changes and
why. Keith has got all the latter – and there have been at least 4. We
made Susan (Solomon) aware of these – all came from David Holland.
According to the FOI Commissioner’s Office, IPCC is an international
organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything
about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on, unless it has anything to
do with our core business – and it doesn’t! I’m sounding like Sir
Humphrey (bureaucrat in English TV comedy series) here!"
And then a devastating postscript in a 21 February 2005 email to Michael Mann, cc’d to Bradley and Hughes.
"PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
On
21 January 2005 Phil Jones responded to concerns about FOIA from Tom
Wigley, former Director of the CRU, grandfather overseer of the IPCC
central characters.
As for FOIA Sarah isn’t technically employed
by UEA and she will likely be paid by Manchester Metropolitan
University. I wouldn’t worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get used
by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all
the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.
I’ll be passing any requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a
post to deal with them."
IPR is Intellectual Property Rights and
similar to the Proprietary Rights (PR) Michael Mann used to prevent
release of his material. Jones suggests it is the final fall back
position and so far it seems to work for Mann.
The Virginia media
group Amicus Brief may redress problems created by Mann’s use of PR.
Mann knew that as a “public figure” he was subject to a different level
of what was defamatory. Shouldn’t that also apply to his PR? He tried to
downplay the challenge claiming he was a ”reluctant public figure”.
This reluctance didn’t prevent him promoting public adulation and
recognition by bragging about and falsely claiming he was a Nobel Prize
winner. Actually, the Nobel Institute gave it to the IPCC for their
contribution to world peace. This categorically implies the IPCC work
had global implications and therefore much greater consequence.
Mann
consistently advances the importance of his work and the threat it
confronts. He makes the link in such works as, “Do Global Warming and
Climate Change Represent A Serious Threat To Our Welfare and
Environment? He pushes the same message in manytelevision appearances.
These are hardly the activities of a “reluctant” person.
In my
opinion this changes the standard of disclosure for his data and work.
What is the basis for such an alarmist message that demands
world-changing action with economic and social upheaval? Taxpayers who
funded and are impacted have a right to know.
Earlier I said the
PR was the final fall back position, but that only applies to legal
actions. Phil Jones used a few unscrupulous tactics successfully. He
convinced the University of East Anglia (UEA) that they should not have
to reply to request from Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit. He did it by
denigrating and demeaning them with phrases like “types of people” in
his 3 December 2008 email to Wigley,
"When the FOI requests began
here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a
couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them
otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of
the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the
registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school
and a few others) became very supportive.
Jones anticipated FOI request for emails by advising erasure. On 2 February 2005 he wrote,
"If
they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I
think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone."
Did this
attitude cause him to use the second defensive technique of losing the
data? On 29 May 2008 he advised Mann and others to erase emails.
"Can
you delete any emails you may have had with Keith (Briffa) re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his
new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
Apparently,
Mann’s material or data is not erased or lost yet. Presumably he
believes the PR ruling provides all the protection he needs.
Data
Mann withholds was used to create the “hockey stick” handle and data
Phil Jones lost created the blade, an event he said was “not
acceptable”. The graph dominated the 2001 IPCC Report as Ross McKitrick
detailed. The Report was pivotal in convincing the world that human
produced CO2 was causing global warming. The hockey stick graph became
the poster child.
Justice demands that Mann’s claim of
Proprietary Rights be offset by the way in which the data and work was
funded, produced and used. Funding was public at all levels, the IPCC is
a UN agency globally funded, their work received maximum public
approval with a Nobel Prize, their work was consciously directed and
promoted to influence public policy through the Summary for Policymakers
that profoundly altered national and international policies for energy
and economies. If they believe the work done is so valuable, why do they
persist in keeping it from the public? It is another example of the gap
between justice and the law, especially as it relates to climate and
the environment.
SOURCE GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIAFour articles belowClimate Change Research Axed in AustraliaThe
fallout from the new government’s budget is still being seen in
Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when
it comes to funding. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been skeptical
of global warming and the science behind it, but with his new-found
legislative power it seems as though he is looking at making that
viewpoint into law. According to critics, there is no longer even the
pretence of working towards limiting the effects of climate change as
the government works to protect the interests of fossil fuel producers
and businesses. Whether or not there is a real connection between big
business interest and the new budget, Abbott and his cabinet have taken
the axe to climate change research and are poised to fundamentally
damage all scientific research in Australia in the process.
The
budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists
based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government
programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming
rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the
next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is
meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be
reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after
Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide
$2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate
change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The
Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO),
Australia’s national science agency, will have $111 million worth of
funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain
number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce.
The
outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in
Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find
work elsewhere. This represents a loss of a skilled workforce for a
country that is already seeing a six percent unemployment rate. Despite
harping on the jobless rate, the Abbott government has not provided a
solution to getting more people working. Cuts to climate change programs
and scientific research are only the tip of the unemployment iceberg.
Under this budget, unemployment rates are set to rise to 6.25 percent by
June next year. This is worrying news for the hundreds of thousands of
Australians currently out of work or who are facing the prospect of
unemployment in the wake of the new budget plan.
But it is not
only highly educated scientists who may lose their employment after
climate change research was axed by the government that is currently
running things in Australia. There are thousands of jobs connected to
renewable resources that will also be lost due to funding cuts.
Thousands of jobs exist in rural areas where renewable energy sources
like wind and solar power have a great presence. Wind mills and solar
energy outposts have to be built in rural areas that have enough space
to accommodate them. People who own the land these are built on also see
an income from the renting of their property to the operators of this
machinery, an income they will most likely lose should funding be cut so
drastically. It looks as though funding for climate change programs is
not just an issue of ideology, but a problem of real-world economics.
Some
have claimed that the cuts are completely ideologically driven and have
nothing to do with principles of budget balance or good governance.
Greens party leader Christine Milne called out the prime minister’s
oppositional stance to climate change science. She referred to the
government’s repeated claims to support emissions reduction and called
the budget a repudiation of that, a dropping of the curtain on their
real designs on the issue. She went a step further, calling the budget
an attempt to “shore up the vested interests of coal-fired generators
and the old order of Australia.” Her comment points to the role of the
mining industry, which provides six percent of the country’s economy.
There
is some good news for climate change funding and the scientific
research community that is facing down the barrel of the Abbott
government’s budget. Until the budget passes the senate, there will be
no changes to funding and organization of the sector. For now, climate
change research is safe from getting axed and if the senate does not
allow the budget to go through, the jobs that could be lost will still
exist in Australia’s renewable energy sector.
SOURCEQld solar tariffs under threatQUEENSLAND
homeowners who use solar panels could be worse off under laws that will
no longer guarantee them a feed-in tariff of eight cents.
Laws
due to be passed tonight will mean the responsibility for paying the
tariff will switch from government-owned distributors to retailers after
June 30.
And consumers will have to negotiate directly with their retailer for the price they are paid.
The
Queensland Competition Authority will set a tariff rate for Ergon
Energy customers in the immediate future, given the very limited
competition outside the southeast corner.
Energy Minister Mark
McArdle says the changes will lift the cost burden from the network
businesses, making the scheme fairer for all Queensland consumers.
"It will put downward pressure on electricity prices," Mr McArdle told parliament.
"Feed-in
tariff payments will not be cross subsidised by consumers, making the
arrangement far more sustainable over the long term."
Electrical
Trades Union state organiser Stuart Traill says the 40,000 consumers on
the eight cents feed-in tariff will have little to no bargaining power
with large energy corporations.
"They will be worse off, and a lot of them will be pensioners," he told AAP.
"And there will be job losses in the solar industry because there will be less incentives to move to solar now."
Mr
Traill added the plan was ill considered, and the returns would be
minuscule compared to how much could have been saved if the 44 cent
feed-in tariff had been reformed.
The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged.
Shadow
Treasurer Curtis Pitt said the Opposition would not oppose the bill but
said the Newman government had broken an election promise.
"The LNP promised the scheme would be safe and kept at the same rate," Mr Pitt told parliament.
SOURCESolar panels ‘are time bombs’THE
Coalition has likened the spate of house fires caused by allegedly
faulty rooftop circuit-breakers to the pink batts fiasco, claiming Labor
ignored warnings that subsidies for solar power would create a similar
honey pot for dodgy operators.
As revealed by The Australian,
Advancetech, the Queensland company that imported and sold 27,000 solar
power DC isolators, went into receivership last Friday, leaving tens of
thousands of homeowners to replace them in their rooftop arrays or risk a
conflagration.
The Queensland and NSW governments have issued
recall notices for the Avanco isolators after 70 of them burnt out, in
some cases causing minor house fires.
Also recalled is a PVPower
branded isolator imported and sold by Swiss electrotechnical products
supplier DKSH, though that began in March at the instigation of the
company.
Describing solar panels as “ticking time bombs”,
Nationals senator Ron Boswell said there would be “possibly thousands”
of other dangerous breakdowns.
The Queensland senator said the
Labor government’s subsidy to encourage home owners to install solar
panels, the Small-scale Renewable Energy Certificates scheme, led to an
overheated market in which shoddy operators and cheap imports thrived.
“The
flaws and waste associated with this scheme have been largely under the
radar because of the scale of the personal tragedies associated with
the pink batts fiasco, but as an exercise in silliness, waste, and
maladministration, the solar scheme has been its absolute equal,”
Senator Boswell said.
“It has a long way to go before it plays out, as systems installed age.
“Fire-prone
isolators in rooftop solar arrays in Queensland and NSW are just the
sort of problem Labor was warned about, and ignored, as it ramped up
demand for its solar program in 2010.”
He quoted several experts
who had given evidence to a Senate committee on the topic that year,
including the chief executive of environmental credits trader Greenbank
Environmental, Fiona O’Hehir, who said the subsidy gave rise to possible
dodgy and dangerous installations.
“You would actually have DC
generation on your roof, which can be as high as 120V DC. A flood of
cheap imports into Australia could mean that we have significant risk,”
she said at the time.
“If it continues at this rate, we will soon
end up with a situation along the lines of the insulation program,
which would be a disaster for the renewable energy industry.’’
The
SREC scheme is still in place, though at a much reduced rate of
subsidy, and is under review pending the outcome of the inquiry into
renewable energy by businessman Dick Warburton.
SOURCESubsidies for clean energy to hit $21bnSUBSIDIES
for renewable energy schemes such as rooftop solar panels and wind
farms will cost electricity consumers up to $21.6 billion by 2020, a new
analysis has found.
A submission by the Minerals Council of
Australia also warns that more gas- and coal-fired power stations could
be mothballed or permanently closed as the renewable energy target puts
pressure on the electricity market and slashes their revenues.
If
this happens, retail electricity prices “can be expected to increase”,
according to an economic analysis commissioned by the council which
represents mining giants including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Glencore
Xstrata.
The analysis also hits back at fresh claims by the clean
energy sector that the RET will create up to 18,400 jobs by 2020,
declaring “the most immediate effects” from subsidising the renewable
sector are job losses as cheaper forms of energy are crowded out.
“Additional
job losses can be expected to arise from the drain on economic activity
as a result of higher electricity prices,” it finds.
Former
Queensland treasurer Keith De Lacy — now one of the nation’s best-known
company directors — declared it was “plain crazy” to have schemes such
as the RET, solar feed-in tariffs and carbon tax that were driving up
power bills.
“The Australian public keep complaining about the
increases in the costs of living and this has become even more so since
the budget,” Mr De Lacy told The Australian yesterday.
“But one
of the biggest increases in cost has been the price of electricity ...
It’s the most fundamental of services to the Australian public … These
kind of things just make some people feel good but don’t achieve
anything.
“They’ve got no place, I believe, in a modern economy.”
The comments add to pressure on the Coalition, given it is split over what to do about the RET.
According
to the Principal Economics review commissioned by the Minerals Council,
the RET scheme has an opportunity cost (money that could have been
invested elsewhere) of more than $36bn by 2020-21.
The analysis
finds that subsidies that are recovered through the sale of renewable
energy certificates, which are directly passed on to consumers, could
reach between $19.3bn and $21.6bn by 2020-21, covering part of the cost
to build the infrastructure.
The miners are wielding the figures
in a bid to convince the government-appointed RET review panel that the
scheme is excessively costly for households and industry, and cannot
continue the way it is.
“These are the additional costs paid by
energy consumers: households, domestic firms and exporters such as the
mining sector,” the council’s submission says.
The submission
also warns that the RET will encumber business with “uncapped and high
costs for subsidies”, particularly for the scheme for rooftop solar PV
panels, “because of poor design and a series of inchoate policy
shifts”.
In 2010, then federal minister Martin Ferguson said the
RET was a “bonus to the renewable sector of the order of another $20bn
to $30bn in commonwealth government support”.
The Australian
Industry Group has called for the RET to be maintained, despite demands
by some businesses that it be scrapped because it is expensive.
The
AiGroup says that while the cost of building wind farms and solar
panels is passed on to customers, extra energy from wind farms and solar
panels has pushed down wholesale prices.
This has also been a
key pillar of arguments by the Clean Energy Council, which is wielding
its own research by ROAM Consulting that finds household energy prices
would be $50 a year lower by 2020 with the RET, and that leaving it
alone would create 18,400 jobs.
The Minerals Council has told the
panel lower wholesale prices are not a “function of competitive forces
but of government intervention”, are likely to be short-lived and
undermine investments in coal- and gas-fired power stations needed for
reliable electricity supplies.
The analysis points to power
station retirements including the permanent shutdown of the Munmorah
black coal power station in NSW and temporary closure of South
Australia’s Playford.
“Overall retail price rises have therefore been lower than they otherwise would have been,’’ the analysis says.
Wholesale
electricity prices are “likely to increase” if power generators that
become unprofitable close. Minerals Council chief executive Brendan
Pearson said access to cheap, reliable energy had been a “source of
economic strength” for Australia. “This is no longer the case,” he said.
The
analysis draws on previous modelling. It quotes estimates by SKM MMA
for the Climate Change Authority in December 2012 that put the cost for
buying certificates for large-scale renewables at $15.9bn by 2020-21 and
for small-scale renewables at $3.4bn — totalling $19.3bn.
Like
most of the figures cited in the new analysis, these are based on an
assumption of no carbon price — which the analysis says is appropriate
as the Abbott government has announced its plans to repeal it.
To
get to the $21.6bn figure, the analysis cites modelling by ACIL Tasman
for TRUenergy (now EnergyAustralia) — which wants the RET scaled back —
that puts the subsidy for the small-scale scheme at $5.7bn.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
21 May, 2014
Cynical lies designed to pressure big food companiesWarming
would make great new areas of Northern Canada and Siberia suitable for
grain farming. So the problem would be TOO MUCH food, not too little.
And if some of the soils there are poor, adding supplements of various
sorts is already routineThe price of cereals such as Corn
Flakes could surge by as much as 44 percent in the next 15 years because
of climate change, Oxfam has warned.
The charity has claimed the
'Big 10' food and drink companies combined emit more greenhouse gases
than Scandinavia, and has warned these firms could face financial ruin
if they do not do more to tackle climate change.
Oxfam says were
companies Associated British Foods, Coca-Cola, Danone, General Mills,
Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez International, Nestl‚, PepsiCo and Unilever a
country, they would rank as the 25th most polluting.
In its new
report Standing on the Sidelines, the international agency says these
firms emit 264 million tons of greenhouse gases, according to the latest
available figures, more than the combined 250 million ton total for
Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
Oxfam says food
supplies are being affected by storms, floods, droughts and shifting
weather patterns caused by climate change, which is leading to more
hunger and poverty.
It has been predicted that by 2050 there will
be 50 million more people made hungry because of climate change, and
Oxfam has suggested that the price of key products like Kellogg's Corn
Flakes could rise by 44 percent by 2029.
In its critical report,
the charity has called on the firms, which is says generate œ650 million
a day in revenues - equivalent to the total gross domestic product of
all the world's lower income countries - to cut their combined emissions
by 80 million tons by 2020.
'By failing to cut emissions
adequately the 'Big 10' are putting short term profits ahead of the long
term interests of both themselves and the rest of us,' said Oxfam's
director of UK campaigns and policy Sally Copley.
'Their
influence and wealth are the perfect ingredients to stop putting their
businesses at risk and making climate change worse.
'They need to look at the whole picture from how their ingredients are grown to how their goods are produced to cut emissions.
'They
also need to pressure businesses and governments to do what is needed
to tackle climate change and help build a future where everyone has
enough to eat.'
Oxfam says that the food industry drives around
25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that these emissions
are growing as demand for food rises.
'Experts say that if the
world is to avoid warming of more than 2C, rising emissions from
deforestation and agriculture need to be reversed by 2050 and
agriculture and forests need to together become a carbon sink -
effectively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,' said an
Oxfam spokesman.
'Their influence and wealth are the perfect
ingredients to stop putting their businesses at risk and making climate
change worse'
Oxfam says some of the companies, Unilever,
Coca-Cola, and Nestle, had taken steps to tackle climate change, and
that Pepsico UK had committed to reduce emissions from its agricultural
supply chain by 50 percent in five years.
But it singled out
Kellogg, which produces cereals including Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies,
and General Mills, which encompasses brands including Haagen-Dazs and
Jus-Rol, as two of the 'worst' on climate.
In its report the
charity called on these companies to lead the other firms towards more
responsible policies and practices. Oxfam also urged the firms to
disclose their agricultural emissions and biggest polluting suppliers,
and set targets to cut emissions from their supply chains.
A
spokesman from Kellog told MailOnline: 'Kellogg is committed to doing
what's right for the environment and society. As part of this
commitment, we are working to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions -
along with energy use and water use - by 15-20 percent at our
manufacturing facilities by 2015.
'We're pleased to see that
Oxfam has recognized our commitment to working with global palm oil
suppliers to source fully traceable palm oil, produced in a manner
that's environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and
economically viable. We've also made continuous improvements in the
areas of Land, Women, Climate and Water.
'We value continued
engagement and discussion with Oxfam, and other external stakeholders on
the important issues of environmental and social sustainability.'
A
General Mills spokesperson added: 'Climate Change is a serious issue,
and as a food company we are very aware of the impact that climate
change could have on agriculture and the world's food supply.
'General
Mills has been actively engaged in positively influencing climate
policy and has been taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in
its operations for many years.'
SOURCEComment
by William Happer received by email: Meyers is an "instructor in
medicine" and research scientist at the "Harvard Center for the
Environment." This is not a very prestigious position. But if Meyers
continues to produce horror stories like this for the establishment, it
will soon bring him fame and fortune, just as environmental fanaticism
has done for so many already, including Obama's Presidential Science
Advisor and Al Gore. As for content, Meyers's paper sounds like rubbish
to me. As best I know, grain is not the main source of nutritional zinc
and iron anyway. And somebody should get the environmental enforcers
after the growers of hothouse tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., who persist in
doubling, tripling and quadrupling the CO2 levels in their greenhouses.Judith Curry leaves the plantationDoing
science by consensus is not science at all, says the climatologist all
the alarmists love to hate. Not that the enmity bothers Judith Curry too
much -- and certainly not as much as the debasement of impartial
inquiry by which the warmist establishment keeps all those lovely grants
coming
When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last
week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony
Thomas. The professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric
Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she is something of a
stormy petrel in the climate-change community, as she has broken ranks
with alarmist colleagues to question the articles and ethics of the
warmist faith. This has made her less than popular in certain circles,
even inspiring Scientific American, house journal of the
catastropharians, to brand her "a heretic" who has "turned on her
colleagues." [only religions have heretics]
Such criticism leaves
Curry unmoved. If anyone needs counselling, she says, then it is those
academics who continue to preach the planet's sweaty doom despite the
fact that no warming has been observed for almost two decades.The edited transcript of Curry's conversation with Thomas is below:
TONY
THOMAS: If the skeptic/orthodox spectrum is a range from 1 (intense
skeptic) to 10 (intensely IPCC orthodox), where on the scale would you
put yourself
(a) as at 2009, 7
(b) as at 2014, 3
and why has there been a shift (if any)?
JUDITH
CURRY: In early 2009, I would have rated myself as 7; at this point I
would rate myself as a 3. Climategate and the weak response of the IPCC
and other scientists triggered a massive re-examination of my support of
the IPCC, and made me look at the science much more sceptically.
THOMAS:
The US debate has been galvanised in recent weeks by strong statements
against CO2 emissions by President Obama and Secretary of State John
Kerry. What is your view of the case they made out, and your thoughts
about why the statements are now being made?
CURRY: I am
mystified as to why President Obama and John Kerry are making such
strong (and indefensible) statements about climate change. Particularly
with regards to extreme weather events, their case is very weak.
Especially at this time, given that much of the rest of the world is
pulling back against commitments to reduce emissions and combat climate
change.
THOMAS: Re the halt to warming in the past 15-17 years,
has this been adequately explained to the public? If it continues a few
more years, is that the end of the orthodox case?
CURRY: Regarding
the hiatus in warming, I would say that this has not been adequately
explained to the public, the IPCC certainly gave the issue short shrift.
The
hiatus is serving to highlight the importance of natural climate
variability. If the hiatus continues a few more years, climate model
results will seriously be called into question. When trying to
understand and model a complex system, there is, unfortunately, no
simple test for rejecting a hypothesis or a model.
THOMAS: What empirical evidence is there, as distinct from modelling, that `missing heat' has gone into the deep oceans?
CURRY:
Basically, none. Observations below 2 km in the ocean are exceedingly
rare, and it is only since 2005 that we have substantial coverage below
700 metres.
More
HERE The fanaticism of Paul WatsonIt's
not only whale meat but ALL meat he wants us not to eat. There are
certainly some problems with animal husbandry but, in the developed
world, these problems are already heavily regulated. It is telling that
most other environmental organizations do not agree with him. And the
tales of destruction below are mostly mere assertions, not scientific
factsVeganism is real conservation in action. It validates a
conservationist as virtuous and courageous in facing and exposing the
most inconvenient truth of all
The Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society is one of the very few, if not the only marine conservation
organization in the world that actively promotes and practices veganism.
Why?
Because we see the connections between animal husbandry and pollution
in the ocean, diminishment of life in the seas, the destruction of the
rainforests and climate change.
Veganism is real conservation in
action. It goes beyond talking about climate change and diminishment of
biodiversity and actually does something to address the problems.
Sea
Shepherd ships have been vegan vessels since 2002 and before that vegan
options were always provided. The ships were vegetarian vessels
beginning in 1979.
The Sea Shepherd Conservations Society is not a
vegan or vegetarian organization however, nor are we an Animal Rights
or an Animal Welfare organization. We are a marine wildlife and habitat
conservation movement.
So why are all the meals on Sea Shepherd ships vegan?
The
answer is because vegetarianism and especially veganism are powerful
alternatives to eight billion human beings and their domestic animals
eating the oceans alive.
The diversity in our ocean is being
diminished more and more every day and when diversity collapses,
interdependence between species collapses and the result is a dead
ocean.
And a dead ocean means death to all creatures big and
small because if the ocean dies, we all die. The ocean is the heart of
the planet and it sustains all life both on land and in the sea.
We are ruthlessly overfishing the seas and much of it is being done illegally.
Virtually
every commercial fishing operation in the world is in a state of
collapse. We are polluting the ocean with plastic, petro-chemicals,
agricultural run-off and sewage. We are inflicting acidification, noise
pollution and destroying coastal habitats for development.
The
Sea Shepherd position's is that all commercial fisheries must be shut
down so fish can have a chance to recover. The only relatively
“sustainable” fisheries are artisanal fishing by fishermen working from
very small boats out of tiny ports in India, Africa, etc.
We need
to remove the corporations, the big trawlers, seiners, and long-liners,
the heavy gear, the big nets, the long lines and the factory ships if
our oceans are going to be saved.
So what has this got to do with anyone eating a hamburger, bacon and eggs or chicken? These creatures don’t live in the sea.
Yet
they live off of the sea. Like us, they are land dwellers collectively
eating the sea alive and they are doing it against their will to benefit
the most destructive creature to ever venture into the ocean – the homo
sapiens.
A third of all the marine life the fishing industry
takes is called forage fish and it is extracted from the sea
specifically to feed pigs, chickens, mink, foxes, domestic salmon, and
house cats. In fact chickens are eating more fish than albatross, pigs
are eating more fish than sharks and housecats are eating more fish than
all the seals in the sea.
There are 1.5 billion cows on the
planet, 1.2 billion sheep, more than a billion pigs, a half a billion
dogs and 2 billion domestic and feral housecats.
Ten percent of
the forage fish goes to feed cats. Fifty-five percent goes to pigs, the
rest to chickens, mink, foxes, and domestic farm raised salmon.
There
are 2 billion cats and a half a billion dogs in the world and less than
fifty million seals in the sea. There are 18.6 billion chickens in the
world far outnumbering all of the seabirds.
When you eat chicken
you may be eating fish. When you eat bacon you may be eating fish. When
you drink milk or eat eggs you maybe consuming marine wildlife.
Fishermen
whine about seals eating all the fish. Just today there were 38 sea
lions in the Columbia River and more than 500 anglers on the shore with
their fishing rods but the government was gunning for the sea lions
because they “eat fish.”
And on top of that we have the fact that
animal husbandry produces more greenhouse gases than the transportation
industry. When you consider it takes 600 barrels of water to produce one
hamburger, the waste is simply unacceptable.
So Sea Shepherd decided many years ago that promoting veganism was in fact practicing good conservation ethics.
From
2003 to 2006 I was a national director of the Sierra Club in the United
States. All of my attempts to address the environmental impact of
animal husbandry were not only dismissed, they were laughed at. The
Sierra Club absolutely refused to address human population growth and
the escalating consumption of factory-farmed animal products as a
significant factor contributing to climate change and habitat
destruction.
Why? For the same reason that Greenpeace,
Conservation International and numerous other large environmental groups
willfully ignore the great inconvenient truth that it is the eating of
animals that produces more greenhouse gas than the entire transportation
industry. Even Al Gore conveniently neglected to mention that very
important fact in his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Why
did he not mention it and why do the big groups refuse to even discuss
the relationship between eating meat and climate change?
It is
because they do not want to upset the public that gives them donations.
Their big fear is that they will alienate their donor base.
And
they are probably right. Sea Shepherd has lost support from people who
eat meat because they have gotten angry about our message. But the
difference between Sea Shepherd and these big groups in denial is that
we want to save our oceans and our planet no matter how inconvenient
people may think that is.
Change comes about because of action,
not because of words. I resigned from the Sierra Club Board because the
nation’s oldest environmental organization whose founder John Muir was a
vegetarian and an anti-hunter is now pro-hunting and pro-animal
husbandry. When I left I called them the Siesta Club Hunting and
Conversation Society.
The planet will not be saved just by taking
shorter showers, recycling your trash or driving in an electric car. It
takes one hell of a lot of short showers to equal the six hundred
barrels of water required to make that one hamburger.
In fact a
vegan driving down the highway in a Hummer is contributing less to
creating greenhouse gases than a meat-eater riding a bicycle.
The
meat industry consumes more water than any other industry on the
planet. It uses more land. It produces more waste. It produces the most
greenhouse gases, especially methane.
There is a new documentary
being released called "Cowspiracy" that investigates the contradictions
by large environmental organizations that refuse to discuss or take
seriously the connection between the meat industry and rising levels of
global warming gases.
The filmmakers are addressing a forbidden
subject and focusing on the big elephant in the room that mainstream
conservation groups willfully refuse to see. In the film, Greenpeace
will not even agree to meet with the filmmakers to discuss the project.
The filmmakers went to the Greenpeace office after Greenpeace refused to
answer their emails only to be told that Greenpeace had no interest in
discussing anything to do that connects meat eating with climate change.
More
HERE Vermont Maple Syrup Producer Complains: NBC Edited My Remarks to Support `Global Warming'Sometimes the truth is much sweeter than the syrupy environmentalism of the national media.
While
hyping the alleged effects on climate change, NBC's May 6 "Nightly
News" tried to localize the impact by citing a different problem in each
region. The broadcast played a clip of Burr Morse, a seventh-generation
maple syrup producer from Montpelier, Vermont, stating that this
season's weather had been too warm. Contrary to this clip's
implications, Morse told the MRC's Business and Media Institute that
cold weather actually did more to harm this year's maple syrup season.
Morse
complained that NBC had selected a short sample of his full remarks to
"support their point which was global warming." Morse said he didn't
want "to be the cause of any hysteria," emphasizing that he is confident
in the future of the maple syrup industry and its ability to
"circumvent the weather with technology."
NBC White House
Correspondent Peter Alexander told "Nightly News" that "Short winters
are already harming Vermont maple syrup famer Burr Morse." Then, NBC
played a clip of Morse saying "It didn't quite get cold enough at
night."
Anybody who spent the 2013/14 winter on the East Coast
should immediately have become suspicious as the winter remained cold
through March, incidentally when the maple syrup harvest typically
begins.
In fact, Morse claimed that winter "hung on a month
longer than it usually does." Because of this lingering cold, Morse
started tapping his maple trees in April instead of March. By April,
however, the nights were slightly too warm for the ideal 20 degree
temperature, hence the actual context for NBC's excerpt.
Rather
than suffering from the heat, Morse described this season's primary
hardship as cold, saying a "big part of the season was that it was too
cold."
Morse expressed distaste for the way NBC handled his
remarks. He told BMI that NBC took a video of his remarks but "only
selected the words to support their point which was global warming."
Contrary
to climate alarmists' repeated assertions in publications like the
Huffington Post and USA Today, Morse maintained that the maple syrup
industry is not in trouble. In fact, he made sure to tell BMI that "I
don't want to be the cause of any hysteria."
Morse admitted that
"we've had our challenges" but maple syrup producers were experimenting
with new technologies to extract sap. For example, he told BMI the
details of new vacuum technology that can get sap "in weather that isn't
ideal." Morse appeared confident in "the ability to, in some ways,
circumvent the weather with technology."
SOURCE Politico Notices TV Meteorologists 'More Skeptical' of Climate Change Than Other ScientistsPolitico's
Darren Goode surprisingly highlighted the skepticism of many on-air
meteorologists in a Monday item about President Obama's interviews with
"some of television's most popular celebrities - weather forecasters -
to ratchet up the volume on the administration's latest scientific
assessment of climate change." Goode pointed out that "not all broadcast
meteorologists have been conducive to the climate science message."
The
writer cited Weather Channel founder John Coleman, who labeled global
warming "the greatest scam in history" back in 2007. He also outlined
the reason for many of the weather personalities' skepticism:
One
explanation...which more than one meteorologist...shared with Politico
is skepticism over climate modeling that tries to predict changes
decades down the road. At least mathematically, these models aren't much
different from the modeling that TV meteorologists use to forecast
weather mere days in advance, which often can prove challenging to do
accurately.
Goode quoted from Keith Seitter, executive director
of the American Meteorological Society, in his article, "Obama tries
weather outreach on climate." The AMS oversees certification "seals" for
on-air meteorologists. Seitter praised the President's interviews with
the broadcast forecasters as "absolutely...a great move," but later
acknowledged the skeptics' viewpoint: "They know their own models become
unreliable very quickly, and it makes it hard for them to become
comfortable with a lot of the climate modeling being used to forecast
many years rather than just a handful of days."
The Politico
journalist also spotlighted a "June 2011 survey by the George Mason
center [that] found that while 82 percent of TV meteorologists were
convinced that the climate is changing, many don't think human activity
has been the primary cause of changes over the past 150 years."
Later
in his write-up, Goode underlined that "climate researchers counter
that climate - which changes over decades and centuries - is much
different from day-to-day weather." He also noted that "the official
position of the American Meteorological Society since 2012 is that there
is 'unequivocal evidence' and that the 'dominant cause of the warming
since the 1950s is human activities.' 'This scientific finding is based
on a large and persuasive body of research,' says the society, which
represents about 14,000 members, about 10 percent of them involved in
broadcasting."
One meteorologist that the journalist didn't
mention is former AccuWeather forecaster Joe Bastardi, who lambasted
Bill Nye the "Science Guy" and former CNN host Piers Morgan in a series
of Twitter posts in December 2012. Back in May 2010, CBS Evening News
also devoted a full report to the climate change skepticism of many
broadcast weather forecasters.
SOURCE Democrat Told President Nixon in 1970: It'll Be 7 Degrees Hotter and Sea Level Rise Will Wash Away NYC and DC by the Year 2000BEGIN TRANSCRIPT from Limbaugh program
RUSH:
Well, well, well, looky here. Koko Jr. at RushLimbaugh.com just sent me
a quick note. "Documents released Friday..." This is from July of 2010,
folks, so it's from the archives at RushLimbaugh.com. "Documents
released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of
President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of
global warming more than 30 years ago.
"Advisor Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the [Nixon] administration, urged the
[Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global
warming came to the public's attention." Here is the nub: Daniel Patrick
Moynihan warned Richard Nixon in 1970 that unless the Nixon
administration took drastic action to limit greenhouse gases, it would
be seven degrees warmer in the year 2000 and parts of America would be
underwater.
In 1970.
This is five years before the famous
Newsweek cover on the coming ice age. Moynihan, in 1970, warned Nixon to
act on global warming or parts of the country would be underwater by
2000. In fact, here's what he wrote: "This could increase the average
temperature near the earth's surface by seven degrees Fahrenheit. This
in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye, New York.
"Goodbye,
Washington, for that matter," by the year 2000. That's 14 years ago. In
1970, Nixon was told we gotta act now or by 30 years from now, in 2000,
New York City's gone, Washington's gone, and we're gonna have
temperature raise of seven degrees! There's nothing that has changed.
There's nothing new. The predictions are the same. They never come true.
All these predictions of doom and gloom and destitution never come
true. What does happen?
While all of these predictions are out there, liberal policies are put into place, and they do cause havoc.
Paul Ehrlich was also in the 1970s.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
20 May, 2014
Here we go again -- Exaggerated new claim of Antarctic melting
As
the image shows, and as we already know, virtually ALL the melting is
in the margins of the W. Antarctic sheet -- showing that it is a quite
local effect, not a global effect. So far from being global, the effect
does not even cover the whole of Antarctica. To reinforce the point that
the effect is a purely local one (probably due to vulcanism) note that
there has been no GLOBAL warming for 17 years. So the W. Antarctic
warming cannot be due to something that does not existThe Antarctic ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in history, it has been revealed.
Three
years of observations from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the
Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year –
twice as much as when it was last surveyed.
The polar ice sheets
are a major contributor to the rise in global sea levels, and these
newly measured losses from Antarctica alone are enough to raise global
sea levels by 0.45 mm each year.
These latest findings by a team
of scientists from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling
show that the pattern of imbalance continues to be dominated by glaciers
thinning in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica.
Between
2010 and 2013, West Antarctica, East Antarctica and the Antarctic
Peninsula lost 134, 3 and 23 billion tonnes of ice each year,
respectively.
The average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica
has increased compared to previous measurements, and this area’s yearly
loss is now one third more than measured over the five years before
CryoSat’s launch.
The data collected from 2010-2013 was compared to that from 2005-2010.
'We
find that ice losses continue to be most pronounced along the
fast-flowing ice streams of the Amundsen Sea sector, with thinning rates
of 4-8 m per year near to the grounding lines – where the ice streams
lift up off the land and begin to float out over the ocean – of the Pine
Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers,' said Dr Malcolm McMillan from the
University of Leeds, UK, and lead author of the study.
This area has long been identified as the most vulnerable to changes in climate.
SOURCE.
The journal article is "Increased ice losses from Antarctica detected by CryoSat-2"A Californiam epicenter?
I guess Gov. Moonbeam speaks Californian. He make no sense otherwise.
As anyone familiar with Greek prefixes can tell you, an epicenter is a
point above a center. Nuclear bombs are normally exploded above a
target, not on it. Classics aside, however, Brown's main point seems to
be California's increasing wildfires. They however are an effect of
Greenie meddling, not global warming. For some reason, Greenies seem to
hate preventive burnoffs -- and the result is predictableCalifornia
is at the “epicenter” of global warming and other climate change, with
the state experiencing longer fire seasons, rising sea levels and
droughts that threaten agriculture, Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday.
The
governor made his remarks during a conference about the climate, as
California was mopping up from a string of wildfires in San Diego County
that caused more than $20 million in damage.
The event also came
as scientists warn that higher temperatures will lead to more frequent
and intense wildfires throughout the West, and after scientists
confirmed that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to
collapse and could boost sea levels as much as 12 feet.
Brown
said California has had almost twice the number of forest fires this
year compared to normal levels, and the fire season is now 70 days
longer than it was historically, adding that “we’ve got to adapt because
the climate is changing.”
SOURCE Greenies Emit More GHGsStartup
founder Ian Monroe has developed a carbon footprint-tracking app called
Oroeco, which calculates your emissions contribution based on lifestyle
choices. What he found was almost too predictable. According to Monroe,
"The average person who says they care about climate change actually
has a substantially worse than average footprint. Generally that's
because they tend to have a bit more money, and they tend to be people
who like to think of themselves as multicultural and like to get out and
see the world. Which means that they're flying around a lot, and all
that flying generally outweighs any other green lifestyle choices that
they've made." Say, that sounds an awful lot like Al Gore.
Monroe
says, "Realizing the hypocrisy in my own life is exactly why I wanted
to create this [app]." At least he's putting his money where his mouth
is. That's more than we can say about ecofascists.
SOURCE German Government Falsifies IPCC Summary On Climate PolicyThe
UN’s climate report has debunked Germany’s green energy subsidies as
useless. No one has noticed. That’s because the government has crudely
falsified the official summary.
German consumers have subsidised
renewable energy to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros. But is
hasn’t done anything to protect the climate. That, in essence, is the
conclusion stated in the recent UN climate report which was presented to
the public in April. Mind you, no one so far has noticed.
One of
the reasons for this unawareness is quite simple: The German government
has simply concealed the findings of the UN researchers in the official
German summary. Other embarrassing passages from the IPCC document were
turned into the opposite.
Action on climate change
But
first things first : On April 14, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) presented its most recent and, to date, most
important report on climate change to the public. Although the first two
IPCC reports assessed the causes and effects of climate change, the
Working Group III report of its Fifth Assessment Report dealt with
possible countermeasures.
For policy makers the advice by the
IPCC is of utmost importance. Should governments respond to climate
change with the introduction of CO2 taxes? Are subsidies for renewable
energy advisable or is nuclear power more important? Or is setting up an
emission trading system that forces industry and power plant operators
to acquire emission allowances for each tonne of carbon dioxide they
want to blow into the air more effective in the fight against the
greenhouse effect?
These and similar questions were addressed by
235 leading researchers from 58 countries over a four year period.
Hence, when IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri and the Co -Chair of the IPCC’s
Working Group III, Ottmar Edenhofer, presented the results on April 14
in the Auditorium Maximum of the Technical University of Berlin, Federal
Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) listened
carefully.
Clear four sides
The presentation was of course
too short for a deeper analysis of the several thousand-page UN report.
The “Technical Summary” alone comprises 99 pages of complicated science
poetry in English. And even the IPCC’s “Summary for Policymakers” with
its 33 pages of English remains a challenge for politicians with very
tight times schedules.
Journalists, speakers and environmental
NGOs were therefore grateful that the government agencies responsible
for climate change made a pretty clear four-page summary of “key
messages” of the IPCC report available.
Responsible for the
German summary were four high-ranking government agencies: in charge was
the Ministry of the Environment; also involved were the German IPCC
Coordination Office in Bonn, the Environment Agency in Dessau and the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research . The German translation, one
would therefore think, is an authoritative source for the
interpretation of the IPCC findings. No one suspected that the
ministerial summary did not match the original in important ways.
Green power useless – if there is emission trading
In
its report the IPCC emphasises the futility of subsidies for renewable
energy parallel to an emissions trading system: “The addition of a CO2
reduction policy to a second policy does not necessarily lead to greater
CO2 reductions,” it says in a literal translation of the IPCC’s
Technical Summary: “In an emissions trading scheme with a sufficiently
stringent cap other measures such as subsidising renewable energy have
no further influence on total CO2 emissions.”
Thus, the IPCC now
confirms what the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of
Economics, the Monopolies Commission or the President of the Ifo
Institute, Hans -Werner Sinn, have been saying for years: Under the
fixed cap of European emissions trading with its precisely calculated
amount of pollution rights renewable energy subsidies only lead to a
shift of CO2 emissions, but not to their reduction.
Where a wind
farm displaces a German coal-fired power plant, for example, the total
CO2 emissions of the plant in question are made available again to the
market in the form of emission allowances. The supply is therefore
greater and other European power plant operators, accordingly, can
operate cheaper, using this vacant contingent of allowances. The avoided
CO2 emissions in Germany are then blown into the air by someone else.
For climate policy, the only crucial issue is that the total amount of
all distributed CO2 allowances in Europe is never exceeded.
Clear judgement missing in Summary
Yet
the IPCC’s clear verdict regarding the climate-political futility of
green energy subsidies that run simultaneously to emissions trading does
not appear in the German summary. The only comment on this issue reads
completely differently: “Emissions trading affects the impact of others
measures, unless the number of allowed certificates are adjusted
flexibly.”
The difference is obvious: the IPCC has declared CO2
emissions trading to be an effective instrument that makes subsidies for
renewable energy unnecessary. The German translation reverses this
conclusion and makes emissions trading the culprit that allegedly
“constricts the impact of other measures.”
Also questionable is
what the IPCC summary – allegedly – says about the design of emissions
trading itself: “For the success of emissions trading rights it is
necessary to achieve sufficient high prices for emission allowances in
order to offer incentives for low-carbon energy sources,” says the
Summary by the Federal Government. Therefore, the number of tradable
emission rights must be “adapted flexibly”.
Ministry : “First explanation in an intelligible form “
With
this account, the German authorities have twisted the IPCC statements
into its opposite. Emissions trading is by definition a system in which a
number of freely tradeable emission certificates is specified so that
they might be subject to free market prices. The German translation has
turned this system of fixed rates and flexible prices into a system of
flexible quantities in order to enforce the highest possible price for
emission rights.
That, however, is contrary to the operating
principle of emissions trading. Moreover, the demand for a ‘flexible’
adaptation of tradeable emission vouchers stands in direct contradiction
to the IPCC report according to which the maximum number of emission
allowances must be “binding”.
The statement that high CO2 prices
are “necessary” for the success of emissions trading, as the German
translation would have us believe, is nowhere to be found in the
original. Basically, and this is precisely the great advantage of
emissions trading, the set CO2 targets are achieved even when the market
results in low prices for emission allowances. In this way, climate
policy can be cheap if you allow the market mechanism to work. The
emissions trading system cannot be blamed for the fact that the EU has
set a relatively undemanding CO2 reduction targets: the instrument
itself is working nevertheless.
Asked to comment, the Environment
Ministry pointed to the German IPCC Coordination Office. There,
however, the issue is played down. The “core messages” were “not a
literal or even official translation of the IPCC report,” said a
spokeswoman regarding the document on which the logos of the Ministry of
Environment, the Ministry of Research and the Federal Environment
Agency can be seen. It was “a first presentation of the report in an
intelligible form.” The statements had been “derived” from various
passages of the UN report . “It should also be noted that the ‘key
messages’ have been developed in close collaboration with the authors of
the IPCC report, and that elements of the report can be reflected only
in highly abbreviated form. ”
IPCC : “That’s not what we wrote “
The
IPCC scientists, however, have reacted very surprised when they were
confronted by “Welt am Sonntag” with the German translation of their
core messages. “That’s not what we wrote in the IPCC report ,” declared
Ottmar Edenhofer who as Co-Chair of Working Group III has played a
leading role in the formulation of the original IPCC report. “Basically,
it is not for an emissions trading system to generate high prices.”
“Only the original English version is important,” says Edenhofer, who is
also deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research ( PIK) . What “the ministries or other agencies
do with it is not in my hands.”
SOURCE Should teachers use the classroom for campaigning on climate change?John
Shade is a retired industrial statistician who runs the blog ‘Climate
Lessons‘ to share his concerns about materials and campaigns aimed at
children about the climate. He was co-author of the report ‘Climate
Control: Brainwashing in schools’ which we covered on this site and
requested this opportunity to share more fully his concerns…
Is the teaching of basic skills and basic knowledge not hard enough
without adding the complication of deliberate political manipulation
into the mix? Are teachers to be the willing servants of whichever
government or ideological position happens to be currently fashionable
or empowered? Are they also to willingly intervene between parents and
their children in ways which seem intended to weaken the special bonds
within a family?
I am particularly concerned with climate change
and the associated wish of some powerful groups, not least in
international agencies and NGOs, to make use of children as political
tools with which to promote fundamental views about life, and even
lifestyle and political choices, on to their parents. There are
materials out there aimed at scaring children about their future, and
surveys show that many are in fact living with a fear that they may not
survive thanks to environmental catastrophes heading their way. There
are materials aimed at distancing children from their own parents by
persuading them, the children, that their parents are part of ‘the
problem’ and need to be changed.
This combination of fear about
the future and separation from previous sources of trust and guidance,
are basic elements of brainwashing as described by Sowell (1993) in his
book ‘Inside American Education’ where he provides several examples of
such ‘stripping away of defences’ in schools in a range of programmes.
Andrew Montford and I have written a report entitled ‘Climate Control:
Brainwashing in schools’ (GWPF, 2014) in which we focus on eco-alarms in
general, and climate-related ones in particular. This was reported on
here on the Schools Improvement Net (2014), where it attracted a few
generally disparaging comments. None addressed our concerns that there
may be widespread targeting of children in our schools with what amounts
to eco-propaganda or, at the very least, inadequate treatment of
important topics. But why should teachers be engaged at all with such
campaigning in their classrooms and in extra-curricular events for their
pupils? By all means, let them campaign with other adults, and engage
them in debate on controversial issues. But surely it should be beneath
them to seek to take advantage of their position in the classroom to try
to persuade their pupils of their views?
‘Save the World on
Your Own Time’. This is the title of a book by Fish (2008), and,
although the book is about tertiary education, the spirit of that title
is relevant here. The blurb about it on Amazon notes ‘When teachers
offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social
change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and
the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose.’
An article in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THS, 2008)
describes more of the content, e.g. ‘Many of the chapters sound like
bluff common sense – “Do your job“, “Don’t try to do someone else’s
job“, “Don’t let anyone else do your job” – ‘ and ‘In terms of what goes
on in the classroom, Fish argues, “The line of virtue is very clear:
are you asking academic questions or are you trying to nudge your
students in some ideological partisan direction? ..’
Back in
2007, the then Labour government chose to distribute an emotive and
politically-loaded DVD about climate to all schools in England &
Wales. It was called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and was full of
self-serving propaganda presented by a politician apparently intent on
being seen as a saviour of the planet. In my view this was an
astonishing and disgraceful action by the government. How dare they try
to manipulate the young in such a fashion! Sadly it was part of a
broader effort by them to use schools, and thus teachers, as agents for
the promotion of far-reaching societal and personal changes linked to
climate scares and the often associated topic of ‘sustainable
development’. Far from being agreed, or even well-defined, these are
controversial areas today, as indeed they were back in 2007.
So,
gentle readers of this blog, do you think eco-activism should be given a
free rein within schools? Do you think you should participate in
raising fears, followed by giving detailed guidance on how your pupils
should live, as well as on what they should think? Do you think it is
part of your job to burden your pupils with ‘saving the planet’ and
putting pressure on their parents?
SOURCE Totally dishonest Canadian scareIn
its latest entry on "health repercussions for Canadians of a changing
climate" in the Globe and Mail newspaper, Karen McColl raises the alarm
bells on "substantial increases in occurrences of extremely hot seasons"
in Canada.
Apparently, "Clean Air Partnership [CAP], a
non-profit that addresses climate-change issues, says maximum
temperatures in Toronto are expected to rise 7 C over the next 30 to 40
years." That is a remarkable claim. A predicted 7 degrees Celsius
increase in maximum temperatures over a 30-year period in Toronto
equates to a rate of 23.3 degrees Celsius per century. To say that is
insanely large would be an understatement.
So how does the
historical trend in maximum temperatures for Toronto compare with this
hysterical claim? The results are not promising for the Globe and Mail.
Using the benchmark Environment Canada Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian
Climate Data (AHCCD) database, the mean of daily maximum temperatures
during the summer months in Toronto has not increased one bit since
1920. In other words, over the past century, the mean maximum summertime
temperatures in Toronto exhibit absolutely no trend. None whatsoever.
If
you are familiar with linear regression statistics, the p-value for the
correlation is 0.87, which is almost a perfect non-correlation. In
fact, the correlation coefficient is negative (r=-0.02), meaning that if
there was a trend, it would likely involve declining summertime maximum
temperatures.
The p-value for July -- the hottest individual
month -- average maximum temperatures (p=0.93, r=-0.01) in Toronto from
1920 to 2012 is even worse for the climate alarmists. As it is for
August (p=0.92, r=-0.01). Once again, there is absolutely no evidence
that mean maximum summertime temperatures in Canada's largest city are
increasing, never mind increasing at the crazy-high rate of 23.3 degrees
Celsius per century.
What about extreme maximum temperatures in
Toronto? Using data from the Environment Canada Historical Climate Data
online database for the WMO certified Toronto Lester B. Pearson
International Airport site, there is absolutely no temporal correlation
for extreme maximum temperatures between 1938 (when the dataset begins)
and 2012 during either July (p=0.79, r=-0.03) or August (p=0.36,
r=-0.10). Actually, there is a modest possibility that extreme maximum
temperatures are declining in August.
And yet we read this in the
Globe and Mail article that "'this is major,' said CAP deputy director
Kevin Behan, adding that by 2040, Toronto may jump from having one heat
wave every other year, on average, to two or three heat waves each
year." Huh? The historical climate data for this city unequivocally show
that summertime maximum temperatures (both average maxima and the
extremes) are in no way increasing since the first half of the 20th
century, and yet somehow extreme heat climatageddon will occur in only
the next couple decades?
To show how local governments have gone
off the deep end, the article goes on to state that "'Looking forward,
everywhere is going to get hotter in Canada,' said Ewa Jackson, director
of ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability, an organization that
works with about 250 Canadian municipalities." Everywhere? That's a bold
statement.
Here is a table of the trends in average maximum and
extreme maximum summertime temperatures at Canada's major cities since
1920 or the earliest year available in the databases.Canada temps
There is not a single increasing summer maximum temperature trend at any of these major cities. I repeat, not one.
But
the article also claims that "in 2009, Health Canada worked with four
pilot communities to develop heat-alert and response programs. Windsor,
Ont., is expected to be particularly hard hit." Ah yes, Windsor, where
there has been no significant change in extreme maximum temperatures
during July (p=0.43) or August (p=0.70) since records began in 1940, nor
in average maximum temperatures during either the summertime period as a
whole, or July and August individually.
And municipalities, and
even higher levels of government, are going along willingly with this
hysterical nonsense. Why? Follow the money. Drumming up public concern
over climate change equals more funding for infrastructure and staff and
a host of other projects, both within the government and for
politically well-connected contractors. Who is getting duped? The
taxpayers.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
19 May, 2014
David Suzuki is a confused manHe
says skeptics are playing the man and not the ball and then does
exactly that himself! He says that skeptics attack Warmists on the basis
of personalities rather than attending to the facts -- but he then
attacks skeptics on the basis of personalities rather than the facts! He
is a rather stark case of pychological projection, I thinkIn
the second part of his conversation with Bill Moyers, Dr. David Suzuki
says climate deniers are engaging in a good ol’ game of “kill the
messenger.”
“This is a very effective thing that we know has been
done by the tobacco industry [and] it’s being done by the fossil fuel
industry… You attack a person on the basis of their trustworthiness,
their ulterior motives, anything to get away from dealing with the
issues,” the scientist, author and philanthropist said.
He said
it’s not unlike the attacks he has experienced from Canada’s prime
minister, corporations and others over the years for speaking his mind
about the government and the fossil fuel industry.
“The fossil
fuel industry knows that fossil fuel use is at the heart of climate
change,” Suzuki said. “But the problem is their job as CEOs and
executives is to make money for their shareholders, and they’ll do it.”
SOURCE More dippiness from Climate Central: Antarctica stealing Australia's rain (?)One slight problem! Rainfall trends have been increasing in Australia, since around 1970The
answer to one of the enduring puzzles of global warming — the
apparently sluggish response of the Antarctic continent to rising
greenhouse gas levels — may have been settled by Australian scientists.
And, in the course of doing so, they may also have solved another
problem: the parching of Australia itself.
Nerilie Abram, of the
Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences, and
colleagues outline their findings in Nature Climate Change. They report
that they looked at the pattern of climate in the southern hemisphere
and have concluded that the Southern Ocean winds that normally deliver
rain to South Australia are being pushed further south towards
Antarctica.
Their research was focused on a meteorological
phenomenon known — although probably only to climate scientists — as the
Southern Annular Mode, which marks the pattern of climate variability
south of the equator. For the last 25 years of climate observation, it
has been obvious that changes in the northern hemisphere have not been
matched by changes in the south.
There are geophysical reasons
for some of the difference. For example, most of the inhabited landmass
of the planet is in the northern hemisphere; the North Pole is covered
by an ocean, while the South Pole is in the center of an enormous
continental landmass piled high with ice and snow; and the seasons and
wind patterns of the two hemispheres run counter to each other. The two
hemispheres are very different.
Weather Observations
In
addition, weather observations in the northern hemisphere are much more
detailed and have been conducted over a much longer period than in the
southern hemisphere.
Conspicuously, the Arctic has been the
fastest warming region of the planet, and for more than a decade there
was argument about whether the Antarctic was warming at all.
Lead
researcher Dr. Abram and her fellow scientists took the measure of the
Southern Annular Mode by looking at annual seasonal data since AD 1000 —
recorded in Antarctic ice cores and South American tree rings. They
then used the information to build up a picture of the past and the
changing present.
“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is
actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall,” she reported. “It’s not
good news. As greenhouse gases continue to rise, we’ll get fewer storms
chased up into Australia. As the westerly winds are getting tighter,
they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica. This is
why the Antarctic has bucked the trend. Every other continent is
warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on Earth.”
SOURCEHotter climate could turn sea turtles all-girlAnd
conservative gun owners might one day use their guns to wipe out all
Leftists. Lots of things MIGHT happen. The article below is just a bit
of speculation. There are many turtle clades from previous geological
eras but we still have turtlesOut of her shell: Rising temperatures mean more female turtles.
Sea
turtles are likely to be beneficiaries of a warming climate as hotter
incubation conditions trigger a rising share of female hatchlings that
could lift natural rates of population growth, new research to be
published in Nature Climate Change on Monday shows.
But gains
will be temporary if temperatures keep rising and nudge populations
towards becoming all female, or exceed levels at which developing
embryos die, the study found.
It will be end of story without human intervention.
"There'll
be a bit of a breathing space … but down the track it'll be serious,"
said Graeme Hays from Deakin University, one of the report's authors.
It
has been known for decades that reptile reproduction is highly
sensitive to temperature, with the ratio of male to female offspring
varying. For species of sea-turtles, the pivotal temperature is an oddly
uniform 29 degrees for incubation, beyond which more females emerge
from the eggs.
At about 30.5 degrees, populations become fully
female. As remaining males die off, "it will be end of story without
human intervention", Professor Hays said. At higher than 33 degrees,
embryos do not survive.
The study focused on a globally important
loggerhead turtle rookery on the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic but
its results also apply to species elsewhere, including the Pacific. It
found light-coloured sandy beaches already produce 70.1 per cent
females, while beaches with darker sands are at 93.5 per cent.
The
findings should help steer conservation efforts to make a priority of
protecting lighter-coloured sandy beaches or planting more vegetation
near dark ones to ameliorate the warming, Professor Hays said. "If you
have to build a hotel, build it behind the dark-coloured beach," he
said.
Since breeding populations are likely to swell in coming
decades, sea turtle adult populations are "unlikely to be dire in the
next 150 years", the paper said.
Professor Hays said any
near-term increase in turtles would be modest compared with past
populations. Green turtles in the Caribbean, for instance, are "a
fraction of 1 per cent" of their original numbers.
Other changes
linked to global warming, including effects on food sources, will also
likely offset some of the benefits of having more breeding females, he
said.
"Rising sea levels resulting in the loss of nesting beaches
[through erosion] could push local turtle populations over the brink
unless new suitable nesting beaches are found," the paper said.
It
remains to be seen whether sea turtles, which have survived hundreds of
millions of years, can adjust quickly enough to a changing climate,
Professor Hays said.
Possible adjustments could include females laying their eggs at milder times of the year or shifting to cooler regions.
SOURCE GLOBAL COOLING UNDERWAYWritten by Dr Sierra Rayne
With
global temperature data now available for the first three months of
2014, an interesting trend has clearly emerged: global cooling. No
longer is it just a hypothesis. For the first quarter of each calendar
year since 2002, it is effectively a fact at reasonably strong
statistical significance. Here is the data:
Temp AnomaliesThat
downward trend since 2002 has a p-value of 0.097 (r=-0.48), which is
below the p=0.10 (90%) threshold used in many climate science studies
for statistical significance, and very close to the standard p=0.05
(95%) threshold generally employed across the physical and biological
sciences. The same level of statistical significance is obtained
regardless of whether parametric or non-parametric trend analysis
methods are employed.
Some readers may be looking at this plot
and thinking that the global climate data since 1880 looks a lot like a
cycle, with a stable period (of neither warming nor cooling) of, say,
140 years in length between the approximately 70-year long alternating
cool and warm periods. It certainly has that appearance. If such is the
case, we would expect a return to "normal" January-March global
temperatures by 2050, give or take a decade or two.
In the United
States, the January-March 2014 temperature was well below the
20th-century average. There has been no statistically significant trend
in January-March temperatures in the contiguous USA since 1980. None,
for 35 years and counting. The same lack of trend applies for the
December-February temperatures. Depending on how you define winter,
either – or both – of these timeframes is considered the wintertime
period.
So there has been absolutely no change in wintertime
temperatures in the United States since before Reagan was president, and
yet the The Guardian is reporting that the latest National Climate
Assessment finds climate change to be a "clear and present danger" and
that "Americans are noticing changes all around them ... Winters are
generally shorter and warmer."
There is no trend – I repeat: no trend – in wintertime temperatures in the United States since 1980.
On
an annual basis ending in March, there has been no change in the
contiguous U.S. temperature since 1986 (actually, probably since 1985,
but we'll give the alarmists the benefit on this). You get the same
result on a calendar-year basis. That's right: there has been no change
in annual temperatures for the United States since Bon Jovi had a
number-one hit with "You Give Love a Bad Name," the Bangles were telling
us to "Walk Like an Egyptian," Madonna was asking her papa not to
preach, and Robert Palmer was "Addicted to Love."
According to
Virginia Burkett, the chief scientist for global change at the U.S.
Geological Survey, "all areas are getting hotter." All of them? So bold,
yet so inaccurate. The entire Ohio Valley climate division has not seen
any significant warming on an annual basis since 1896. The entire U.S.
South climate division hasn't warmed since 1907. Neither has the entire
Southeast climate division since 1896.
The National Climate
Assessment claims that "summers are longer and hotter." Hotter summers?
There is no trend in the average June-August temperature (aka summer) in
the USA since 1930. Same lack of trend for July and August average
temperatures.
On an annual basis ending in March (allowing us to
use the most complete dataset possible), global warming stopped cold in
statistical terms during 1997. And since 2002, the correlation
coefficient has – in fact – turned slightly negative. Very weak evidence
for global cooling, but on the balance of probabilities, since 2002,
there is more statistical evidence for global cooling than there is for
global warming. Scientists such as Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus
of geology at Western Washington University, have been making similar
predictions for global temperatures.
In the Southern Hemisphere,
where climate scientists are now apparently warning that the "Antarctic
Ice Shelf [is] on [the] brink of unstoppable melt that could raise sea
levels for 10,000 years," the annual cooling trend since 2003 is even
more probable (r=-0.22, p-value as low as 0.34 using non-parametric
approaches).
The poor-quality science reporting on climate change
is ubiquitous. Over at the Daily Kos, we find a plot of "Global
Temperature (meteorological stations)." Given that oceans cover 71
percent of the planet's surface, what possible meaning could a "global
temperature" derived only from "meteorological stations" have? The
answer is none. Any talk of a global temperature must include both land
and sea data, and be properly weighted according to station type and
location. And this assumes that the data itself is correct. Various
climate skeptic websites have repeatedly shown that we need to doubt the
data itself, not just the analyses.
As the countdown to the
proposed climate agreement in 2015 ticks along, expect more of this
hysterical nonsense not founded in the underlying data, as well as more
concerted and emphatic denials of the global cooling phase we may be
entering. One can only hope that the moderately conservative leaders in
Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom will not fall prey to the
hysteria, but instead take a principled scientific stand in 2015 and
lead the charge to reject any international climate agreements.
Unfortunately,
many crony capitalists – including a number in the fossil fuels
industry itself – are starting to see greater financial benefits for
themselves by going along with the hysteria, rather than fighting for
reality.
Perilous times indeed. The next couple years may not
only see the end of America's economic domination on the world stage,
passing the torch instead to communist China, but also witness the final
death throes of rigorous, objective science in the public interest.
SOURCEThe War on MercuryWritten by Dr Klaus L.E. Kaiser
EPA’s
new MATS rule is not based on scientific evidence of benefit from the
reduction of mercury emissions; it is nothing but a ruse. The U.S.
Government’s “war on coal” claims to be a “war on mercury.”
While
the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed “Mercury and Air
Toxics Standards” (MATS) rule is supposed to reduce exposure to
“mercury” emissions, this is just a pretext; the real intent is to
control “carbon” emissions, or carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, to be
more precise.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury, signed by
nearly 100 nations a few months ago, aims to reduce emissions of mercury
and mercury compounds, (i.e. “total mercury”) to the atmosphere. The
Convention derives its name from the town of Minamata Japan, where the
“Minamata disease,” a form of neurological poisoning was observed in
Japan in the 1950’s and later on also in other locations in Japan.
The
Minamata disease was determined to result from “methyl-mercury,” a
derivative of the element mercury. Methyl-mercury, in contrast to
elemental mercury is a also a common product of microbial action upon
other dissolved mercury compounds, especially in ocean and lake
sediments of low oxygen content; more on that further down.
With
EPA’s use of “mercury” as a way to regulate the coal-using industry it
behooves us to look at the whole mercury situation in more detail. What
could be the problem with EPA’s attempt to reduce “mercury”?
Mercury or CO2?
EPA
uses “mercury emissions” as a convenient mechanism to regulate and
discourage the use of coal for electricity generation and heating.
However, EPA’s real intent is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide
(CO2) emissions that President Obama frequently terms “carbon
pollution.”
The mercury rule is nothing but a red herring to
control fossil fuel-derived energy production which is claimed to
contribute to “climate change.”
To use a crass analogy, it is
akin to doing away with all civilian airplanes just because on 9/11
airplanes were used as weapons. Several trade unions recently called the
proposed MATS rule “nothing less than industrial sabotage by regulatory
means.”
While mercury (in whichever form) is only a minor
by-product of burning coal, it is claimed to be the intended target of
the proposed MATS rule. Therefore, it ought to be reasonable to look at
the various forms and uses of the mercury, their chemistry, effects and
quantities. Let’s begin with the element itself.
Use of Mercury
Elemental
mercury is known to most people in the form of a silver-like shiny
liquid. Elemental mercury is best known from such devices as
thermometers like the kind used by your mom to measure your body
temperature when you were a child and had a fever, or in
motion-activated light switches under the hood of your old Chevy, or
even some other electrical switches commonly found in households. For
many decades, such uses were common throughout the western world. In
fact, the humidity control device in my house contains a small glass
vial with liquid mercury inside. It changes position with the humidity
in the air to allow either a connection or break of the electrical
circuit between the poles.
Because of its high density of 13.5
(relative to that of water, i.e. 1.0), liquid mercury can support all
kinds of things close to its surface. There are practical uses for that
property as in light houses. Widely used in former times and still found
in some locations, their structures supporting the Fresnel lenses are
floating on a bath of liquid mercury. The reason is twofold: there is
hardly any friction to slowly turning the lens system for creating
blinking lights and, more importantly the lens system is always
perfectly parallel to the earth’s surface. The latter is critical to the
distance from which the light can be seen to guide ships through
treacherous waters.
In chemical laboratories around the world,
elemental mercury is quite common. There are various applications of its
unusual physical properties; from one-way valves to vacuum pumps. As a
chemistry student, I worked with such things for years. With proper
handling none of us experienced any problem using mercury.
Apart
from applications that make use of elemental mercury’s physical
properties like its high density and electrical conductivity, there are
other common uses of mercury of which you may not be aware. Amalgam is
one of those and more likely than not you have some of that in your
mouth.
Amalgam
Indeed, you may have a significant amount
of mercury in your body. I am not talking trace amounts here, but real
quantities, say a volume like that of your mom’s sewing thimble filled
with the element. Most of that mercury is found in your teeth, put there
(after some drilling) by your friendly dentist. Of course, he or she
didn’t put liquid mercury into your extended cavities but a mixture of
mercury and another element such as silver powder. When well mixed, the
liquid elemental mercury and the silver powder rapidly combine to a rock
hard solid, generally known as an amalgam.
Silver-mercury
amalgam is most suitable for filling dental cavities as it can be formed
to any shape but will harden within a few minutes. It is also extremely
durable, resisting any dissolution by saliva and can last for a
lifetime. However, I do not dispute that some other amalgams, for
example those made with lesser metals such as zinc, are less stable and
should not have been used for dentistry.
Silver amalgam is still
widely used by dentists around the world when it comes to filling
cavities in teeth with a material that is easily applied, hardens
rapidly, is strong and lasts a life time. Though quite obvious from its
silver-like appearance, its properties for dental fillings are
unsurpassed.
The ease with which mercury forms an amalgam with
gold is also widely exploited by small claim gold miners around the
world. Small claim panning for gold is a major use of mercury. In order
to extract and consolidate the gold flakes and nuggets, miners in Brazil
and elsewhere use elemental mercury to capture the gold flakes in water
running over liquid mercury beds. The gold binds with the mercury and
the solid gold-amalgam can be sieved off. The mercury is then easily
recycled by heating the amalgam in an iron pot with the resulting
mercury vapour forced through a water bath where it liquefies again. The
gold remains as a solid lump in the crucible.
Mercury compounds
are also common preservatives in various medicinal products such as
vaccine solutions that require stability and shelf life before
application.
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule
In
order to understand how the new MATS rule stacks up against reality,
some simple calculations are useful. The most basic ones would give
estimates of mercury emissions from the “villain du jeur” (coal) and
other sources. Let’s do some math:
Mercury from Coal
The
U.S. consumes close to 1,000 million tonnes of coal a year, or 10^12 kg.
That coal contains close to 0.1 ppm (parts per million) of mercury.
Hence, on combustion, of all that coal and without any cleansing of the
flue gases, a total of 100 tonnes or 100,000 kg mercury would be coming
out of all chimneys in one year. As the density of mercury is quite high
(approximately 13 times that of water), roughly, that amount of mercury
would fit into a volume occupied by a table that comfortably seats
eight persons..
Mercury from Teeth
As mentioned, for the
last one hundred years or so, silver amalgam has been the material of
choice to fill dental cavities. I recently visited my favourite dentist
and asked him about the amount of amalgam in my mouth. He assured me
that it was quite comparable to his other patients of equal age. When I
asked about the combined volume of all of such fillings, he guessed
about one milli-liter or the volume of half a sewing thimble. That would
represent about 10 grams, or 0.01 kg of mercury as amalgam.
Now,
let’s multiply that by the population in North America, say 400
million, and you arrive at an amount of 4,000,000 kg of mercury in the
entire population’s teeth. As you can see, that number is approximately
40 times that of the annual release of mercury from the burning of coal,
100,000 kg/per year. Wikipedia states the total amount of anthropogenic
(manmade) emissions of “mercury” in the U.S as 144,000 kg/year.
At
a death rate of approximately 8% of the population and with an
estimated one third of the population being cremated, the amount of
mercury so released then also comes to 0.1 million kg (elemental)
mercury; the same quantity as calculated for the mercury from coal.
Indeed, EPA concluded that only one half of the mercury emissions comes
from coal.
Mercury from other Sources
Most difficult to
estimate is the amount of mercury released from sources other than the
two mentioned above. While the element (in any form) is relatively rare
with its abundance in the earth’s crust estimated at 0.067 ppm, slightly
higher than that of gold, it also is found in any rock and soil in
nature; mercury compounds are ubiquitous in nature. Therefore,
methyl-mercury and other mercury compounds are also found in aquatic
organisms around the world including those far from any human
settlement.
In nature, mercury is almost never found as the free
element but only in compounds with other elements. Of these, cinnabar,
mercury sulfide is by far the most common one. Its bright red color made
it a favored cosmetic for millennia.
Toxicity of Mercury
This
brief discourse on mercury would be incomplete without a quick review
of mercury’s (in any form) toxicity. However, that is also a major bone
of contention.
Elemental mercury, i.e. its vapor is a known
neurotoxin. Many of the early investigators of mercury’s effect suffered
from its neurological toxic effects before they were recognized.
However, it would be wrong to call mercury a villain on that basis only.
Chronic exposure to elemental mercury vapor causes neurotoxic
effects like the “mad hatters” disease. However, as with all things
toxic, the dose or concentration over time of exposure is most critical.
While long-time exposure to elemental mercury vapors causes severe
effects, no such effect has been proven to arise from the extremely low
levels of mercury and its compounds in the atmosphere that result from
the burning of coal. Therefore, the limitations on coal-fired power
plants based on their mercury emissions are not scientifically
defensible.
Pollution by soluble mercury compounds in lakes,
rivers or ocean embayments like at Minamata can lead to increased
methyl-mercury levels in local fish above the natural background
concentration of approximately 1 ppm. However, the amount of mercury
contributed to the atmosphere from burning coal is miniscule relative to
its natural background levels in most environs. Even without the use of
any coal whatsoever, the concentrations of mercury and its compounds in
the environment would not change materially.
Therefore, EPA’s
MATS rule is not based on scientific evidence of benefit from the
reduction of mercury emissions; it is nothing but a ruse, solely
invented to couch the “war on coal” as a “war on mercury.”
SOURCEThe Loony Anti-Keystone CampaignWhat is this incessant nonsense over Keystone XL?
It’s
a pipeline, for crying out loud. The United States already has 185,000
miles of liquid petroleum pipelines, 320,000 miles of natural gas
transmission pipelines, and more than 2,000,000 miles of gas
distribution pipelines. Using the latest steel, valves and other
technologies to build another 1,179 miles of pipe – to move 830,000
barrels of oil per day safely from Alberta, Canada oil sands country and
North Dakota’s Bakken shale territory to Texas refineries – should not
be an earth-shattering matter.
KXL would create jobs – in an
economy that grew at a pathetic Depression-era clip of 0.1% during the
first quarter, and where the true jobless rate (unemployed,
underemployed and those no longer looking) is almost 13 percent, and
much worse for minorities.
In fact, Keystone would create some
20,000 construction jobs; another 10,000 in factories that make the
steel, pipelines, valves, cement and heavy equipment needed to build the
pipeline; thousands more in hotel, restaurant and other support
industries; and still more jobs in the oil fields whose output would be
transported to refineries and petrochemical plants where still more
workers would be employed.
States along the pipeline route would
receive $5 billion in new property tax revenues, and still more in
workers’ income tax payments. Depleted federal coffers would also
realize hefty gains.
The pipeline would ease railroad congestion
all over the central USA. The pipeline’s absence is forcing oil
producers to move crude by railroad tanker car. That certainly improves
the bottom line for RR companies and folks like Warren Buffet who have
big-time investments in tankers.
But it causes train logjams and
delays that are creating backlogs in getting fertilizer and other
supplies to farmers, who have already been hard-hit by a long winter and
now may not be able to plant on schedule. Come fall, their efforts to
ship corn, wheat and other crops to market will also be stymied.
By
reducing the need for RR tankers, KXL would also reduce oil spills and
improve safety. A 2013 derailment in Quebec killed 47 people; 2014 rail
accidents in Colorado and Virginia resulted in significant oil spills
but fortunately no deaths. The Bakken Field’s light crude contains more
dissolved gases and thus is more flammable than heavier crudes (like
Canadian oil sands output), but both tanker cars and the Keystone
pipeline would carry a variety of crude products.
Improved track
maintenance, train scheduling and other safety practices would reduce
rail accidents and spills. However, as US State Department studies point
out, the Keystone pipeline is inherently safer than RR alternatives –
and would likely result in fewer than 520 barrels of crude being spilled
annually, compared to 32,000 barrels in the three rail spills just
noted.
KXL will augment America’s national security, make North
America more energy independent, further improve US balance of trade,
reduce global supply and demand imbalances, and aid our European allies
in their quest to counter Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail.
The
hydrocarbon wealth the pipeline would transport will help ensure
improved human health, welfare, living standards and other many other
benefits, in a more stable world that has more sources of jobs, wealth
and income equality. Approval would improve relations with our ally and
trading partner Canada. Not tapping and safely transporting all these
oil, natural gas and propane resources makes no sense.
But
despite all these solid reasons for building the pipeline President
Obama refuses to approve it, even to protect vulnerable Democrat
politicians, for fear of offending ultra Keystone hater Tom Steyer or
losing his hardcore eco-base. Senator Harry Reid can hardly bring
himself to allow even votes on nonbinding resolutions in support of KXL.
And rabid environmentalists say they’re prepared to go to jail over it.
What in blazes is going on here?
Keystone
is symbolic! In fact, it has become the symbol of Big Green
environmentalism’s immutable opposition to … and hatred of … anything
hydrocarbon. KXL is fracking, oil sands, onshore and offshore drilling
and, above all, “catastrophic manmade climate disruption” (the latest
nom de guerre, since the global warming and climate change monikers and
models have abjectly failed to reflect climate reality).
KXL
represents their determination to de-develop the United States, reduce
our energy use and living standards, redistribute wealth – and permit
Third World development only in accordance with their supposed
“sustainable development” and “renewable” energy “principles.”
The
Keystone XL pipeline issue is as phony as a $3 bill. Blocking its
construction will have about as much effect on Earth’s climate as a hand
grenade would in stopping a hurricane, even if carbon dioxide does
influence weather and climate change far more than thousands of
scientists say it does.
(More than 1,000 climate scientists,
31,000 American scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no
evidence that humans are causing dangerous warming or climate change.
And it is increasingly obvious that much of the remaining “consensus” is
obtained by harassing, intimidating and browbeating any scientists who
might be tempted to stray from the alarmist party line.)
China,
India, Indonesia, Brazil and dozens of other countries are burning coal,
driving cars, modernizing their hydrocarbon-based economies and
emitting CO2 at a fevered pace. Further delaying or ultimately blocking
Keystone will have no effect, especially if the oil simply goes to Asia,
instead of the USA.
However, Big Green has staked its power and reputation on Keystone – and it will not back down.
This
$13.4-billion-per-year US eco industry is determined to block the
Keystone pipeline. As Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold revealed,
the $789-million Rockefeller Brothers Fund launched its “tar sands” and
pipeline campaigns in 2008. It funded a dozen attack groups, told them
what the Fund wanted done, and presented the strategy and tactics for
mobilizing the troops, inventing and spotlighting the pipeline’s alleged
dangers, recruiting always-helpful media allies, and slowing and
stopping KXL.
The campaigns are backed up by other fat-cat
liberal foundations that collectively have more than $100 billion in
assets! As Arnold pointed out, they gave more than $80 billion to some
16,000 American environmental activist groups between 2000 and 2012 –
and those groups were also supported by over $100 million in grants from
US government agencies!
Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer has
promised to give $100 million to anti-Keystone Democrats. Law firms are
making serious money filing lawsuits against KXL. And of course
Hollywood elites can always be counted on to lend their support and
innate grasp of energy and economic issues to pipeline opponents.
This
is a force to be reckoned with, a force that is largely responsible for
inflicting nearly $1.9 trillion in regulatory compliance costs on
United States businesses and families. That’s one-eighth of the entire
US economy. It’s no wonder job, economic and investment growth rates are
so miserably low.
President Obama and other Democrats,
environmentalists and liberals love to expound on how compassionate and
socially responsible they are. How devoted to justice, workers, middle
class families, jobs, and human health, safety and welfare. How honest,
transparent, respectful of others’ opinions and needs, and accountable
for their mistakes and failures.
Am I the only one who sees pitifully little evidence for any of these self-proclaimed saintly attributes?
Keystone
epitomizes how callous, arrogant, hypocritical and destructive the Big
Green authoritarians have become. It’s high time the rights and needs of
poor and middle class families got some recognition.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
18 May, 2014
Scientists Condemned For Political Bias On Climate Change
If you doubt global warming you should beThe
journal says the Bengtsson paper was rejected on academic grounds. It
would be interesting to see the actual reviewer reports to see just what
those "academic" grounds were. I'll have a bet that they were very
shallow. But given compulsive Warmist secrecy, I doubt that we will ever
see that. "Hiding" things is essential to their modus operandiClimate
scientists who vilified a colleague for advising a think-tank are
“blind to their own biases”, according to a former senior member of the
UN’s climate change advisory body.
Mike Hulme, professor of
climate and culture at King’s College London, condemned fellow
scientists for “harassing” Lennart Bengtsson, and gave warning that
climate science had become too political.
Professor Bengtsson
resigned this week from the academic advisory council of the Global
Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic think-tank, after being
subjected to what he described as McCarthy-style pressure from fellow
academics.
Professor Hulme, who helped to lead the team that produced
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2001 report, last night
broke ranks within the climate science community to defend Professor
Bengtsson.
He condemned climate scientists who “believe it’s
their role to pass public judgment on whether a scientific colleague
should offer advice to political, public or a campaigning organisations
and to harass that scientist until they ‘fall into line’.”
He
added that the episode said much about how politicised climate science
had become and “how some scientists remain blind to their own biases”.
An
academic journal yesterday defended its decision to reject a paper
co-authored by Professor Bengtsson and four other leading climate
scientists. The paper suggested that the climate might be much less
sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the IPCC in its
report last September. An anonymous reviewer for Environmental Research
Letters recommended rejecting the paper and described it as “harmful”
because climate sceptics could use it to argue their case.
Nicola
Gulley, editorial director at IOP Publishing, which publishes the
online journal, said that the rejection was based solely on editorial
standards. “The referees selected to review this paper were of the
highest calibre and are respected members of the international science
community,” she said. IOP declined to name the reviewer.
Joanna
Haigh, co-director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London,
said that external pressure on climate scientists had polarised the
debate over global warming into “us and them” camps. “It is regrettable
that perceived political stances on the climate issue are apparently so
affecting academic activity,” she said.
In a statement last night
issued via the University of Reading, where he is a research fellow,
Professor Bengtsson said: “I am worried by a wider trend that science is
gradually being influenced by political views. Policy decisions need to
be based on solid fact.”
SOURCE More Settled Science!![](gremay14_files/image_thumb40.png)
Sea levels to fall, at the same time as they rise!
SOURCEMore on the West Antarctic nonsense![](gremay14_files/Mail-Attachment.jpg)
Despite
having local unstable regions Antarctica has more sea ice surrounding
it than for many years, with more ice being added than is being lost by
glaciers in the West Antarctic.
The media have been saying that
the collapse of the West Antarctic glaciers is unstoppable; nothing can
halt their retreat, say the headlines. They add that man-made climate
change is one of the driving factors that will result in sea-level rises
that will alter the coastlines of the world.
The media reports
are based on two new studies, or rather the press releases associated
with them. One of them looked at 40 years of data. The glaciers in the
Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica “have passed the point of no
return,” according to glaciologist Eric Rignot, of UC Irvine and NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The other study
investigated nearby Thwaites glacier saying it will likely disappear in a
few centuries.
It’s clear that this region is currently the most
changeable part of Antarctica, but it’s not clear why, or how long it
will go on for. Not every change seen in the past few decades (when we
started obtaining reliable satellite data for the first time) is down to
mankind.
The most famous and most studied glacier in the region
is Pine Island. It has seen significant changes in the last few decades.
Its velocity has increased by 40% between 1996 and 2007 and its
grounding line retreated by about 1 km/yr between 1992 -2011. It seems
that the grounding line – the boundary where a glacier touches the sea
floor – is retreating allowing warm water to melt the glacier from
below. This was seen for the first time in the 1990s. Since 2009 however
there is some evidence that the glacier has been receding at a steady
pace.
Because this region of glaciers rests on land below sea
level, and there is no land formation to hold it back it is postulated
that a runaway process will eventually cause the entire glacier to
discharge out to sea, if things continue as they are. Timescales are
important. The “collapse” of this particular ice sheet could happen in
200 years, or more likely in 500 or a thousand or more. One should be
careful extrapolating hundreds of years into the future from just 20
years of data. The experience from the glaciers in Greenland is that you
have to monitor them for much longer to see how variable is their
output. “Rignot said, “It happened many times before when the Earth was
as warm as it is about to be.” So the collapse needs the current
conditions to last hundreds of years. Is that likely?
It’s all
too easy to see such changes as obviously manifestations of man-made
climate change. Mankind may have played a role. There is some evidence
that ocean current changes induced by ozone depletion (down to us) have
brought more warm water southward particularly affecting the Antarctic
Peninsula.
The most relevant research, not mentioned in the
recent media reports, that helps put the changes seen in this particular
region into context is a study of the region’s glaciers over the past
8,000 years. The study showed that Pine Island Glacier has experienced
rapid thinning in the past and that once set in motion the rapid changes
can persist for centuries, and eventually reverse, without mankind’s
help.
So this event occurs naturally and has happened before. Of
course we are now more vulnerable to such changes that we were in the
early Holocene and should monitor the area and make plans. It is an
example that even without any human changes to the climate we humans
will still have to adapt to climate changes, potentially big ones.
The
ice discharge from Pine Island Glacier could rise to 130 GT/yr and lead
to significant sea-level rise, perhaps over a metre. It’s a good thing
that the vast majority of the 27 million GT of total Antarctic ice is
stable.
Despite having local unstable regions Antarctica has more
sea ice surrounding it than for many years, with more ice being added
than is being lost by glaciers in the West Antarctic. Sea ice is however
not the same as land ice. Sea ice is more variable and does not
contribute to sea-level rise. No one really knows why the Antarctic sea
ice is expanding, undermined as it is by the very same warm water that
is said to be responsible for the increased glacier flow in the West
Antarctic.
SOURCEEnd to solar farm blight as subsidy scheme is scrapped in BritainSubsidies
that have driven the spread of large solar farms across Britain are to
be scrapped under plans to stop the panels blighting the countryside.
Energy
companies that build solar farms currently qualify for generous
consumer-funded subsidies through the so-called 'Renewable Obligation'
(RO) scheme, and had expected to keep doing so until 2017.
But
the Department of Energy and Climate Change announced on Tuesday that it
planned to shut the RO to new large solar farms two years early, from
April next year.
The decision follows an admission by ministers
that far more projects have been built than expected, leading to an
rising subsidy bill for consumers and increasing local opposition.
Greg
Barker, the energy minister, pledged last month that solar farms must
not become "the new onshore wind" and said he wanted solar panels
installed on factory rooftops instead.
Although a separate, new
subsidy scheme will be made available to large solar farms, it is
expected to be far more difficult for solar farms to gain funding under
the new regime.
A Whitehall source said: "Large scale solar
shouldn't be in any place or at any cost. The direction of travel is
away from farms - especially where communities don't want them."
Leonie Greene, head of external affairs for the Solar Trade Association, said the industry was "dismayed" at the proposals.
She said that the replacement subsidy scheme - so-called 'contracts for difference' (CfD) - simply "doesn't work for solar".
The
new scheme will have a capped budget and onshore wind and solar farm
projects will be forced to compete with each other in reverse auctions
to win subsidy contracts.
Ms Greene said that, on current costs,
solar farms "can't compete with onshore wind". The uncertainty in the
auction process also made solar farm development too risky for the small
businesses who typically build them.
"Unless we can get major amendments to CfDs and fair treatment, they [large-scale solar farms] won't get built," she said.
The
Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "Large-scale solar is
deploying much faster than we expected. Industry projections indicate
that, by 2017, there could be more solar deployed than is affordable –
more than the 2.4-4GW set out in the electricity market reform (EMR)
delivery plan.
"We need to manage our financial support schemes
effectively and responsibly. That means that we need to ensure that the
growth of the solar sector is delivered in a way that gives best value
for money to consumers and allows us to offer effective support to the
renewables sector as a whole.
"So we are also consulting today on
proposals to close the RO to new solar PV capacity above 5MW from 1st
April 2015, across England, Wales and Scotland. Those proposals include
grace period arrangements to protect developers who have already made
significant financial commitments."
In a solar strategy released
last month, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: “We
want to move the emphasis for growth away from large solar farms.”
Seb
Berry, head of public affairs at solar company Solarcentury, said:
"Today's announcement is unnecessary and totally at odds with the
government's desire to reduce the cost to energy bill payers of
delivering the 2020 renewable energy target.
"This policy
proposal will undermine investor confidence in the entire UK renewable
energy sector, by removing at a stroke the short and medium-term policy
certainty required for major project investments.
“It is
surprising that the government is trying justify this proposal on cost
grounds. Large-scale solar is already significantly cheaper than
offshore wind and will be competitive with onshore wind by 2017. In
deliberately setting out to strangle the growth of cheaper solar from
2015, Secretary of State Ed Davey can no longer claim that government
policy will deliver the most cost-effective mix of technologies by
2020."
SOURCEGovernment Policy: Save the Planet from the Plague of Hungry HumansI guess vegetables ARE mostly greenOur
friends at the Independent Women’s Forum sent a letter the other day to
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack expressing concern about the Dietary
Guidelines Advisory Committee becoming overly ideological.
Brace
yourself: The guidelines recommend taking great care to feed humanity
while being mindful of the carbon footprint consuming food requires … no
matter the cost.
IWF Senior Fellow Julie Gunlock wrote at National Review Online about the food nannies our First Lady has decided to direct:
"Every five years, a committee of officials chosen by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services reviews the federal dietary guidelines. This committee, called
the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, is mandated by Congress to
work on “providing nutritional and dietary information and guidelines
for the general public . . . based on the preponderance of scientific
and medical knowledge currently available.” In other words, these are
the government-fat-camp counselors, and they’re here to tell you what to
eat."
Gunlock notes the sketchy track record of the federal food
police. Once they advocated a food pyramid that since 1992 was heavy on
carbs. But under the guidance of our First Lady, we moved to the
“Choose My Plate” program, which was high in vegetables and fruits, lean
proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats. Writes Gunlock:
"The
new plate was met with much optimism. Celebrity chef Padma Lakshmi
gushed that the new plate was a “triumph for the first lady and the rest
of us.” Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public
Health at New York University said, “The new design is a big
improvement.” Others suggested the plate would finally knock some sense
into us piggy Americans and make us eat better and lose weight.
Of course, reasonable people realize this is ludicrous because what
normal person says, “You know, I really need to eat better. I think I’ll
go check out the USDA website for diet info.”?
Only Washington
bureaucrats could be oblivious enough to miss the utter uselessness of
the DGAC. Only they could be unaware that the United States has a
thriving, $60 billion diet and exercise industry (not to mention a whole
host of independent bloggers) that already provides people with a
variety of choices and advice on how to get fit and eat nutritiously.
The DGAC members must avoid grocery stores altogether because if they
did ever stand in the checkout lane, they’d be bombarded with magazine
headlines promising guidance on dieting (along with pictures of
bikini-clad hard bodies)."
Great point by Gunlock. Liberals have
zero faith in the public to make the right choices — and an equal lack
of recognition that the free market endlessly urges Americans to shape
up. But nothing matters to a liberal unless the government
urges/mandates it.
Gunlock watched the live feed of the DGAC
event so you don’t have to, and noticed something that caught her
attention — and should have yours:
"Kate Clancy, billed as a
“food systems consultant” (yeah, so am I!) came to the podium and
explained that the DGAC must integrate environmental concerns into the
guidelines. As her speech went on, I heard phrases like “environmentally
friendly food choices” and making “low impact food choices” and looking
at things with an “ecological perspective.” Her point was clear:
Americans must not only make nutritious food decisions, they must make
environmentally responsible food decisions even if that means Americans’
food costs increase. And food prices most definitely will go up if her
recommendations are included in the final guidelines."
The liberal elite shops at Whole Foods (despite it being headed by a libertarian), so everyone else should too!
"While Clancy doesn’t say we have to swear off meat altogether, she
envisions a population that procures protein from local sources, only
buying line-caught fish, grass-fed beef, and organic milk. Again, she
makes no mention of the added costs associated with this Whole
Foods-style food shopping. Which should make us all wonder, do these
folks understand that the highest rates of obesity are suffered by those
who live under the poverty line? This administration, which portrays
itself as looking out for the poor, might want to reconsider making
recommendations that will needlessly hike the prices of healthy food for
that very demographic."
Sure. That will happen. As soon as kids all across the country stop dumping their First-Lady-approved lunches into the garbage.
When will we be free of the food nannies? Maybe when we all agree to compost the crappy food they demand we eat.
SOURCEEnvironmental ShakedownOver
a three-year period, 2009-2012, Department of Justice data shows
American taxpayers footed the bill for more than $53 million in
so-called environmental groups’ legal fees—and the actual number could
be much higher. The real motivation behind the Endangered Species Act
(ESA) litigation, perhaps, could have more to do with vengeance and
penance than with a real desire to protect flora and fauna.
On
May 7, I spoke at the Four Corners Oil and Gas Conference in Farmington,
New Mexico. During the two-day event, I sat in on many of the other
sessions and had conversations with dozens of attendees. I left the
event with the distinct impression that the current implementation of
the ESA is a major impediment to the economic growth, tax revenue, and
job creation that comes with oil-and-gas development. I have written on
ESA issues many times, most recently I wrote about the lesser prairie
chicken’s proposed “threatened” listing (which the Fish and Wildlife
Service [FWS] listed on March 27) and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s
lawsuit against the federal government over the “sue and settle” tactics
of FWS and the Department of the Interior.
While at the
conference, I received an email announcing that FWS has asked a federal
court for a six-month delay in making a final determination on whether
to list the Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species—moving the
decision past the November elections. Up for re-election, Senator Mark
Udall (D-CO) “cheered” the extension request. The E & E report
states: Colorado elected leaders “fear the listing could have
significant economic impacts.”
Kent Holsinger, a Colorado
attorney specializing in lands, wildlife and water, posited: “Senator
Udall is among those lauding the move—perhaps because a listing decision
would affect his fate in the U.S. Senate. Gunnison sage grouse
populations are stable, if not on the increase. In addition, myriad
state, local and private conservation efforts have been put into place
over the last decade. Those efforts, and the Gunnison sage grouse, are
at risk if the FWS pursues listing.”
The report continues:
“WildEarth Guardians is not opposing the latest extension after Fish and
Wildlife agreed to some extensive new mitigation measures that will be
made in the interim, including increasing buffer zones around sage
grouse breeding grounds, called leks, and deferring coal, oil and gas
leasing, said Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with WildEarth
Guardians.” It goes on to say: “But the Center for Biological Diversity,
which is a party to the settlement agreements with WildEarth Guardians,
said the latest extension is a bad move for the grouse, which it says
has needed ESA protections for years.”
Two important items to
notice in the Gunnison sage grouse story. One, the power the
environmental groups wield. Two, part of appeasing the environmental
groups involves “deferring coal, oil and gas leasing.”
It is
widely known that these groups despise fossil fuels. The Center for
Biological Diversity (CBD)brags about its use of lawsuits to block
development—but it is not just oil and gas they block, it is virtually
all human activity.
In researching for this week’s column, I have
talked to people from a variety of industry and conservation efforts.
The conversations started because I read something they’d written about
CBD. Whether I was talking to someone interested in protecting big horn
sheep, a fishing enthusiast, or an attorney representing ranching or
extractive industries, CBD seems to be a thorn in their side. All made
comments similar to what Amos Eno, who has been involved in conservation
for more than forty years, told me: “CBD doesn’t care about the
critters. They are creating a listing pipeline and then making money off
of it.” Environmental writer Ted Williams, in a piece on wolves, called
CBD: “perennial plaintiffs.”
New Mexico rancher Stephen Wilmeth
directed me to a CBD profile he’d written. In it he addressed how the
CBD’s efforts targeted livestock grazing and sought “the removal of
cattle from hundreds of miles of streams.” Wilmeth states: “CBD has
elevated sue and settle tactics, injunctions, new species listings, and
bad press surrounding legal action to a modern art form. Consent decrees
more often than not result in closed door sessions with concessions or
demands made on agency policy formulation.”
In a posting on the
Society for Bighorn Sheep website titled: Legal tactics directly from
the Center for Biological Diversity, board member Gary Thomas states:
“The Center ranks people second. By their accounting, all human
endeavors, agriculture, clean water, energy, development, recreation,
materials extraction, and all human access to any space, are subordinate
to the habitat requirements of all the world’s obscure animals and
plants. But these selfish people don’t care about any person, plant, or
animal. The Center collects obscure and unstudied species for a single
purpose, specifically for use in their own genre of lawsuits. They
measure their successes not by quality of life for man nor beast, but by
counting wins in court like notches in the handle of a gun.”
You’d
expect someone like me, an energy advocate, to dis the CBD—and I have
(CBD is not too fond of me)—but how’d it get such a broad-based
collection of negativity from within the environmental community?
Ted
Williams told me: “environmentalists who are paying attention are not
happy with CBD.” He has written the most comprehensive exposé on CBD
that can be found—for which he was threatened with a lawsuit. Without
Williams’ work, one has to resort to bits and pieces off the internet to
put together CBD’s modus operandi—but there is plenty to choose from!
One
of the most interesting ones to catch my eye was a part of the post on
SheepSociety.com. There, Thomas points out the fact that the three
founders of CBD are ex-forest service workers. He states: “To donors,
their motives appear altruistic. To the informed, they look more like a
20-year quest for revenge for their firing.”
I am fairly well
acquainted with CBD, but Thomas’ accusation was new to me—though it fit
what I knew. (One of the very first pieces I ever wrote, when I
originally got into this work seven plus years ago, was on the one and
only legal victory ever won against CBD. Arizona rancher Jim Chilton won
a defamation suit against CBD with a $600,000 dollar settlement. Nearly
everyone I talked to as a part of my research for this story mentioned
Chilton’s name with reverence.)
I dug around and found an
interesting story from Backpacker Magazine that gave credence to Thomas’
claim. The February 2003 issue features a multi-page profile on Kieran
Suckling, co-founder and executive director. Addressing the three
founders, who were working for the Forest Service, Backpacker reports:
“All three of them were frustrated by their agencies’ inaction.” The
story goes on to explain how the threesome “hatched a plan” to petition
the Forest Service and force it to list the spotted owl.
Then, I
found a 2009 profile on Suckling in High Country News (HCN). It quotes
Suckling describing how the roots of his full-time activism started
while working for the Forest Service doing spotted owl surveys: “We had
signed contracts saying we wouldn’t divulge owl locations, but we went
the next day to the Silver City Daily Press, with a map that told our
story. We were fired within seconds. That was the start of us becoming
full-time activists.”
These snippets help explain Suckling’s
animosity toward the Forest Service and other government agencies. CBD
is gleeful over its results. It has sued government agencies hundreds of
times and has won the majority of the cases—though many never go to
court and are settled in a backroom deal (hence the term: “sue and
settle”). Thomas writes: “They are extremely proud to report that
single-handedly they deplete the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s entire annual
budget, approximately $5 million, for endangered species listings year
after year by forcing them to use their limited funds defending lawsuits
instead of their intended purpose.”
The HCN piece describes
Suckling’s approach to getting what he wants—which he explains in the
New Yorker, as “a new order in which plants and animals are part of the
polity”: “The Forest Service needs our agreement to get back to work,
and we are in the position of being able to powerfully negotiate the
terms of releasing the injunction. … They [federal employees] feel like
their careers are being mocked and destroyed—and they are. So they
become much more willing to play by our rules and at least get something
done. Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect of
environmental campaigning.”
“In CBD speak,” adds Wilmeth, “the
suggestion of playing by the rules equates to its rules of manipulating
positive outcomes for its mission.”
Putting the pieces together,
it does appear, as Thomas asserts, that Suckling is on a 20+ year “quest
for revenge” for being fired—vengeance that American taxpayers are
funding.
Suckling is an interesting character. The Backpacker
story cites his ex-wife, who said the following: “He’s not tethered on a
daily basis to the same things you and I are tethered to.”
Tierra
Curry is another name that comes up frequently in CBD coverage. CBD’s
staff section of the website lists her as “senior scientist” and says
she “focuses on the listing and recovery of endangered species.” As
Warner Todd Huston reports: “Curry has an odd profile for an activist.
She once claimed to have enjoyed dynamiting creek beds in rural Kentucky
and taking perverse pleasure at sending fish and aquatic animals flying
onto dry land and certain death. Now Curry spends her time filing
petitions to ‘save’ some of the same animals she once enjoyed killing.”
Perhaps Curry’s frenetic listing efforts are her way of doing penance for her childhood penchant of killing critters.
The
role vengeance and penance may play in CBD’s shakedown of the American
public is just a hypothesis based on facts. But the dollars paid out are
very real.
In an April 8, 2014 hearing before the House
Committee on Natural Resources, fifth-generation rancher and attorney
specializing in environmental litigation, Karen Budd-Falen talked about
the need for ESA reform, as four different House bills propose: “Public
information regarding payment of attorney’s fees for ESA litigation is
equally difficult to access.” Addressing HR 4316—which requires a report
on attorney’s fees and costs for ESA related litigation—she says: “It
should not be a radical notion for the public to know how much is being
paid by the federal government and to whom the check is written.”
As
she reports in her testimony, Budd-Falen’s staff did an analysis of the
276-page spreadsheet run released by the Department of Justice (DOJ)
listing litigation summaries in cases defended by the Environment and
Natural Resources Division, Wildlife Section. She explains: “The
spreadsheets are titled ‘Endangered Species Defensive Cases Active at
some point during FY09-FY12 (through April 2012).’
Although the
DOJ release itself contained no analysis, my legal staff calculated the
following statistics.” Budd-Falen then shows how she came up with the
nearly $53 million figure of taxpayer money paid out over an approximate
three-year period. However, she then shows how her own Freedom of
Information Act requests have proven “that the DOJ does not keep an
accurate account of the cases it defends”—making the actual dollar
figure much higher.
Budd-Falen has stated: “We believe when the
curtain is raised we’ll be talking about radical environmental groups
bilking the taxpayer for hundreds of millions of dollars, allegedly for
‘reimbursement for attorney fees.’”
Budd-Falen’s research shows that for groups like CBD—who sue on process not on substance—it really is about the money.
Eno
believes that for the CBD, it isn’t about the critters: “CBD endangers
the endangered species program on multiple fronts. First, their
petitions and listing suits use up significant financial and personnel
resources of both Office of Endangered Species and solicitors office in
DOI. This means less funding and personnel devoted to species recovery.
Second, CBD suits antagonize and jeopardize recovery programs of
cooperating federal land management agencies, particularly USFS and BLM.
Third, their suits have hampered forest and grassland management
thereby inviting forest fires which endanger both human and wildlife
(sage grouse) communities throughout the west. Fourth, CBD suits
antagonize, alienate and create financial hardship for affected private
land owners, thereby reducing both public support and initiatives and
active assistance for listed species recovery.”
Despite numerous
attempts, the ESA has not had any major revisions in more than 25 years.
The Wall Street Journal states: “The ESA’s mixed record on wildlife
restoration and its impact on business have made the law vulnerable to
critics.” Groups like CBD have twisted the intent of the law. Reform is
now essential—not just to save taxpayer dollars, but to put the focus
back on actually saving the species rather than, as Wilmeth calls it:
“the bastardized application of science, policy and education.”
The
author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director
for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational
organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE).
Together they work to educate the public and influence policy makers
regarding energy, its role in freedom, and the American way of life.
Combining energy, news, politics, and, the environment through public
events, speaking engagements, and media, the organizations’ combined
efforts serve as America’s voice for energy.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
16 May, 2014
The spurious "97% consensus" claim now needs legal protection from being disprovenAnthony
Watts has apparently obtained more of the data on which John Cook based
his 97% claim and was set to publish an article showing just how
disreputable the Cook claim is.
But the university where Cook
works has now issued Watts with a threatening legal letter that forbids
him from discussing Cook's work -- on the ground that Cook's work is
copyrighted!
How Fascist can you get! A claim that cannot be discussed! It tells us most vividly how indefensible the claim is.
Anthony gives the gruesome details
hereScience as McCarthyism Another scientist gets blackballed for his skepticism about global warming.
On
Monday, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson took a tilt at climate
skeptics. “The assumption that the vast majority in a scientific field
is engaged in fraud or corruption is frankly conspiratorial,” Gerson
wrote. As a non-scientist, he decided that the answer to the question of
whether humans had warmed the planet was to trust scientists.
The
article’s timing was unfortunate. Three weeks ago, Lennart Bengtsson, a
leading Swedish meteorologist approaching his 80s, announced that he
was joining the avowedly skeptical Global Warming Policy Foundation
think tank. In an interview with Spiegel Online, Bengtsson spoke of the
need for climate-model predictions to be validated against observations.
“Since the end of the 20th century, the warming of the Earth has been
much weaker than what climate models show,” he said.
Hadn’t the IPCC covered this in its recent report? “Yes,” Bengtsson replied:
"the
scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically
enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational
results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific
work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for
consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and
the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does
not exist."
One of the most telling features of climate science
is just how few climate scientists changed their minds as the evidence
changed. The pause in global temperature in the last 15 years or so has
been unexpected. Now we know why: Yesterday, Bengtsson dropped a
bombshell. He was resigning from the think tank. In his resignation
letter, Bengtsson wrote:
"I have been put under such an enormous
group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become
virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be
unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my
health and safety. . . . Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other
colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit
and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the
time of McCarthy."
Especially significant was a tweet from Gavin
Schmidt, a leading climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute, who
for many years worked alongside James Hansen. “Groups perceived to be
acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within
the science community,” Schmidt tweeted. “Changing that requires that
they not act in bad faith and not be seen to be acting in bad faith.”
Evidently
the right to practice and discuss climate science should be subject to a
faith test. It is an extraordinarily revealing development. Fears about
unbelievers’ polluting the discourse, as some academics put it,
illustrate the weakness of climate science: The evidence for harmful
anthropogenic global warming is not strong enough to stand up for
itself.
Inadvertently Schmidt’s tweet demonstrates how far
climate science has crossed the boundary deep into pseudo-science. Karl
Popper observed of the trio of pseudo-sciences prevalent in 1920s Vienna
that their followers could explain why non-believers rejected their
manifest truths. For Marxists, it was because of their class interests.
For subscribers to Freudian psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler’s
psychology, non-belief was evidence of unanalyzed repressions crying out
for treatment. So it is with climate science. Only the pure of heart
should be allowed an opinion on it.
Science regresses if it
becomes intolerant of criticism. At the beginning of her reign, Queen
Elizabeth I of England spoke words of tolerance in an age of religious
strife, declaring that she had no intention of making windows into men’s
souls. Unlike religion, science is not a matter of the heart or of
belief. It exists only in what can be demonstrated. In their persecution
of an aged colleague who stepped out of line and their call for
scientists to be subject to a faith test, 21st-century climate
scientists have shown less tolerance than a 16th-century monarch.
There is something rotten in the state of climate science.
SOURCE More Green/Left FascismMSNBC’s
Hayes: Some Conservative Beliefs Should Disqualify People From Public
Office. This is a discussion by democratically deficient people. Who
should decide what beliefs are to be disqualifying? The answer of
course: dictatorsOn Tuesday’s All In, host Chris Hayes and
his guests tackled a chilling and politically loaded subject: which
beliefs should disqualify someone from holding public office. Among
other things, the group decided that global warming “denialism,”
opposition to same-sex marriage, and opposition to a “robust” Voting
Rights Act should put a politician outside the mainstream and ruin their
chances of holding public office.
Hayes seemed excited that
politicians might be branded with a figurative scarlet letter for
holding beliefs that run counter to his own far-left vision. In fact, he
claimed the act of disqualification based on certain beliefs is a “tool
of progress,” not something that “constrains consensus.” The host
gloated:
It’s a tool of progress when we say that certain things,
like opposing marriage equality, are sort of, like, not the kinds of
things that mainstream American politicians –
One of Hayes’
guests cut him off, but he didn’t need to finish that sentence. The
point is clear – Hayes has stumbled upon a new way to squelch debate in
this country and pave the way for liberal domination of American
political thought.
The host was particularly gleeful over the
growing acceptance of the theory that human beings are driving climate
change. After playing clips of Sen. Marco Rubio expressing skepticism of
global warming and then trying to clarify when pressed on the issue,
Hayes smirked:
[T]he fascinating aspect of this to me is that
it looked to me for the first time in a long time that denialism was
looking like a thing that was a disqualifier or at least something to be
defensive about in a way I haven't seen in a while.
One of Hayes’ guests, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, agreed:
And
I think nowadays it is. I mean, this is an issue that’s – I mean, we’re
all threatened by this. I mean, the planet is in danger. Something
needs to be done. And I think if you’re just going to deny that this is
even occurring, it means that you’re going to be blocking the policies
that we need, and it should be a disqualifier.
Hayes even went so far as to call global warming skeptics "really cuckoo."
Regarding
gay marriage, the host was also ready to declare the debate closed. He
exulted that he has "never seen an issue go so quickly from a
contentious, contested issue that’s at the center of our political
debates to one in which opposition to it is quickly becoming taboo.”
But
in many parts of the country, gay marriage still is a “contentious,
contested issue.” Hayes only wishes it were a settled topic.
By
the way, the host placed global warming skepticism and opposition to gay
marriage in the same basket as 9/11 Trutherism. During his introduction
to this discussion, Hayes mentioned that Van Jones, now a co-host of
CNN’s Crossfire, was pressured into resigning from his job in the Obama
White House because, among other things, his name appeared on a petition
that suggested the George W. Bush administration may have knowingly
allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks to happen. The host failed to
mention, of course, that MSNBC colleague Toure has a history of
Truther-style statements.
That conspiracy theory is well outside
of the mainstream, but it was what prompted Hayes to launch his
discussion of other, more conservative beliefs that he wishes society
would just laugh away.
Below is a transcript of the segment:
CHRIS
HAYES: Van Jones says he never actually signed the 9/11 truther
petition that prompted that spout of outrage, and he maintained from the
start it did not reflect his actual views. But just that tiny little
brush with trutherism was enough to get the guy drummed out of the White
House. And all this got me thinking about what exactly should
constitute a disqualifier when it comes to those who want to hold public
office or even work in the government. Joining me now, Bob Herbert,
distinguished senior fellow with Demos; Christina Bellantoni,
editor-in-chief of Roll Call; and Richard Kim, executive editor of
TheNation.com.
I am really interested in the boundaries of taboo
and consensus and what are the kinds of things that are the kinds of
things that politicians can argue about, and the kinds of things that
kind of place them off the table. And I thought it was interesting to
see the Ernst campaign felt that that claim about WMD was an
off-the-table kind of claim they had to then deny, which I found to be
progress of a sort. Are there certain things you think, Bob, that should
be in the kind of off-the-table category that aren't currently in the
off-the-table category?
BOB HERBERT: Sure. I would start with if
you don't have support for a robust Voting Rights Act for example. So if
you're running for national office and you don't feel that qualified
Americans ought to be guaranteed the right to vote, that should
disqualify you.
HAYES: Just like Voting Rights Act as a matter of
– Voting Rights Act or opposition to Voting Rights Act is off the
table. But here’s the thing that's tricky about that, right, is that no
one comes out. You're right. That is actually rhetorically where we are
in American politics insofar as no one will come out and be like, I
don't like the Voting Rights Act, unless, you know, Supreme Court
justices. But, right, I think – don't you agree that if someone – no one
would actually come out and say that.
[crosstalk]
HERBERT:
– should have to come out and say it. I'm saying you need to be
forthright in your support of a robust Voting Rights Act because you
need to be forthright in your support of Americans' right to vote.
HAYES: And Rand Paul has come pretty close.
RICHARD KIM: With the Civil Rights Act, which is not the Voting Rights Act, but that package of civil rights legislation.
HAYES:
And that infamous moment on Rachel’s show with the long, torturous,
just train wreck of an interview in which he basically said, I'm not
that into the public accommodation part of the Civil Rights Act, that
was him flirting with precisely the line of the disqualifying.
***
JONATHAN
KARL: Let me get this straight. You do not think that human activity,
the production of CO2, has caused warming to our planet?
SEN.
MARCO RUBIO: I don't believe that human activity is causing these
dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying
it.
UNIDENTIFIED: What information, reports, studies or otherwise
are you relying on to inform and reach your conclusion that human
activity is not to blame for climate change?
RUBIO: Well, again, I
mean – headlines notwithstanding, I’ve never disputed that the climate
is changing, and I pointed out that climate, to some extent, is always
changing. It’s never static.
HAYES: Nice try, Marco Rubio. I’m
back with Bob Herbert, Christina Bellantoni, and Richard Kim. And the
reason I want to play that, so Rubio – again, he stepped in it on that
Jon Karl interview. I think he didn’t think it was going to become a
headline. I mean, you can see his passive/aggressive note about
headlines notwithstanding. And then today he tried to walk it back in a
totally incoherent way. But the fascinating aspect of this to me is that
it looked to me for the first time in a long time that denialism was
looking like a thing that was a disqualifier or at least something to be
defensive about in a way I haven't seen in a while.
HERBERT: And
I think nowadays it is. I mean, this is an issue that’s – I mean, we’re
all threatened by this. I mean, the planet is in danger. Something
needs to be done. And I think if you’re just going to deny that this is
even occurring, it means that you’re going to be blocking the policies
that we need, and it should be a disqualifier.
HAYES: And the key
here to me is, the conspiratorial thinking it requires to think that
thousands of scientists across the globe are engaged in this massive
hoax, which is basically what James Inhofe, who’s a sitting U.S.
senator, believes, right? The conspiratorial thinking that it takes to
believe that is really cuckoo. I mean, that is really out there.
KIM:
Okay, I can't believe I'm going to take the other side on this. So
obviously, I don't believe, you know, these views, and I think they’re
sort of lunatic and really dangerous. On the other hand, large
percentages of the American population believe that. And don't they have
representation in that political process? And I also worry that if you
have this circle of disqualified opinions, and you keep growing that
circle, what that rewards is an incentive structure that depends on sort
of an absolute certainty of emotion. Like a really kind of intense
belief. And to keep feeding that, if the facts on the ground don't
match, you invent a set of facts. And I think, actually, that is what
has happened to the Republican Party. They’ve sort of produced this
outrage machine.
HAYES: So you're just saying, like, against litmus tests as a broad –
KIM: I say let the democratic process play out, and people should vote these things down.
CHRISTINA
BELLANTONI: On climate, as a specific thing. The candidate that appeals
to the business community tends to be the candidate that’ll either win
the nomination or win the general election. And so this is an area where
you –
HAYES: In the Republican party, in particular.
BELLANTONI:
In general, though, you have to be palpable to them to sit in the White
House. And so with the business community shifting on this issue or on
minimum wage issues or on some other labor issues, that's where you
start to see the shifts. That guides the politician.
HAYES: But
what you’re identifying, though, is precisely the nefarious ideological
undercurrent of discussions about what's disqualifying. Because, I mean,
that goes hand-in-glove with what Richard is saying. You’re saying the
people that actually draw the lines around what’s disqualifying is the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And like, frankly, that’s what’s going to
decide if you're, like, a whacko.
BELLANTONI: And just watch with
immigration reform. I mean, the conversation has completely changed
since 2005-2006 when George Bush, people were angry at him in a certain
segment of the population because he supported immigration reform. And
now it is sort of a moderate Republican view.
HAYES: Or on
marriage equality. I mean, that is a place where you really do see – I
have never seen an issue go so quickly from a contentious, contested
issue that’s at the center of our political debates to one in which
opposition to it is quickly becoming taboo.
HERBERT: Well, the
truth is that you can only do this as a hypothetical exercise, and
that’s a good example of why. I mean, there was a time when no one could
get elected if they were in favor of gay marriage. Now in many
elections it’s a disqualifier if you’re opposed to gay marriage.
HAYES:
But that makes me hopeful about the power of this kind of – the force
of this, as opposed to this being something that constrains consensus,
it actually is this tool, right? It’s a tool of progress when we say
that certain things, like opposing marriage equality, are sort of, like,
not the kinds of things that mainstream American politicians –
KIM:
But it's also a double-edged sword. So things like supporting a 90
percent tax rate, which was once policy in the United States –
HAYES: Right, that's a very good point.
KIM: – would be a completely disqualifying characteristic for many, many people in this country.
HAYES:
If you came forward and said I am for a 90 percent top marginal tax
rate, which of course was what it was after World War II and the
Eisenhower administration before the first round of tax cuts, you would
be – that would be the equivalent.
KIM: Exactly.
SOURCE What's the Real 'Climate Change' Agenda?A Perfect Storm for an End Run on LibertyWe’re
nearing the hot season in the Northern Hemisphere and, predictably,
that means the Left’s alarmist “global warming” rhetoric is heating up.
Never mind that most weather forecasts beyond 72 hours are largely
speculative; these purveyors of hot gas believe we should accept their
inviolable 100-year forecast.
Ahead of this year’s midterm
elections, amid the plethora of its domestic and foreign policy
failures, the Democrat Party has chosen to make their “climate change”
fear and fright campaign an electoral centerpiece. Their strategy is to
rally the most liberal cadres of Al Gore’s cult of Gorons, whose
religious zeal toward “global warming” is fanatical. Unfortunately, for
the rest of America, most who occupy this Leftist constituency are no
longer capable of distinguishing fact from fiction.
Though the
climate alarmists of the 1970s were driven by rhetoric over the coming
ice age, the current climate calamity is one of global warming. But the
question about climate isn’t if the weather is varying but why it is
varying.
And the answer to that question is far less complicated
than the “climate change” agenda, which is not about the weather, but
about a political strategy to subjugate free enterprise under statist
regulation – de facto socialism, under the aegis of “saving us from
ourselves.”
The climate is always changing relative to complex
short- and long-term climate cycles, so “climate change” is a superbly
safe political “cause célèbre” – sort of like “heads we win, tails you
lose.” So, declarations like Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union
warning – “The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact” – fall into
the “keen sense of the obvious” category.
In April, the
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change released a
synopsis of thousands of climate studies, which contradict the
conventional “global warming assumptions.” According to the Cato
Institute’s Roger Pilon, “We are now at 17 years and eight months of no
global warming.”
Not to be outdone by the NIPCC, however, the
Obama administration released its own 800-page apocalyptic National
Climate Assessment last week, with such erudite conclusions as, “[W]e
know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now.”
I
“know” with more than “increasing certainty” that every time I walk
outside, I can detect climate change, and this ever-changing condition
is better known as “weather.”
Despite the hot hype, Jason Furman,
chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, the week before Obama
trotted out his climate assessment, had this to say about sluggish
first quarter economic growth: “The first quarter of 2014 was marked by
unusually severe winter weather.”
Global cooling? That’s right,
economic stagnation is not the result of failed “economic recovery”
policies but “unusually severe winter weather.”
Obama’s minister
of propaganda, Jay Carney, followed with this explanation: “We had
historically severe winter weather which temporarily lowered growth in
the first quarter … in other words, a reduction of 1 to 1.5% in GDP as a
result of what was historically severe weather, one of the coldest
winters on record, the greatest number of snowstorms on record.”
After
the White House climate assessment was released, Carney was challenged
about the disparity between “historically severe winter weather” and
global warming, and responded, “The impacts of climate change on weather
are severe in both directions.”
Well there you go – climate change is the default explanation for hot and cold weather.
It
was no small irony that last week, Obama chose to promote his
administration’s “green agenda” with Walmart as a backdrop – ironic
given that most of Walmart’s products are produced in China and other
third-world nations, the biggest land, water and atmospheric polluters
on the planet.
To that end, columnist Charles Krauthammer notes,
“We have reduced our carbon dioxide emission since 1996 more than any
other country in the world, and, yet, world emissions have risen. Why?
We don’t control the other 96% of humanity. We can pass all the laws we
want. We can stop all economic activity and take cold showers for the
next 100 years, it will not change anything if India and China are
opening a new coal plant every week.”
I would suggest to Charles
that it’s called “global climate” because it is not “local climate,”
even if China and India reduced their CO2 emissions it would not stop
“climate change.”
Further, the administration’s report claims
that “climate disruption” has resulted in a global temperature rise of
1.3 to 1.9 degrees since 1895 – and it is no coincidence that the report
cherry-picked that starting date because 1890 is recognized as the end
of the 300-year “Little Ice Age” global cooling period.
For the
record, estimates of the minuscule temperature fluctuation over the last
century, if correct, would explain why White House science adviser John
Holdren has abandoned the term “global warming,” opting instead for the
more ambiguous and all-encompassing phrase “global climate disruption.”
Fact is, we “disrupt” the global climate every time we exhale.
Such
linguistic obfuscations would make the old Soviet Dezinformatsia Bureau
proud! Of course, the Obama administration has mastered the art of the
“BIG Lie” from the top down. (Think about it: Would you buy a used car
from any of them?)
However, even the Left’s cherished United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there
“is limited evidence of changes in [weather] extremes associated with
other climate variables since the mid-20th century.”
And,
regarding the objectivity of all those erudite “climate change”
scientists, columnist George Will observed, “There is a sociology of
science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have
got interests like everybody else. If you want a tenure-track position
in academia, don’t question the reigning orthodoxy on climate change. If
you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this
country, the federal government, don’t question its orthodoxy. If you
want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is
what’s happening.”
Krauthammer added, “All physicists were once
convinced that space and time were fixed until Einstein, working in a
patent office, wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not. I’m
not impressed by numbers. I’m not impressed by consensus.”
As for
those of us who can distinguish between fact, fiction and political
endgames, and are most decidedly not among Obama’s legions of pantywaist
bed-wetters, he unilaterally suspends the revered scientific method and
accuses us of “wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate – climate
change is a fact. … Climate change is not some far-off problem in the
future. It’s happening now. It’s causing hardship now.”
This
week, you can expect to hear the Leftmedia trumpet some Antarctic ice
melt, but you haven’t heard much about the record ice pack in the
Arctic, which is threatening Al Gore’s once-marooned polar bear
population, because the ice is too thick for the bears to reach their
primary food source, seals.
Let me repeat myself: The climate
hype is not about the weather, but about a political strategy to
subjugate free enterprise under statist regulation – de facto socialism,
under the aegis of “saving us from ourselves.”
Indeed, Obama’s
economic policies and regulations have already moved our nation rapidly
toward the brink of statist totalitarianism.
And there was more
evidence this week of Obama’s reckless strategy to subjugate our economy
and by extension, our national security, to his “climate change”
agenda.
Adding to his “War on Coal,” Obama has ratcheted up his
War on Energy Independence, not only refusing to complete the Keystone
XL pipeline but now going after alternative oil exploration methods by
implementing new fracking disclosure rules. On top of that, he is
undermining alternate transportation options for oil in the absence of
Keystone XL with new regulations for trains transporting oil, and
specifications for rail cars. Oh, did I mention Obama’s regulatory
obstacles to constructing new refineries despite the fact that our
current refinement capacity is approaching its limit?
How does this all add up?
According
to columnist Terence Jeffrey, “Ultimately, it will not matter if people
in government cynically promote the theory that human activity is
destroying the global climate as a means of taking control of your life,
or if they take control of your life because they sincerely believe
human activity is destroying the global climate. Either way, government
will control of your life. … In a nation where government can de-develop
the economy, stop population growth and redistribute wealth both inside
and outside its borders, there will still be droughts, floods and hot
summer nights. But there will be no freedom.”
In his 1735 edition of
Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin observed, “Some are
weatherwise, some are otherwise.” While the Left promotes its agenda as
“weatherwise” and its detractors as “deniers,” fact is, they are
otherwise.
Oh, wait, my bad. “The debate is settled.
SOURCE Fossil-free isn't folly freeIF
OKLAHOMA prison authorities had been able to carry out Clayton
Lockett's execution using sodium thiopental, his death on April 29 would
likely have been swift and relatively painless. The powerful sedative
used to be part of the standard lethal-injection drug combination, but
when its only American manufacturer stopped production in 2010, European
governments barred pharmaceutical companies on the other side of the
Atlantic from exporting sodium thiopental to the United States.
As
the British business secretary, Vince Cable, made clear at the time,
the point of the ban was to strike a moral pose. "This move underlines
this government's and my own personal moral opposition to the death
penalty in all circumstances," he said. The practical effect, however,
has been to drive death-penalty states to devise new lethal injection
protocols, sometimes with gruesome results.
Many Americans would
say that Lockett's prolonged death was no less than he deserved for the
vicious murder of 18-year-old Stephanie Neiman in 1999. But justice for
murder victims isn't what the Europeans have in mind. They just want to
demonstrate their antipathy to capital punishment. Refusing to sell the
drugs that can make lethal injections the most humane form of execution
enhances their self-image. It also turned Lockett's death from a rapid
act of euthanasia into a grimacing, teeth-clenching ordeal that finally
ended with a heart attack after more than 40 minutes.
There is a
lesson here about the unintended consequences of economic boycotts that
backers of the fossil-fuel divestment movement would do well to
contemplate.
On college campuses across the country, activists
have been urging administrators to adopt "fossil-free" investment
policies and rid their endowment funds of shares in coal, oil, and gas
stocks. Last week, Stanford became the first major university to join
the boycott, announcing its intention to stop investing in "companies
whose principal business is the mining of coal." Though Stanford's
endowment, about $19 billion, is substantial, its actual investments in
coal stocks are minimal. Divesting them will have no real financial
impact on either the university or the companies. But it strikes a moral
pose, and adds to the pressure on other universities to do likewise.
The
biggest target of the divestment movement is Harvard, with its $32
billion endowment and outsize reputation. A student group, Divest
Harvard, recently blocked the entrance to Massachusetts Hall, the
university's main administration building, as part of a campaign to
pressure the school to get rid of its fossil-fuel holdings. So far the
university has said no, on the grounds that the endowment's purpose is
to earn the income on which many Harvard priorities rely, and that
"barring investments in a major, integral sector of the global economy
would … come at a substantial economic cost."
Blockading the
administration building may feel like disobedience in a righteous cause;
students clamoring for hydrocarbon divestment may be convinced they're
on the side of the angels. Are they convinced enough to risk the
consequences of a weaker endowment? Such as less of the financial aid
with which Harvard subsidizes 70 percent of its students?
You
don't have to be an especially savvy investor to realize that divestment
for ideological reasons doesn't increase your leverage, it eliminates
it. Sell your profitable fossil-fuel stocks to show your concern about
climate change, and the odds are they'll be snapped up by investors who
care much less about the issue than you do. "It's like believing that
pornography is evil," writes Canadian economist Todd Hirsch, "so you
sell your stash of nudie magazines to the teenager next door."
Using
economic weapons for ideological reasons so often leads to unintended
and unwanted consequences. Prohibition triggered a host of negative
outcomes that its promoters never anticipated, from a wave of restaurant
failures to the elimination of thousands of blue-collar jobs to an
explosion of crime and corruption.
To stigmatize fossil fuels and
the corporations that extract them is to stigmatize the energy on which
the modern world runs. This is moral preening, the hypocrisy of
activists who want to strike a noble pose without paying a real-world
price. Were they to get their way, the consequences would be disastrous,
above all for the planet's poorest human beings, still mired in energy
poverty, with all the misery it entails. A "fossil-free" future is a
chimera, at least in our lifetime, and the divestment campaign can't
make things better by pretending otherwise. But don't be surprised if it
makes things worse.
SOURCE Greenies trying to take control of farming and ranchingAustralia:
Nationals Senator Ron Boswell has warned primary producers to take
action now to maintain control over production and marketing.
In
what Senator Boswell described as his last substantial speech in the
Senate, he said: “What I want to do is leave all Australian primary
producers with a warning: take action now to maintain control over the
production and marketing of your product.
“Primary producers are
under threat from a long-term strategy by a powerful and sophisticated
combination of environmental zealots and major corporations that would
effectively control primary production practices worldwide.”
Senator
Boswell said the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, an
organisation created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and dominated by
non-producer bodies, was an example of the threat.
“I regard WWF
and other environmental activists teaming up with major corporations to
impose conditions on producers as a dangerous development,” Senator
Boswell said.
“Management of primary production is being taken
away from producers and from elected governments by environmental
non-government organisations. They are doing it via environmental
conditions enforced by corporations.
“This was encouraged during
the six years of the previous Labor Government. That government was in
effect a Labor-Greens alliance, and Labor surrendered to environmental
lobbyists time and again. It is time the Australian Government
re-asserted its legitimate role in management of primary production.
“WWF
and other environmental activists are increasingly trying to dictate
what can and can’t be caught, harvested, grown or mined in Australia.
WWF
is an organisation with a turnover in the hundreds of millions of
dollars and 5,000 staff spread across offices in 60 countries. It is a
huge multi-national business with enormous resources. What’s more, it is
handling the likes of roundtables and stewardship councils on a daily
basis.
“By contrast, producers are often developing responses on
the run, responding as best they can to a sophisticated, well-rehearsed
strategy from WWF. Let’s not pretend that, individually, any single
commodity or industry representative body can handle an organisation as
powerful and sophisticated as WWF.
“I call on everyone involved
in productive toil in our primary industries to address this issue. Work
together, and with the Australian Government, to retain the influence
you deserve to have over the way your industries operate.
“Producers
have a fundamental knowledge of how their operations should be
conducted. Government has the scientists, economists and resource
managers to assist producers. Together, they can guarantee sensible,
rational, sustainable management of this nation’s natural resources.”
Via email***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
15 May, 2014
"Climate change" has lost its punch. People now know it is just global warming with lipstick onA summary from the Left belowThere
are few things more symbolic of our climate dysfunction than the
strange idea that if only we gave the problem a different name, we'd be
able to deal with it. Nonetheless, for years there have been intimations
that we should cease saying "global warming" and instead say "climate
change"—albeit for wildly different reasons.
The case for this
phrase change dates at least back to an infamous 2002 memo by
conservative strategist Frank Luntz, who argued that "while global
warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change
suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge." Luntz was
giving this advice in the context of also advising Republicans to
highlight the "lack of scientific certainty" about climate change. In a
study published in 2011, however, researchers at the University of
Michigan actually found that Republicans seem to be more willing to
accept the reality of the problem when the "climate change" label was
used.
Most recently, however—and as Media Matters documents in
the helpful video below—conservatives have seized on the bizarre idea
that the environmental movement is now saying "climate change" because
it can explain anything, including "decades of global cooling," as one
Fox News host claimed. In other words, the accusation is that this a
sneaky way to cover up the reality that global warming is a sham.
But
which term should we use from a public opinion perspective? What's the
better frame? Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University
who is currently serving as the Gallup scholar for the environment, has
just published a comprehensive polling analysis suggesting that
basically, it's a wash. "The public responds to global warming and
climate change in a similar fashion," writes Dunlap. For instance: When
you show people a list of environmental problems and ask if they
personally worry about each one "a great deal, a fair amount, only a
little, or not at all," 34 percent say they worry a great deal about
global warming, and 35 percent say the same about climate change.
The
more pertinent issue, though, is whether ideological groups respond
differently to different phrasings. Dunlap looked at that too. Breaking
responses down by ideology, he found that only 16 percent of Republicans
say they worry a great deal about "global warming"...and only 17
percent say the same for "climate change." In the other three possible
response categories—a fair amount, only a little, not at all—the results
were also quite similar
In sum, 36 percent of Republicans
worried a great deal or a fair amount about "global warming," and 39
percent worried a great deal or a fair amount about "climate change." By
contrast, 83 percent of Democrats worried either a great deal or a fair
amount about both "global warming" and "climate change."
"While
there are slight differences in the degree of partisan and ideological
divergence in responses to global warming versus climate change," Dunlap
concludes in his paper, "they are not statistically significant, and
modest compared with the huge gaps in views of both terms held by
Americans at the two ends of the political spectrum."
That's not
to say there wasn't a time, perhaps as recently as mid-2009 (when the
data were collected for the Michigan study cited above), when
conservatives were indeed more open to taking the problem seriously if
it was labeled "climate change" rather than "global warming." But if so,
those days are long gone. Dunlap suggests that this is because
conservatives have gotten just as used to dismissing "climate change" as
they are to dismissing "global warming." Certainly, the name bestowed
upon their favorite pseudo-scandal, late 2009's "ClimateGate," didn't
help matters.
Nor does the right's cynical new idea that the
climate crowd shifted to saying "climate change" in order to paper over a
supposed lack of warming. "In recent years a popular meme on skeptic
and conservative blogs is that climate scientists and climate policy
advocates have shifted to climate change because it refers to abnormally
cold as well as warm weather and is thus harder to dispute—even though
climate scientists have used both terms from the late 1980s onward,"
comments Dunlap by email. "The result is that in conservative circles
climate change has become as politicized as global warming, and the two
terms now seem synonymous."
So, in sum: If you thought clever word-smithing was going to save the planet, forget about it.
SOURCEDistinguished Swedish meteorologist, 78, terrorized by WarmistsPress Release from GWPF belowIt
is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received
Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership
of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
The Foundation, while of
course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep
concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community
which has prompted his resignation.
Professor Bengtsson’s letter
of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its
chairman, Professor David Henderson. His letter and Professor
Henderson’s response are attached below.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Resigning from the GWPF
Dear Professor Henderson,
I
have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from
all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this
is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will
even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no
other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting
such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I
have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their
support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I
see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that
reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting
anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology.
Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these
situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF
and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my
decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson
Your letter of resignation
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I
have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you
had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming
Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came
as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know
that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your
resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is
also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you
speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join
us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of
open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a
situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to
remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you
said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become
completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy
with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
Via emailBritish meteorologist knocks W. Antarctic scare on the headPiers Corbyn
NASA
gives its most deluded Scare story Ever - “Unstoppable break - up of
(SOME) Antarctic Ice due to (non - existent) Global - Warming threatens
sea level Rise (in 200 years time)”W. Antarctic highlightedThis
alarmist USA pre-election year hype produced by the US Government
Science Denial Fantasy Factory Dept of NASA uses cherry - picked
speculation for part of West Antarctica (cherry - color) which is
negated by facts for a much larger area – the whole Antarctic &
South Hemisphere - and longer time, issued by a respected USA body, the
NSIDC (National Snow & Ice Data Center).
Even IF the somewhat
controversial computer model (recall ALL the failed IPCC computer
models!) assertion that part of the West Antarctica Ice - Sheet might
break up (like it has in the past when there was less CO2) in the coming
200 yrs, does this automatically mean the end of Antarctic Ice &/or
big sea level rise?
The graph says it all. Ice cover is on an INCREASING trendNO!
FACT: Antarctic ice AS A WHOLE is increasing which reduces water in the
sea. The NASA assertion is as brain - dead as saying a storm that blows
down a load of trees means the end of trees. MORE ice (like tree s)
will come.
But then the NASA - BBC - AlJazeera - NYT... aim is brainwashing the public into stupidity and then treat them as stupid.
More
HERE Of Mice and MenBlame
Barack Obama’s aggressive environmental agenda for the land-use fights
that have broken out all over the West. The federal government has
changed its polices in the last few months, passing over local
governments and remaining stubborn on environmental policies. At least
two new faces in the administration, both less than six months old, may
have something to do with it.
John Podesta, a known “progressive”
environmentalist, was brought on in December, in preparation for an
environmental regulation push by Obama. And last November, Obama
nominated Neil Kornze to head the Bureau of Land Management, which
manages 13% of the total land in the United States, the bulk of which is
in the West. Before taking the reins of BLM, Kornze advised Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and he also worked on the Western
Solar Plan.
While the headlines were full of the standoff at
Cliven Bundy’s ranch, another group seems to have made more headway
against government overreach. The ranchers of Otero County, New Mexico,
decided to petition the government through legal means, with the backing
of their local government.
On April 25, the Otero County
Commission called an emergency meeting. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS)
was erecting a three-foot fence that kept cattle away from water in
order to protect the endangered meadow jumping mouse. The commission
cried foul saying the ranchers had rights to the water, and they wrote a
cease and desist letter to USFS. “This amounts to nothing short of
criminal trespass by your personnel, potential animal cruelty and
several other violations of state criminal or civil law,” the commission
stated in the letter. “Otero County respectfully demands that the USFS
immediately cease and desist from all such activities. We respectfully
encourage USFS to take a step back and respect private property rights
and state law which the USFS has thus far failed to consider.”
District
3 Commissioner Ronny Rardin added, “I guess we need to put the cattle
on the endangered species list so you guys can work diligently to
protect them.”
When that didn’t work, the commission ordered
Sheriff Benny House to open the gates so cattle could access water. But
House hoped it wouldn’t escalate. “What’s going to happen here is that
we could end up with a Bundy situation,” he said. “Hopefully, we can
resolve it without it getting out of hand.”
Meanwhile, state
legislators across the West are meeting, discussing how the states can
wrest control of federal lands, which take up vast swaths of their
states. The local governments “deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed,” as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of
Independence, may be the best tool for checking too much federal power.
The Endangered Species List has become a favorite vehicle for abusing
that power.
SOURCENo open minds at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
SOURCEMarc Morano's hate mail of the dayWhere's that "civility" Obama was advocating?"I
hope you choke on fracking water fall in a pit and die clown ...yeah
that's right I'll say what everyone else is to afraid to say ... you
kill people slowly by feeding that crap and they thinks it's alright
well guess what I hope you get it bad one day"
One has to feel a little sorry for the dupe -- JRVia emailFive reasons voters don’t believe the White House about global warmingThe
White House released a third iteration of the “U.S. National Climate
Assessment,” claiming it is “the most comprehensive scientific
assessment ever generated of climate change and its impacts across every
region of America and major sectors of the U.S. economy.” The report
emphasizes the need for “urgent action to combat the threats from
climate change.” Well, here are five reasons voters don’t believe what
the White House says on climate change:
1. Overreach. The White
House doesn’t just want it both ways, it wants it every way.
Increasingly, when there is a topical weather event, be it a warm
typhoon in the Pacific or a cold snap in the United States, we hear it
is caused by global warming. But non-events, such as fewer tropical
storms becoming hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or the frustrating,
inconvenient truth that there hasn’t been any warming in the past 15
years, are dismissed as meaningless because we are told you must
evaluate climate change over the long term. On Tuesday, President Obama
even took time to meet with local and national weather reporters as a
way of emphasizing the effects of global warming on today’s weather. The
left is inconsistent in its selection of what factors and events
“prove” that manmade global warming is real.
2. Hypocrisy. Voters
notice that the founding father of the global warming movement, Al
Gore, has become fabulously wealthy by selling out to Middle Eastern oil
and gas interests. Voters notice the mansions, private planes and the
super-wealthy lifestyle. And Gore is not the only global warming
hypocrite. I would guess that after he leaves office, President Obama
will never again fly on a commercial airline – and he will probably be
traveling by Global Expresses, Gulfstreams and the occasional large
Falcon, not even on the more modest, smaller private jets. Voters are on
to the fact that the global warming crusaders want us to pay more and
live with less — but, of course, the rules don’t apply to the
politicians who want everybody else to sacrifice. Not to mention, the
people who insult and belittle anyone who has a question about the
“science” of manmade global warming are often the same people who
categorically dismiss the scientific proof of the viability, safety and
reliability of nuclear energy. I have a little test for the global
warming crusaders: If you’re not for nuclear energy and against ice
cream, your commitment to the cause is questionable.
3. The
global warming cause fits too nicely with the president’s left-wing
political agenda. The prescriptions for dealing with climate change are
the same policy objectives the left has promoted for other reasons for
at least the past 25 years. That is, redistribution of wealth, higher
taxes, anti-growth, anti-development regulations, etc. Because they
don’t have much support from voters, the left has to advance its cause
through surreptitious maneuvering rather than forthright advocacy of its
specific global warming policies. The left never answers the questions
of who pays, how much and for what result.
4. A lack of faith in
foreign cooperation. Absent any verifiable, enforceable global warming
treaty, any unilateral moves by the United States would be pointless.
After all, the left wants us to believe that global warming really is
global and that fossil fuels burned in distant lands are every bit as
harmful as they are when they are utilized here at home. I would love to
see a poll that asks American voters if they think American tax dollars
should be spent on global warming remedies in foreign lands. Of course,
we all know the vast majority of Americans would say no. Some say the
United States should lead by example, but does anybody believe that if
we affirmatively harm our own economy, others will somehow think that is
a noble sacrifice and follow suit? The very notion is ridiculous.
5.
This administration lacks credibility. For a long time, we have said in
America, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we do X, Y or Z?”
Well, in the Obama era, that adage has morphed into, “If he couldn’t get
a Web site right, how are we supposed to believe he knows how to
control the climate?” Who really believes that a massive government tax
and reordering of the economy in the name of stopping global warming or
climate change or whatever will go as planned and the world’s thermostat
will adjust to something the Democrats find more acceptable? Answer:
Almost nobody. Voters don’t believe what the White House says on this
issue in part because it has not been credible on so many other
important issues. We’ve heard everything from “you can keep your
health-care plan” to there is a “red line” in Syria. Why should anyone
believe the White House now?
As I’ve said before, voters aren’t
stupid. They know when they are not being leveled with. And all the
bluster, intimidation and angry frothing won’t make their doubts go away
or make the Obama administration any more believable.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
14 May, 2014
The Australian budget brings weeping and wailing and garnishing of teeth from GreeniesAustralia's new conservative government brought down its first budget on Tuesday nightAs
feared, the first Budget delivered by the new Government has seen the
axe swung upon the Australian Reneweable Energy Agency (ARENA).
According to the Budget papers:
"The
Government will achieve savings of $1.3 billion over five years from
2017-18 (including $223.3 million in 2018-19, $455.9 million in 2019-20,
$125.4 million in 2020-21 and $131.1 million in 2021-22) by abolishing
the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and repealing the Australian
Renewable Energy Agency Act 2011. Funding of $1.0 billion over eight
years will remain available to support existing priority projects."
The Government says the savings will be redirected to repairing the Budget and to fund policy priorities.
The Clean Energy Council expressed its disappointment in the announcement.
"A
global race for renewable energy is on, and the removal of ARENA will
see potential Australian and international investors now look to
countries with much stronger support for renewable energy innovation,
meaning we may well miss out on billions of dollars of investment and
highly-skilled jobs," said Deputy Chief Executive Kane Thornton.
"Abolishing
ARENA is a backwards step for the 'clever country' at a time when job
losses in traditional industries like the automotive and manufacturing
sectors mean we need new, innovative industries to take their place and
fill this void."
The Australian Solar Council also reacted strongly, calling the budget a "boulevard of broken dreams" for the solar industry.
"The
Budget has delivered a trifecta of broken promises to the solar
industry," said John Grimes, Chief Executive of the Australian Solar
Council.
"The Government promised the Australian people an
additional million solar roofs by 2020. The Budget contains no funding
to make this happen. A Million Solar Roofs is a mirage."
"The
Government promised to maintain the Australian Renewable Energy Agency
(ARENA) but, instead, the Budget has delivered a death warrant for
ARENA. Unless the Senate stands up to the Government, ARENA will be
abolished."
"The Government promised to maintain the Renewable
Energy Target but every indication is this key policy will also be
thrown on the scrapheap."
The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia called the axing of ARENA a regressive step.
"ARENA
was designed to increase the supply of renewable energy in Australia
and to make it more affordable. It has been welcomed by both the
industry and by investors, who were looking at Australia as a growing
market for clean technologies," said SEA Chief Executive Kirsten Rose.
"Unfortunately,
the proposed scrapping of ARENA means it’s likely that investment in a
cleaner energy sector won’t happen in Australia, but will go to other
countries with stronger, more stable policy environments for renewable
energy," said Ms Rose.
Greens leader Senator Christine Milne
said the Budget was "just a tunnel vision for motorways and stranded
fossil fuel assets that will be worthless to our economy within
decades."
SOURCE GM hysteriaApartheid for GM food!Could
we soon farm crops in disused MINES? Growing corn in colder, isolated
conditions doesn't affect yield - and could stop GM pollen escaping into
the foodchain
Kent might be known as the ‘Garden of England’ but
one day parts of Wales, northern and south-west England could be home
to underground ‘fields’ of corn and genetically modified crops.
Scientists have discovered that lowering the temperature reduces the height of corn crops without affecting its seed yield.
They think the crop could be grown in cool places such as caves and former mines in 'controlled-environment' facilities.
Researchers
installed a growth chamber with insulation and yellow and blue
high-intensity discharge lamps in a former limestone mine in Marengo,
Indiana.
Their aim was to test how corn would react to an
environment in which its growing conditions - light, temperature,
humidity and carbon dioxide - were tightly controlled.
To reduce
the corn's height, the researchers used a growth chamber that mimicked
the temperature conditions and carbon dioxide levels of the mine.
They
dropped the temperature to 16°C (60°F) for the first two hours of each
photoperiod - the time in which the corn received light.
The temperature was restored to 27°C (80°F) for 14 hours and then lowered to 18°C (65 °F) for eight hours of darkness.
The
temperature dip dwarfed stalk height by 10 per cent and reduced stalk
diameter by nine per cent without significantly affecting the number and
weight of the seeds.
Experts think this process could be easily achieved in caves and disused mines.
Genetically-modified
crops could also be grown in such isolated environments as this would
prevent genetically modified pollen and seed from escaping into the
ecosystem and crossing with wild plants, experts claim.
Cary
Mitchell, professor of horticulture at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana, believes that the technique could be useful for
growing transgenic crops to produce high-value medicinal products such
as antibodies.
‘Grains of corn could be engineered to produce
proteins that could be extracted and processed into medicine,
pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals such as essential vitamins,’ he said.
‘What we've done is show that you can successfully grow these high-value crops in contained environments.’
Professor Mitchell described corn as a ‘good candidate crop’ for the plant-derived pharmaceutical compounds industry.
Genetically-modified crops could be grown in isolated environments such
as mines and caves as this would prevent genetically modified pollen
and seed from escaping into the ecosystem and crossing with wild plants.
SOURCE Hostile 8 min. Climate Debate Between Morano & TV Anchor on CCTVClimate
Depot’s Marc Morano vs. CCTV Anchor Anand Naidoo (formerly of Al
Jazeera & CNN). Selected Excerpts from Monday May 13, 2014
Internationally Televised Debate on CCTV America (Chinese TV)Marc Morano: You can distinguish between natural variability and the human impact. Nothing unusual is happening in our climate.
Sea
level has been rising since the last 10,000. There has been no
acceleration. In fact a new paper in the journal Nature since 2002,
there has been a deceleration in sea level rise. Nothing alarming is
happening with sea level rise. (More here and here)
President
Obama claims we are feeling global warming here and now. But on every
metric, you can talk tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts. Not only
are we not ‘feeling it now’, we are on no trend or declining trends on
50 to 100 year times scales.
Anchor Anand Naidoo: But we are
feeling it, we have seen hurricanes, for instance hurricane Sandy. We
have seen more Tornadoes in the Midwest in America. We have seen ocean
levels rise in Bangladesh.
Morano: First of all, you used the
word ‘facts’ earlier, I hope you are not using that now. Every bad
weather event is now proof of global warming? There is no way to falsify
the AGW theory.
We are actually going through the longest period
a category 3 or larger hurricane hitting the U.S. since 2005. That is
the longest period in at least a century. Big tornadoes F3 and larger
since the 1950s and 1970s have been on a decline. There might be more
tornadoes counted, because we have better monitoring but actual damaging
tornadoes, huge decline. The most damaging decade for hurricanes was
the 1940s. Droughts are on a decline in the U.S. (over the past
century.)
Anchor Anand Naidoo: Are you saying nothing should be done?
Morano:
Yes. There so-called solutions would have no detectable climate impact.
Our President Obama, is on record as calling our failed cap and trade
bill would make our planet 4 or 5 degrees cooler for our grandchildren.
His then EPA director went to the US senate and testified that not only
would the cap and trade bill not impact global temperature, it would not
even impact global co2 levels. What they are proposing is pure
symbolism. It is medieval witchcraft because they are saying we can
alter through acts of congress, the EPA and United Nations treaties.
Every
coal plant built today is radically cleaner than ones built 30 or 40
years ago. Natural gas fracking is replacing coal in many instances and
that is causing dramatic reductions. Our emission levels are dropping
due to technology. Not big government solutions brought up on by fear by
people like John Holdren.
Look, in 1846, in Australia,
Aborigines blamed the bad climate on the introduction of the White man
in Australia. During World War 2, some blamed the war for causing
unusual weather patterns. In 1933, Syria banned the Yo-Yo because they
thought it caused drought. In the 1970s, the exact same things (bad
weather) we are talking about today, were blamed on man-made global
cooling.
Anchor Anand Naidoo: But if you say nothing should be done, doesn’t this play into the hands of big energy, oil companies?
Morano:
When faced with a non-problem – as Lord Monckton once said – the best
thing to do is have the courage to do nothing. On every metric they are
failing. When current reality fails to alarm, they make a bunch of scary
predictions. That what this report is, it is a political report. Please
be careful with the word ‘fact’ that was a disturbing word you used
earlier.
[crosstalk]
Anchor Anand Naidoo: You may call it a
political report. It is fact. 300 scientists were involved in
compilation of the White House report. There were hundreds more
scientists involved in the UN report. What are your qualifications in
the climate?
[Crosstalk]
Morano: My qualifications are I
have a background in political science which is the perfect
qualification to examine global warming claims. But I don’t rely on
myself, I have actually worked with teams of scientists. I authored a
report of over 1000 international scientists that have dissented from so
called man-made global warming claims.
Anchor Anand Naidoo: But this is climate science.
Morano:
But the [Obama climate report] report you are referencing included
Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists. It was written to
cause a political agenda. And the American people are not stupid.
Anchor Anand Naidoo asks about Climate Depot funding:
Morano:
One donation from the from Natural gas industry – carbon based energy –
to the Sierra Club of $26 million exceeded my [parent company CFACT’s
total annual] budget by about five times – just one donation to Sierra
Club.
I used to work for Senator Inhofe, when he was asked ‘how
much does big energy’ give you? His answer was ‘not enough when you look
at how well financed the greens are’
The Koch brothers, are only
59th giving in American politics. That is where they come in. You have
billionaire democrats like Tom Steyer. Are you looking at into that? Are
you worried about their bias right now?
Your last guest (Michael
Dorsey) talked about minorities and African Americans the
disproportionate impact of ‘global warming.’ The biggest impact that
minorities, seniors, and people on fixed incomes face — are so-called
‘solutions’ which drive up the cost of our energy.
In the UK people have died this past winter because of commitment to green energy based on global warming fears.
President
Obama has done us a favor in a way, because no one is going to take
this report seriously. Al Gore has made global warming a partisan issue
and Obama has furthered that cause.
Anchor Anand Naidoo: Well, I am not sure that no one is going to take this seriously.
Morano: Well, the usual suspects will.
Anchor Anand Naidoo: Obviously there are various viewpoints on this. Marc Morano, thank you very much for joining us.
SOURCE The medical experts who refuse to use low-energy lightbulbs in their homesProfessors have stocked up on old-style bulbs to protect against skin cancer and blindness. So should YOU be worried?How
would you view a man who's stockpiled a lifetime supply of
old-fashioned lightbulbs because he believes low-energy bulbs could lead
to blindness?
You might well dismiss him as dotty. But the man
in question, John Marshall, is no crank. In fact, he's one of Britain's
most eminent eye experts, the professor of ophthalmology at the
University College London Institute of Ophthalmology. So concerned is he
that he has boxes stacked with old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs at
home.
'I bulk bought incandescent lightbulbs before the Government made it illegal to import them,' he says.
'I can't give you an exact number, but I have enough to see me out.'
Nor
is he alone in his concerns about modern lightbulbs. Another eminent
British professor, John Hawk, an expert in skin disease, is warning they
may cause sunburn-like damage, premature aging and even skin cancer.
He
doesn't have any low-energy bulbs in his house, explaining: 'I have
lots of old-style bulbs I bought in bulk when they were available.'
Incandescent
bulbs had been the standard form of illumination for more than a
century. But following an EU directive, the Government banned the import
of 100-watt bulbs from 2009. This was followed by a ban on 60w bulbs in
2011 and a full ban on all 'traditional' bulbs in 2012.
The EU
directive was aimed at cutting fuel and carbon emissions. The low-energy
bulbs - or compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), to give them their
technical name - are said to use 80 per cent less electricity and to
last longer.
Old-fashioned incandescent bulbs work by
electrically heating a filament inside a glass globe filled with inert
gas, so that it emits light.
Instead of a glowing filament,
low-energy bulbs have argon and mercury vapour within a spiral-shaped
tube. When the gas gets heated, it produces ultraviolet light. This
stimulates a fluorescent coating painted on the inside of the tube. As
this coating absorbs energy, it emits light.
The concern is about
some of the light rays emitted in high levels by these bulbs, says
Professor Marshall. Recent scientific evidence shows these specific rays
are particularly damaging to human eyes and skin.
Light is made
up of a spectrum of different coloured rays of light, which have
different wavelengths. As he explains: 'Light is a form of radiation.
The shorter the wavelength, the more energy it contains.
'The most damaging part of the spectrum is the short wavelength light at the indigo/violet end of blue.
'Incandescent
bulbs did not cause problems, but these low-energy lamps emit high
peaks of blue and ultraviolet light at this wavelength.'
SOURCE Rubio: Climate Change Proposals ‘Will Destroy Our Economy’Marco Rubio doesn’t think human behavior is causing the world’s climate to significantly change.
“I
do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to
our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” the Florida
Republican senator told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview that aired
Sunday.
“And I do not believe,” Rubio continued, “that the laws
that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will
destroy our economy.”
Saying that the global climate “is always
changing,” Rubio said scientists had taken “a handful of decades of
research” and called it “evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly
and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.”
Nick Loris,
the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said
Rubio was “spot on in saying climate regulations will do much more to
harm our economy than combat climate change.”
“Despite Congress’s
rejection of cap-and-trade proposals,” warned Loris, “the administration
is moving forward with the regulatory equivalent that will drive up
energy prices for American families and businesses, reducing income and
destroying jobs in the process.”
SOURCE Obama Slams 'Climate Deniers'While
delivering a speech promoting renewable energy last week, Barack Obama
said, “[W]e’ve still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but
they’re wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate.” He added,
“Hundreds of scientists, experts and businesses, not-for-profits, local
communities – all contributed over the course of four years. What they
found was unequivocally that climate change is not some far-off problem
in the future. It’s happening now. It’s causing hardship now.”
Really,
it took a plethora of scientific groups to figure out that the climate
is always in a state of change? And yet they still don’t get it. Mona
Charen recently wrote, “The Economist magazine noted [that] ‘half of all
published research cannot be replicated … and that may be optimistic.’”
Such fabrication would include the EPA itself. “The point,” Charen
concludes, “is not to ignore scientific data but to treat all studies,
models and predictions with a degree of skepticism.” Something for those
who emphatically proclaim “the science is settled” to consider.
SOURCEObama Shines on WalmartBarack
Obama visited a California Walmart to announce a new push for solar
energy. He unveiled some executive actions so minor even The New York
Times admitted Obama's "initiatives will not amount to much in terms of
energy policy or their impact on global warming." The Times continued by
saying Obama's move is preparation for a new round of EPA regulations
that will be unveiled in June.
Obama praised Walmart for its
green initiatives like installing solar panels, saying, "Those upgrades
created dozens of construction jobs, and helped this store save money on
its energy bills. And that why I'm here today, because more and more
companies like Walmart realize that wasting less energy isn't just good
for the environment, it's good for business."
If Walmart did that on its own, why do we need the vacation-taking, porn-watching EPA to draft more red tape in its spare time?
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
13 May, 2014
WEST ANTARCTIC ICE MELTGlobal
warming is all that the article below talks about by way of explanation
but bringing just a touch of extra evidence to bear alters the picture.
If warming is causing the glaciers to melt, how come the sea
ice is at a record high? Is the land warming while the sea is cooling?
If so we are looking at local effects not global ones.
And there
IS a local warming effect that could be at work. Also in West
Antarctica, an active sub-sea volcano has just been discovered. And the
discoverers note: "Numerous volcanoes exist in Marie Byrd Land, a
highland region of West Antarctica". See the article following the one
below. And volcanoes are very hot. So it is not at all improbable that
there is vulcanism elsewhere in West Antartica which is warming things
up and melting glaciers.
Vulcanism is at least as good an
explanation as global warming as an explanation of glacial changes for 2
reasons: 1). We know there is vulcanism nearby whereas we know that
there is NO global warming going on at the moment. 2). Vulcanism
explains the opposite trends in sea ice and glacial ice -- which global
warming cannot do -- JRThe huge West Antarctic ice sheet is
starting a glacially slow collapse in an unstoppable way, two new
studies show. Alarmed scientists say that means even more sea level rise
than they figured.
The worrisome outcomes won't be seen soon.
Scientists are talking hundreds of years, but over that time the melt
that has started could eventually add 4 to 12 feet to current sea
levels.
A NASA study looking at 40 years of ground, airplane and
satellite data of what researchers call "the weak underbelly of West
Antarctica" shows the melt is happening faster than scientists had
predicted, crossing a critical threshold that has begun a domino-like
process.
"It does seem to be happening quickly," said University
of Washington glaciologist Ian Joughin, lead author of one study. "We
really are witnessing the beginning stages."
It's likely because
of man-made global warming and the ozone hole which have changed the
Antarctic winds and warmed the water that eats away at the feet of the
ice, researchers said at a NASA news conference Monday.
"The
system is in sort of a chain reaction that is unstoppable," said NASA
glaciologist Eric Rignot, chief author of the NASA study in the journal
Geophysical Research Letters. "Every process in this reaction is feeding
the next one."
Curbing emissions from fossil fuels to slow
climate change will probably not halt the melting but it could slow the
speed of the problem, Rignot said.
SOURCE Newly-discovered active volcano underneath ice in West Antarctica A
newly-discovered active volcano could erupt underneath Antarctica,
melting the ice from below and compounding the effects of global
warming, according to scientists.
Researchers discovered the
volcano underneath the ice after setting up devices to measure tectonic
activity across Marie Byrd Land in the west of the continent.
Scientists
had intended to use the seismograph machines to help in their efforts
to weight the ice sheet - only to find that a volcano was in fact
forming underneath the ice.
Volcanic activity was discovered
around 30 miles from Antarctica's highest volcano, Mount Sidley, and
although an eruption would be unlikely to breach the ice - the
accompanying heat could have an effect on the landscape.
Even a
sub-glacial eruption would still be able to melt ice, creating huge
amounts of water which could flow beneath the ice and towards the sea -
hastening the flow of the overlying ice and potentially speed up the
rate of ice sheet loss.
'Numerous volcanoes exist in Marie Byrd
Land, a highland region of West Antarctica,' said Amanda Lough, of
Washington University in St Louis in the team's paper on the subject,
published in the Nature Geoscience journal.
'High heat flow through the crust in this region may influence the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.'
The
Antarctic ice sheet is one of the Earth's two polar ice caps and covers
an area of 5.4 million square miles - around 98 percent of the
continent, making it the largest single mass of ice on earth.
Although
scientists have suggested that sea ice around the continent is
increasing, land ice appears to be decreasing and the area is very
sensitive to global warming.
Seismologists had set up two
crossing lines of seismographs across Marie Byrd Land in 2010 - the
first time such instruments able to withstand the cold temperatures
year-round had been used.
They had hoped that discovering the
weight of the ice would help them to work out the history of
Antarctica's climate, but to do this needed to know how the Earth's
mantle might respond to such a large mass of ice.
Software that
might detect anything unusual beneath the ice surface was deployed, and
in January 2010 and March 2011 this recorded two bursts of seismic
activity.
When the scientists looked into what might have caused
this activity they discovered what they believe to be a new volcano,
forming around half a mile below the ice.
Ms Lough added:
'Eruptions at this site are unlikely to penetrate the 1.2 to 2-km-thick
overlying ice, but would generate large volumes of melt water that could
significantly affect ice stream flow.'
SOURCE MOST HIMALAYAN GLACIERS STABLE AND IN A STEADY STATE, NEW STUDY FINDSAbstract:
The
Himalayan mountain system to the north of the Indian land mass with
arcuate strike of NW–SE for about 2400 km holds one of the largest
concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions in its high-altitude
regions. Perennial snow and ice-melt from these frozen reservoirs is
used in catchments and alluvial plains of the three major Himalayan
river systems, i.e. the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra for irrigation,
hydropower generation, production of bio-resources and fulfilling the
domestic water demand. Also, variations in the extent of these glaciers
are understood to be a sensitive indicator of climatic variations of the
earth system and might have implications on the availability of water
resources in the river systems. Therefore, mapping and monitoring of
these fresh water resources is require d for the planning of water
resources and understanding the impact of climatic variations. Thus a
study has been carried out to find the change in the extent of Himalayan
glaciers during the last decade using IRS LISS III images of 2000/01/02
and 2010/11.
Two thousand and eighteen glaciers representing
climatically diverse terrains in the Himalaya were mapped and monitored.
It includes glaciers of Karakoram, Himachal, Zanskar, Uttarakhand,
Nepal and Sikkim regions. Among these, 1752 glaciers (86.8%) were
observed having stable fronts (no change in the snout position and area
of ablation zone), 248 (12.3%) exhibited retreat and 18 (0.9%) of them
exhibited advancement of snout. The net loss in 10,250.68 sq km area of
the 2018 glaciers put together was found to be 20.94 sq km or 0.2% (±2.5
% of 20.94 sq km). [...]
The results of the present study
indicate that most of the glaciers were in a steady state compared to
the results of other studies carried out for the period prior to 2001.
This period of monitoring almost corresponds to hiatus in global warming
in the last decade. It may happen that an interval of one decade could
be smaller than the response time of glaciers to be reflected in terms
of any significant change with 23.5 m spatial resolution of data. This
point requires further studies using high-resolution data for a longer
interval of time.
Currrent Science April 2014Will the solar doldrums of the coming decades lead to cooling? A look at the latest scientific publicationsBy Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated/edited by NoTricksZone)
Seldom
has the sun been as strong as we have seen it over the last 5 decades.
Is it just a coincidence that the largest warming of the last 500 years
occurred during this phase?
Just a few years ago the tide changed
when the sun ended its hyperactive phase. Few people had anticipated
this, and so it was a surprise for many. Solar physicist Leif Svalgaard
of California’s Stanford University expressed it as follows at the
American Geophysical Union last December:
“None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something.”
And
so science commenced to consider and think about what all this could
lead to. The latest works on the subject include Qian et al. 2014
(“Secular changes in the thermosphere and ionosphere between two quiet
Sun periods“), Zhao et al. 2014 (Modulation of galactic cosmic rays
during the unusual solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24) and McCracken
& Beer 2014 (Comparison of the extended solar minimum of 2006–2009
with the Spoerer, Maunder, and Dalton Grand Minima in solar activity in
the past).
After a number of studies it has become clearer: It’s
only the beginning! It is expected that the sun will continue becoming
quieter over the coming decades. This has pretty much become the
consensus among solar physicists. The latest studies on the subject come
from Roth & Joos 2013, who assume a decline in solar activity to
normal levels will occur during the 21st century. Salvador 2013 goes
further and anticipates a solar minimum for the coming 30-100 years.
Read the original abstract:
Using many features of Ian Wilson’s
Tidal Torque theory, a mathematical model of the sunspot cycle has been
created that reproduces changing sunspot cycle lengths and has an 85%
correlation with the sunspot numbers from 1749 to 2013. The model makes a
reasonable representation of the sunspot cycle for the past 1000 yr,
placing all the solar minimums in their right time periods. More
importantly, I believe the model can be used to forecast future solar
cycles quantitatively for 30 yr and directionally for 100 yr. The
forecast is for a solar minimum and quiet Sun for the next 30 to 100 yr.
The model is a slowly changing chaotic system with patterns that are
never repeated in exactly the same way. Inferences as to the causes of
the sunspot cycle patterns can be made by looking at the model’s terms
and relating them to aspects of the Tidal Torque theory and, possibly,
Jovian magnetic field interactions.
In the Journal of Geophysical
Research a study by Goelzer et al. appeared in December 2013 and also
foresees a decline in solar activity.
What climatic consequences
could this have? In our book “The Neglected Sun” we assume that
temperatures could be two tenths of a degree lower by 2030 as a result,
which would mean warming getting postponed far into the future. Russian
scientists foresee an even more dramatic situation, as described in
Germany’s leading national daily Bild of April 4,2013:
AND NOW THIS! Russian scientist sees next approaching ice age
It will get colder beginning in 2014 +++ Human migration cannot be ruled out”
Just a month earlier The Voice of Russia reported:
Planet on the verge of an ice age
Russian
scientists are predicting that a little ice age will begin in 2014.
They refute the claims of global warming and describe them as a
marketing trick. Global warming is indeed happening. The earth has been
continuously getting warmer since the second half of the 18th century,
the start of the Industrial Revolution. This is why the process gets
connected to an anthropogenic impact. Mankind increased CO2 emissions,
which caused a greenhouse effect. But Russian scientist Vladimir
Baschkin categorically disagrees. He claims that the climatic changes
have a cyclic character and are not at all related in any way to human
activities. Together with his colleague, Rauf Galiullin, of the
Institute for Fundamental Problems of Biology of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, he points out that the current warming is merely the
continuation of the post Little Ice Age and that, measured on a
geological scale, the occurrence of a new ice age is approaching.”
Other
scientists share this view as well, among them Professor Cliff Ollier
of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies at the University of
Western Australia:
Professor Cliff Ollier of the School of Earth
and Environmental Studies, the University of Western Australia, recently
presented a paper in Poznan, Poland, in which he described the sun as
the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases.”There is
a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Solar cycles provide a
basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect
serious cooling.”
H.S. Ahluwalia of the Department of Physics
& Astronomy of the University of New Mexico sees it in similar way,
as he describes in an article in the journal of Advances in Space
Research in February 2014. Ahluwalia expects a Dalton-type minimum and
reminds us that the last minimum of this kind back around 1810 resulted
in a cold period.
SOURCE What would climate change without politics look like?No
sooner had the White House doomsday report on climate change been
released and the media had frantically sensationalized it ("No one will
be spared" – NBC News) than the left said We Told You So and the right
said It's All Lies.
The climate change nee global warming that
everyone in America reads about, hears about and is told about is the
political version of climate change.
The proof is in the pudding
and the pudding is political. Politics cannot control the climate;
politics exists expressly to control people.
Therefore climate change MUST be caused by people; else there is nothing for the political power elites to control.
There's
no secret that the division between believers and deniers breaks down
almost exclusively along the lines of political philosophy. Why is that?
Why does virtually every political-left person in America believe in
human-caused warming while nearly every political-right person rejects
it?
Look at the solution the political left offers us as a means
of combating anthropomorphic climate change: more direct government
hands-on regulation of our lives, more laws, more control, more
bureaucratic and political power, massively more extractions of our
incomes, more loss of our individual choices and our freedoms and our
property.
It just seems like an incredible coincidence that the
"solution" to the "scientific fact" of human-caused climate change just
happens to perfectly coincide with the coercively collectivist
elitist-controlled social and cultural philosophy of the political left.
But consider what would happen if libertarians pointed out a little fact of history.
Nearly
every great human achievement, in knowledge, technology, architecture,
medicine, the arts, has been the result of free individuals working
alone or in voluntary concert in a culture of free enquiry and free
action.
If the climate change we're told about is real and
therefore needs a real solution history tells us how to go about finding
it: Unleash the imagination and creativity of every human being by
abolishing coercion, intimidation and fraud – the prime movers behind
politicized climate change – and let everyone seek solutions everywhere.
Knowledge is diffused throughout society, not monopolized by the minds
of a superior elitist few.
But then the left would reject climate change because it would not serve its predetermined agenda.
We
will never know the truth about climate change unless and until we
expunge all of the power, profit and politics from it and free the
actual science.
SOURCE Marco Rubio: I Don't Believe Humans Are Causing Climate ChangeOf
all the states that stand to suffer from climate change, Florida is
facing potentially the bleakest consequences. A New York Times report
noted last week that global warming was already having an effect on
everyday life, like leading to flooding on streets that never used to
flood.
Meanwhile, a National Climate Assessment has named Miami
as the city most vulnerable to damage from rising sea levels. While a
Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact paper warned that water in
the area could rise by as much as two feet by the year 2060.
On
Sunday, one of the state's U.S. senators, Marco Rubio (R), was pressed
about the general subject of climate change, and despite the warnings
outlined above, he argued that there was nothing lawmakers could or
should do to reverse the climate trends (whose origins he also
questioned).
"I do not believe that human activity is causing
these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are
portraying it," Rubio said, according to excerpts released by ABC "This
Week," "and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass
will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy."
"The
fact is that these events that we're talking about are impacting us,
because we built very expensive structures in Florida and other parts of
the country near areas that are prone to hurricanes. We've had
hurricanes in Florida forever. And the question is, what do we do about
the fact that we have built expensive structures, real estate and
population centers near those vulnerable areas?" he asked. "I have no
problem with taking mitigation activity."
The transcript does not
indicate what Rubio's "mitigation activity" would consist of, but his
assessment that the laws currently being proposed to address climate
change won't help, and will only hurt the economy, is at odds with his
own history as a politician.
As the leader of the Florida House
in 2008, Rubio helped pass a law directing the state Department of
Environmental Protection to develop a carbon emissions capping system.
He has since distanced himself from that vote, arguing that he never
supported cap and trade, only the idea that the state should look into
such a system. And when the system ultimately did not pass, he cheered
its failure.
But those who worked on that bill in Florida have called him an opportunist and a flip-flopper on the topic.
"For
Rubio to say that all along he knew it wouldn't really come to pass is
illogical," Jay Liles of the Florida Wildlife Federation, who lobbied
for the bill, told the Miami Herald in 2009. "He set the stage for (cap
and trade) to happen."
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
12 May, 2014
An amusing piece of dogmatism from "Climate Science Watch"It
defends the Obama "report" in even more extreme terms than the report
itself. The editor of the site appears to be Rick Piltz, who is a
journalist with no scientific qualifications -- so his naivety and the
failure to mention a single scientific fact about the climate in the
article he prints can perhaps be understood. Interesting that the actual
author of the article is anonymous. Perhaps he too is a blithering
ignoramus like Rick.
The article makes large claims about what
"the science" shows but the author has obviously not read the science
that he links to. He implies, for instance, that heat-waves have
increased recently. That is the exact opposite of what the heat-wave
reference in the report shows. I quote: "For heat waves “the highest
number of heat waves occurred in the 1930s, with the fewest in the
1960s. The 2001–10 decade was the second highest but well below the
1930s.”. I could call Mr Anonymous a liar but I think he is just a
gullible idiot. His various other assertions below could also be ripped
apart but what's the point? He's an ignoramusIn response to
the release of the latest National Climate Assessment (NCA), the Wall
Street Journal has unleashed an unfortunately typical stream of
distractions, straw men, and outright falsehoods in the form of an
editorial as well as an op-ed by Steven F. Hayward. Both pieces seek to
portray the assessment as politicized, practically suggesting that
President Obama personally composed the report off the top of his head.
But neither the President nor the administration wrote the report:
scientists did. The attempts to imply political subterfuge show how
increasingly desperate the detractors of climate science are growing,
and how unable they are to engage with the science itself.
The
report’s conclusions are in fact completely uncontroversial in the world
of science, and should be considered separately from the political
drama which some are trying to impose on them.
The report was
written by scientists. To be exact, hundreds of authors, each experts in
their respective fields, cited over 3,000 individual studies to create
the final product. The report received thousands of public comments and
review from both green groups and industry groups, and was reviewed by
the National Academy of Sciences. A spokesperson from oil giant Chevron
endorsed the report, saying, “Chevron recognizes and shares the concerns
of governments and the public about climate change.” The report is one
of a series mandated by Congress in the U.S. Global Change Research Act,
enacted during the administration of George H.W. Bush. And the report’s
conclusions echo the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific organization completely
outside the scope of the U.S. administration.
The summary
reflects the balance of the evidence. In an attempt to show that the
summary is “politicized,” the WSJ editorial quotes a line from the
underlying chapters about uncertainty over trends in tornadoes. However,
the summary states that climate change is worsening extreme weather,
because it is: heat waves, extreme precipitation, wildfires, higher
storm surges, and increased drought in currently dry areas all show
clear climate connections that are reflected in the assessment.
Tornadoes are an outlier to this body of evidence, and using them as a
primary example is transparently misleading.
The report doesn’t
prescribe political action. It shows we have a problem, and that
Americans’ livelihoods will be harmed if we don’t take action to fix it.
It’s not surprising that these conclusions would be unpopular with
Hayward, who is a board member and treasurer for the Donors Capital
Fund, described as the Koch brothers’ “dark-money ATM.” Strategically,
these groups are trying to preemptively discredit the report to
forestall any potential future action. But the report itself does not
take political sides or advocate any one policy solution over others.
Inaction on climate change poses serious economic risks. Both the IPCC
and NCA support this conclusion, contrary to the suggestions in both WSJ
pieces that climate action would derail the economy. The NCA documents
the growing evidence of climate change impacts, with clear economic
implications for coastal properties, fisheries, water resources,
transportation infrastructure, energy availability, and more. The latest
IPCC report further concluded that delaying action would be far
costlier than taking action immediately.
Climate change is
caused by humans. This statement is the definition of old news, yet both
WSJ pieces imply the opposite. From the editorial we get the tired old
maxim that we’ve had extreme weather in the distant past, so there can’t
possibly be a human contribution. Hayward claims outright that proof of
human-caused climate change “is far from definitive.” This is simply
not true. The latest IPCC report’s best estimate is that all of modern
climate change was caused by humans, and possibly more (this is possible
because natural factors may have actually reduced the observed
warming). It just doesn’t get more definitive than that, and Hayward is
unwilling to acknowledge this simple fact.
The National Climate
Assessment is a scientific document, not a political one. Its findings
are of immediate practical use to Americans in all regions and economic
sectors of the country. It provides a blueprint for actions as simple
and commonsense as raising roadways that are now routinely flooded due
to sea level rise, an occurrence that Miami knows all too well. Despite
the obvious utility of this information, some politically motivated
voices are trying to stigmatize it, and the Wall Street Journal is
handing them a megaphone. But the facts themselves are undeniable, even
if the Journal fails to show them clearly to its readers.
SOURCE Kidnap of Nigerian schoolgirls due to climate changeOr
so Nafeez Ahmed says in the Guardian (below). That there has been no
climate change for 17 years does not faze him. I am sad that I have to
spell it out but things that don't exist cannot cause anything. Nafeez
Ahmed is clearly a lamebrain. But you can get any crap into The Guardian
if it is ideologically congenialThe kidnapping of over 200
Nigerian school girls, and the massacre of as many as 300 civilians in
the town of Gamboru Ngala, by the militant al-Qaeda affiliated group,
Boko Haram, has shocked the world.
But while condemnations have
rightly been forthcoming from a whole range of senior figures from
celebrities to government officials, less attention has been paid to the
roots of the crisis.
Instability in Nigeria, however, has been
growing steadily over the last decade - and one reason is climate
change. In 2009, a UK Department for International Development (Dfid)
study warned that climate change could contribute to increasing resource
shortages in the country due to land scarcity from desertification,
water shortages, and mounting crop failures.
A more recent study
by the Congressionally-funded US Institute for Peace confirmed a "basic
causal mechanism" that "links climate change with violence in Nigeria."
The report concludes:
"...poor responses to climatic shifts
create shortages of resources such as land and water. Shortages are
followed by negative secondary impacts, such as more sickness, hunger,
and joblessness. Poor responses to these, in turn, open the door to
conflict."
SOURCE Antarctic sea ice at record levels91%
of the earth's glacial ice is in the Antarctic so by any estimate the
Antarctic is what matters. Yet the Warmists keep dribbling on about the
Arctic! Reality is not their sceneANTARCTIC sea ice has
expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq
km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.
The
National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued
into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a
significant margin’’.
“This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,’’ the centre said.
Increased
ice cover in Antarctic continues to be at odds with falling Arctic ice
levels, where the summer melt has again pushed levels well below the
average extent for 1981-2010. The centre said while the rate of
Arctic-wide retreat was rapid through the first half of April, it had
slowed.
The April Arctic minimum was 270,000sq km higher than the
record April low, which occurred in 2007. The Antarctic sea ice extent
anomalies were greatest in the eastern Weddell and along a long stretch
of coastline south of Australia and the southeastern Indian Ocean. The
centre said the increased ice extent in the Weddell Sea region appeared
to be associated with a broad area of persistent easterly winds in March
and April, and lower-than-average temperatures.
Changing wind patterns are increasingly cited to explain the expanding Antarctic sea ice.
Research
suggests that the changes in Antarctic sea ice, both where it is
increasing and where it is decreasing, are caused in part by the
strengthening of the westerly winds that flow unhindered in a circle
above the Southern Ocean.
SOURCE Eco-Fascism alive and well in Ireland
An Irish Fascist in a blue (!) tieClimate
change deniers “are lying to themselves and lying to the country and
they need to be swept aside”, Minister of State Brian Hayes has said. Mr
Hayes, who has responsibility for the Office of Public Works, was
speaking during a question-and-answer session at an OPW flood-risk
management conference in Dublin Castle.
“The scientific evidence
confirming climate change is compelling,” he told the 250 attendees,
many of whom came from communities in the south and southeast badly
affected by the past winter’s storms and flooding. “We must now accept
the reality of climate change and prepare for the likely consequences.
“Coping
with frequent flooding will, in some cases, mean working with nature,
rather than controlling it. “In some situations flood management may
include the restoration of natural flood plains and a willingness to
allow rivers to flood in a controlled manner in order to prevent greater
damage.”
Dealing with the problems generated by climate change
meant being “honest and realistic about what we can do”. Not every yard
of coast or beach could be protected; “we cannot defend every field”.
He
continued: The political system also needs to grow up. Because politics
in Ireland is very local – it’s equally very short-term. We are not
good at planning for the long-term and having to make tough choices
especially when it comes to good planning and development. If ever we
need a national response, it is on this issue.”
He criticised
some planning decision of recent years that had seen building permitted
on known flood plains, and warned that the State would not compensate,
or underwrite, the financial consequences of such decisions in the
future.
The conference heard from several senior staff at the OPW
on the Cfram programme – the Catchment-based Flood Risk Assessment and
Management project – under which the likelihood of flooding along the
country’s major rivers and 90 coastal areas is being quantified
scientifically. Based on this, maps will be published this summer
showing where flooding is likely and what action, if any, needs to be
taken.
Paul MacDonnell of Insurance Ireland said flooding
correlated not to weather but poverty and bad planning. Adequate flood
defences allowed insurers to assess risk.
Tom Turley of the IFA said the Shannon and other rivers should be dredged. “We can’t wait for reports and planning.”
SOURCE UNH and Union of Concerned Scientist Report is Wrong on the Facts14 Prominent Scientists and Academics Refute Claims with Historical DataToday
a group of prominent scientists and meteorologists called into question
the findings of a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists and
the University of New Hampshire, “Climate Change in New Hampshire:
Past, Present, and Future.”
“It is disappointing that New
Hampshire’s leading University has chosen to publish a report which is
not grounded on actual facts, but on conjecture,” stated Joe D’Aleo.
‘The authors have based all of their findings on the failed climate
models. Scientists like Dr. John Christy and Dr. Judith Curry have
written extensively on the failure of the climate models and how the
projections fall below accepted levels of scientific significance. UNH
and the UCS blindly hold to the model forecasts for their projections,
despite the models incredibly poor track record.
Citing data from
numerous national and global climate resources, the group identified
nine specific claims that actual data refutes. This includes claims
about extreme weather, changes in New Hampshire’s temperatures,
reduction in our snowfall and changes in our agricultural production.
All of these claims are contradicted by the facts.
“We cannot
understand how scientists can use these flawed models as the basis for
their projections,” continued Mr. D’Aleo. “Just as concerning is how
these scientists do not provide policy makers and elected officials a
fair and unbiased representation of what is going on with our weather
and climate. Our brief report can provide decision makers with a better
understanding of our climate through actual data instead of the
conjecture provided by UNH and the UCS.”
SOURCE. See also
here.
First British shale gas 'to fuel homes next year’Shale
gas could be fuelling British homes for the first time by late 2015,
under plans from fracking firm Cuadrilla. The company is preparing to
submit planning applications by the end of this month to frack at two
sites in Lancashire next year.
Francis Egan, Cuadrilla chief
executive, said that, if successful, it planned to connect the test
fracking sites up to the gas grid, in what would be a milestone first
for the fledgling British shale gas industry.
He also suggested homeowners hostile to fracking beneath their land should be entitled to only minimal compensation, if any.
Cuadrilla
hopes to gain planning permission for its two sites, near the villages
of Roseacre and Little Plumpton, in time to start drilling at the end of
this year. They could then be fracked next summer “in a best case
scenario”.
“After the initial flow test period, which is up to 90
days, if the flow rates look good then we would want to tie the well
into the gas transmission system and flow it for a longer period to
assess the flow rate over 18 to 24 months,” Mr Egan said.
The
first shale gas could be flowing into the grid by the end of next year.
Although quantities of gas from the exploratory sites would be
relatively small, the step would be a symbolic first for the industry in
Britain.
Just one shale gas well has been partially fracked in
the UK to date, by Cuadrilla in 2011, with work halted when it caused
earthquakes.
Cuadrilla, however, faces a number of hurdles if it
is to proceed as planned at its new sites. As well as planning
permission it must obtain numerous permits from the Environment Agency.
Industry sources fear any permission to frack may face judicial review challenge from environmental campaigners.
Cuadrilla
could also find its optimal drilling routes blocked by hostile
homeowners. The company intends to drill down vertically at each of its
sites then out horizontally west for up to two kilometres.
It has
signed agreements with farmers at each site allowing it to drill under
their land – meaning at least some drilling will be possible - but not
with all homeowners above the potential underground drilling area.
“If we were unable to get permission from householders we would have a smaller area, but we could still drill,” Mr Egan said.
Under
current trespass law Cuadrilla would have to take hostile landowners to
court to gain the right to drill beneath them, but the government is
planning give companies an automatic right to drill.
Asked
whether compensation should be paid to landowners, Mr Egan said: “I
don’t think there’s any disturbance. If someone flies two miles above
your house, do you get compensation?”
He said if compensation
were due it should be “in the region” of a test case on the issue,
involving oil drilling, in which Mohamed Fayed’s company Bocardo was
awarded £1,000 for trespass under its land, but an appeal court judge
later ruled this to be “generous” and suggested £82.50 would have been
fair.
He insisted the law change was necessary in order to
achieve widespread shale production in the UK. “If you can’t get access
at all, if there’s no amount of money people are interested in, then the
resource can’t be developed,” he said.
Taking homeowners to
court would take “years” and “no company would hang around for that”, he
said. “I don’t think companies will invest if they think it will take
years to drill each horizontal well.”
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
11 May, 2014
The Ethanol DisasterAmerica's renewables policy is bad for consumers, the environment, and the global poorLast
November, when the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) proposed
moderating years of escalating mandates by reducing the amount of
ethanol that must be mixed into gasoline, a top ethanol lobbyist seemed
perplexed. "We're all just sort of scratching our heads here today and
wondering why this administration is telling us to burn less of a
clean-burning American fuel," Bob Dineen, head of the Renewable Fuels
Association, told The New York Times.
Here are a few possible
reasons why: America's ethanol requirement destroys the environment,
damages car engines, increases gas prices, and contributes to the
starvation of the global poor. It's an unmitigated disaster on nearly
every level.
Start with the environment. After all, when the
renewable fuel standard (RFS), which since 2005 has set forth a minimum
annual volume of renewable fuels nationwide, was first set, one of the
primary arguments for mandating ethanol use was that it was a greener,
more environmentally friendly source of fuel that released fewer
greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
This turns out to be
complete hogwash. Researchers have known for years that, when the entire
production process is taken into account, most supposedly green
biofuels actually emit more greenhouse gasses than traditional fuels.
Some
proponents of the ethanol mandate have argued that the requirement was
nonetheless necessary in order to spur demand for and development of
more advanced, environmentally friendly biofuel like cellulosic ethanol,
which is converted into fuel from corn-farm leftovers. But there are
two serious problems with cellosic ethanol. The first is that cellulosic
ethanol turns out to be rather difficult to produce; despite EPA
projections that the market would produce at least 5 million gallons in
2010 and 6.6 million in 2011, the United States produced exactly zero
gallons both years—and just 20,069 gallons in 2012.
The second is
that cellulosic ethanol is also bad for the environment. At least in
the short-term, the corn-residue biofuels release about 7 percent more
greenhouse gases than traditional fuels, according to a federally
funded, peer-reviewed study that appeared in the journal Nature Climate
Change last month.
The environmental evidence against ethanol
seems to mount almost daily: Another study published last week in Nature
Geoscience found that in São Paulo, Brazil, the more ethanol that
drivers used, the more local ozone levels increased. The study is
particularly important because it relies on real-world measurements
rather than on models, many of which predicted that increased ethanol
use would cause ozone levels to decline.
To make things worse,
ethanol requirements are bad for cars and drivers. Automakers say that
gasoline blended with ethanol can damage vehicles by corroding fuel
lines and injectors. An ethanol glut caused by a misalignment of
regulatory quotas and demand has helped drive up prices at the pump. And
the product is actually worse: ethanol blends are less energy dense
than regular gasoline, which means that cars relying on it significantly
worse mileage per gallon.
American drivers have it bad, but the
global poor have it far worse. Ethanol requirements at home have helped
drive up the price of food worldwide by diverting corn production to
energy, which dramatically reducing the available calorie supply. A
25-gallon tank full of pure ethanol requires about 450 pounds of
corn—roughly the amount of calories required to feed someone for a year.
Some 40 percent of U.S. corn crops go to ethanol production, which in
effect means we're burning food for automobile fuel rather than eating
it. Studies by economists at the World Bank have found that a one
percent increase in world food prices correlates with a half-percent
decrease in calorie consumption amongst the world's poor. When world
food prices spiked between 2007 and 2008, between 20 and 40 percent of
the effect was attributable to increased global reliance on biofuels.
The effect on world hunger is simply devastating.
Ethanol
lobbyists are still pretending the renewable fuels mandate is a success,
and Senators from corn-friendly states in the Midwest are still urging
the agency not to proceed with the proposed reduction to the mandate.
But at this point, ethanol requirements have few serious defenders
except the people who profit from its production and the politicians who
rely on those people for votes and campaign contributions.
Judging
by the cut it proposed last November, even the EPA seems to be
wavering. A final regulation has yet to be submitted, but the proposal
would reduce the amount of renewable fuels the agency requires this year
from 18.15 billion gallons to 15.2 billion gallons. That's if the EPA
sticks to its original plan. The agency is under heavy pressure to
moderate its proposed cuts, or avoid them entirely.
Those cuts,
if approved, would represent a productive step forward. But they
wouldn't be enough. Congress should vote to repeal the renewable fuel
standard entirely. The federal government shouldn't be telling people to
burn less ethanol; it shouldn't be telling anyone to burn any of it at
all.
SOURCE Manmade Climate Disruption – the Hype and RealityPaul Driessen replies to some of the claims in Obama's "Report"The
White House has released its latest National Climate Assessment. An
829-page report and 127-page “summary” were quickly followed by press
releases, television appearances, interviews and photo ops with tornado
victims – all to underscore President Obama’s central claims:
Human-induced
climate change, “once considered an issue for the distant future, has
moved firmly into the present.” It is “affecting Americans right now,”
disrupting their lives. The effects of “are already being felt in every
corner of the United States.” Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in
Washington, maple syrup producers in Vermont, crop-growth cycles in
Great Plains states “are all observing climate-related changes that are
outside of recent experience.” Extreme weather events “have become more
frequent and/or intense.”
It’s pretty scary sounding. It has to
be. First, it is designed to distract us from topics that the President
and Democrats do not want to talk about: ObamaCare, the IRS scandals,
Benghazi, a host of foreign policy failures, still horrid jobless and
workforce participation rates, and an abysmal 0.1% first quarter GDP
growth rate that hearkens back to the Great Depression.
Second,
fear-inducing “climate disruption” claims are needed to justify
job-killing, economy-choking policies like the endless delays on the
Keystone XL pipeline; still more wind, solar and ethanol mandates, tax
breaks and subsidies; and regulatory compliance costs that have reached
$1.9 trillion per year – nearly one-eighth of the entire US economy.
Third,
scary hyperventilating serves to obscure important realities about
Earth’s weather and climate, and even the NCA report itself. Although
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily for decades,
contrary to White House claims, average planetary temperatures have not
budged for 17 years.
No Category 3-5 hurricane has made landfall
in the United States since 2005, the longest such period since at least
1900. Even with the recent Midwestern twisters, US tornado frequency
remains very low, and property damage and loss of life from tornadoes
have decreased over the past six decades.
Sea levels are rising
at a mere seven inches per century. Antarctic sea ice recently reached a
new record high. A new report says natural forces could account for as
much as half of Arctic warming, and warming and cooling periods have
alternated for centuries in the Arctic. Even in early May this year,
some 30% of Lake Superior was still ice-covered, which appears to be
unprecedented in historical records. And to top it off, rising CO2
levels improve forest, grassland and crop growth, greening the planet.
Press
releases on the NCA report say global temperatures, heat waves, sea
levels, storms, droughts and other events are “forecast” or “projected”
to increase over the next century. However, the palm reading was done by
computer models – which are based on the false assumption that carbon
dioxide now drives climate change, and that powerful natural forces no
longer play a role. The models have never been able to predict global
temperatures accurately, and the divergence between model predictions
and actual measured temperatures gets worse with every passing year. The
models cannot even “hindcast” temperatures over the past quarter
century, without using fudge factors and other clever tricks.
Moreover,
much of the White House and media spin contradicts what the NCA report
actually says. For example, it concludes that “there has been no
universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental
U.S. since 1900.” Other trends in severe storms, it states, “are
uncertain.”
Climate change, Johnstown Floods, Dust Bowls, extreme
weather events and forest fires have been part of Earth and human
history forever – and no amount of White House spin can alter that fact.
To suggest that any changes in weather or climate – or any temporary
increases in extreme weather events – are due to humans is patently
absurd. To ignore positive trends and the 17-year absence of warming is
abominable.
Fourth, sticking to the “manmade climate disaster”
script is essential to protect the turf, reputations, funding and power
of climate alarmists and government bureaucrats. The federal government
doles out some $2.6 billion annually in grants for climate research –
but only for work that reflects White House perspectives. Billions more
support subsidies and loans for renewable energy programs that represent
major revenue streams for companies large and small, and part of that
money ends up in campaign war chests for (mostly Democrat) legislators
who support the climate regulatory-industrial complex.
None of
them is likely to admit any doubts, alter any claims or policies, or
reduce their increasingly vitriolic attacks on skeptics of “dangerous
manmade global warming.” They do not want to risk being exposed as false
prophets and charlatans, or worse.
Last, and most important,
climate disruption claims drive a regulatory agenda that few Americans
support. Presidential candidate Obama said his goal was “fundamentally
transforming” the United States and ensuring that electricity rates
“necessarily skyrocket.” On climate change, President Obama has made it
clear that he “can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to
do its job. Where they won’t act, I will.” His Environmental Protection
Agency, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy and other
officials have steadfastly implemented his anti-hydrocarbon policies.
Chief
Obama science advisor John Holdren famously said: “A massive campaign
must be launched to … de-develop the UnitedStates … bringing our
economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the
realities of ecology and the global resource situation.… [Economists]
must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much
more equitable distribution of wealth.”
This agenda translates
into greater government control over energy production and use, job
creation and economic growth, and people’s lives, livelihoods, living
standards, liberties, health and welfare. It means fewer opportunities
and lower standards of living for poor and middle class working
Americans. It means greater power and control for politicians,
bureaucrats, activists and judges – but with little or no accountability
for mistakes made, damage done or penalties exacted on innocent people.
A
strong economy, modern technologies, and abundant, reliable, affordable
energy are absolutely essential if we are to adapt to future climate
changes, whatever their cause – and survive the heat waves, cold
winters, floods, droughts and vicious weather events that will most
certainly continue coming.
The Obama agenda will reduce our
capacity to adapt, survive and thrive. It will leave more millions
jobless, and reduce the ability of families to heat and cool their homes
properly, assure nutritious meals, pay their rent or mortgage, and
pursue their American dreams.
America’s minority and blue collar
families will suffer – while Washington, DC power brokers and lobbyists
will continue to enjoy a standard of living, housing boom and luxury
cars unknown in the nation’s heartland. Think Hunger Games or the
Politburo and nomenklatura of Soviet Russia.
Worst, it will all
be for nothing, even if carbon dioxide does exert a stronger influence
on Earth’s climate than actual evidence suggests. While the United
States slashes its hydrocarbon use, job creation, economic growth and
international competitiveness, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia – and
Spain, Germany, France and Great Britain – will all continue increasing
their coal use … and CO2 emissions.
President Obama and White
House advisor John Podesta are convinced that Congress and the American
people have no power or ability to derail the Administration’s
determination to unilaterally enact costly policies to combat “dangerous
manmade climate disruption” – and that the courts will do nothing to
curb their use of executive orders and regulatory fiats.
If they
are right, we are in for some very rough times – and it becomes even
more critical that voters eject Harry Reid and his Senate majority, to
restore some semblance of checks and balances.
SOURCERepeal the Gas Tax…and Get Rid of the Department of TransportationDaniel J. Mitchell
More
than three years ago, I wrote that the Department of Transportation
should be dismantled for the simple reason that we’ll get better roads
at lower cost with the federalist approach of returning responsibility
to state and local governments.
I echoed those sentiments in this CNBC interview.
Since
there’s only an opportunity to exchange soundbites in these interviews,
let me elaborate on some of the reasons why transportation should be a
state and local responsibility.
1. Washington involvement is a
recipe for pork and corruption. Lawmakers in Congress – including
Republicans – get on the Transportation Committees precisely because
they can buy votes and raise campaign cash by diverting taxpayer money
to friends and cronies.
2. Washington involvement in
transportation is just the tip of the iceberg. As I said in the
interview, the federal budget is mostly a scam where endless streams of
money are shifted back and forth in leaky buckets. This scam is great
for insiders and bad news for taxpayers.
3. Washington
involvement necessarily means another layer of costly bureaucracy. And
this is not a trivial issues since the Department of Transportation is
infamous for overpaid bureaucrats.
4. Washington involvement
gives state and local politicians an excuse to duck responsibility for
low-quality infrastructure. Why make adult decisions, after all, when
you can shift the blame to DC for not providing enough handouts.
While
I think I made some decent points in the interview, I should have
addressed the assertion that our infrastructure is falling apart. My
colleague at the Cato Institute, Chris Edwards, effectively dealt with
this scare tactic in hisrecent Congressional testimony.
I also should have pointed out that a big chunk of the gas tax is diverted to boondoggle mass transit projects.
Last
but not least, I’m disappointed that I failed to connect some very
important dots. Gov. Rendell and the CNBC host both fretted that the
current system isn’t producing a desirable outcome, but they’re the ones
advocating for a continuation of the status quo! Heck, they want even
more of the system that they admit doesn’t work.
Sigh.
SOURCEHow much porn does it take to get fired at EPA? As
a U.S. House committee looked at allegations that a special homeland
security unit within the Environmental Protection Agency was blocking
investigations by the EPA's Inspector General, lawmakers also veered
into other internal probes at that agency, demanding to know why it is
so difficult to get rid of federal workers involved in on-the-job
misconduct.
"When we have an employee who is looking at over 600
porn sites in a four day period - and it's there in black and white -
fire them!" said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT).
At the hearing,
investigators detailed for lawmakers how a six figure EPA employee had
admitted watching large amounts of porn on the job; he remains on the
payroll, but his case has been referred to the Justice Department for
possible prosecution.
"So this guy is making $125,000, spending
two to six hours a day looking at porno," said Rep. John Mica (R-FL),
who was told by officials that the worker had been given performance
awards - despite one time spending four straight hours on a website
called, "Sadism is Beautiful."
"How much pornography would it take for an EPA employee to lose their job?" asked a frustrated Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).
There
was no concrete response from officials, given the lengthy process that
it takes for the federal government to "separate" an employee from the
civil service.
One note about this case - when an agent from the
IG's office went to interview the employee in question about his porn
habit - that agent found the man sitting at his desk - watching porn.
"The
OIG’s investigation determined that the employee downloaded and viewed
more than 7,000 pornographic files during duty hours," the IG's office
reported.
Other cases discussed before the House Oversight
Committee included an EPA employee who had been tele-working from home
for 20 years - but not really producing anything on a regular basis -
seemingly with the backing of the boss.
"It is estimated that the
manager’s approval of fraudulent time-and-attendance records cost the
government more than $500,000," said Allan Williams of the EPA Inspector
General's office.
Williams detailed for lawmakers how the
manager allowed the employee to not show up at work, not produce any
work of value for the agency, and yet still give that employee
"exemplary performance appraisals that resulted in a cash award to the
employee."
"Just unbelievable," said a disgusted Rep. Mica.
SOURCEAustralia: Queensland government approves mega coal mine in Galilee BasinOne in the eye for GreeniesThe
Queensland government has signed off on what could be the biggest coal
mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world.
Deputy
Premier Jeff Seeney told parliament on Thursday the proposed $16.5
billion Indian-owned Adani Carmichael coal mine project in the Galilee
Basin had been approved by the state's coordinator-general.
The mine is still to receive federal approval.
But
Mr Seeney said he believed it would serve a "vital role" in opening the
Galilee basin, which is also home to Clive Palmer's proposed coal mine
and the Hancock-GVK Alpha mine project.
"The [Carmichael] project has the potential to create 2500 construction and 3900 operational jobs," he said.
"Jobs that would be significant to the future economic prosperity of that region and to all of Queensland.
"It
also includes a 189-kilometre rail line, water supply infrastructure,
coal handling and processing plant and off-site infrastructure including
workers' accommodation village and airport."
At full export capacity, the mine is expected to produce 60 million tonnes of thermal coal per annum for export.
The coordinator-general set down 190 conditions in a 600-page report.
Mr
Seeney said Adani would be required to reach "make-good agreements with
all affected landholders including the identification and provision of
alternative water supplies".
“Adani will also be required to
contribute water monitoring data and funding to a Galilee region water
resource model," Mr Seeney.
The Queensland Coordinator-General’s report has been sent to the Commonwealth environment minister for a decision.
SOURCEA Greenie pesticide ban bites the dust in one Australian StateTASMANIA'S
new Liberal government is scrapping a ban on the controversial
pesticide 1080. The former Labor-Green government had imposed a ban due
to begin next year.
Primary industries minister Jeremy Rockliff said the chemical would not be phased out until a viable alternative was available.
"One
of the many challenges facing our farmers is the significant pasture
and crop losses caused by some of our abundant wildlife - particularly
wallabies and possums," Mr Rockliff said in a statement.
Farmers have applauded the move, saying they lose on average a quarter of their income to browsing animals.
"Animal
rights campaigners have suggested fencing is the solution (but) it is
enormously expensive and, in many areas, physically impractical,"
Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association boss Jan Davis said.
Green
groups, though, reacted angrily to the announcement, saying it went
against community sentiment. "Resorting to 1080 poison is the cheapest,
nastiest and cruellest way to prevent browsing by native animals," state
Greens leader Kim Booth said.
The poison, also known as sodium fluoroacetate, is widely used to bait foxes in Australia.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
9 May, 2014
Forgive me while I laughIt would be absurd for me to try to read the whole 800 pages of Obama's recent climate
"Report"
but I thought I should at least dip into it. I went to the section
"Recent U.S. Temperature Trends" and clicked the "supporting evidence"
gadget. I found that the evidence was in the form of four workshops. I
picked the workshop on heat waves with T.C. Peterson as lead author. The
"workshop" was in the form of
an academic journal article
(“Monitoring and Understanding Changes in Heat Waves, Cold Waves,
Floods and Droughts in the United States- State of Knowledge”) published
by the American Meteorological Society in June 2013. So I went to the
article, didn't I? Academic articles have no terrors for me. I have
written plenty of them.
The article was a ball of fun. It started
out admitting that the the data was so diverse that it was difficult to
draw conclusions from it. So they had the workshop so that participants
could discuss the data and come to a consensus. In other words the
conclusions were an opinion about the data, not the data itself.
And under the heading HEAT WAVES AND COLD WAVES (Subsection "Observed changes"), the fun really began. We read for instance:
"For
heat waves “the highest number of heat waves occurred in the 1930s,
with the fewest in the 1960s. The 2001–10 decade was the second highest
but well below the 1930s.”
Come again??? That is supposed to
prove global warming? I could make a better case for it proving global
cooling. You should read the whole thing. It's a riot (unintentionally).
They conclude what they want to conclude and evidence be damned.
I
am pleased, however, that the scientists were rather frank. The
"Report" as a whole however is a heap of corruption. It's authors did
not at all reflect the science in their own report -- JR
Harry Reid: The Koch Brothers Are Causing Climate ChangeHarry
is driven mad by the people he refers to as the "Coke brothers". He has
really lost his marbles over them. But I can see his dilemma about the
pronunciation. The German guttural (ch) is too hard and a
straightforward prounciation could sound rude. He could refer to them as
the "Cook" brothers. "Koch" is German for cookThe Senate
Majority Leader has a penchant for bashing the Koch Brothers for all
sorts of things. But this might take the cake. Sen. Reid openly declared
today on the Senate floor that two “multizillionaires” named David and
Charles Koch are not a cause of climate change, mind you, but rather
"one of the main causes." Let that sink in.
This is a point he
made explicitly, delivering it with both conviction and certainty. But
while trolling the Koch brothers (who most Americans have never heard
of, by the way) might be his latest obsession, at what point do his
crazy rants reach the point of diminishing returns?
For example,
Forbes contributor and Townhall columnist Ralph Benko is already calling
on Republicans to censure him. That is, if and when they wield enough
political power to bring that tantalizing idea to fruition:
Sen.
Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) trafficked in the culture of allegations of the
“un-American.” He was censured by the United Senate and died disgraced.
Now
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is engaging in misconduct
comparably shameful: “redbaiting” those with red state values. He
deserves censure for such misconduct. If the Democrats will not provide
it, if the Republicans regain the majority in the U.S. Senate the
censuring of Harry Reid deserves to be the first order of business next
year.
Leader Reid has cast himself as the point man in a campaign
by the left to vilify Charles and David Koch. As recently inventoried
by The Washington Free Beacon, and as noted by The Washington Post, Reid
has vilified the Koch name, at last count, 134 times.
This is not a random act by Reid.
Of
course it isn’t. The politics of destruction and vilification are very
much in play here -- and will continue to be for some time. Reid, too,
more than anyone else in his caucus, is promoting Kochsteria like it’s
his job. But again, when does a “campaign strategy” become so farcical
and so ridiculous that its chief spokesman loses all credibility?
Apparently we haven’t reached that point…yet. But how far off can we
really be?
Accusing two private citizens of effectively causing climate change is insane. Surely even Senate Democrats must realize this:
SOURCE Yes It’s Real: GlobalChange.GovCS
Lewis warned us about men without chests. That is technocrats who use
what Winston Churchill called “the lights of perverted science” to play
God without ethics, without morality, without responsibility.
And now they have a website. It's called globalchange.gov.
And
they have a legal mandate too, not just to investigate so-called
climate change, but to investigate “global change” in general.
“The
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP,)” says the website, “was
established by Presidential Initiative in 1989 and mandated by Congress
in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to ‘assist the Nation
and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to
human-induced and natural processes of global change.’”
Wow.
And
whatever else that open-ended mission statement means, one thing you
can be sure of is that the USGCRP will get shriller, more strident and
more partisan as the science behind so-called “global change” becomes
more damning to their hypothesis.
“Researchers have issued the
‘loudest and clearest alarm bell to date,’” reports Bloomberg,
“signaling the need for urgent actions to combat climate change in the
U.S., the president's science adviser said May 6. The third and most
comprehensive installment of the National Climate Assessment shows that
evidence of human-induced climate change is growing stronger as its
impacts are increasingly felt across the country.”
Most comprehensive? Yes, and so was Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But then both are only works of fiction.
Still,
mainstream media is using globalchange.gov's latest position paper as
more thin scientific evidence-- and I use the term sarcastically-- that
global warming is already causing great harm to the United States.
The rest of us, they believe, are just too stupid to know it without a website.
The
report catalogs a litany of hypothesis, fantasy, wishful thinking and
poor science to bolster claims about so-called climate change that have
already been proven scientifically incorrect.
For example, the
report states that since 1980 hurricanes have become more prevalent,
more intense, and probably--it's implied--much more racist.
In fact the scientific evidence and history show just the opposite.
While
the so-called climate change models have predicted a vast number of
killer hurricanes, and the hurricane predictors year after year have
predicted a vast number of killer hurricanes, the predictions have been
so far off base that hurricane predictions are even less reliable than
NFL draft projections.
This most popularized predicted effect of
global warming from the models given us by the climate change clowns--
increased hurricane and tropical storm activity-- was shown conclusively
to be without merit in 2011 by a paper produced by the science and
operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, Dr. Chris Landsea.
In
a workpublished in late November of 2011 and carefully labeled an
“opinion” piece on the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration- which is quick to distance itself from the conclusions
reached by Landsea-- concludes that “the overall impact of global
warming on hurricanes is currently negligible and likely to remain quite
tiny even a century from now.”
Lansea is a supporter of the theory of man-caused global warming, but says the models for hurricanes are wrong.
In
the rarefied atmosphere of climate politics this deviation was enough
to get him labeled as a "climate skeptic," perhaps enough to get him
excommunicated as a "climate denier." Landsea resigned from the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005 because he felt it had
become politicized and was ignoring the science.
Yet somehow he remains the leading hurricane expert in the US, despite his "shoddy" science.
Landsea
attacked three specific datasets that are often used by global warming
alarmists to show that the warming of the earth will have terrible
consequences for human-kind: 1) the frequency of storms; 2) the
intensity of storms and; 3) the economic damage of storms.
In
each data subset he showed that apparent increases in storm activity or
effect can be ascribed to advances in technology or development that
skew the data rather than a real increased frequency or effect of
storms.
And that's exactly what you'd expect from CS Lewis's “Men without Chests”-- that is men without hearts.
You'd
expect them to skew the data by using technology and development, and
then shinning the light of perverted science upon it, with an assist by
perverted media, to institute global change, whatever that ‘change’
happens to entail.
But you don’t need to worry about that, they say. They'll tell you what you need to know and when you need to know it,
Because now they have a website, just like they do for all of their other programs.
They still, however, don't have hearts.
SOURCE This is why wind energy can neither have nor produce nice things The
wind lobby has yet to give up on their quest to renew the egregiously
generous production tax credit that essentially keeps the wind industry
afloat by providing 2.3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy output
during the first ten years of a given project’s operation; that
lucrative subsidy expired on January 1st of this year, but it wouldn’t
be the first time — or the second, or the third – that Congress has
belatedly bestowed a retroactive extension. Most recently, the wind
industry was awarded a one-year extension of the credit at the start of
2013, with the new and convenient condition that any project that simply
began construction in 2013 would receive the full benefits of the
credit (whereas in the past, installations had to be completed) — and
for a demonstration of just how precious that credit really is, here are
a couple of handy visuals via The Atlantic:
According to the
AWEA, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group, wind turbine installations
hit a record 8,385 megawatts in the fourth quarter of 2012 only to crash
in the first quarter of 2013 to 1.6 megawatts—and, yes, the decimal
place is in the right place. In other words, thousands of wind turbines
went online at the end of 2012 to power about 2.1 million American
homes. Three months later, about one more turbine had been installed,
generating just enough juice to supply about 405 homes.
The
downdraft continued in the first quarter of this year, according to the
AWEA, when 133 turbines producing 433 megawatts went online. …
Installations
skyrocketed in 2012 before dropping off like crazy when the credit
expired, and then when the credit was renewed with the new and more
flexible condition that projects only needed to have begun construction
before it expired at the end of 2013, a bunch of projects got in just
under the wire. Could the wind industry’s utter dependence on government
taxpayer “help” (which actually discourages the price efficiency that
could make wind viable in the long run) be any more apparent?
But
rather than heeding my umpteenth rant on the mind-boggling perversity
of supporting a technology that so clearly cannot survive in the free
market based on its own competitive merits, let’s mix it up and look to —
oh, I don’t know — how about billionaire Warren Buffet, noted supporter
of hiking taxes on the wealthy, in Omaha this past weekend? Via the
editors of the WSJ:
So it was fascinating to hear Mr. Buffett
explain that his real tax rule is to pay as little as possible, both
personally and at the corporate level. “I will not pay a dime more of
individual taxes than I owe, and I won’t pay a dime more of corporate
taxes than we owe. And that’s very simple,” Mr. Buffett told Fortune
magazine in an interview last week.
The billionaire was even more
explicit about his goal of reducing his company’s tax payments. “I will
do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s
tax rate,” he said. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if
we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them.
They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Think about that
one. Mr. Buffett says it makes no economic sense to build wind farms
without a tax credit, which he gladly uses to reduce his company’s tax
payments to the Treasury. So political favors for the wind industry
induce a leading U.S. company to misallocate its scarce investment
dollars for an uneconomic purpose. Berkshire and its billionaire
shareholder get a tax break and the feds get less revenue, which must be
made up by raising tax rates on millions of other Americans who are
much less well-heeled than Mr. Buffett.
Just take a moment and
let that really wash over you, and then take a gander at the still other
subsidy-goodies the Obama administration is doling out to its
politically preferred pet projects. …Just today. Via The Hill:
"The
Department of Energy (DOE) Wednesday said it will give up to $47
million each to three offshore wind power projects over the next four
years to pioneer “innovative” technology.
The planned projects
are off the costs of New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia. DOE said the money
will help speed the deployment of efficient wind power technologies as
part of the government’s effort to expand the use of wind power."
SOURCE Senate takes up energy bill amid Keystone squabbleThe
Senate moved closer to a showdown over the proposed Keystone XL oil
pipeline Tuesday, as a related energy bill cleared an early procedural
hurdle.
Senators voted 79-20 to take up an energy efficiency bill
that Keystone supporters want to amend with language authorizing
immediate construction of the proposed pipeline from Canada to the
United States. Despite the vote, the two parties were still arguing over
whether to allow amendments to the measure, including one by Keystone
supporters that would end years of delay by the Obama administration on
whether to approve the pipeline.
Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., denied a Republican request for an amendment on the
pipeline, but said he was open to a stand-alone vote on a pipeline bill
later.
Reid accused Republicans of trying to block the energy
bill, which has bipartisan support. Republicans said Reid was backing
away from a promise to allow a vote on Keystone.
"Senate
Republicans keep changing their requests," Reid said, noting that some
Republicans first asked for a "sense of the Senate" resolution on
Keystone and then later called for a binding vote.
"It seems like
this is nothing but a game of diversion and obstruction to many Senate
Republicans," Reid said on the Senate floor. "But it's not a game. Every
time a group of Republicans feigns interest in bipartisanship, only to
scramble away at the last moment, it is part of a calculated political
scheme."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called
Reid's claim "laughable," and said all that Senate Republicans seek is a
full and open debate on energy policy.
"The American people have
waited seven long years for a serious energy debate in the Democrat-run
Senate," McConnell said, noting that the Senate has not approved a
major energy bill since 2007.
In addition to Keystone, Republican
senators have prepared a host of amendments to the energy bill,
including one that would block the Environmental Protection Agency from
imposing rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power
plants. Lawmakers from both parties also support a measure to speed
approval of terminals to export liquefied natural gas.
"The
American people deserve a real debate on how we can best tap our own
extraordinary natural resources to achieve energy independence at home
and how we can help our allies overseas through increased exports of
American energy. But we can't move forward if the Democrats who run the
Senate keep trying to protect the president at the expense of serving
their constituents," McConnell said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.,
one of the bill's co-sponsors, said the measure was an affordable
approach to boost energy efficiency, which she said is the best way to
save money on energy use.
"Energy efficiency is no longer about
putting on a sweater and lowering the thermostat. It's about the
technologies that can reduce energy use," she said.
Sen. Rob
Portman, R-Ohio, said the bill does not include mandates but merely
encourages homes and businesses to increase efficiency.
"The least expensive form of energy is the energy we don't end up having to use," he said.
SOURCE Spare me TV's climate change expertsClive James is a skeptic as well as a wit and an entertainer. I like the way he pisses on false prophet Tim FlanneryBecause
of its many beautiful images of my homeland, I couldn’t help watching
the repeat of Australia with Simon Reeve (BBC Two). I thought I was
being idle, but suddenly a big idea occurred to me.... an idea relevant
to countless BBC programmes about the environment over the course of the
past decade and a half. Let me try to evoke the moment in which the
idea occurred. Simon was talking to a man in charge of a South
Australian wine factory which covered thousands of acres with its
enormous shining silver vats and bins. The factory produces a zillion
bottles of wine per year, and uses, in the process, a gazillion gallons
of water.
The water is drawn from the Murray-Darling river
system. If it occurred to you to wonder what would happen to the output
of wine if the input of water were to be restricted, it occurred to
Reeve too. So did he ask the professionally knowledgeable bloke in
charge of the wine whether he anticipated any restrictions in the water
supply?
No, he asked a climate change expert. In Australia,
climate change experts are not hard to find. Indeed it is very hard to
keep them out of your car: unless you wind the window all the way up,
one of them will climb in. This climate change expert was called Tim.
Armed with his ability to read the future, Tim predicted that any dry
area of the Murray-Darling system was “an indication of what’s coming”,
and that “what Australia is experiencing here now” would eventually be
experienced by “hundreds of millions of people around the world”.
Simon
nodded his moustache sagely but didn’t once ask whether the flourishing
wine industry was not part of what Australia is experiencing here now.
Nor did he ask whether, in view of climate change, the wine industry was
doomed. It was then that the big idea hit me. Why hadn’t he asked the
wine grower? It would have been easy to frame the question, perhaps
along the lines of: “In view of what is happening to the planet, have
you any plans for selling all this colossal acreage of silver metal for
scrap?”
It would have been worth asking the wine grower because
his whole way of life depends on what he thinks about the water supply,
whereas, with Tim, nothing depends on what he thinks about the water
supply except his next research grant and his prospects of getting on
screen with the visiting TV presenter so that they can shoot off their
mouths together. And at that point I started thinking about all those
BBC environment and nature programmes from the immediate past that might
just turn out, in retrospect, to have been souping up their science
with science fiction.
But you can see the attraction.
Sensationalism makes for a splash of danger, and sometimes, when the
danger isn’t there, you miss it. In a re-run of the classic little
wildlife programme of 2006 Rabbits of Skomer (BBC Four) you could see
the danger, or lack of danger, that some animal shows faced before the
global warming theme got going.
On the island of Skomer the
rabbits, like the puffins, face no mammal predators. In the air, the odd
short-eared owl or greater black-backed gull lurks hungrily, but on the
whole the rabbits have got it made. They stick their heads up out of
their holes and sniff, but all they find is a camera crew looking at
them. There is not a single whiff of oncoming planetary doom. If the
show were being made now, there would have to be a climate change expert
called Tim to say that the whole island will soon be a hundred feet
under water with sharks cruising through waves dotted with the corpses
of rabbits and puffin chicks.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps the Beeb,
in view of the current shifting of the emphasis in climate science from
mitigation to adaptation, is now, at last, dialling down the alarmism.
Perhaps they put the Skomer rabbits back on air as a portent of the
nature programmes they will make next, with the future restored to its
erstwhile position as the long stretch of time about which not even
science can know everything.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
8 May, 2014
More on yesterday's climate "report"The
Obama administration today released its third National Climate
Assessment (NCA) predicting a series of calamities and urging action on
the president’s climate agenda.
“This laughably misleading report
is the predictable result when hard-core environmental activists are
chosen to write up a climate assessment for, and subject to the approval
and revisions of, the Obama administration. It is like the punch line
to a bad joke: ‘How many environmental activists does it take to put
together an alarmist global warming report?’
“Leading authors of
this report include staffers for activist groups like the Union of
Concerned Scientists, Planet Forward, The Nature Conservancy, and Second
Nature. Few objective climate experts will take this report seriously.
Even those scientists who are not overtly affiliated with environmental
activist groups were almost uniformly on the record as global warming
alarmists before being chosen to write this report. The only real
surprise in the report is it didn’t take the opportunity to trumpet the
Union of Concerned Scientists’ call for U.S. unilateral nuclear
disarmament.
“It would take a whole squadron of environmental
activists years to come up with the whoppers told in this report. The
report falsely asserts that global warming is causing more extreme
weather events, more droughts, more record high temperatures, more
wildfires, warmer winters, etc., when each and every one of these false
assertions is contradicted by objective, verifiable evidence. It reads
like a press release from The Nature Conservancy and the Union of
Concerned Scientists – probably because it essentially is a press
release from The Nature Conservancy and the Union of Concerned
Scientists.”
SOURCENature
CAN cope with climate change: Unusual behaviour of plants and animals
suggests we've underestimated their ability to adapt, claim studiesResponses to local warming episodes are instructiveAs
the planet warms, animals and plants are learning to adapt to their new
environment by either migrating or evolving, new research has revealed.
Many
scientists believe the rate of climate change is too rapid for various
species to keep up. But two new studies have offered some hope that
experts may have underestimated their abilities.
The first study
reveals how a species of butterfly named the quino checkerspot has
defied expectations of extinction by moving to cooler climes and
changing its diet.
The quino checkerspot, found in Mexico and
California, moved to higher altitudes to avoid extinction, according to
research presented at the Butterfly Conservation's symposium in
Southampton.
Its rapid adaption offers some hope to scientists
that other insects could be able to change their environment and survive
a warmer climate.
Separate research led by Stanford University
scientist Steve Palumbi found how some corals can quickly switch on or
off certain genes in order to survive in warmer-than-average tidal
waters.
The research team discovered corals can adjust their
internal functions to tolerate hot water 50 times faster than they would
adapt through evolutionary change alone.
‘The temperature of
coral reefs is variable, so it stands to reason that corals should have
some capacity to respond to different heat levels,’ Professor Palumbi
said.
‘These results tell us that both nature and nurture play a role in deciding how heat-tolerant a coral colony is.
‘Nurture,
the effect of environment, can change heat tolerance much more quickly -
within the lifetime of one coral rather than over many generations.’
It’s
not just butterflies and corals that are adapting. From chipmunks to
Mediterranean spiders, scientists are increasingly tracking how animals
are evolving to cope with the effects of hotter temperatures.
‘Most
of the models that ecologists are putting out are assuming that there's
no adaptive capacity. And that's silly,’ Ary Hoffmann, a geneticist at
the University of Melbourne told National Geographic. ‘Organisms are not
static.’
Writing for Pacific Standard, systems biologist Michael
White said scientists tracking the movements of animals have repeatedly
found that plants and animals have altered their behaviour in response
to earlier springs and milder temperatures.
Dr White cited the
work of a team of scientists at the University of California-Berkeley as
an example of how creatures are adapting to warmer temperatures.
The
scientists studied alpine chipmunks living in Yosemite National Park
and found that over 100 years the animals have moved to higher altitudes
as the average temperature of the park has risen by 3°C.
DNA evidence also suggests the European wasp spider is evolving and have colonised new areas as they seek cooler climates.
The
spiders primarily lived in Mediterranean regions until the 1930s but
have gradually crept northwards to colonise Scandinavia, Poland and the
Baltic region.
Interestingly while scientists thought they were
trying to find new places to live that were the same temperature as the
Mediterranean before temperatures have risen, the spiders have actually
moved into regions that are cooler than their original homes.
The
reason for their behaviour is they have been mating with spiders that
like the cold, to create an invading species that can survive freezing
temperatures that would kill its Mediterranean relatives, researchers
from Germany's Max Plank Institute told Dr White.
A 2011 review
of data on hundreds of moving species found a average shift to higher
altitudes of 36 feet (11 metres) per decade and a average shift to
higher latitudes of about 10.5 miles (17 km) per decade.
‘I think
we should feel impressed by the impact that we have, that we can change
the course of evolution around us by the way we change the
environment,’ Menno Schilthuizen, from Naturalis Biodiversity Center in
Leiden, Netherlands told National Geographic.
‘Our impact is much further and deeper than we tend to think.’
SOURCEDAVID BELLAMY OBE -- GLOBAL WARMING VICTIMIt's
funny that those who stress the scientific credentials of the
anthropogenic global warming theory (AGWT) use very unscientific and
indeed political ways and means to silence all contradictory -- or even
skeptical -- views about it.
For example, AGWT activists,
scientists and even some MPs have written to the BBC begging it not to
give “airtime” to AGWT skeptics or critics. This is a kind of
(non)scientific version of the British Leftists' “no platform” policy;
which is similarly used to silence literally all the people who dare to
have nonconformist views about various and many political subjects.
Indeed individuals in America have even argued that AGWT skeptics should be prosecuted or criminalized -- quite literally!
Will
there now be a Gulag built for those who dare to question the complete
and total truth of the AGWT? Are all AGW skeptics, by definition,
“flat-earthers”, “knuckle-draggers” or the paid agents of Big Business?
So
it's clear that these AGW totalitarians don't want to give any “oxygen
of publicity” -- to use Margaret Thatcher's phrase about terrorists - to
skeptics or critics. Yet we're not talking about terrorists here! We're
talking, in many cases, about scientists and those who simply question
many -- or simply some -- aspects of what is supposed to be a scientific
theory. Aren't questioning and criticism part of the very essence of
science? And doesn't all this AGW evangelism show that the theory may in
fact be more political than scientific after all?
David Bellamy OBE (Order of the British Empire) himself called the AGWT “poppycock”.
Mr.
Bellamy was once a very well-known British TV presenter. He's also a
scientist (a botanist). For over two decades, he was almost the face
(after Sir David Attenborough) of science -- or at least of natural
history -- on British television. He made and presented countless TV
programs, wrote over 45 books and even had a top 40 hit called
'Brontosaurus, Will You Wait For Me?' He also set up many charities and,
at one point in time, was the patron of more than 400 of them.
However, it was his character -- often parodied by comedians -- which proved to be the most endearing to British people,
David Bellamy first rejected the AGWT in 2004. What happened then? According to David Bellamy himself, this:
“From
that moment, I really wasn’t welcome at the BBC. They froze me out,
because I don’t believe in global warming. My career dried up. I was
thrown out of my own conservation groups and I got spat at in London.”
Now
it's not clear from that whether or not the BBC “froze out” Bellamy
because it feared he would articulate his skepticism about the AGWT on
air; or that it simply froze him out because of what he believed.
Things got worse for Mr. Bellamy.
He
was then dropped, in 2005, by The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. (He
was the president of that organization at the time.) The RSWT said: “We
are not happy with his line of climate change.”
In response, Bellamy said:
“I worked with the Wildlife Trusts for 52 years. And when they dropped me, they didn’t even tell me.”
Later,
in October 2006, the New Zealand Herald reported that Bellamy had
joined the AGWT-skeptic New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. Following
that, in May 2007, Bellamy and Jack Barrett wrote a paper -- in the
Civil Engineering journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers --
called 'Climate stability: an inconvenient proof'.
(One claim in
that article is that the predicted doubling of carbon dioxide levels
from natural, pre-industrial levels was not only unlikely but would also
amount to less than 1 degree C of global warming.)
As for Bellamy's evidence against the AGWT, he once said the following:
“For
the last 16 years, temperatures have been going down and the carbon
dioxide has been going up and the crops have got greener and grow
quicker. We’ve done plenty to smash up the planet, but there’s been no
global warming caused by man.”
Now that evidence alone is of
course far from conclusive. And I don't think that Bellamy himself, as a
scientist, would see it as being conclusive. (No single “bit” -- or
bits -- of evidence are ever conclusive in science.) In other words,
those simple facts don't disprove the AGWT. But that's primarily because
proof and disproof are not notions that are used in science in the
first place: they are exclusively, strictly speaking, mathematical and
logical notions.
In addition, Bellamy's facts (which may well be
facts) are simply not enough to even discredit -- never mind disprove
-- the AGWT. However, he wouldn't claim, I hope, that they do that.
Nonetheless, the facts he cites -- as well as the innumerable other
counter-AGWT facts -- do give us at least some grounds for skepticism.
Indeed many people argue that they give us grounds for intense
skepticism.
This isn't a matter of whether or not the AGWT is
true or not. In fact the AGWT can be neither true nor false. (Let's
forget here about the fact many philosophers of science, and some
scientists also, have a problem with the very notion of truth -- as
applied to scientific theories -- in the first place.) Only single
statements or propositions can be true or false. More relevantly, the
AGWT is so broad, and contains so many variables, that it's difficult to
decipher what people are actually saying when they make general
statements about it. The AGWT can, at most, only be true or false in
part.
So this is in fact a matter of the tactics and opinions of
those who zealously and piously uphold the theory in the rather
Stalinist manner they do. Indeed the very political nature of this
intolerance of different views (as well the scientific fundamentalism of
the believers) leads one to think that these things occur precisely
because the AGWT itself is essentially political in nature. That is, the
obvious political underpinnings of the AGWT (which the believers don't
deny) are quite naturally leading to the very political methods and
means which are used to create a 'no platform' policy for all those who
dare to question it. Indeed it can even be said that
anthropogenicglobalwarmingism (as it were) is the Lysenkoism of our time
and that the United Nations -- or at least the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) -- is a contemporary version of the Soviet
Union's Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences.
SOURCEA FRESH LOOK AT CLIMATE CHANGE - THE CONNOLLY PERSPECTIVEIndependent science shows that C.20 global warming has been greatly overestimatedThe
Connolly Scientific Research Group is a family-run independent entity
based in Ireland and has provided fascinating new research and analysis
on the global warming controversy.
Below Ronan Connolly has set
out the group's complete body of work and invites full open peer review
in the spirit that PSI endorses.
Dr Connolly reports:
I
have uploaded datasets for all of our papers to the Figshare website
(http://figshare.com/authors/Ronan_Connolly/532073), and provided links
to the datasets on the corresponding article pages at http://oprj.net/
In total, we have written eight articles on climate science/atmospheric science.
We
believe that science thrives through openness, and so we have decided
to use a fully open peer review system for the peer review process,
i.e., our new Open Peer Review Journal. As a trial run for this system,
we are using our own research. But, if the system is successful, we hope
to expand the journal to accept submissions from other researchers.
We are also providing open access to the data for all our papers so that people can check and/or use our analysis.
We
are very interested in feedback from the scientific community on our
research, whether positive or negative. So, if any of your readers are
interested in posting a technical comment or review on one (or more) of
articles, they are more than welcome to do so. Instructions are provided
on the OPRJ website: http://oprj.net/how-to-submit-a-review
I have provided brief summaries and links to our eight articles below:
In
three of the articles we revisit the urbanization bias problem and
argue that this has led to a substantial overestimation of "global
warming" trends:
R. Connolly, and M. Connolly (2014).
Urbanization bias I. Is it a negligible problem for global temperature
estimates?, Open Peer Rev. J., 28 (Clim. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer
reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/28
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1005090
R.
Connolly, and M. Connolly (2014). Urbanization bias II. An assessment
of the NASA GISS urbanization adjustment method, Open Peer Rev. J., 31
(Clim. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/31
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.977967
R.
Connolly, and M. Connolly (2014). Urbanization bias III. Estimating the
extent of bias in the Historical Climatology Network datasets, Open
Peer Rev. J., 34 (Clim. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/34
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1004125
In
another three articles we develop a new approach for describing and
explaining the temperature and energy profiles of the atmosphere. Our
findings suggest to us that the physics used by the current climate
models is wholly inadequate, and as a result their results are
unrealistic:
M. Connolly, and R. Connolly (2014). The physics of
the Earth’s atmosphere I. Phase change associated with tropopause, Open
Peer Rev. J., 19 (Atm. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/atmospheric-science/19
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.971150
M.
Connolly, and R. Connolly (2014). The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere
II. Multimerization of atmospheric gases above the troposphere, Open
Peer Rev. J., 22 (Atm. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/atmospheric-science/22
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.971140
M.
Connolly, and R. Connolly (2014). The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere
III. Pervective power, Open Peer Rev. J., 25 (Atm. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non
peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/atmospheric-science/25
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.971041
In
another article we reviewed the various temperature proxy estimates of
global temperature trends of the last 1000 years.Unlike previous
reviews, technical analyses presented via internet blogs were considered
as well as the conventional peer-reviewed literature.
R.
Connolly, and M. Connolly (2014). Global temperature changes of the last
millennium, Open Peer Rev. J., 16 (Clim. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer
reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/16
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.977937
For
the eight article we revisited the poor station siting problem
associated with weather station records. Using the results of Anthony
Watts et al.’s Surface stations project, we find that poor station
siting has introduced a substantial warming bias into U.S. temperature
trends. It is likely that similar biases also occur for global
temperature trends.
R. Connolly, and M. Connolly (2014). Has poor
station quality biased U.S. temperature trend estimates?, Open Peer
Rev. J., 11 (Clim. Sci.), ver. 0.1 (non peer reviewed draft).
Article URL: http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/11
SI dataset: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1004025
SOURCEMore Greenie job-killingIn
2009 — the immediately preceding time four council seats contested last
year in Whatcom County, Wash., were open — candidates spent less than
$7,000 on their campaigns. But during the 2013 election cycle, spending
skyrocketed, with outside groups forking over as much as $148,000 to
campaign for a single council seat.
There’s one man primarily
responsible for this precipitous spending hike: Tom Steyer, an
environmental enthusiast, hedge-fund manager, California billionaire,
and emerging Democratic kingmaker.
Steyer’s interest in these
four obscure local races is simple. The Whatcom county council will
ultimately decide the fate of a proposed coal-export facility on the
West Coast. If it receives approval, it would be the largest such
American facility on the West Coast, but Steyer and his green allies
fervently oppose the use of coal, so they spent heavily to support
council candidates likely to vote against the export facility. Their
efforts were ultimately successful, with candidates perceived as green
winning all four contested seats.
“I wouldn’t say [Steyer] was
decisive, but he definitely moved the needle [in] the environmental
candidates’ favor,” says Todd Donovan, a political-science professor at
Western Washington University, which is located in Whatcom County. “He
provided an unprecedented amount of money spent on behalf of the
environmental candidates, and they all won — and they were fighting an
uphill battle. . . . We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Steyer’s
political action committee, NextGen Climate, gave $275,000 to the
Washington Conservation Voters Action Fund, which in turn spent at least
$210,000 on the Whatcom county-council elections. But it’s impossible
to get an exact figure for how much Steyer money was spent in Whatcom
County.
Randy Pepple, a Republican political strategist in
Washington State, says Steyer’s lack of transparency was particularly
alarming.
“Instead of Tom Steyer for NextGen PAC writing the
checks, instead he wrote them to other organizations that were spending
money, particularly the Conservation Voters,” he says. “He hid it. For
all his challenges on Politico to be transparent, up here, he laundered
money through political committees, so it was not entirely clear where
he put all his money.”
Outside cash may have played an
instrumental role in the Whatcom county-council elections, but that’s
not the only development bothering some of its residents. In particular,
union members in Whatcom County are concerned that, if the coal-export
facility fails to garner council approval, there will be a huge economic
cost.
The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would export up to
54 million metric tons each year, the majority of which would be coal
extracted in Wyoming and Montana being shipped to buyers as far away as
China. The export terminal would also pay more than $92 million in state
and local taxes in the two-year construction period alone, and then
contribute $11.2 million a year to the government’s coffers after the
project’s completion.
Approval would result in nearly 4,500
construction jobs, as well as 1,250 permanent jobs in Whatcom County —
no small matter in a region where unemployment in February 2014 was 7.4
percent. And many of the jobs the Gateway Pacific Terminal would provide
are unionized, a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of local labor
leaders like Mike Elliott, a spokesman and lobbyist for the Washington
State Legislative Board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and
Trainmen.
“These are the types of jobs we want to create,”
Elliott tells National Review Online. “We weren’t going to get on board
with these projects unless they would use union construction people and
union longshoremen to run the thing. But opponents brought in this
billionaire environmentalist from California, and not just him — they’ve
come up with a whole lot of money. They’ve got more resources than we
will ever have, and it makes all the difference in the world. You
shouldn’t be able to come in with a wheelbarrow full of money and
influence the electoral process. I just think that’s wrong.”
In
Whatcom County, Steyer’s big donations helped Democrat-affiliated groups
outspend their Republican counterparts two-to-one. But he may well have
created an interesting dilemma for Democrats during future elections.
Steyer’s spending in Whatcom County pitted environmental groups against
organized labor, creating a deep division among two of the Democrats’
key constituent groups.
Steyer’s spending may have a similarly
divisive effect on the national stage. In February, he pledged to donate
more than $100 million in support of environmentalist Democratic
candidates. Just two months later, the Obama administration announced it
would opportunely delay its decision on the approval of the Keystone XL
pipeline, a project as reviled by environmental groups as it is beloved
of Big Labor.
Ken Oplinger, a self-identified “business
Democrat” who served as head of the Whatcom County Chamber of Commerce
for a decade, tells NRO that while intra-party divisions may not be
enough to win labor over to Republicans, they may well split the vote
between Democratic candidates.
“In Whatcom County, because the
coal terminal was such an all-encompassing issue, it really did play a
role because it was the key issue for labor,” he says. “In places where
economic development and jobs [are pitted against environmental
concerns], you’ll see that happen, and it’s going to be on a
case-by-case level. The blue-green connection is still there, and it’s
still strong. But they’re going to disagree on some key issues, and when
[they do], it may play a role in those races as it did in Whatcom
County.”
SOURCEAustralian government plan to strip Tasmania forest of World Heritage status was made without external reviewGreenies don't like miners having a say in mining decisions, so why should Greenies have a say in environmental decisions?The
federal government's unprecedented bid to strip Tasmanian forests of
World Heritage status was put together without any external advice, a
Senate committee has heard.
The original case to list 170,000
hectares of mainly forested land as World Heritage emerged as part of
the most comprehensive regional forests review ever undertaken in
Australia, the committee was told.
The extension to the Tasmanian
Wilderness World Heritage Area gained the backing of the World
Conservation Union and the International Union for Conservation of
Nature, and was unanimously approved by the World Heritage Committee in
2013.
A push by the Abbott government to excise 74,000 hectares
of forest from that extension "flies in the face" of the findings of an
expert Independent Verification Group set up to decide the fate of
Tasmanian forests, IVG member Professor Brendan Mackey said.
"Regarding
the 74,000 hectares, 90 per cent has not been industrially logged, only
four per cent is heavily disturbed, 35 per cent is actually mapped as
old growth, " said Professor Mackey, of Griffith University.
The
Senate committee inquiring into the de-listing attempt heard the case
for it was prepared by the Environment Department to meet a Coalition
election commitment to wind back the listing.
The department's
internal experts on world heritage were consulted, as was the Department
of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries and its ministerial offices,
Greens leader Christine Milne was told.
"We had a number of
discussions with the minister [for Environment, Greg Hunt] about the
options being produced and the merits and demerits of the options," said
departmental deputy secretary Kimberley Dripps.
"Was there any peer review, any verification from outside at all?" Senator Milne said. "No," Dr Dripps replied.
The
government argues in its submission to the World Heritage Committee
that the removal would enhance the overall standing of the 1.6 million
hectare Tasmanian Wilderness WHA.
"... It's unusual, if not
unprecedented, for it to be achieved in the reduction of the property
unless there is a corresponding increase elsewhere," said Dr Dripps.
She
will lead the Australian delegation to the World Heritage Committee
meeting in Doha next month, where she said one of four options would be
on the table.
The 21 nation World Heritage Committee could choose
to accept the wind-back; reject it outright; refer it back for
additional information; or defer it for a more substantial submission in
2016.
A former Environment Department staffer who worked on
World Heritage issues, Peter Matthews, told the Senate committee that
once an area was on the list, the World Heritage Committee had never
agreed to a wind-back as a principle.
"It actually has to be demonstrated that it has lost its outstanding universal value," Mr Matthews said.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
7 May, 2014
White House calls for urgent climate change action after report warns of more extreme weatherAll
the usual lies gathered together in one place. I can't find a single
true statement in it. Note: The climate report was supposed to be
released in APRIL... I guess it was too cold!The White House
called on Tuesday for urgent action to combat climate change, as it
released a study on the impact of global warming across the United
States and key sectors of the US economy.
The four-year survey warned of serious threats to homes and infrastructure and industry in the face of extreme weather events.
President
Barack Obama vowed during his victorious 2008 presidential campaign to
make the United States a leader in tackling climate change and the
"security threat" it poses.
But he has failed to convince Congress to take significant action during his subsequent years in office.
As
part of a new push on the issue this week, Obama was to give televised
interviews with various meteorologists on Tuesday to discuss the
findings of the third US National Climate Assessment.
Hundreds of
the nation's best climate scientists and technical experts - from both
the private and public sectors - worked on the report, which examines
the impact of climate change today and makes forecasts for the next
century.
The government’s newest national assessment of climate
change, released early on Tuesday, declares what a wide majority of
scientists say is clear: Americans are already feeling the effects of
global warming.
Heavy Northeast downpours unleashed by super
storms such as Sandy, flooding from sea-level rise from Norfolk to Miami
along the Atlantic Ocean, record-setting monster wildfires in several
Western states, a crop-destroying heat wave in the Midwest, and drought
that has parched southern California, have all taken place in recent
years.
“The report affirms a number of things we have known,”
said Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and lead
co-author of the changing-climate chapter of the assessment.
“But
there are new aspects,” Hayhoe said. “For a long time we have perceived
climate change as an issue that’s distant, affecting just polar bears
or something that matters to our kids. This shows it’s not just in the
future; it matters today. Many people are feeling the effects.”
The
researchers warned of drought in the state of California, prairie fires
in Oklahoma and rising ocean levels on the East Coast, particularly in
Florida, most of them caused by humans.
Sea level rise is also eating away at low-lying areas in places like Mississippi.
In
the Southeast and Caribbean regions, home to more than 80 million
people and some of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas, "sea
level rise combines with other climate-related impacts and existing
pressures such as land subsidence, causing significant economic and
ecological implications."
The report cited a locally-sponsored
study as saying that coastal areas in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi
and Texas could face annual losses of $US23 billion ($24.59 billion) by
2030, with about half of those costs related to climate change.
The
impact of global warming is unevenly distributed across US territory,
with spectacular effects in Alaska, which researchers said warmed twice
as fast as the rest of the country.
"Arctic summer sea ice is
receding faster than previously projected and is expected to virtually
disappear before mid-century," the report said.
"This is altering
marine ecosystems and leading to greater ship access, offshore
development opportunity and increased community vulnerability to coastal
erosion."
It warned that rising permafrost temperatures would
cause drier landscapes, more wildfire, changes to wildlife habitat,
greater infrastructure maintenance costs and the release of greenhouse
gases that increase global warming.
Facilities and roads that are
vital to the US economy are also under the threat of rising water
levels or an increase in already reported tropical storms hitting
coastal areas, the report says.
It cites in particular State
Highway 1 in Louisiana, the only road linking New Orleans to Port
Fourchon, a strategic oil hub. The road is "sinking, at the same time
sea level is rising," resulting in more frequent and more severe
flooding during high tides and storms. A 90-day shut down of this
highway would cost the nation an estimated $US7.8 billion ($8.34
billion).
Rising temperatures
The decade starting in 2000
was the hottest on record, and 2012, the year Sandy followed an epic
summer drought, was the hottest ever recorded in the nation’s history,
the report says. US temperature is 0.72 to 1.05 degrees Celsius warmer
now than it was in 1895, and most of that increase — 80 per cent, the
assessment says — occurred over the last 44 years.
David Wolfe, a
professor at Cornell University who was a lead co-author of the
report’s chapter on change in the Northeast, said that might sound
frightening, but he and other authors of the study are optimistic that
climate impacts can be mitigated.
Business leaders are looking
more toward investments in renewable energy, he said. This third
assessment, unlike the others, offers a website with interactive tools
showing how to reduce climate impacts.
“It will be a living document, a resource for people,” he said. “It’s a place to start.”
Critics of global warming
Wolfe’s
optimism wasn’t universally shared, even among some co-authors who
described the assessment as too conservative — a consensus document
meant to reflect the diverse views of the more than 300 scientists who
crafted it.
Other contrarians include libertarians at the Cato
Institute, founded by Charles and David Koch, brothers whose
multibillion-dollar fortune is partly derived from fossil fuels, and are
well-known to deny the impacts of climate change.
Cato
researchers Paul C. Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels said the
assessment was “biased toward pessimism,” the opposite of how Wolfe
described it. As a resource, it is meant to justify “federal regulation
aimed towards mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”
The report’s
early reception reflects the deep partisan divide over climate that
fractures along party lines and even has finer breaks within each party,
between liberals and progressives and mainline conservatives and tea
party factions.
The higher the temperature, the more dire the impact
Burning
coal for electricity, using oil and gasoline in vehicles, clear-cutting
forests and engaging in certain agricultural practices — all for the
convenience of humans — contribute to the problem, the assessment said.
By
the end of the century, temperatures could be up to 2.77 degrees
Celsius higher if the nation acts aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from industry, or up to 5.55 degrees Celcius if emissions are
high.
Extreme weather in the United States has “increased in recent decades,” the report said.
The
assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts:
More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves
in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the
Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest.
Rapidly
receding ice and shrinking glaciers are occurring in Alaska, which
warmed twice as fast as the rest of the country in the past 60 years.
And warmer oceans, along with increased acidification, particularly in
the Pacific, have put marine life in peril.
Sea-level rise is a
major concern to the District, Maryland and Virginia. A report last year
by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change found that coastal
sea-level rise on the state shoreline will range from slightly less than
a 30 centimetres to more than 60 centimetres by mid-century, and from
120 centimetres to 360 centimetres by the end of the century, depending
on whether carbon emissions increase or decrease.
Climate change
is also leading to heat stress events, forcing people with respiratory
illnesses to turn to devices such as inhalers or to hospitals, the
federal assessment said. It is leading to more severe allergies and
waterborne illnesses as pathogens increase. Minority communities are
especially vulnerable.
Extreme heat causes more deaths than other
weather events, and that is expected to continue. Such deaths have
decreased in recent years, but the assessment attributed that to better
weather forecasting.
In more general terms, climate change will
increase costs for the country's transport system and its users, said
the authors, who warn that major adaptation measures will be necessary
to overcome this.
Republican opponents
The report, which
can be viewed at www.globalchange.gov and aims to mobilise American
citizens as well as local communities, is part of Obama's sputtering
efforts to address global warming, which have gone nowhere in Congress.
There, Republicans control the House of Representatives.
The
fight against climate change, once a high priority issue when Obama took
office, was relegated to the back burner after a bill failed in
Congress early in his first term, when Democrats still held both houses.
The
president's Republican foes, who now hold a majority in the House of
Representatives, reject new federal laws on emissions, which they say
harm growth and employment.
And Democrats from states that are
heavily dependent on fossil fuels, such as oil-rich Louisiana and
coal-rich West Virginia, have also come out against a transition to
green energy.
During his January 28 State of the Union address,
Obama reiterated that climate change is real and promised unilateral
action, without Congress, to promote his energy agenda.
The
administration has already taken regulatory measures, in particular by
introducing tougher federal emission standards for vehicles.
Impact of heat on oceans
The
risk of dying from extreme heat has declined for decades and by now
“this should be rather unsurprising as it has been demonstrated over and
over again.”
But increased heat doesn’t just affect humans. In
warmer and more acidic oceans, particularly the Pacific, the effects of
climate change are deadly, said Drew Harvell, a Cornell University
professor of ecology and a co-author of the marine resources chapter of
the assessment.
Marine scientists in the Pacific have traced the
mass die-off of the sunflower star, a type of sea star, to warmer
temperatures. In a laboratory, 10 sunflower stars were placed in water
with normal temperature and another 10 in water only 0.72 degrees
Celsius warmer.
Within two days, half the sunflower stars in the warmer water were dead. “It’s going to get worse with warming,” Harvell said.
Thirty
per cent of carbon released into the atmosphere is sucked up by the
ocean, leading to acidification that’s killing coral and shell life.
Coral protects young fish from predators, and tiny shellfish, at the
bottom of the food chain, help feed entire ecosystems.
“A third
of all coral is at the risk of extinction,” Harvell said. After two
decades of studying marine life, she holds a more negative view of the
future than both Wolfe and the Cato researchers.
“It’s important
to understand that this is a very, very, very conservative document, a
consensus document,” Harvell said of the assessment. The truth is more
dire, she said.
“The Pacific Ocean is the place with the most
extreme problem with acidification and salmon, mussels, things heavily
affected,” she said. “I’m not sure there are many mitigations to these
impacts. There’s hope, but there’s got to be some pretty radical changes
to practices and policies.”
SOURCEAntarctic Sea Ice Blows Away Records In AprilAntarctic sea ice continues to set new records, with extent in April at the highest since measurements began in 1979.
![](gremay14_files/s_plot_thumb.png)
Ice extent has also been above last year’s already high levels for most of this year.
Meanwhile, both GISS surface and UAH satellite datasets show the Antarctic has been much colder than usual recently.
Finally, global sea ice area remains well above average.
More
HERE (See the original for links, more graphics etc.)
Lennart Bengtsson: “The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong”The
GWPF yesterday announced that Swedish scientist Lennart Bengtsson joins
their Academic Advisory Council. Among the members of this council are
many well-known “climate sceptics” like Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick,
Henrik Svensmark, Bob Carter, Nir Shaviv etc.
Bengtsson (born
1935) was the director of of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range
Weather Forecasting) for 18 years and after that he was the director of
the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. So his background
is very “mainstream”. His entry to the GWPF Council will certainly have
raised a few eyebrows in the climate community that sees the GWPF as a
sceptical think tank.
Bengtsson has written some very
nuanced/critical opinion articles in recent years (see here and here). I
decided today to ask Bengtsson about his motivation to join the GWPF
Council and sent him a list of questions to which he kindly responded.
Q. Why did you join the GWPF Academic Council?
I
know some of the scientists in GWPF and they have made fine
contributions to science. I also respect individuals that speak their
mind as they consider scientific truth (to that extent we can determine
it) more important than to be politically correct. I believe it is
important to express different views in an area that is potentially so
important and complex and still insufficiently known as climate change.
My
interest in climate science is strictly scientific and I very much
regret the politicisation that has taken place in climate research. I
believe most serious scientists are sceptics and are frustrated that we
are not able to properly validate climate change simulations. I have
always tried to follow the philosophy of Karl Popper. I also believe
that most scientists are potentially worried because of the long
residence time of many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, our
worries must be put into a context as there are endless matters to worry
about, practically all of them impossible to predict. Just move
yourself backward in time exactly 100 years and try to foresee the
evolution in the world for the following 100 years.
Q. Is this
your way of telling the world that you have become a “climate sceptic”?
(many people might interpret it that way) If not, how would you position
yourself in the global warming debate?
I have always been sort of a
climate sceptic. I do not consider this in any way as negative but in
fact as a natural attitude for a scientist. I have never been overly
worried to express my opinion and have not really changed my opinion or
attitude to science. I have always been driven by curiosity but will of
course always try to see that science is useful for society. This is the
reason that I have devoted so much of my carrier to improve weather
prediction.
Q. Is there according to you a “climate consensus” in the community of climate scientists and if so what is it?
I
believe the whole climate consensus debate is silly. There is not a
single well educated scientist that question that greenhouse gases do
affect climate. However, this is not the issue but rather how much and
how fast. Here there is no consensus as you can see from the IPCC report
where climate sensitivity varies with a factor of three! Based on
observational data climate sensitivity is clearly rather small and much
smaller that the majority of models. Here I intend to stick to Karl
Popper in highlighting the need for proper validation.
Q. Mojib
Latif once said at a conference of the WMO (in 2009) “we have to ask the
nasty questions ourselves”. Do you think the climate community is doing
that (enough)? or are others like the GWPF needed to ask these “nasty”
questions? If so, what does this say about the state of Academia?
I
think the climate community shall be more critical and spend more time
to understand what they are doing instead of presenting endless and
often superficial results and to do this with a critical mind. I do not
believe that the IPCC machinery is what is best for science in the long
term. We are still in a situation where our knowledge is insufficient
and climate models are not good enough. What we need is more basic
research freely organized and driven by leading scientists without time
pressure to deliver and only deliver when they believe the result is
good and solid enough. It is not for scientists to determine what
society should do. In order for society to make sensible decisions in
complex issues it is essential to have input from different areas and
from different individuals. The whole concept behind IPCC is basically
wrong.
Q. I noticed that some climate scientists grow more
sceptical about global warming after their retirement. Can you confirm
this? Does it apply to yourself? Is there a lot of social pressure to
follow the climate consensus among working climate scientists which can
explain this?
Wisdom perhaps comes with age. I also believe you
are becoming more independent and less sensitive to political or group
pressure. Such pressure is too high today and many good scientists I
believe are suffering. I am presently a lot on my own. As I have replied
to such questions before, if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will
become completely unbearable.
Q. Are you satisfied with the role
that the GWPF has played so far? What could or should they do
differently in order to play a more successful and/or constructive role
in the discussions about climate and energy?
My impression is
that this is a very respectable and honest organisation but I will be
happy to reply to your question more in depth when I have got experience
of it.
From the GWPF:
Professor Lennart Bengtsson has a
long and distinguished international career in meteorology and climate
research. He participated actively in the development of ECMWF (European
Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting) where he was Head of
Research 1975-1981 and Director 1982-1990. In 1991-2000 he was Director
of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. Since 2000 he
has been professor at the University of Reading and from 2008 the
Director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern,
Switzerland.
Professor Bengtsson has received many awards
including the German Environmental Reward, The Descartes Price by the EU
and the IMI price from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). He
is member of many academies and societies and is honorary member of the
American Meteorological Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and
European Geophysical Union. His research work covers some 225
publications in the field of meteorology and climatology. In recent
years he has been involved with climate and energy policy issues at the
Swedish Academy of Sciences.
SOURCEIt Is "Very Likely" That Scientists Are Confusing Us About Global WarmingVeteran
psychologizer, Chris Mooney, is mourning below the fact that the IPCC
mostly uses moderate scientific language. Even a whiff of science is bad
for WarmismThe United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change is a big, big production. Its reports, released roughly
every five years, are considered the gold standard of climate science,
and are always a major media event. Thousands of scientists contribute
to the reports, all of them volunteering their expertise to make the
world just a little bit better.
There's just one problem:
According to a new paper out in Nature: Climate Change, the IPCC may be
dramatically undermining its own work through one of its trademark
tools: A system of language that the group uses to describe how certain
(or uncertain) researchers are about its scientific findings. According
to the new study, this system (which involves describing conclusions as
"likely," "very likely," and so on) has the unfortunate effect of making
people less sure than they ought to be of the IPCC's most important
conclusions.
Unintentionally, then, the IPCC seems to be doing just what climate skeptics and deniers are so often accused of: Sowing doubt.
The
new study, by psychologist David Budescu of Fordham University and his
colleagues, is actually the latest in a string of papers by these
researchers showing that people systematically misunderstand what the
IPCC means when it uses phrases such as "likely" and "very likely" to
describe the strength of its conclusions. Take, for instance, the IPCC's
famous finding, in 2007, that "most of the observed increase in global
average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to
the observed increase in anthropogenic [human-produced] greenhouse gas
concentrations." According to Budescu's research, while the IPCC intends
for "very likely" to mean a greater than 90 percent likelihood, that's
not necessarily the message the average person hears. Instead, when
Budesco and his colleagues asked members of the public to assign a
probability to the term "very likely," the mean estimate people gave was
just 62 percent.
Unintentionally, the IPCC seems to be doing just what climate skeptics are so often accused of: Sowing doubt.
In
general, Budescu finds that when the IPCC assigns a high level of
certainty to a conclusion, using terms like "very likely" or "extremely
likely," people adjust their interpretation downward, taking the
conclusion to be considerably less certain than it actually is. When the
IPCC assigns a low probability, meanwhile, people adjust their
assessment upwards, taking the conclusion to be considerably more
certain than it actually is. Thus for instance, when the IPCC calls a
conclusion "very unlikely," it means there is less than a 10 percent
chance that it's true. But the mean estimate given by members of the
public for what this term means is 41 percent. To see how much confusion
this can cause, just consider another 2007 IPCC statement: "It is very
unlikely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to
1950 were due to variability generated within the climate system alone."
Budescu
and his colleagues have found these results consistently, across
samples. In 2009, they found as much with a sample of college students
and members of a single university community. In 2012, they did so again
with a nationally representative sample of Americans. And in the new
Nature: Climate Change study, they present the same finding with
citizens of 25 countries, having now conducted the research in multiple
languages. Again and again, it would seem that the IPCC's language about
uncertainty backfires, and undermines itself. It sows doubt in the
minds of the public.
Moreover, given that Budescu's first paper
on this subject was published in 2009, the IPCC should presumably know
by now that its practices appear to have caused the public to be far
more doubtful than it should be about the science of climate change. In
fairness, the current approach exists for a reason: It avoids requiring
scientists to be too precise about their level of certainty, and it
allows for the possibility that different scientists would come up with
somewhat different numbers for their extent of certainty.
"I
think that they are finding their way slowly, and they are trying
things," remarks Budescu of the IPCC's uncertainty practices. "A lot of
the things that they are trying make sense, and are reasonable. I think
they are slow in adjusting."
Solving this problem would be quite
simple: Budescu's research shows that people's misunderstanding of the
IPCC's language about uncertainty decreases if you simply include a
numeric value next to the standard uncertainty language. Thus, instead
of merely saying "very likely," the IPCC could just prominently add
"(> 90% likelihood)," or something similar. As it is, these numerical
values are included as a footnote in the IPCC's widely read "Summary
for Policymakers" reports, and a box in the much less widely read
technical report; Budescu's research suggests they should appear
throughout the text.
It is critical to underscore just how
problematic the IPCC's ill-calibrated uncertainty language is. The IPCC
produces many thousands of words in its reports, and spends five or more
years doing so; and yet generally, there is one sentence from each
report that is almost universally quoted in the press, on blogs, and
beyond. It is always the sentence that describes how certain the IPCC is
about the conclusion that humans are causing global warming; and that
sentence always contains the IPCC's confusing uncertainty-speak. In
2001, the IPCC found the conclusion "likely"; in 2007, "very likely";
and in 2013, "extremely likely." To the IPCC, that meant "greater than
66 percent likelihood," "greater than 90 percent," and "greater than 95
percent," respectively. Based on the latest research, the public took
away a very different message indeed.
Journalists may partly
mitigate this problem, to be sure. Outlets like the New York Times and
the Washington Post, in their coverage of last year's IPCC report, took
it upon themselves to include a numerical probability value as they
explained the IPCC's conclusion that it is now "extremely likely" that
humans are driving global warming. Yet not all media outlets did: Take
this report from ABC News, for instance; it included a clip of an IPCC
official saying it's "extremely likely" that humans are causing climate
change but did not include any numerical explanation of what that means.
The
IPCC has been extensively faulted in the past for a wide range of
communications failures. Not all of them have easy fixes, but this one
surely does.
SOURCEPutin’s Anti-Fracking Campaign He knows that European greens can help further his dreams of conquestVladimir
Putin, the ruler of Russia, wants to ban fracking in other countries.
He is very concerned about their environments. If you frack, Putin told a
global economic conference last year, “black stuff comes out of the
tap.”
Alexey Miller — a longtime Putin crony going back to the
early 1990s, when they stole the money that was supposed to buy food for
the starving city of Leningrad, who now oversees the Russian
state-owned gas company Gazprom — strongly supports his friend on this
issue. He would like to see an EU-wide ban on fracking, and the Gazprom
board is with him 100 percent. “The production of shale gas is
associated with significant environmental risks, in particular the
hazard of surface and underground water contamination with chemicals
applied in the production process,” they warned the world in 2011. “This
fact has already caused the prohibition of the shale gas development
and production in France.”
Alexandr Medvedev, the general
director of Gazprom Export, is also very supportive of efforts to ban
fracking in Europe. “I would like to quote the president of France, who
said that as long as he’s president, he will not allow the production of
shale gas in France,” Medvedev said in a television interview last
August. “The cost of production of shale gas in Europe is incomparably
higher than in the U.S. and also the situation with the environment is
different, because in the U.S. its main production is in unpopulated
areas, which are quite available in the U.S., but in Europe we can’t
find such big unpopulated areas with reach to the water.”
The
fact that Kremlin opposition to European fracking has nothing to do with
environmental concerns should be clear even to the dullest among us,
because Russia has massive fracking projects of its own underway in
Siberia. The real goal is to keep Europe dependent upon Russia for its
fuel supply. Natural-gas prices in Europe are quadruple those prevailing
in the United States, and by maintaining a near-monopoly on overpriced
European natural-gas imports, the Putin regime assures itself of a vast
source of revenue. This allows it to rule and rearm Russia without
permitting the freedom necessary to develop the country’s human
potential. Furthermore, so long as Europe is kept critically dependent
upon Russia for fuel, Moscow can paralyze and render ineffective any
Western response to its plans for conquest, whose initial steps are
currently being demonstrated in Ukraine. More, and much worse, is
certain to follow so long as Europe remains helpless.
In a recent
four-hour television appearance in Moscow, Putin explicitly embraced
Kremlin fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin’s grand design of creating a
united totalitarian Eurasia, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” If he can
maintain control of Europe’s critical fuel supplies, he just might be
able to pull it off.
So it should come as no surprise that the
Putin regime is pulling out all the stops in fomenting the global
anti-fracking movement, with Europe as its central target. Leading the
propaganda campaign has been RT News, Russia’s state-owned television
network, which broadcasts around the world in English and other
languages.
Here is a small sample of RT’s incessant anti-fracking drumbeat:
Wrecking the Earth: Fracking has grave radiation risks few talk about, August 28, 2013
Fracking fluid linked to fish die-off, August 29, 2013
US fracking wells annually produce 280bn gallons of toxic waste water destroying environment – report, October 4, 2013
Chevron halts search for shale gas in Romania following public outrage, October 17, 2013
“We say no to shale gas”: World unites against fracking, October 20, 2013
Money & influence: Oil & gas co’s hush threats of fracking, November 21, 2013
Fracking dilemma: Fresh water or cheap gas? The latter “is not likely to happen,” November 25, 2013
Fracking nightmare: “Like living in a very heavy industrial zone,” November 29, 2013
Massachusetts seeks 10-yr ban on gas fracking after series of Texas quakes, November 30, 2011
City of Dallas effectively bans fracking, December 13, 2013
Hazardous fracking waste: Activists alarm at proposal to move it by river, December 16, 2013
Fracking chemicals disrupt human hormone functions, study claims, December 17, 2013
UK government found ‘cheerleading’ for fracking industry, January 18, 2014
UK Fracking could be allowed under people’s homes without their consent, January 27, 2014
Living near fracking sites increases infant birth defects – study, January 31, 2014
“Most of us eventually get gagged by the industry”: Restrained activist exposes fracking business, February 3, 2014
Hundreds gather for anti-fracking march in Manchester, March 9, 2014
Anti-fracking activist asks court to lift ban keeping her from local hospital, grocery store, March 24, 2014
Oklahoma breaks record with hundreds of earthquakes after fracking intensifies, April 7, 2014
Methane emissions from fracking vastly underestimated by EPA – study, April 16, 2014
The
Voice of Russia has been equally ardent in propagandizing for a halt to
Western fracking, with one recent article going so far as to advance
the claim that riots in Venezuela are being caused by American fracking.
Here are some selections from another, which argues that the U.S. is
“demonizing Putin” in order to stampede the EU into accepting fracking:
“It
all falls into place,” says Peter Koenig, a former World Bank economist
and the author of Implosion — An Economic Thriller about War,
Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed, in an interview with the
Voice of Russia. “If Washington and its media outlets are successful in
portraying Vladimir Putin as a demon of war, then American energy
companies will have the green light to frack in Europe in order to
reduce the dependency on Russia. They will be seen as a lesser evil or
even as benefactors saving Europe from the ‘evil Putin.’ ”
The
VoR then breathlessly asks: “Does Europe really want to risk its
citizens’ health in order to obtain some shale gas?” Koenig continues:
The
spineless European politicians will bend over backwards to satisfy the
American energy companies. The Obama Administration is proposing a trade
agreement between the US and the EU, involving the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership, to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia’s
energy resources. . . . The US is leading the EU into a trap, making
European countries give up on their environmental standards for the sake
of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. . . . Following
America and serving the interests of its corporate and banking elites is
not a good idea. But all is not lost. So far, sanctions are nothing
more than bluff and fracking has not begun yet. For Europe there is
still time to come to its senses.
The Kremlin’s all-out effort to
stop fracking in Western nations is not limited to openly broadcasting
lies, hysteria, and propaganda through its official media organizations.
It also engages in covert operations, behind-the-scenes lobbying and
payoffs, and political manipulations using its agents of influence. Many
of these are documented by former U.S. ambassador to Lithuania Keith C.
Smith in a recent paper published by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
In this paper, titled “Unconventional Gas
and European Security: Politics and Foreign Policy of Fracking in
Europe,” Smith details Kremlin/Gazprom behind-the-scenes operations that
were instrumental in obtaining fracking bans in Germany and Bulgaria.
Similar dirty work appears to have been involved in ramming through
fracking bans in France, Italy, and other European countries.
SOURCEGreen No More, Europe Is Desperate For Cheap CoalAt
the biggest power plant in the U.K., operated by Drax Group PLC, a
small black mountain of a million tons of coal sits at the base of a
dozen 374-foot cooling towers.
Much of it is high-sulfur coal
from under the plains of Illinois and Indiana—exactly the kind of
high-emission, power-plant fuel receiving closer scrutiny from U.S.
regulators and courts. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of
enforcing regulations that require power plants in 28 states to cut coal
emissions that blow across state lines.
Many U.S. power plants
were already reducing emissions in anticipation of tougher Environmental
Protection Agency rules that take effect in 2015. Now, the Supreme
Court ruling could affect 1,000 power plants in the eastern U.S. that
might need to install additional pollution controls or cut back on coal
consumption.
These are tough times for the global coal industry,
which has been battered in recent years by regulations, the U.S. boom in
extracting gas from shale-rock formations, and lower prices caused by
softening demand from China. Coal now generates about 39% of electric
power in the U.S., off from 55% in 1990.
Low domestic demand has
renewed the focus on U.S. exports, which are on track for a
record-setting third straight year of more than 100 million tons. The
28-nation EU imported 47.2 million tons of U.S. coal last year, up from
13.6 million tons in 2003. Exports to the U.K. alone are up tenfold in
the same period. The U.S. ranked second only to Russia in supplying
Europe with coal last year, and the U.S. could further increase its
market share if recent political tensions with Moscow disrupt Russian
shipments.
Germany's decision to phase out of nuclear power after
the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has also made it a
significant buyer of U.S. coal, mostly because the commodity is so
inexpensive.
"Before the financial crisis, Europe was happy to
favor the environment, but when the economy started not doing well, they
weren't quite ready to accept the high power price," so energy
consumers returned to coal, says Daniel Rohr, an analyst for Morningstar
Inc.
Since 2003, German imports of U.S. coal have risen to more
than 15 million tons from under a million tons. A spokesman for E.ON
EOAN.XE -0.50% SE, Germany's largest power and natural-gas utility, says
it now purchases more than four million tons of coal a year, or 17% of
its total, from the U.S., up from 800,000 tons in 2010. E.ON operates
power plants in several European countries.
Although sales have
tapered off in recent weeks because of higher inventory levels, the U.S.
coal industry expects the EU to be a good long-term bet. Several U.S.
mining companies, including Foresight Energy LLC and Arch Coal Inc., ACI
-4.30% recently opened new sales offices on the Continent.
The
big gainer—accounting for roughly one-third of U.S. exports, up from
almost nothing 10 years ago—has been high-sulfur coal taken from thick
coal seams in Illinois and Indiana. It is loaded onto barges and shipped
800 miles down the Mississippi River to a terminal on the Gulf of
Mexico. From there, it heads across the Atlantic to people like Dave
Docker, head of fuel procurement at Drax, who buys nine million tons of
coal a year on global markets.
Mr. Docker says the Illinois and
Indiana coal, shunned in some places in the U.S. because of its high
sulfur content, offers a less-expensive alternative than coal from
nearby European mines—even including transportation costs.
Phil
Gonet, president of the Illinois Coal Association, says geography helps
keep prices low. "Our coal is easy to extract and we're right next door
to two rivers that can take the coal to anywhere in the world," he says,
referring to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Mr. Gonet argues that
Illinois Basin coal is a viable, cost-effective fuel alternative given
new scrubbing technology that removes sulfur from power-plant emissions.
The
Illinois Basin—located in Illinois, Indiana and parts of
Kentucky—possesses some of the world's richest coal seams, but high
sulfur and ash content caused the coal to be shunned after the passage
of the Clean Air Act in 1970. By 2002, mining in Illinois reached its
lowest levels since the Great Depression.
That is when a handful
of companies, led largely by two private operators, Chris Cline and
Robert Murray, snapped up mines on the cheap. The acquirers,
bet—correctly, it turned out—on scrubbing technology that can remove
almost all the sulfur. They also counted on the coal appetite of export
markets such as the U.K.
Mr. Cline's Foresight Energy—Drax's top
U.S. supplier—last year offered its coal for as little as $65 a ton in
Europe, including freight, compared with $80 a ton from U.K. mines near
the Drax power plant.
For Mr. Docker, the coal's low cost is a
saving grace. He has made enough other improvements to plant
operations—in particular, new technology to remove sulfur better—to
allow Drax to burn cheap dirty coal and still comply with strict EU
laws.
The Drax power plant was built in northern England in the
1970s, following the conventional model of building power plants next to
coal mines. Coal was basically shoveled straight from the mine. Next to
hangars housing the six boilers and 30 turbines that generate
electricity are a five-week supply of coal, as well as little green
hills. The hills, say Drax officials, are actually piles of ash waste
that are ideal for growing grass and hedges.
In 2005, EU
regulators set up rules that fixed Drax's sulfur-emissions quota at
33,000 tons a year. Drax, which bought almost all of its coal from local
mines, began importing cleaner coal from Russia and Colombia that
contains less than 1% sulfur, compared with the 2.5%-3% sulfur content
of Illinois Basin coal.
At the same time, Drax also started
burning dried vegetation that emits almost no sulfur and reduced the
amount of coal needed. One of Drax's six boilers now burns biomass, or
compressed plant and wood material, much of it imported from the U.S.
The plan is to convert two more of the boilers to biomass fuel by 2020.
Drax
was emitting less than the allotted 33,000 tons of sulfur by using the
cleaner Russian and Colombian coal and the biomass, giving Mr. Docker an
opportunity to burn dirtier coal. "I have headroom now to emit more
sulfur, and that can be filled with Illinois Basin [coal]," he says. His
engineers would prefer Appalachian coal, which is cleaner, burns more
efficiently and doesn't impose as much wear and tear on the boilers.
"But it's too expensive," Mr. Docker says. Appalachian coal typically
sells for 20% more than Illinois Basin coal.
The use of
high-sulfur Illinois Basin coal in Europe is disrupting the plans of
policy makers hoping to wean the EU off dirty fuel sources, and has
angered environmentalists who contend its high sulfur content damages
the environment, despite power plants now using scrubbers to remove more
than 90% of the sulfur. Imports have also brought high-cost coal mines
in Germany, Poland and the U.K. to the brink of closure. U.K. coal
output fell 24% last year to 13 million tons.
Tara Connolly, a
Greenpeace activist in Brussels, says dirty coal shouldn't be burned no
matter how cheap it is and that quotas simply give companies permission
to continue polluting, just not as much.
Quotas have allowed the
U.S. "to export its emissions to Europe," Ms. Connolly says. She says
that a better approach would be an outright ban of dirty coal in favor
of alternative clean-energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass. "We
want to end the Age of Coal," she says.
EU officials are aware
of the rise in high-sulfur Illinois Basin coal imports and are
concerned, says Joe Hennon, a spokesman for the European Commission, the
EU's executive arm. "We've seen the increase in shale gas in the U.S.
and more U.S. coal coming to Europe," he says.
Many EU countries
are in violation of the bloc's emissions rules, and 19 have been subject
to formal complaints from the European Commission. Drax and the U.K.
haven't faced any complaints, Mr. Hennon says.
The EU is studying possible new rules governing emissions from coal-fired power plants.
SOURCE***************************************
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week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
6 May, 2014
Global
warming is 'not uniform': Regions of the planet have actually COOLED
over the past 100 years -- particularly in the Southern HemisphereIt's
long been known that S. Hemisphere temps did not warm during the
Northern warming period but who needs the silly old S. Hemisphere
cluttering up their theory? It's only half of the globe!It can be easy to dismiss talks on global warming if your part of the world is feeling colder than usual.
But
a new study claims that while the world is getting warmer, the heating
effect on the Earth has not been uniform across the planet.
The research provides the first detailed analysis of global land surface warming trends over the century.
‘Global
warming was not as understood as we thought,’ said Zhaohua Wu, an
assistant professor of meteorology at Florida State University.
Professor
Wu used a newly-developed analysis method on historical temperature
records to examine land surface temperature trends from 1900 onward for
the entire globe, minus Antarctica.
Previous work by scientists
on global warming could not provide information of non-uniform warming
in location and time due to limitations of analysis methods.
The
research team found that noticeable warming first started around the
regions circling the Arctic and subtropical regions in both hemispheres.
But
the largest warming to date has been at the northern mid-latitudes. The
research team also found that in some areas of the world, cooling had
occurred.
‘The global warming is not uniform,’ Professor Eric
Chassignet said. ‘You have areas that have cooled and areas that have
warmed.’
For example, from about 1910 to 1980, while the rest of
the world was warming up, some areas south of the Equator, such as those
near the Andes, were cooling down, and then had no change at all until
the mid-1990s.
Other areas near and south of the Equator didn't see significant changes comparable to the rest of the world at all.
The
detailed picture of when and where the world has warmed or cooled will
provide a greater context to global warming research overall, Professor
Wu said.
SOURCEHurrah! The price of carbon credits is approaching zeroWritten by Tim Worstall
This
is very much a time for celebration as the carbon credit price in the
EU's trading system rapidly approaches zero. Of course, we do have
people taking the wrong message from this, such as our own UK government
who reacted to the price falls by insisting that there must be a
minimum price for such credits. But then none of us really thought that
governments were going to approach this particular problem with even a
modicum of good sense, did we?
December EU carbon permits dropped
4.4 percent to 5.22 euros ($7.23) a ton at 4:59 p.m. on ICE Futures
Europe in London. The contract earlier slumped as much as 6 percent, the
most since April 25. December CERs were unchanged at 15 euro cents a
ton, while no ERUs were traded. The program’s rules curb offset use in
the 13 years through 2020 to about 1.59 billion tons, 25 percent of
which remains unused after today’s announcement, according to New Energy
data.
There are two roughly market based ways of dealing with
emissions. We could tax them at some rate and see what emissions were.
Or we could limit emissions through permits and then see what the price
would be. Obviously, the higher we put the price of the tax then the
more we would expect emissions to fall. However, the corollary often
gets missed (as HMG missed it). Once we've limited emissions though the
number of permits then we obviously want the cost of each permit to be
as low as possible.
For we have already defined the emissions
limit and are now looking to the market to tell us the price of
achieving that limit: clearly and obviously a lower price to meet the
goal is better than a higher one.
Thus, if we've set a limit, if
25% of those permits won't ever be used, and if those that are being
cost somewhere around spit, then we're solving the emissions problem
much more cheaply than anyone thought we would. Which is excellent news,
isn't it? Thus, and inevitably, those who blather about how awful it is
that permits are cheap have got entirely the wrong end of the stick.
Which is where HMG comes in again with their imposition of a m,inimum
price for such permits. They're deliberately making it all more
expensive than it need bem, the very fact that permits are cheaper than
their minimum being all the proof that we need.
Climate change is
bad enough without people deliberately, or perhaps through ignorance,
making dealing with it more expensive than it need be.
We could
of course insist that the original targets were wrong: but that would
also be saying that government is incompetent in dealing with climate
change. Which isn't a great argument for having them do more, is it?
SOURCERegulate-First-Think-Later Approach to Harm HoneybeesEuropean
bureaucrats placed a two-year ban on a class of pesticides in the name
of “protecting honeybees” when in fact, as one EU official recently
admitted, they didn’t have evidence that the chemicals present a serious
threat to honeybee health. According to an article in Food Chemical
News, the European Commission official admitted that the government
banned the chemicals simply because it was “the only factor” that the
commission could quickly regulate.
It’s a case of “regulate
first, think later.” That’s not only dumb; it’s dangerous, because it
threatens farmers’ ability to provide affordable food and may harm
honeybees rather than help them.
As noted in earlier posts (here
and here) and on SafeChemicalPolicy.com and all the many articles linked
therein, mystery surrounds periodic disappearances of honeybee hives.
It appears that numerous factors, including cold weather, new and old
diseases, nutritional issues, and potentially some chemicals affect hive
health, making the hives more susceptible when certain diseases strike.
Mother
Nature and hive management appear to play critically important roles in
honeybee health, but all the focus has been on one class of pesticides
called neonicotinoids, even though they have not been shown of the
source significant problems in real life settings. Randomly banning
these pesticides simply harms farmers’ ability to produce food and may
force them to switch to other chemicals that pose even greater risks to
honeybees.
To top it off, this regulate-first-and-think-later
approach diverts attention and resources away from exploring and
discovering the actual causes of the problem. For example, researchers
point out, in a recent issue of the journal EcoHealth, that the likely
potential causes are not getting enough attention. They explain:
Although
many environmental and anthropogenic factors remain under investigation
for their role in annual honey bee colony losses, the introduction of
pests and pathogens, and large-scale shifts in management practices may
be significant, under-researched drivers of colony losses in Europe and
North America.
The recently expressed rationale for their
regulation highlights the shortsighted nature of European bureaucrats’
approach. Environmentalists, beekeepers, farmers, and others should be
up in arms, calling for an approach that includes research focused on
likely causes and careful evaluation of the existing science.
While
the issue may be complicated, solutions are out there, but public
officials have to be willing to look in the right places.
SOURCEA New God of ChaosClimate change scientists are spreading panic and disrupting our conception of nature. Interview with Benny Peiser
Q. You have previously argued that scientists are overstating
the significance of anthropogenic climate change. What, then, do you
believe is the source of our panic over global warming?
I think
it's a combination of factors. It's of course something comparatively
new, and what very often occurs when people experience a new hazard, a
new risk that they haven't encountered before, is that they are
increasingly concerned because it's an unknown hazard. So that's the
backdrop to the concern, and then of course we've had the climate
science community ratcheting up the rhetoric, which was kicked up by the
media because the media like a good scare.
In reality of course,
if you just look at the observational evidence, there was no real
signal or any evidence to suggest that we are facing an imminent
disaster. The warming of the last 150 years has been very slow and very
moderate – 0.8 degrees of warming over 150 years is very, very moderate.
Very slow and very gradual, and there's no cause for alarm. The actual
warming we have experienced is rather low, and the alarm is about
speculations of what may happen in the future. There is a reliance on
predictions of the future, based on computer modeling.
So I would
argue there is a discrepancy between what has been observed in reality,
and what has been claimed is going to happen in the future. I think the
alarm is mainly based on the claims that the future will be so much
worse than what we have observed over the last 100 or 150 years. And
that, of course, is pure conjecture. Doomsday prophets have always
managed to scare people by making very strong predictions of the future,
and so the question then is how reliable are these predictions.
Q.
Is the damage done by over-preparing for potential environmental
disaster comparable to the damage done by being under-prepared for it?
Given
that we've had so many environmental scares over the last 40 or 50
years, it’s safe to say that the world would respond differently if we
were actually experiencing a real climate crisis.
Q. Really?
Of
course! The reason why the international community isn't doing anything
about it effectively is twofold: A, it's extremely expensive; and B,
there's no political pressure to do anything about it because the
public, by and large, is not concerned. So in a way the alarm isn't
actually working.
Q. That's an interesting thing, the panic and then the lack of action. It's a curious thing.
It's
a combination, as I said. Some countries have actually tried to do
something about it, but they are now feeling the pain and the cost of
doing it on their own when it hasn't had any actual effect on CO2
emissions.
Q. What kind of cost do you mean?
Well,
countries like Germany and other European countries, and even Britain,
building wind farms and solar panels in the name of saving the planet,
or saving the climate. Of course it has absolutely no effect on either
CO2 emissions, or global CO2 emissions, or the climate. But it is very
costly, and people have to pay for it through their energy bills, so you
have a public increasingly more worried about the cost of energy bills
than climate change.
So there's a political cost and an economic
cost. It's difficult to actually address the underlying issues, which
are CO2 emissions, the result of the world using cheap fossil fuels. And
to get away from that turns out to be almost impossible.
Another
reason, apart from the economic and political hurdles and costs, is the
fact that people are not concerned about climate change. They might be,
if we had increasingly rising temperatures and heat wave after heat
wave and disaster after disaster, and people might say: “Well we must
prevent this from going on.” But by and large, survey after survey shows
that climate change seems to be at the bottom of people's concerns. So
there's a discrepancy between the panic generated by campaigners and
some scientists and media, and the public response, which is: “I don't
care, I'm not bothered.” So that discrepancy is quite manifest.
Q.
Is there a spiritual element to our relationship to the earth? And, if
so, is this relevant to our response to these predictions about climate
change?
I would call it a more religious kind of shift. During
the enlightenment of the last 200 years or so, the enlightenment
scientists and philosophers worked on the assumption that the world is a
fairly stable and resilient system, that nature is cold but that we
live in a world that is fairly stable. That was the main outlook of
enlightenment philosophy and science. That also resonated with their
view (their religious or irreligious view) that the world in a way was
resilient, and humans were resilient to whatever nature was throwing at
us, so to speak. That we could cope with that. And it’s worth saying
that previous generations were much less prepared, technologically,
economically than today's generation.
But what has changed is
that many of today’s scientists and, by and large, the public think that
nature is very fickle, very unstable, that anything could tip it into
utter chaos. We're almost back to the view of nature where the ancient
pagans looked like they thought they were at the whim of irrational gods
punishing mankind at will. They didn't understand basic physics, the
basic scientific dynamics of nature. That was the big breakthrough of
the enlightenment, where we discovered we could understand exactly how
nature works. And today we're back in the situation where people no
longer trust nature, and they feel that anything we do, any intervention
could flip nature into some kind of 'revenge of Gaia', that certainly
there could be a tipping point that could tip our stable environment
into a chaotic, disastrous downturn.
That is a view that makes
many people very fearful of any new technological advance, because they
think any new intervention of humans has the potential to be the final
straw that kills nature.
Q. Rather than it being something positive?
Yes,
rather than being something that actually could, and actually has,
improved our living standards and our environment. So that's why people
are so afraid of any new technology
Q. Is that because they now
feel like climate change is a human-caused event, so it almost seems
like we deserve it, or is it because we seem to know so much more about
what's going on, and all the data intimidates us?
It is more
because you don't trust nature any more. And you don't trust humans
either, and that the best way of going through life is not to risk
anything, just to keep the status quo, the stability, the order as it
is. Because that will guarantee that there won't be any risk, no
accident, no big change. People are extremely afraid of novelty, new
technology, intervention, because they have this fickle view of nature,
that it is inherently unstable and disastrous. And so they are afraid.
That's why they're afraid of the CO2 emissions to the atmosphere,
because they think this could at any point turn into a disaster.
Q. Like a new god of chaos.
Yeah,
it's like a new kind of chaos philosophy. Nature used to be something
that people adored: the beauty of nature, the harmony of nature, the
Newtonian worldview where the universe works like clockwork and we can
predict exactly the movements of the planets and we know when the sun
rises. We know everything, we can predict everything: even evolution,
which had this kind of almost progressive idea of development and things
getting better. But all of this has been turned upside down, and
everything that is new and happening though mankind is threatening the
stability of the natural order.
Q. We kind of hate those ideas of nature having some sort of teleological direction, don't we?
Yes,
well it doesn't, in the view of modern man. Nature is a truly random
chance conglomerate of things that can easily tip into chaos. That
changes our response to any large-scale human technology or intervention
into nature. Of all the interventions climate change is the most
global. The alarmists fear that it will cause disaster, will cause a
climate catastrophe. And of course the vast majority of people don't
think about it at all. You can't see it; it's not like pollution which
you breathe in or drink or whatever. This is invisible to most people so
they ignore it, and the very small minority of scientists who think
that the world is more stable than the alarmists fear, they don't see
any evidence that it is causing any significant change. If we were to
see signals of significant change or significant deterioration then we
would be much more concerned, but people don't see that.
Q. And is that because the scientists who see nature as more stable take a wider view?
I
think because of the new, changed view of our world as inherently
unstable, the vast majority of scientists are more concerned still.
Because it is a paradigm that is more deeply rooted now. We've heard in
the last 40 or 50 years that man is destroying nature and the
environment, against all evidence showing the opposite, the general
thinking is that we are actually destroying the environment. That is the
perception. When you actually look at issue after issue – whether it's
forests or water or food or agriculture – in reality things are actually
improving rather than deteriorating. Technology makes it much easier to
produce food or clean water, air and so on.
If you think about
Britain, just as an example. Compare Britain to what it looked like 100
years ago, or even 50 years ago. The rivers are cleaner than ever
before, the air is cleaner, the water's cleaner, living standards are
going up. 100 years ago the average life expectancy was 40 years or
something like that. Many kids would die early on. Things for families
and individuals, and the environment, have actually improved. But the
general perception is that it's going down the drain.
Q. So, if not climate change, what do you think is the single biggest threat to the earth today?
There's
no threat to the earth, there's no global threat. We could be hit by a
large asteroid, which hits every million years or so. So the likelihood
is very remote. Even that wouldn't destroy the earth, it might destroy
the global economy though. So the biggest realistic threat to an open
and liberal society is irrationality and fanaticism. That is the biggest
risk we face in my view. That is a political issue that can be solved
long-term. War often results as a direct consequence of these extreme
ideologies and fanaticism. Although even the number of wars has gone
down significantly over the last few generations, globally, maybe
because we have more democracies than ever before. That is still in my
view the biggest risk we face.
Q. Do you think that there could be wars based on our fears about climate change?
No.
that is highly unlikely. For a start, countries are actually getting
better all the time. The scenarios we hear – water wars or something
like that – the reality is that even countries that are enemies are
dealing with water issues, because they have to, they rely on it. And
also, because of desalination a lot of countries that are struggling
with water issues are increasingly able to produce desalinated water.
There's a boom in desalination plants around the world. I wouldn't be
surprised that within 50 years or so there wouldn't be any problems with
water at all. By means of technological solutions.
Q. Aren’t there are objections to desalination plants on the grounds that the process is environmentally unfriendly?
Well
they are environmentally unfriendly only to people who hate energy.
They are energy intensive, so you need a lot of energy, but by and large
they don't cause any environmental damage.
But don't get me
wrong, there are a lot of energy issues around the world, in China for
example. But they will solve their problem of air pollution the same way
we did. We started with the industrial revolution with terrible air
pollution. But we sorted it out. It also requires a certain economic
development. What is the top priority for China? The top priority is
getting their people out of poverty. Once that happens and they have a
kind of middle class, urban lifestyle, they will say: “OK, now I’ve got a
job, and I’ve got a flat and a telly and fridge, OK now I also want
clean air. This is how things tend to develop. First food on the table
and then clean air.
SOURCE'Peak oil' theory runs out of gasThe
problem is, it’s just so hard to be an alarmist these days.
Temperatures aren’t rising, U.S. emissions are down, and now it turns
out that peak oil won’t peak. What’s a scare-monger to do?
“Peak
oil proponents — the guys and gals who believe overconsumption combined
with scarce resources will lead to stratospheric energy prices — are now
clinging to the hope that the shale oil and gas boom will fizzle out as
the cost of drilling climbs,” reports Business Insider. “For the most
part, the boom has held up, though no one believes it will last forever.
But there is a fifth-column phenomenon this group has completely
overlooked that will once-and-for-all obliterate their arguments: energy
consumption efficiency.”
Put simply, we won’t run out of oil and gas (and other fuels) because we’re using less and less of them.
Not because demand is down, but because efficiency is up.
“Contained
in Exxon’s new Outlook for Energy report is the following damning
statistic: Electricity generation will grow by 90 percent by 2040, but
the amount of fuel needed to generate that electricity will only have to
grow by 50 percent,” the magazine reports. “And the projected increase
in energy demand is 20 percent less than the demand increase seen from
1980 to 2010. The IEA has previously projected that electricity will
become more affordable over time in most regions as income levels
increase faster than household electricity bills.”
In one sense,
this is a victory for the conservationists. It’s difficult to quantify,
but the EPA’s Energy Star program no doubt played a part. Consumers were
encouraged — but not forced — to spend their money on more
energy-efficient appliances. Consumers were rewarded for their purchases
with tax credits — and lower electricity bills.
Although the
General Accounting Office has criticized the Energy Star program’s
implementation, it was at least a free market approach to saving energy.
The
free market deserves a lot of the credit for the failure of peak oil
claims, as well. Companies, as well as consumers, seek to trim their
expenses, and energy is always a big expense. There’s a built-in
motivation for efficiency that everyone responds to.
Writing in
the Dallas Business Journal, Nicholas Sakelaris says that efficiency can
be seen as our greatest “green” energy source. He quoted Ted Pirog, an
energy analyst with Exxon.
“Our greatest source of energy in the future is our ability to use it more efficiently,” Pirog said.
Don’t tell that to Daryl Hannah, the Hollywood star who has been arrested in East Texas protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
“We
should be starting to build some resilience and some self-sufficiency
by developing renewable energy infrastructure,” she says.
And she’s right, to a degree. There’s nothing wrong with a true “all-of-the-above” energy policy.
But
we can’t let the alarmists continue touting the peak oil theory, which
was first expounded in 1956 by Shell scientist M. King Hubbert. He said
U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1971, and after that,
costs would steadily rise until we’re out of oil completely.
It didn’t — and it won’t.
SOURCE Nuclear Adaptation – How Evolution Works CATCHING
evolution in action is hard. The best-known examples are those where
human action, in the form of pesticides, herbicides or drugs, has
intentionally made the world a nastier place for some specific group of
creatures, and natural selection has pushed back to create resistance
(see article). But a group led by Timothy Mousseau of the University of
South Carolina, Anders Moller of the CNRS, in France, and Ismael Galván
of the Doñana Research Station in Spain has now, in a paper in
Functional Ecology, provided an example of selection responding to a
human action that was most definitely unintentional: the explosion and
fire at a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, 28 years ago.
Dr
Mousseau and Dr Moller knew from previous work that birds living near
Chernobyl have better survival rates than those living near Fukushima,
in Japan, where a serious reactor accident happened in 2011. They
suspected that was because the Ukrainian birds had had time to evolve
resistance. They therefore sent blood and feather samples from 120 birds
of 13 species they collected from both high- and low-radiation regions
around the defunct reactor at Chernobyl to Dr Galván, who looked for
genetic damage in them and also analysed their levels of glutathione, an
antioxidant that mops up highly reactive (and therefore harmful)
molecules created when radiation hits biological tissues.
In
those birds taken from low-radiation zones the average concentration of
glutathione was 450 micrograms per gram of body mass; in high-radiation
areas it was 725 micrograms per gram. Moreover, the higher a bird’s
glutathione level, the lower the amount of genetic damage Dr Galván
could spot in its cells. Birds in high-radiation zones, then, seem to
have evolved to deal with the threat, just as Darwin would have
predicted.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
5 May, 2014
The Warmist strategy: If the facts don't suit you, make up them upThere's no such thing as an honest Warmist and Michael Mann is a model of that.
He
starts out below with an implication that a CO2 level of 450ppm would
be dangerous but blithely ignores the fact that for many years Warmists
said 400 ppm was the danger point. But 400 ppm has been reached and
nothing happened. So how do we know that any other ppm figure is not
just another figure plucked out of the air? It is exactly that of course
Then
he goes on to a real whopper: "the earth’s temperature has ticked up
just as expected". Even people like IPCC chair Rajenda Pachauri and
NASA's Jim Hansen have admitted that global warming has been halted for
the last 17 years but Mann makes no mention of that
He ends up
however admitting that the predictions are uncertain and even implies
that they are of very low probablity -- so the truth is gradually
getting to him![](gremay14_files/michael-mann.htm)
On
April 30, a research professor at the center of the so-called “climate
wars” came to Fordham to talk about rising carbon dioxide emissions and
the science that shows they need to be curtailed.
The speaker was
Michael E. Mann, Ph.D., director of the Earth System Science Center at
Pennsylvania State University, whose research helped the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change secure a Nobel Peace Prize in
2007 and who has authored two books on the topic. Mann has been the
target of climate change deniers, who hacked into his e-mail account in
an attempt to discredit him.
He spoke at the Rose Hill campus and
was introduced by Stephen Holler, Ph.D., assistant professor in the
Department of Physics and Engineering Physics.
Mann started with a
basic description of greenhouse effect, caused by the buildup of carbon
dioxide that “traps” part of the infrared radiation emitted by the
Earth. The resulting warming is amplified by feedback mechanisms such as
increased evaporation, which boosts the amount of airborne water vapor
that, in turn, acts as a greenhouse gas as well, he said.
In
2013, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts
per million for the first time, he said. If there’s no change in the
burning of fossil fuels, levels will reach 450 parts per million in a
matter of just decades. By the mid-21st century, it will be be double
the level that existed in preindustrial times. Meanwhile, he said, the
earth’s temperature has ticked up just as expected.
“Everything I
told you thus far wasn't based on climate models; it was based on
simple physics that we've known about for two centuries—irrefutable
measurements that tell us we're changing the composition of the
atmosphere in an unprecedented manner and that the Earth is warming up
as we expect it to,” he said.
“Scientists around the world would be completely stumped … if the Earth were not warming up,” he said.
Mann
discussed climate change projections based on computer models, saying
that one of the more benign projections—that the Earth will experience
an increase in global temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, compared to
preindustrial times, if nothing is done—“puts us firmly into the danger
zone.”
“You start to see bad things happen when you talk about
human health, water resources, food, national security, our economy,
biodiversity, and across the board,” he said.
Such an increase
could be three degrees higher, he said—“the difference between a problem
that would be moderate, and which we could adapt to, and a problem that
would be catastrophic.”
“Some people say, ‘Well, it's
uncertain—maybe we'll be lucky,’” he said. “It’s true, maybe we'll get
lucky. But maybe we'll get unlucky.”
Invoking the example of a
cost-benefit analysis, he said, “we buy fire insurance not because we
think our homes are going to burn down, but because if they did burn
down it would be catastrophic. It's a very low-probability event with an
effectively infinite cost to us [because] it ruins our lives if it
happens.”
“I would argue that reducing greenhouse gas emission is
a planetary insurance policy” because of the possibility that the worst
projections could come true, he said.
SOURCEAre pets bad for the environment?The
author's subheading below reveals the emptiness of his case. His basic
assumption is wrong. He implies that the world's resources are running
out. But they are not. Our entire history for the last few centuries is
one of increasing resources. Mankind is always inventing new ones, with
fracking being the latest example. The stone age did not end because
people ran out of stone. It ended because human ingenuity converted more
and more physical "things" into resources. Bauxite pebbles did not
become a resource untill Hall & Heroult figured out how to convert
it into aluminium. We in fact face a future of ever-increasing resources
and affluence. Fracking is the great resource upsurge of recent times
but all history tells us that there is more to comeWith the world's resources under increasing pressure, Erik Assadourian argues that pet ownership needs a drastic rethink
Early
last month the Pet Industry Sustainability Coalition launched an update
for its Pet Industry Sustainability Toolkit (yes, it's called PIST).
Touting a partner like Natural Capital Solutions, this toolkit, in
theory, should offer some bold ways the industry could become
sustainable – such as promoting small dog ownership (as they eat less) –
but instead it offers remedial advice like how to reduce packaging
waste, make buildings more efficient, and remove toxic chemicals from
supply chains.
Meanwhile, less than two weeks later, hundreds of
companies and entrepreneurs convened in Orlando for the 10th annual
Global Pet Expo to sell more useless stuff to pet owners – everything
from remote video camera treat dispensing systems (for the guilty pet
owner who spends all day at the office) to designer pet clothes, toys,
even burial caskets – helping to stoke the annual $55.7bn pet industry
in the US.
As our pets increasingly adopt the consumer habits of
their owners, it's clear that no matter how "green" this industry
becomes, it will never become sustainable. But even if we severely
restrict what pet products can be sold, and even if we stop overfeeding
our increasingly overweight pet populations – 53% of dogs and 58% of
cats are overweight or obese in the US, according to the Association for
Pet Obesity Prevention – can pets be part of a sustainable future?
The
short, if unpopular, answer is probably not. Two German Shepherds use
more resources just for their annual food needs than the average
Bangladeshi uses each year in total. And while pet owners may disagree
that Bangladeshis have more right to exist than their precious
Schnookums, the truth is that pets serve little more societal purpose
than keeping us company in an increasingly individualistic and socially
isolated consumer society.
So fast forward to a climate disrupted
future, which the new IPCC report suggests is coming faster than we
thought. Where do pets fit in? When climate change disrupts grain
supplies, shoots food prices through the roof and also eviscerates the
global consumer economy, pets may be abandoned in droves, as families
suddenly can no longer afford their upkeep. We've seen this happen in
times of economic crises, hence the large feral dog population in
Detroit today. But perhaps at that point the pet issue will solve itself
– as these packs of dogs become a bridge food for the hungry unemployed
masses.
In other words, as we prepare for the contracting future
ahead, a low-hanging fruit is to change the culture around pet
ownership. Not just by putting the above barriers in place to discourage
overall ownership, but to help shift the norms around what pet
ownership means.
SOURCE North American Natural Gas Seeks Markets OverseasA slew of multibillion-dollar coastal projects compete to ship super-chilled LNG to Asia and EuropeNorth
America's natural gas boom is now so big that the industry and its
supporters believe it should not be contained to just one continent.
They
argue this new bounty should be shared—especially with hungry markets
in Asia and Europe willing to pay a high price for the fuel. But
long-distance transport of natural gas is one of the world's most
expensive engineering feats, and it will require government approvals,
community support, and billions of dollars in capital to take North
American gas overseas.
Despite the challenges, proposals are now
moving forward to make the Chesapeake Bay waterfront community of Cove
Point, Maryland, into a global gateway for Pennsylvania shale gas, and
to turn the remote British Columbia coastal village of Kitimat into an
international energy hub.
Supercool Gas
In all, some 40
new export projects have been proposed in the United States and Canada,
giant multibillion-dollar facilities to superchill natural gas into
liquid form at -260°F (-162°C) so it can be shipped by refrigerated
tanker. This liquefied natural gas, or LNG, takes 600 times less space,
making it economical to move by vessel.
The LNG business has been
around for decades; Japan, the world's largest importer, relies on such
shipments for all of its natural gas. But as the distance between the
world natural gas supply and demand centers becomes more clear, price
disparities have grown. The International Energy Agency noted last fall
that the price of natural gas in the European Union has been running at
roughly triple the price in the United States, while Japan has been
paying nearly five times as much.
As a result, there is a frenzy
of building and planning to build and expand LNG terminals, not only in
North America, but in other energy-rich locations such as Australia, the
Middle East, and Russia.
Chris Holmes, senior director of global
gas and LNG at the consulting firm IHS Energy, said proposed new and
expanded international export facilities, a dozen of of which are
already under construction, would nearly triple the amount of liquefied
natural gas on the market. The increase would likely meet global demand
for decades, he said.
"You have a wide [price] spread there and that's the attraction," Holmes said.
Yet
industry analysts say many of the proposed export facilities might not
get beyond the planning stage because of high costs and stiff
international competition. Exporting natural gas by ship requires
building massive facilities to supercool the gas. Holmes said these
liquefaction facilities cost as much as $10 billion, only part of a $30
billion investment to build a new export facility.
"This is a very challenging business," Holmes said, adding that it can take more than a decade to turn a profit.
A Gas Wedge Against Putin?
The
financial realities mean that North American natural gas will not be
hitting the high seas anytime soon. That means U.S. energy supplies made
bountiful by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, are not likely to be a
useful lever in the short term against the world's other natural gas
powerhouse, Russia, in the current crisis over Crimea and Ukraine,
experts say.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has suggested that
the lack of U.S. natural gas ports amounts to a "de facto ban on
exports," and he has called for President Barack Obama's administration
to dramatically expand natural gas production and speed export
facilities in order to supplant Russia as Europe's natural gas supplier.
The Netherlands opened its first import terminal for LNG, a facility on the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam, in 2011.
However,
IHS said the Ukrainian crisis "may promote a shift to simplifying (and
expediting)" the U.S. government's export approval process.
SOURCECaruba: Science, Free Speech, and the Courts?By Alan Caruba
The
public, after decades of global warming advocacy, now called “climate
change”, has begun to conclude that claims of a massive warming trend
were dubious and that real climate change is the natural response of the
planet to forces well beyond any impact of the human race.
The
fact is that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for some 17 years
based on lower rates of solar radiation as the Sun undergoes one of its
natural cycles, a reduction in the number of sunspots or magnetic storms
on its surface.
The May 5th edition of the National Review
devotes its cover story to “The Case Against Michael Mann: The Hockey
Stick and Free Speech” by Charles C.W. Cooke because the creator of the
“hockey stick” graph purporting a massive warming is suing the magazine,
commentator Mark Steyn, along with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, and Rand Simberg. In his suit, filed in the D.C. Superior
Court, Mann asserts that “in making the defamatory statement” they acted
intentionally, maliciously, willfully, and with the intent to injure
Dr. Mann, or to benefit (National Review) and Steyn.”
Mann is
asserting a “narrow form of libel that American law prohibits” said
Cooke. “As a seminal Supreme Court case, New York Times v. Sullivan,
outlined in 1964, using the law of libel, to drag journalists into court
for expressing their sincere views on matters of major public
importance is entirely inconsistent with our ‘national commitment to
principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust,
and wide open.’”
Mann’s feelings are hurt and he believes that
any criticism of the questionable science he applied to the creation of
his now-famous global warming graph is libel. I believe the court will
conclude that using the charge of libel to silence his critics is wrong.
That’s what makes the case important, in particular for a basic
principle of science, and in general for the public understanding that
global warming and/or climate change depends on vigorous debate.
Science
depends on being able to reproduce the results of an assertion by other
scientists. Suffice to say that Mann’s graph has been extensively
disputed and found lacking in the methods used to produce it.
As
Cooke reports, the graph “purports to depict global temperature trends
between the years A.D. 1000 and 2000” and takes its name from “a mostly
flat line of temperature data from the year 1000 until about 1900 (the
handled of the hockey stick), followed by a sharp uptick over the 20th
century (the blade).” The graph was published in the 2001 report of the
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since then the IPCC has
been retreating from its vehement claim that global warming posed a
major threat to life on Earth.
In 2009, the leak of many emails
between members of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research
Center and others engaging in the global warming claims revealed that
“Mann and his colleagues have processed their data in a way that makes
global warming appear more severe than the evidence suggests on its
own.” Most damning was Mann’s use of tree ring data and the way other
data was ignored in order to make his claims about global warming appear
to be valid. “The leaked emails suggest that some members of the IPCC
were well aware of these inconsistencies—and even may have sought to
conceal them,” notes Cooke.
Aside from the dubious science cited,
the issue before the court is whether publicly questioning Mann can or
should be deemed libelous. If it concludes that it is, then the most
fundamental principle of science will be destroyed and the courts will
fill up with similar cases whose purpose would be to censor and silence
the debate that is the life blood of science.
Mann has claimed to
have been a Nobel Prize laureate, but Cooke notes that the Nobel
Committee “explicitly said that he is not.” He has claimed that the
National Academy of Sciences and that the University of East Anglia’s
Climate Research Unit investigations into his conduct and his work “have
fully vindicated him “when they in fact have done no such thing.”
Worldwide,
people have been subjected to the greatest hoax of the modern era and
17 years of cooling demonstrates that carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas”
plays no role in heating the Earth. All of the claims about global
warming are demonstrably wrong, along with all of the computer models
and other “proof” inaccurate to the point of being purposefully
deceptive.
At the heart of the case against the National Review
is whether a scientist can silence his critics and one can only hope for
the sake of science, free speech, freedom of the press, and the truth
that Mann loses.
Editor’s note: The testimony of climate
scientist Dr. John R. Christy of the University of Alabama before a 2011
U.S. House hearing on climate change addresses how and why Michael Mann
and his “hockey stick” became such a prominent part of the IPCC Third
Assessment Report in 2011. It is available
here (PDF)
SOURCE Fracking: EU red tape threat to British energy boomBritain
will be told to get fracking faster for shale gas when the House of
Lords economy committee publishes its report this week
Britain’s
fracking industry is being held back by environmental regulations drawn
up in Brussels, a senior committee of the House of Lords is expected to
say this week.
In a major report, the Lords are expected to call
for permits to be granted more quickly to drilling companies to allow
them to test the potential of newly drilled shale gas wells.
Government
experts believe that Britain’s shale gas and oil reserves, buried deep
underground, could generate billions of pounds worth of fuel in future.
Ministers
hope that exploiting the shale gas and oil reserves, through the
controversial process of fracking, could help secure a home-grown energy
supply and reduce household gas and electricity bills in future.
David
Cameron has said the Ukraine crisis should act as a spur to encourage
Britain and the rest of the European Union to embrace fracking and
reduce its reliance on imported gas from Russia.
But the House of
Lords Economic Affairs Committee, whose members include the former
Conservative chancellor, Lord Lawson of Blaby, is expected to conclude
that it is impossible to know what the UK’s shale reserves will be worth
without more widespread fracking.
The Lords committee has been
investigating the potential impact of shale gas and oil on the UK
economy and energy policy since October 2013.
They are expected
to conclude that the potential benefits to Britain from fracking are
huge but that progress in the exploration of new wells, and testing the
"flow rate" of gas and oil from these wells, should be accelerated.
Hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking”, involves pumping water, sand and chemicals
at high pressure into shale rock deep underground, which then fractures,
releasing its reserves of gas and oil.
Environmental concerns
have been raised over the potential risks to drinking water supplies
from contamination by fracking waste chemicals and water, and the danger
of causing earth tremors.
Cuadrilla, the shale gas exploration
company, has written to the committee warning that progress has so far
been slow due to the “very lengthy” process of agreeing permits to frack
with the Environment Agency, the state regulator.
The company’s
chief executive, Francis Egan, told the Lords committee that the past
two years had seen “a huge amount of debate and development of
environmental permit requirements for shale, not least in respect of the
application of various European Union Directives”.
The company
will submit fresh applications for fracking permits to the Environment
Agency, including proposals to develop several new sites, “in the near
future”, he said, adding that he hoped the regulator’s response would be
“speedy”.
Industry groups warned the committee that Britain’s
onshore oil and gas businesses were governed by 14 separate EU
directives, ranging from water directives to minor waste regulations.
British
ministers, including Mr Cameron and the Environment Secretary, Owen
Paterson, have been fighting attempts to impose new EU directives on the
fracking industry across Europe.
Speaking at the World Economic
Forum in Davos earlier this year, Mr Cameron warned Europe against
imposing “burdensome” new red tape on the fracking industry.
He said businesses wanting to relocate in Europe needed “cheap and predictable sources of energy”.
“If
the European Union or its member states impose burdensome, unjustified
or premature regulatory burdens on shale gas exploration in Europe,
investors will quickly head elsewhere,” he said.
George Osborne,
the Chancellor, has said that shale gas could bring “thousands of jobs,
billions of pounds of business investment, and lower energy bills”.
However,
only a relatively small proportion of Britain – about 7,300 sq miles –
has so far been licensed for oil and gas drilling. This includes parts
of Sussex, where drilling for oil at Balcombe by Cuadrilla caused fierce
protests.
Last year, ministers commissioned consultants to
identify which other areas are suitable for drilling. Greenpeace, which
opposes fracking, says the areas being assessed cover some 32,000 sq
miles.
A government report is expected to be published soon
setting out the next wave of potential fracking opportunities in
southern England.
The Committee, chaired by Lord MacGregor of
Pulham Market, a Cabinet minister in the governments of Baroness
Thatcher and Sir John Major, will publish its report on the economic
impact of shale gas on Thursday.
The peers have heard evidence
from witnesses including academic experts, government officials,
companies involved in the extraction of shale gas and oil, and
anti-fracking campaigners.
Ministers have announced measures to ensure the safety of fracking after concerns that the process can trigger earthquakes.
Seismic
activity during fracking will be closely monitored and any significant
changes will result in the process being slowed or stopped.
SOURCE Australia: Climate scientists in audit commission's crosshairsAnd are they squealing!The
nation’s climate and weather predicting capacity and the jobs of dozens
of scientists are at risk if the Abbott government accepts a
recommendation of the National Commission of Audit to axe a key program,
researchers said.
The Australian Climate Change Science
Program’s four-year funding of $31.6 million, mostly to the CSIRO and
the Bureau of Meteorology, duplicates work by those and other agencies
and “should be returned to the budget or allocated to priority areas”,
the commission said in its report.
But scientists, including
Michael Raupach, formerly of the CSIRO and now at the Australian
National University, said the program supported a “great deal of
critical scientific work” that helps refine climate models which are
also used for weather forecasting.
“The future course of climate
change matters hugely for Australia, and continued observation and
modelling of climate is absolutely vital,” said Dr Raupach, whose
research over more than three decades for CSIRO also included funding
from the program. “The ACCSP is an important component of our national
effort, and the whole effort would be much reduced without this
program.”
“The government is currently considering the commission
of audit,” said a spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt,
declining to elaborate.
While the bulk of the commission’s
recommendations – ranging from cutting the minimum wage to raising the
cost of doctor visits – are not expected to feature in the federal
budget on Tuesday week, the dismissal of the threat from global warming
by senior Abbott government members has scientists nervous about their
future.
One scientist said the $4 million or so provided to the
CSIRO by the ACCSP per year was the reason the institution “was still in
the game". Another said 30 to 35 climate scientists would lose their
jobs directly if the program ceased and probably a similar number
indirectly.
Despite the increasing heatwaves, rising sea levels
and ocean acidification - which scientists link to rising greenhouse gas
levels - the Abbott government has downplayed the risks from climate
change, said Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler.
“This
is a government that has shown a disdain for scientific research,” Mr
Butler said. “From the Prime Minister down, it has regularly denigrated
the work of scientists here in Australia and internationally around the
area of climate change.”
Last week Treasury launched a
Productivity Commission inquiry into disaster relief funding with its
terms of reference omitting any mention of climate change, noting only
that "the impacts and costs of extreme weather events can be expected to
increase in the future with population growth and the expanding
urbanisation of coast lines and mountain districts near our cities".
Axing
the ACCSP may also put at risk Australia’s ability to receive
information from other agencies. Australia's area of expertise includes
the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, information the program shares with
international bodies, receiving access to their work in turn on other
regions also important to Australia’s climate.
“Climate change
has not gone away,” said Dr Raupach. “The best scientific assessments
indicate that Australia could be subject to warming over the 21st
century that could range from less than two to more than five degrees.”
“The high end of this range would be catastrophic,” he said.
The
potential for cuts to climate modelling comes as odds increase for an
El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific. Recent signals include a
significant weakening of the tradewinds and the warm pool of water now
extending east of the international dateline.
El Nino years tend to be drier and hotter than average in Australia, with increased risk of droughts and bushfires.
SOURCE***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
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the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
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May 04, 2014
Meet the Billionaire Obama and Reid Listen To
Tom
Steyer, co-founder of Advanced Energy Economy, speaks to the delegates
on the second night of the 2012 Democratic National ConventionYou’ve
got to hand it to billionaire Tom Steyer. He tells Barack Obama and
Harry Reid to jump, and they obediently reply: How high?
Mr.
Steyer pulled off the policy coup of the year last week when the White
House announced it would place the Keystone XL pipeline in regulatory
purgatory for another six months at least. Mr. Steyer has promised $100
million to Democrats to beat back Republicans in the midterm elections
this fall, and the campaign funds have already paid off in the scuttling
of this $3 billion pipeline project. (Remember when Democrats were
pro-infrastructure?) President Obama says we have to determine whether
it is “in the national interest.”
Mr. Steyer protested this week
that he is not the Democratic party’s version of the Koch brothers, who
fund efforts to promote liberty and free enterprise. Mr. Steyer says
that “there are real distinctions between the Koch brothers and us,”
because the Kochs personally benefit from their political advocacy,
while he is donating to save the planet. Never mind that he’s a major
investor in solar-energy projects that compete with fossil fuels. Let’s
just say that Steyer got more than just a lousy T-shirt for his
political pay-to-play investment.
But Steyer, like most fanatical
greens, really does have an intense hatred of this pipeline — and thus a
motive that goes beyond any personal gain. To the far left, Keystone
has become the symbol of the North American shale-oil-and-gas revolution
that is crushing the brief and ill-fated renewable-energy fad. So
anything that would efficiently transport these fossil fuels to market
is evil.
For his part, Obama repeated the Big Green mantra that
we shouldn’t build the pipeline if it would contribute to “carbon
pollution.” By this logic, the U.S. government should shut down the
existing 100,000 miles of pipeline in North America and stop all
domestic fossil-fuel production.
But all of this is a sideshow to
the really big question here, which is whether the GOP leaders are
smart enough to capitalize on this Keystone blunder. The controversy
exposes a widening fault line within the Democratic coalition that could
split the party in two. It’s an intra-party blood feud between the
blues and the greens: Blue-collar union Democrats (those who work in the
private sector) desperately want the jobs associated with drilling,
mining, and building the infrastructure to make those things happen.
Many of the big unions, from the Teamsters to the welders and
pipefitters, support the project and have furiously objected to Obama’s
decision. The project creates 10,000 jobs that would pay between $50,000
and $100,000 a year. This isn’t minimum-wage stuff we are talking
about.
Obama has made the laughable claim recently that the
pipeline would lead to “only 50 permanent jobs.” So a $3 billion
multistate pipeline that stretches more than 1,000 miles shouldn’t go
forward, because it won’t boost employment permanently? Someone might
want to explain to the president that in the private sector there is no
such thing as a permanent job. (Those are to be found only in the
government.)
We will surely see more of these blue-versus-green
economic-development battles emerge in the months and years ahead.
Already West Virginia has flipped from Democratic blue to Republican red
in recent years because of the Left’s war on coal, while other resource
states — including Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New Mexico,
Virginia, and, who knows, maybe even New York — could shift into the red
column once the old blue-collar Reagan Democrats realize that the
greens who run and now finance the Democratic party have become
unhinged, and constitute a clear and present danger to the jobs and
livelihoods of middle-class America.
Hollywood elites, and
billionaire hedge-fund managers like Tom Steyer, can live with that
result. A Pew Research poll has found that Keystone is unpopular with
only two demographic groups: Democrats who earn more than $100,000 and
Democrats with postgraduate degrees.
But the working class in
America that cares a lot more about a paycheck than about stopping the
rise of the oceans is tiring of being the frontline victim of this green
menace. Barack Obama won the 2012 election because he persuaded
middle-class voters that he cares more about them than do the
Republicans. The latest Keystone XL pipeline travesty is the most recent
evidence that this is a lot of bunk.
SOURCE Will: ‘Global Warming Is Socialism by the Back Door’George Will said recently “global warming is socialism by the back door.”
In
an interview with The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein, Will points out
that progressives use warming to rationalize “more and more power in
Washington” to “micromanage the lives of the American people—our shower
heads, our toilets, our bathtubs, our garden hoses.” Watch:
SOURCE Renewable Energy in Decline, Less than 1% of Global EnergyThe
global energy outlook has changed radically in just six years.
President Obama was elected in 2008 by voters who believed we were
running out of oil and gas, that climate change needed to be halted, and
that renewables were the energy source of the near future.
But an unexpected transformation of energy markets and politics may instead make 2014 the year of peak renewables.
In
December of 2007, former Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace
Prize for work on man-made climate change, leading an international
crusade to halt global warming. In June, 2008 after securing a majority
of primary delegates, candidate Barack Obama stated, “…this was the
moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to
heal…” Climate activists looked to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate
Conference as the next major step to control greenhouse gas emissions.
The
price of crude oil hit $145 per barrel in June, 2008. The International
Energy Agency and other organizations declared that we were at peak
oil, forecasting a decline in global production. Many claimed that the
world was running out of hydrocarbon energy.
Driven by the twin
demons of global warming and peak oil, world governments clamored to
support renewables. Twenty years of subsidies, tax-breaks, feed-in
tariffs, and mandates resulted in an explosion of renewable energy
installations. The Renewable Energy Index (RENIXX) of the world’s 30 top
renewable energy companies soared to over 1,800.
Tens of
thousands of wind turbine towers were installed, totaling more than
200,000 windmills worldwide by the end of 2012. Germany led the world
with more than one million rooftop solar installations. Forty percent of
the US corn crop was converted to ethanol vehicle fuel.
But at
the same time, an unexpected energy revolution was underway. Using good
old Yankee ingenuity, the US oil and gas industry discovered how to
produce oil and natural gas from shale. With hydraulic fracturing and
horizontal drilling, vast quantities of hydrocarbon resources became
available from shale fields in Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania.
From
2008 to 2013, US petroleum production soared 50 percent. US natural gas
production rose 34 percent from a 2005 low. Russia, China, Ukraine,
Turkey, and more than ten nations in Europe began issuing permits for
hydraulic fracturing. The dragon of peak oil and gas was slain.
In
2009, the ideology of Climatism, the belief that humans were causing
dangerous global warming, came under serious attack. In November, emails
were released from top climate scientists at the University of East
Anglia in the United Kingdom, an incident christened Climategate. The
communications showed bias, manipulation of data, avoidance of freedom
of information requests, and efforts to subvert the peer-review process,
all to further the cause of man-made climate change.
One month
later, the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to agree on a successor
climate treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Failures at United Nations
conferences at Cancun (2010), Durban (2011), Doha (2012), and Warsaw
(2013) followed. Canada, Japan, Russia, and the United States announced
that they would not participate in an extension of the Kyoto Protocol.
Major
climate legislation faltered across the world. Cap and trade failed in
Congress in 2009, with growing opposition from the Republican Party. The
price of carbon permits in the European Emissions Trading System
crashed in April 2013 when the European Union voted not to support the
permit price. Australia elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the fall
of 2013 on a platform of scrapping the nation’s carbon tax.
Europeans
discovered that subsidy support for renewables was unsustainable.
Subsidy obligations soared in Germany to over $140 billion and in Spain
to over $34 billion by 2013. Renewable subsidies produced the world’s
highest electricity rates in Denmark and Germany. Electricity and
natural gas prices in Europe rose to double those of the United States.
Worried
about bloated budgets, declining industrial competitiveness, and
citizen backlash, European nations have been retreating from green
energy for the last four years. Spain slashed solar subsidies in 2009
and photovoltaic sales fell 80 percent in a single year. Germany cut
subsidies in 2011 and 2012 and the number of jobs in the German solar
industry dropped by 50 percent. Renewable subsidy cuts in the Czech
Republic, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom added to
the cascade. The RENIXX Renewable Energy Index fell below 200 in 2012,
down 90 percent from the 2008 peak.
Once a climate change leader,
Germany turned to coal after the 2012 decision to close nuclear power
plants. Coal now provides more than 50 percent of Germany’s electricity
and 23 new coal-fired power plants are planned. Global energy from coal
has grown by 4.4 percent per year over the last ten years.
Spending
on renewables is in decline. From a record $318 billion in 2011, world
renewable energy spending fell to $280 billion in 2012 and then fell
again to $254 billion in 2013, according to Bloomberg. The biggest drop
occurred in Europe, where investment plummeted 41 percent last year. The
2013 expiration of the US Production Tax Credit for wind energy will
continue the downward momentum.
Today, wind and solar provide
less than one percent of global energy. While these sources will
continue to grow, it’s likely they will deliver only a tiny amount of
the world’s energy for decades to come. Renewable energy output may have
peaked, at least as a percentage of global energy production.
SOURCE Vermont GMO Labeling Law Will Set Back America’s Food SupplyLook
under the hood of every movement to forestall the use of
genetically-modified grains and you’ll find a preponderance of folks in
the organic food industry. They are celebrating today the passage of a
law in Vermont making it the first state to require the labeling of
foods made with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), and they’re
pretending this law will actually protect people.
But there is no
such thing as contamination of an organic crop by GMOs. Organic farmers
are certainly not allowed to make use of GMO technology according to
rules written, edited and finalized by organic industry stakeholders
over 10 years ago. But not a single organic farmer has ever been
de-certified anywhere in the United States due to pollen drift from, or
commingling with, a GMO crop.
There have been many legal suits,
meanwhile, against conventional farmers for allegedly contaminating
organic fields with prohibited pesticide spray. But none for alleged
contamination by GMOs. Not one.
And it’s not a mere technicality
in the law that prevents such a lawsuit. It’s the fact that such
cross-pollination and commingling between an organic and GMO crop simply
does not qualify, either from a scientific or regulatory perspective,
as actual contamination.
Think of it like a bunch of Dixiecrat
racists trying to keep African Americans out of their favorite lunch
counter back in the 1960s. They might claim that African Americans are
“impure” and that they “contaminate” their otherwise “pure” white
surroundings. But science, and the law, both say we’re all equal. And
this is what the USDA’s National Organic Program says unambiguously when
it comes to GMOs. As long as organic farmers do not themselves use
them, they are a non-issue where organic production is concerned.
Racism
still exists. Likewise there are those who insist on a 100 percent GMO
free diet, referred to proudly as “zero tolerance.” One supposes this is
their right, but they can’t very well impose their views on others. So
why, one must ask, are organic activists trying so hard to get GMOs
labelled or banned if they pose no threat to organic farms, or to anyone
or anything else?
It’s precisely because GMOs pose no threat
that activists have embarked upon a nationwide campaign to discredit
this new, perfectly safe field of science which, ironically enough,
already delivers on many of the organic movement’s goals of reducing
environmental toxicity and minimizing modern farming’s footprint on the
landscape.
This is the real reason why GMOs pose a “threat” in
the eyes of anti-GMO organic activists; they could one day replace
organics in the hearts of the American public.
After choosing to
reject GMOs during the Clinton Administration, the collective aim of the
organic industry has been to get foods containing GMOs banned or
labelled like a package of cigarettes, thereby scaring American
consumers into buying more certified-organic food.
Once a
patchwork of GMO-labeling laws such as Vermont’s is achieved, even in
just a handful of states, food manufacturers will find themselves forced
to label all of their products with a GMO label because it will be too
costly to label food for states that have mandatory labeling, but not
for the majority of states that don’t. The tail will wag the dog.
The
fact that roughly 70 percent of processed foods now contain GMOs should
testify to their safety. But once a few more state labeling laws are
passed, it’s yet another reason we’ll see all foods labeled — all foods
except for organic ones.
SOURCE Climate science isn’t necessarily ‘settled’By John R. Christy
Why do we argue about climate change?
The
reason there is so much contention regarding “global warming” is
relatively simple to understand: In climate change science we basically
cannot prove anything about how the climate will change as a result of
adding extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
So we are left to argue about unprovable claims.
We
can measure and prove that greenhouse gases are increasing. And, in the
laboratory, we can measure and prove that adding greenhouse gases to a
jar of air will lead to further warming.
But when it comes to how
the actual climate system might respond to extra greenhouse gases,
we’re out of luck in terms of “proof” because the climate’s complexities
are innumerable and poorly understood.
Climate science is a
murky science. When dealing with temperature variations and trends, we
do not have an instrument that tells us how much change is due to humans
and how much to Mother Nature. Measuring the temperature change over
long time periods is difficult enough, but we do not have a thermometer
that says why these changes occur.
We cannot appeal to direct evidence for the cause of change, so we argue.
The
real climate system is so massively complex we do not have the ability
to test global-size theories in a laboratory. Without this ability, we
tend to travel all sorts of other avenues to confirm what are
essentially our unprovable views about climate. These avenues tend to
comfort our souls because we crave certainty over ambiguity.
It
is a fundamental characteristic of the scientific method and, therefore,
of the confidence we have in our theories, that when we finally
understand a system, we are able to predict its behavior.
One
avenue of inquiry is computer simulation. If a system’s important
details can be represented properly in a computer model, predictions can
be accurate and therefore valuable.
My local supermarket can
predict with great skill what I am going to buy, thanks to the
information-gathering system now utilized and my boring eating habits.
Unfortunately, even the most advanced set of climate-model simulations
does not deliver much in the way of certainty.
For example, I
analyzed the tropical atmospheric temperature change in 102 of the
latest climate-model simulations covering the past 35 years. The
temperature of this region is a key target variable because it is tied
directly to the response to extra greenhouse gases in models. If
greenhouse gases are warming the Earth, this is the first place to look.
All
102 model runs overshot the actual temperature change on average by a
factor of three. Not only does this tell us we don’t have a good grasp
on the way climate varies, but the fact that all simulations overcooked
the atmosphere means there is probably a warm bias built into the basic
theory — the same theory we’ve been told is “settled science.”
To me, being off by a factor of three doesn’t qualify as “settled.”
As
important as models can be for problems like this, it is clear we have a
long way to go. And it is troubling that current policy is being based
on these computer models, none of which has been validated by a
formalized, independent Red Team analysis. (Congress, EPA: Are you
listening?)
Others might look to certain climate anomalies and
convince themselves that humans are the cause. I often hear claims that
extreme weather is getting worse. Now, here we do have direct evidence
to check. Whether it’s tornadoes (no change over the past 60 years),
hurricanes (no changes over the past 120 years) or droughts and heat
waves (not as bad as they were during the past 1,000 years), the
evidence doesn’t support those claims. So, we argue.
Without
direct evidence and with poor model predictability, what other avenues
are available to us? This is where things get messy because we are
humans, and humans tend to select those avenues that confirm their
biases. (It seems to me that the less direct evidence there is for a
position, the more passion is applied and the more certainty is
claimed.)
One avenue many folks tend to latch onto is the
self-selected “authority.” Once selected, this “authority” does the
thinking for them, not realizing that this “authority” doesn’t have any
more direct evidence than they do.
Other avenues follow a
different path: Without direct evidence, folks start with their core
beliefs (be they political, social or religious) and extrapolate an
answer to climate change from there. That’s scary.
Then, there is
that time-honored, media-approved, headline-grabbing source of truth —
the opinion poll. The poll can be of scientists, nonscientists, the man
on the street, anyone with a smartphone or groundhogs. If no one (not
even an esteemed scientific organization) has direct evidence to
substantiate any claim of the impact of greenhouse gases on climate,
what would an opinion poll provide besides entertainment or (worse)
justification for one’s agenda?
This polling tack is relatively
clever. Without direct evidence to prove or refute the claims of a
climate poll, the poll becomes the popular avenue for supporting
whatever claims are being made. With enough attention, a poll’s climate
claim morphs into “settled science.”
So we argue even more.
Finally,
what to do about climate change is not a scientific question; it is a
moral question: Is there value in enhancing the quality and length of
human life?
If one believes greenhouse gases will cause terrible
climate problems, then stopping their release from sources of
carbon-burning energy means energy costs will skyrocket.
However,
the length and quality of human life is directly proportional to the
availability of affordable energy, which today is about 85 percent
carbon-based. The truth is, carbon emissions will continue to rise no
matter what the U.S. does, because most of the world has already
answered the real question — that argument is settled.
Should we study new sources of energy? Absolutely.
And
when they become safe and affordable, they could be ready for
deployment. Until then, I’d rather see my five grandchildren have the
opportunity to accumulate wealth, enabled by affordable energy, rather
than be made poorer and thus less able to face whatever vagaries the
world and the climate might throw at them in the future.
This is much more than a murky scientific issue and why the stakes, and thus passions, can be so high — and why we argue.
SOURCE EPA Chief Hits Warming SkepticsEPA
Chief Gina McCarthy has declared that the science behind global warming
is settled. "It's worrisome that our science seems to be under constant
assault by a small -- but vocal -- group of critics," McCarthy said. "I
bet when those same critics get sick, they run to doctors and hospitals
that rely on science from -- guess who -- Harvard University and the
American Cancer Society," McCarthy continued, going off on a litany of
ways the nanny state protects us from every ill. "People and businesses
around the world look to EPA and other federal agencies because our
science is reliable, and our scientists are credible," she insisted. And
the kicker: "Climate change is not the product of conspiracies or
political agendas."
On the contrary, climate change has
everything to do with the political agenda of those who want to empower
government. It's no coincidence that McCarthy's EPA is the agency that
has usurped the most regulatory authority in this area. But shut up, she
explained.
SOURCE Train Derailment and Oil TransportA
train transporting crude oil derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia, this week
dumping 50,000 gallons of oil. It's the latest in a string of similar
train wrecks. "This is another national wake-up call," said Jim Hall, a
former NTSB chairman said. "We have these oil trains moving all across
the United States through communities and the growth and distribution of
this has all occurred, unfortunately, while the federal regulators have
been asleep."
We doubt this is a case of too little regulation.
What it truly highlights once again is the need for the Keystone
pipeline and others like it. Pipelines are far safer than trains for
transporting oil, and despite leftists' political weaponization of
conservation, stewardship of the environment is a very conservative
thing to do.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
2 May, 2014
Lord Lawson gets a forumThe
essay excerpted below is based on the text of a speech given to the
Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University
of BathThere is something odd about the global warming
debate — or the climate change debate, as we are now expected to call
it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt.
I
have never shied away from controversy, nor — for example, as
Chancellor — worried about being unpopular if I believed that what I was
saying and doing was in the public interest.
But I have never in
my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation
and vilification which I — along with other dissenters, of course — have
received for my views on global warming and global warming policies.
For
example, according to the Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, the
global warming dissenters are, without exception, “wilfully ignorant”
and in the view of the Prince of Wales we are “headless chickens”. Not
that “dissenter” is a term they use. We are regularly referred to as
“climate change deniers”, a phrase deliberately designed to echo
“Holocaust denier” — as if questioning present policies and forecasts of
the future is equivalent to casting malign doubt about a historical
fact.
The heir to the throne and the minister are senior public
figures, who watch their language. The abuse I received after appearing
on the BBC’s Today programme last February was far less restrained. Both
the BBC and I received an orchestrated barrage of complaints to the
effect that it was an outrage that I was allowed to discuss the issue on
the programme at all. And even the Science and Technology Committee of
the House of Commons shamefully joined the chorus of those who seek to
suppress debate.
In fact, despite having written a thoroughly
documented book about global warming more than five years ago, which
happily became something of a bestseller, and having founded a think
tank on the subject — the Global Warming Policy Foundation — the
following year, and despite frequently being invited on Today to discuss
economic issues, this was the first time I had ever been asked to
discuss climate change. I strongly suspect it will also be the last
time.
The BBC received a well-organised deluge of complaints —
some of them, inevitably, from those with a vested interest in renewable
energy — accusing me, among other things, of being a geriatric retired
politician and not a climate scientist, and so wholly unqualified to
discuss the issue.
Perhaps, in passing, I should address the
frequent accusation from those who violently object to any challenge to
any aspect of the prevailing climate change doctrine, that the Global
Warming Policy Foundation’s non-disclosure of the names of our donors is
proof that we are a thoroughly sinister organisation and a front for
the fossil fuel industry.
As I have pointed out on a number of
occasions, the Foundation’s Board of Trustees decided, from the outset,
that it would neither solicit nor accept any money from the energy
industry or from anyone with a significant interest in the energy
industry. And to those who are not-regrettably-prepared to accept my
word, I would point out that among our trustees are a bishop of the
Church of England, a former private secretary to the Queen, and a former
head of the Civil Service. Anyone who imagines that we are all engaged
in a conspiracy to lie is clearly in an advanced stage of paranoia.
The
reason why we do not reveal the names of our donors, who are private
citizens of a philanthropic disposition, is in fact pretty obvious. Were
we to do so, they, too, would be likely to be subject to the
vilification and abuse I mentioned earlier. And that is something which,
understandably, they can do without.
That said, I must admit I
am strongly tempted to agree that, since I am not a climate scientist, I
should from now on remain silent on the subject — on the clear
understanding, of course, that everyone else plays by the same rules. No
more statements by Ed Davey, or indeed any other politician, including
Ed Milliband, Lord Deben and Al Gore. Nothing more from the Prince of
Wales, or from Lord Stern. What bliss!
But of course this is not
going to happen. Nor should it; for at bottom this is not a scientific
issue. That is to say, the issue is not climate change but climate
change alarmism, and the hugely damaging policies that are advocated,
and in some cases put in place, in its name. And alarmism is a feature
not of the physical world, which is what climate scientists study, but
of human behaviour; the province, in other words, of economists,
historians, sociologists, psychologists and — dare I say it —
politicians.......
Throughout the Western world, the two creeds
that used to vie for popular support, Christianity and the atheistic
belief system of Communism, are each clearly in decline. Yet people
still feel the need both for the comfort and for the transcendent values
that religion can provide. It is the quasi-religion of green alarmism
and global salvationism, of which the climate change dogma is the prime
example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its
mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege.
The parallel goes
deeper. As I mentioned earlier, throughout the ages the weather has been
an important part of the religious narrative. In primitive societies it
was customary for extreme weather events to be explained as punishment
from the gods for the sins of the people; and there is no shortage of
this theme in the Bible, either — particularly, but not exclusively, in
the Old Testament. The contemporary version of this is that, as a result
of heedless industrialisation within a framework of materialistic
capitalism, we have directly (albeit not deliberately) perverted the
weather, and will duly receive our comeuppance.
There is another
aspect, too, which may account for the appeal of this so-called
explanation. Throughout the ages, something deep in man's psyche has
made him receptive to apocalyptic warnings that the end of the world is
nigh. And almost all of us, whether we like it or not, are imbued with
feelings of guilt and a sense of sin. How much less uncomfortable it is,
how much more convenient, to divert attention away from our individual
sins and reasons to feel guilty, and to sublimate them in collective
guilt and collective sin.
Why does this matter? It matters, and
matters a great deal, on two quite separate grounds. The first is that
it has gone a long way towards ushering in a new age of unreason. It is a
cruel irony that, while it was science which, more than anything else,
was able by its great achievements, to establish the age of reason, it
is all too many climate scientists and their hangers-on who have become
the high priests of a new age of unreason.
But what moves me most
is that the policies invoked in its name are grossly immoral. We have,
in the UK, devised the most blatant transfer of wealth from the poor to
the rich — and I am slightly surprised that it is so strongly supported
by those who consider themselves to be the tribunes of the people and
politically on the Left. I refer to our system of heavily subsidising
wealthy landlords to have wind farms on their land, so that the poor can
be supplied with one of the most expensive forms of electricity known
to man.
This is also, of course, inflicting increasing damage on
the British economy, to no useful purpose whatever. More serious
morally, because it is on a much larger scale, is the perverse
intergenerational transfer of wealth implied by orthodox climate change
policies. It is not much in dispute that future generations — those yet
unborn — will be far wealthier than those — ourselves, our children, and
for many of us our grandchildren — alive today. This is the inevitable
consequence of the projected economic growth which, on a "business as
usual" basis, drives the increased carbon emissions which in turn
determine the projected future warming. It is surely perverse that those
alive today should be told that they must impoverish themselves, by
abandoning what is far and away the cheapest source of energy, in order
to ensure that those yet to be born, who will in any case be signally
better off than they are, will be better off still, by escaping the
disadvantages of any warming that might occur.
However, the
greatest immorality of all concerns the masses in the developing world.
It is excellent that, in so many parts of the developing world — the
so-called emerging economies — economic growth is now firmly on the
march, as they belatedly put in place the sort of economic policy
framework that brought prosperity to the Western world. Inevitably, they
already account for, and will increasingly account for, the lion's
share of global carbon emissions.
But, despite their success,
there are still hundreds of millions of people in these countries in
dire poverty, suffering all the ills that this brings, in terms of
malnutrition, preventable disease, and premature death. Asking these
countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the
very least, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to
perpetuate the incidence of preventable disease, and to increase the
numbers of premature deaths.
Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.
Much more
HERE The terror of global coolingThe effects of global warming would be benign compared with the real possibility of global coolingWhat
if the planet is actually cooling? Devoted warmists might welcome the
idea, perhaps seeing in the falling mercury hope for a better, safer
planet. If so, they would be even more deluded than usual, as author
David Archibald lays out in his new and deeply disturbing book
I
have just put down a book readers of this website are sure to take to
heart — Twilight of Abundance by David Archibald, a fellow Quadrant
contributor and currently Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World
Politics in Washington, D.C. The book arrived in the mail, sent to me by
the author, so I did the dutiful thing and read the first page, and
then I did the self-indulgent thing and read it through as fast as time
would allow over the next two days — and with such enormous pleasure
that the only fault I might mention is how short it is. (I know, two
days for a short book, but I’m a slow reader at the best of times.)
You
could say Archibald’s book is about climate change, and it is, and you
could say it’s about resource depletion, and it is that as well, and you
could also say it’s about the breakdown of international order and it
is about that too. But really, what it does is take everything I already
believe about the problems the West must face and put them together
into a tapestry of such pessimistic realism that it is hard not to be
drawn in.
But having read the book, the most astonishing thing is
that now, when I find myself in the company of greens and leftists
preaching the end of civilisation as we know it, I can now so out-do
anything bleak prospect they offer and leave them in the dismal, cooling
shade. They talk of fifty year and the rising of the seas etc, etc. But
their scenarios have nothing to compare with global cooling’s horrors
if anything like the kind of picture Archibald paints comes to pass.
And
while the book may be overly pessimistic about the challenges we face –
and I emphasise that it may only be overly pessimistic because it might
actually be the best set of forecasts available anywhere – there is
nothing in it that struck me as seriously over the top. What the book
does is outline the kinds of trends he sees, starting with the effects
that will flow from a cooling of the global temperature just as we are
running out of the abundant fossil fuels we have taken for granted for
the past two hundred years.
The book reminds me just how
viciously stupid have been the left’s attempts to gag debate on global
warming. Had the only evidence available supported the warmists’ cause,
there might have been something worth continuing to discuss. Instead,
with the abrupt end to the warming phase between fifteen and twenty
years ago (depending on whose charts and numbers you prefer), and which
has followed the solar cycle in the exact way temperatures have always
done, we should actually be looking at the effects that may follow if a
solar minimum is about to recur, as it did during the Little Ice Age
which ended not all that long ago. Suppose the Thames were to begin
freezing over again, as it last did in 1802, how will we get on in a
world of such cold and reduced growing seasons? Try that out in
conversation the next time some propaganda-programmed dimwit brings up
climate change.
Global warming is climate change for idiots. A
cooling climate may be the real thing and the possibility should be
treated with the utmost seriousness. The subtitle, “Why Life in the 21st
Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish and Short’’, is exactly what the book
explains. It’s a book with a message we should all be thinking about
SOURCE Global Warming alias Climate Change [the non-existent, incredibly expensive, threat to us all, including to our grandchildren]Excerpt
below from a booklet by Dr David Kear (former Director-General, NZ
DSIR; United Nations consultant; & South Pacific geoscientist)This
booklet suggests that Global-Warming-alias-Climate-Change, as proposed
by “Global Warmers” makes no sense. You, as the reader, must judge that
for yourself – not to help the writer of this booklet, but to help you
and your family. Do you think after reading all this that the proponents
are absolutely reliable? Should you add your voice to those against it,
or at least talk to your councillors and members of parliament and see
how they feel?
THE ANCIENT ACCEPTABLE VIEW
Our Earth’s
climate is highly variable, and records show clearly that it always has
been so. Animals and plants have had no option but to accept what comes,
and to adapt life in ways that suit best. Evolution gave some help by
introducing “the Survival of the Fittest” Humans found early that their
discussion and understanding were helped by a belief in some extraneous
source being the cause of recorded changes of climate – perhaps with
divine power.
This booklet uses “Mother Nature” in that role to
avoid wordy explanations. Humans discovered that they could ameliorate
climatic effects with buildings, clothing and the rest, and even create
“microclimates” through windbreaks, forest clearing, artificial lakes,
fossil fuel burning, and the rest.
However, no-one originally
thought seriously that man could change the basic influences to our
climate – our Sun, our Earth’s rotation, the total quantity of our
Planet’s water, and the rest. Mother Nature is able to change all such
things (and has been doing so for some 3,000,000,000 years), but we are
not.
THE NEW BELIEF – THE NEW PROBLEM
Introduction
That
ancient and acceptable view was amended in the minds of some people
whom I call the “Global Warmers”. I’ve heard nothing convincing about
their so-called “Science”; but what they publish convinces me that it’s
close to nonsense.
My interest in our changing climate and sea
level During fieldwork for a PhD thesis I found a coastal exposure of
soft sandstone at Ohuka Creek, south of Port Waikato. There were
Pliocene fossils of marine shellfish below an extensive horizontal
bedding plane. Above that plane were more fossils, but of cool-loving a
plants. A finger could show the exact location of the abrupt change to
the cooler climate at the onset of the first of the world-wide
Pleistocene glaciations [Ice Ages]. Ice formed widely at the ultimate
expense of sea water, so sea level fell. At Ohuka, sea bed had become
land. Such changes are rarely seen in a continuous sequence, so I
recorded it in a 1957 scientific paper
That resulted in my
joining an informal world-wide Group researching changing sea levels.
Most interest then was about the rate of sea level rise as the Earth
warmed following the “Little Ice Age”. That cool period, from about 1500
to 1700 AD, halted wine- making in England and taro cropping in New
Zealand. Our Group determined the rate of sea level rise in many
different World regions, from widely-available readings of tide gauges
(less variable than those of thermometers). The average for us all was
125 mm/century (“125” here). Hence it would take 8 centuries for sea
level to rise 1m – no serious threat to us.
Global Warming Dawns
Subsequently,
I attended many international science conferences representing DSIR, NZ
or Pacific Nations. I noted the words “Global Warming” appearing
increasingly in paper titles, and sensed a growing number of adherents.
Those latter arranged a first-ever “Conference on Global Warming” in
Vienna in 1985.
Unlike most such meetings, where a communiqué
summarising achievements was released on the final day, the full results
of this one were delayed for over 2 years. When they did appear (front
page, NZ Herald, two days before Christmas 1987) a World Declaration
included “Overseas scientists have estimated that the seas around New
Zealand will rise by up to 1.4 m in the next 40 years”.
That
article concentrated on the massive consequent problems, caused by our
carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, but gave no adequate supporting
science. That rate of rise was equivalent to 3,500 mm/century, 28 times
faster than our 125. Hence we stupidly ignored it, thinking no- one
could possibly believe it.
But the World did believe, and the
Global Warming mirage was born. Had 3,500 been true, sea level should
have risen by almost 1 m by today – it hasn’t, not even closely. This
showed unambiguously that those “Overseas Scientists” were not true
scientists. They ignored a most important basic rule of true science
“Thou shall not publish Science without first checking it. A check
against local tide gauges would have shown how wrong 1.4 m in 40 yrs
was; they simply hadn’t bothered to check. That was a First Grave Error.
Australian government scientists were concerned about the
effects on Pacific Island nations by any sea level rise of around 3,500
mm/century, and launched a project to determine the correct figure at
that time. They announced the result at the 1992 meeting of SOPAC – a
geoscientific organisation of South Pacific nations. Their figure was
122 mm/century, confirming the order of magnitude of our group’s 125
average value.
Fooling the World
The Global Warmers
persisted with their use of pseudo-science and made further predictions.
Understandably they too all proved wrong. At conferences I began to
hear, regardless of the science involved, when a speaker wished to
“rubbish” some scientific idea or research, he/she stated that
conclusion firmly, and followed it by “Just like Global Warming”.
Clearly
the Global Warmers heard that too. They didn’t change their
pseudo-science, but cleverly changed the name to ‘Climate Change”. [One
can disprove warming, but the words change of climate can’t be proved
wrong].
The United Nations became interested – major sea level
rise could cause havoc in low-lying areas or island groups. They
established an Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and
invited nations to send delegates. Not surprisingly those chosen were
almost entirely Global Warmers, because they clearly knew something
about it. But to do them credit the Panel members acted a little more
like true scientists than those earlier. They accepted that “1.4 m in 40
yrs” was wrong and re-evaluated it as “0.49 m by 2100”, [roundly a
century ahead].
Thus they dropped 3,500 down to 500 mm/century –
to 14% of the original. The cause remained unchanged – our CO 2
emissions to the atmosphere. In no other human activity would those
involved retain a belief when the most crucial item involved was found
to be 86% wrong by themselves. That was a Second Grave Error.
In
spite of that, the World was taken in. Politicians were able to promise
to save us from the consequences, and the Media had an unending “Field
Day”. It wasn’t that people necessarily believed, but they lacked the
courage to risk that it might come true, and that they might have to
bear the terrible consequences that had been so forcibly promised.
The New Errors
The
new value of “0.49 m by 2100” became widely accepted. In New Zealand,
District Councils were instructed by Government Departments, like
Conservation and Environment, and by Regional Councils, that they must
take full account of the risk that “0.49” implied for a sea level rise
by 2100. Councils had to consider that in the same way as earthquake and
volcanic risk.
Yet that “0.49” value doesn’t stand up to the
most simple scientific scrutiny. First, the rate is four times faster
than the current sea level rise, as indicated by regional,
widely-available tide gauges; second, no reason was given for
quadrupling the value, and third, good science interprets “0.49” in this
sense as being deliberately different from 0.48 and 0.50. Thus that
effectively claims that those who determined that value know, for sure,
where sea level will be a century ahead to ±5 mm.
That was, and is, patently absurd These were the Third, Fourth & Fifth Grave Errors.
Further Damning Disclosures
The
United Nations appointed me personally to their UNCSTD Committee which
assists small countries with their ability regarding Science and
Technology Development. Three or so of us would go to a central city to
talk and discuss their options with delegates from regional countries.
On one occasion we met in Prague, to assist countries on both sides of
the “Iron Curtain”.
While there, we were invited to visit the
World’s only “Institute for Global Warming”. It was founded and funded
incredibly by the USA and Soviet Union jointly, at the height of their
“Cold War”, in an attempt to fund something “for the good of Mankind”,
rather than “for armaments”. Some of its staff could have attended the
1985 Conference, and helped create the 1987 World Declaration.
I
took the opportunity of asking to see copies of the documents that had
been brought to that 1985 Meeting in neutral Austria. Several attendees
brought their estimates for sea level rise due to Global Warming. The
values, converted to mm/century, ranged from 500 minimum to 3,500
maximum. There can be no doubt that, to ensure that their 1987 World
Declaration made the greatest impact, they published the maximum value –
contravening the most sacred rule of acceptable science Thou shall not
publish items for monetary, political, or personal gain that are not
clear un-biased un-inflated truths.
The fact that “up to” was
used, might be allowed in non-scientific areas, but not in Science. If
World Media had distorted the message, the Warmers should immediately
have denied what was wrongly claimed, and ensured that the proper
statement got equal publicity. Using a maximum value for greatest effect
was the Sixth (and Worst) Grave Error.
Much more
HERE No evidence of unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented warming in AntarcticaDiscussing: van Ommen, T. 2013. Antarctic response. Nature Geoscience 6: 334-335.
In
a news & views item published in Nature Geoscience, van Ommen
(2013) comments on the prior publications of Abram et al. (2013) and
Steig et al. (2013), which, in his words, "add to the evidence that
changes currently seen in Antarctica are unusual relative to the past
2000 years." And he says that "taken together, alongside other
indicators of change, the message is becoming clearer: Antarctica is
very likely to be showing a response to the warming climate of the
planet," which he says may "reflect the effects of a combination of
natural variability and the early impacts of rising greenhouse gas
concentrations."
But are the findings of Abram et al. and Steig
et al. truly unusual relative to the past 2000 years? In a word, no. And
why? Because several scientific studies of Antarctic temperature
reconstructions clearly suggest otherwise, as can readily be verified by
perusing the brief one-sentence synopses listed below that pertain to a
half-dozen journal articles on this subject.
1. Roberts et al.
(2004) conducted a fossil diatom analysis of an 82-cm sediment core that
was removed from the deepest part of one of the Windmill Islands of
East Antarctica, finding a multi-centennial period of warmth (2000-1700
14C yr BP) that experienced summer temperatures they described as being
"much higher than present summer temperatures."
2. Hall et al.
(2006) found evidence of elephant seal presence at 14 different
locations along Antarctica's Victoria Land Coast between 600 BC and
AD1400, which they said is indicative of "warmer-than-present climate
conditions."
3. Hall (2007) determined that the Collins Ice Cap
margin on Fildes Peninsula (King George Island, South Shetland Islands)
"is still more extensive than it was prior to ~650 cal. yr BP," which
led her to conclude that the climate prior to that time may have been
"as warm as or warmer than present."
4. Hall et al. (2010)
examined organic-rich sediments exposed by the recent retreat of the
Marr Ice Piedmont on western Anvers Island near Norsel Point, finding
peat from the exposed sediments dated between 707 ± 36 and 967 ± 47 cal.
yr B.P., which led them to conclude that "ice was at or behind its
present position at ca. 700-970 cal. yr B.P.," meaning that temperatures
during that period were as warm as or warmer than they are currently.
5.
Bertler et al. (2011) studied deuterium (?D) data obtained from a
180-meter-long ice core that had been extracted from the ice divide of
Victoria Lower Glacier in the northernmost McMurdo Dry Valleys, finding
that "the McMurdo Dry Valleys were 0.35°C warmer during the Medieval
Warm Period than during the Modern Era."
6. Lu et al. (2012),
working with "a downcore ?18O record of natural ikaite hydration waters
and crystals collected from the Antarctic Peninsula," found that the
"most recent crystals suggest a warming relative to the Little Ice Age
in the last century, possibly as part of the regional recent rapid
warming," but they add that this latter event "is not yet as extreme in
nature as the Medieval Warm Period."
So, no. There is nothing
unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current level of warmth in
and around Antarctica relative to the past 2000 years. And, therefore,
there is no logical basis for accusing the historical increase in the
air's CO2 concentration over the past 2000 years of having caused any
unusual, unnatural or unprecedented warming of the globe, simply because
there has been no such warming.
SOURCE Mandate on ethanol fuel costs drivers dearly: studyComment from AustraliaNSW'S
E10 unleaded fuel mandate is a "debacle" and is costing the state's
motorists millions, according to an international study.
The Texas Tech University research found motorists had a "significant aversion" to the ethanol blended product.
With
the push for E10 reducing the availability of regular grade unleaded,
motorists had instead flocked to the more expensive premium petrol
because of concerns about E10's potential engine damage as well as fuel
efficiency.
"The effect was so pronounced that premium grade
gasoline became the No.1 selling grade of gasoline," said the report's
authors Michael Noel and Travis Roach.
The mandate was a debacle
which had cost motorists "$345 million and counting", said Professor
Noel, from the university's department of economics. That figure
calculated the price difference between regular unleaded and premium.
"In
2010, one out of every three consumers forced off of regular switched
to premium instead of E10," Professor Noel said. "Now six out of 10
consumers are. It is costing more and more for less and less."
While the mandate is hurting motorists, the push to premium is a win for petrol retailers.
According
to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission research,
Australian fuel retailers enjoy an average profit margin of 3.69¢ a
litre of premium fuel sold, compared with 1.77¢ a litre of regular
unleaded petrol.
Greens MP John Kaye said the mandate was not
working for consumers or the environment. "Motorists who had been using
regular unleaded have been faced with the choice of a fuel they don't
want and a fuel that is much more expensive," Dr Kaye said.
"While
per litre it [the E10 price] looks better, you have to burn more of it
to cover the same distance, and you get more air pollution and more CO2
emissions.
"There's no evidence that requiring motorists to use
ethanol blended fuels has any net greenhouse gas gain or much in the way
of air quality improvement."
Service Station Association senior
manager Colin Long said E10 needed to be cheaper if the government
wanted more people to buy it.
But the NRMA's motoring and services director Kyle Loades said motorists were switching to premium unnecessarily.
SOURCEAustralia: Ben and Jerry's ice cream hurting Great Barrier reefBen
and Jerry’s ice cream has been hauled over the coals by the Queensland
government for supporting WWF’s "propaganda" save the reef campaign.
Environment
Minister Andrew Powell wants Australians to boycott the American
company, saying they’ve damaged the reputation of the reef and
jeopardised jobs and tourism dollars.
"Another company has signed
up to the campaign of lies and deceit that’s been propagated by WWF,"
Mr Powell said. "The only people taking a scoop out of the reef is Ben
and Jerry’s and Unilever. "If you understand the facts, you’d want to be
boycotting Ben and Jerry’s."
The minister says he’d be writing to parent company Unilever to express concerns and brief them on the truth.
Earlier
this month, Ben and Jerry’s withdrew popular flavour Phish Food because
of its allusion to fishfood, as a way of drawing attention to the
potential damage to the reef.
They also embarked on a road trip
around parts of Australia, giving out free ice cream to highlight their
concerns over damage to the reef.
They say the reef is at serious risk of destruction from intensive dredging and dumping, mega-ports and shipping highways.
The
brand has championed environmental causes in its 35-year history,
including opposing drilling in the Arctic, and says it’s a proud
supporter of WWF’s campaign.
"Ben & Jerry’s believes that
dredging and dumping in world heritage waters surrounding the marine
park area will be detrimental to the reef ecology," Australia brand
manager Kalli Swaik said. "It threatens the health of one of Australia’s
most iconic treasures."
The Queensland and federal governments
in January approved the dumping of three million cubic metres of dredge
spoil in the marine park and World Heritage area to enable the Abbot
Point coal port expansion.
The government says 70 per cent of the spoil is expected to settle on the seabed.
WWF fears spoil could get caught in currents and smother or poison reefs just 40km away.
CEO
Dermot O’Gorman says Ben and Jerry’s involvement reflects the concern
of people around the world about how the reef is being managed. "Ben
& Jerry’s’ tour is a timely reminder that the world expects the
Queensland and Australian governments to lift their game," he said.
UNESCO is due to meet in June to consider the Australian government’s progress in improving the management of the reef.
It’s due to decide this year or next whether to list the reef as a world heritage site in danger.
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
1 May, 2014
Did global warming cause the tragedy on Everest?This
is so brain-dead as not really to deserve reply but maybe I should
nonetheless point out the obvious. Since there has been no global
warming for 17 years, any recent warming in the Himalayas can only be
due to local changes, not global ones. At any one time glaciers across
the world are both retreating and advancing due to local effects --
mostly changes in precipitation. Geoffrey Lean is an old Greenie
propagandist from way back so the fact that he felt the need to write
the tosh below shows how desperate the Warmists now areIt
hasn't been much remarked upon during the anguished coverage in Europe
and the United States of the deaths of 16 Sherpas in an avalanche on
Mount Everest last week, but there is growing concern in the Himalayas
that global warming may have played a part in the tragedy – and that it
may go on to make the world's highest mountain unclimbable.
Both
Sherpas and western climbers are increasingly sounding the alarm, saying
that climate change is seriously destabilising the way up the mountain
and making its ascent even more dangerous than before.
Concern
about melting snow and ice in the Himalayas has been distinctly out of
fashion for then past four years or so, following the discovery of a
gross error in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change which predicted that the giant mountain chain's glaciers would
disappear by 2035. But the melting has continued, albeit at a much
smaller pace, all the same.
Research published by the
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu
last year concluded that Nepal's glaciers have shrunk by 21 per cent
over three decades. And studies on the Tibetan side of the range by the
Chinese Acadamy of Science have reported that glaciers on Everest have
declined ten per cent in the last 40.
"The legendary Apa Sherpa,
who jointly holds the record of 21 ascents of the mountain, has long
been warning of the effects on the ground. “In 1989, when I first
climbed Everest, there was a lot of snow and ice, but now most of it has
just become bare rock” he said back in 2012.
SOURCE New skeptic publication in Nature Climate Change rebuts Åström et al. claims of increased deaths due to heat wavesI
do not normally reproduce articles from the Anthonly Watts blog -- on
the grounds that anybody reading this blog would already have read the
better-known Watts blog. Anthony has however specifically asked for the
findings below to be as widely disseminated as possible so I am doing
what I can by posting it here -- JRRebuttal to Åström et al.
Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in
Stockholm, Sweden., published in Nature Climate Change by Paul C. “Chip”
Knappenberger, Patrick J. Michaels, and Anthony Watts
Last fall,
the press pounced on the results of a new study that found that global
climate change was leading to an increasing frequency of heat waves and
resulting in greater heat-related mortality. Finally a scientific study
showing that global warming is killing us after all! See all you climate
change optimists have been wrong all along, human-caused global warming
is a threat to our health and welfare.
Not so fast.
Upon
closer inspection, it turns out that the authors of that study—which
examined heat-related mortality in Stockholm, Sweden—failed to include
the impacts of adaptation in their analysis as well as the possibility
that some of the temperature rise which has taken place in Stockholm is
not from “global” climate change but rather local and regional processes
not related to human greenhouse gas emissions.
What the
researchers Daniel Oustin Åström and colleagues left out of their
original analysis, we (Chip Knappenberger, Pat Michaels, and Anthony
Watts) factored in. And when we did so, we arrived at the distinct
possibility that global warming led to a reduction in the rate of
heat-related mortality in Stockholm.
Our findings have just been
published (paywalled) in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change as
a Comment on the original Oustin Åström paper (which was published in
the same journal).
We were immediately skeptical because the
original Oustin Åström results run contrary to a solid body of
scientific evidence (including our own) that shows that heat-related
mortality and the population’s sensitivity to heat waves was been
declining in major cities across America and Europe as people take
adaptive measures to protect themselves from the rising heat.
Contrarily,
Oudin Åström reported that as a result of an increase in the number of
heat waves occurring in Stockholm, more people died from extreme heat
during the latter portion of the 20th century than would have had the
climate of Stockholm been similar to what it was in the early part of
the 20th century—a time during which fewer heat waves were recorded. The
implication was that global warming from increasing human greenhouse
gas emissions was killing people from increased heat.
But the
variability in the climate of Stockholm is a product of much more than
human greenhouse gas emissions. Variations in the natural patterns of
regional-scale atmospheric circulation, such as the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), as well as local impacts associated with
urbanization and environmental changes in the direct vicinity of the
thermometer are reflected in the city’s temperature history, and the
original Oudin Åström et al. publication did not take this into account.
This effect is potentially significant as Stockholm is one of Europe’s
fastest growing cities.
But regardless of the cause, rising
temperatures spur adaptation. Expanded use of air conditioning,
biophysical changes, behavior modification, and community awareness
programs are all examples of actions which take place to make us better
protected from the dangers associated with heat waves. Additionally,
better medical practices, building practices, etc. have further reduced
heat-related stress and mortality over the years.
The net result
is that as result of the combination of all the adaptive measures that
have taken place over the course of the 20th century in Stockholm, on
average people currently die in heat waves at a rate four times less
than they did during the beginning of the 20th century. The effect of
adaptation overwhelms the effect of an increase in the number of heat
waves.
In fact, it is not a stretch to say that much of the
adaptation has likely occurred because of an increased frequency of heat
waves. As heat waves become more common, the better adapted to them the
population becomes.
Our analysis highlights one of the often
overlooked intricacies of the human response to climate change—the fact
that the response to a changing climate can actually improve public
health and welfare.
SOURCE Reality Check: Coal To Fill China's Nuclear GapThough
China is pushing nuclear energy and renewables hard, coal will be the
fuel of the world's most populous, and polluted, country into the
foreseeable future.
To combat worsening greenhouse-gas emissions
and pollution, China aims to raise its nuclear capacity to 200 gigawatts
by 2030, from only 14.6 gigawatts last year.
But it probably
won't reach that goal, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie forecast in a
report Monday—which will mean opportunities for miners to supply huge
amounts of additional coal to make up the power shortfall.
Shortages
of qualified personnel, technology constraints, inadequate
infrastructure for uranium-fuel fabrication and disposal, and public
opposition to inland nuclear plants all mean a more realistic nuclear
capacity in 2030 will be 175 gigawatts.
"China's nuclear capacity
will account for 30% of the world's total nuclear fleet," said Gavin
Thompson, head of Asia Pacific gas and power research at the
consultancy. "Putting things into context, in 2013 China made up a mere
4.5% of the global nuclear fleet. Therefore the growth we expect in this
time frame is phenomenal, even if targets are not met."
A
shortfall of 25 gigawatts would equate to additional annual coal demand
of 63 million tons by 2025, falling to 55 million tons by 2030, with gas
and renewables filling the rest of the gap, he said.
Coal
produced 65% of the electricity used by China last year, with hydropower
second at less than 20%, Fitch Ratings said in March, adding that coal
plants represent about 70% of national power capacity. Wood Mackenzie
puts coal's share of China's energy mix last year higher, at close to
75%, and forecasts it will ease to 64% by 2030.
While such
forecasts can be affected by many factors, "our nuclear outlook for
China reinforces Wood Mackenzie's view that coal will continue to play a
dominant role in power generation in the foreseeable future, even with
the successful implementation of new environmental measures," Mr.
Thompson said.
SOURCE Reality Check II: Post-Fukushima Japan Chooses Coal Over Renewable Energy![](gremay14_files/5PLK5ki.jpg)
Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing Japan’s coal industry to expand sales at
home and abroad, undermining hopes among environmentalists that he’d
use the Fukushima nuclear accident to switch the nation to renewables.
A
new energy plan approved by Japan’s cabinet on April 11 designates coal
an important long-term electricity source while falling short of
setting specific targets for cleaner energy from wind, solar and
geothermal. The policy also gives nuclear power the same prominence as
coal in Japan’s energy strategy.
In many ways, utilities are
already ahead of policy makers. With nuclear reactors idled for safety
checks, Japan’s 10 power companies consumed 5.66 million metric tons of
coal in January, a record for the month and 12 percent more than a year
ago, according to industry figures.
“You cannot exclude coal when
you think about the best energy mix for Japan to keep energy costs
stable,” said Naoya Domoto, president of energy and plant operations at
IHI Corp., a developer of a technology known as A-USC that burns coal to
produce a higher temperature steam. “One way to do that is to use coal
efficiently.”
Japan’s appetite for coal mirrors trends in Europe
and the U.S., where the push for cheaper electricity is undermining
rules limiting fossil fuel emissions and supporting cleaner energy. In
the U.S., a frigid winter boosted natural gas prices, providing catalyst
for utilities to extend the lives of dirtier coal plants. Germany,
Spain and Britain are slashing subsidies for renewables to rein in the
cost of electricity.
SOURCE How Britain Is Wasting Its Real Shale PotentialOne of the world's most sclerotic bureaucratic states shows its formWITH
the Ukraine crisis intensifying and concerns growing over its impact on
energy security, the government has responded this week with rather
inconsistent messages: it announced more multi-billion subsidies for
unreliable renewable energy projects and another promise to speed up
shale gas extraction in Britain.
Speaking at a conference in
Blackpool, and with a new report finding that shale could attract £33bn
in investment and create 64,000 jobs, energy minister Michael Fallon
claimed that this week will see the “kick off” in the development of
shale gas in the UK. We’ve heard similar pronouncements before. Exactly
one year ago, Fallon announced that Britain was “on track to accelerate”
its shale gas programme. Yet there has been no progress in actually
getting shale gas out of the ground.
In Texas, it takes seven
days to get a permission for hydraulic fracturing of shale. In Britain,
the wait has been going on for a whopping seven years. In 2007,
Cuadrilla was granted a licence for shale gas exploration in Lancashire.
Seven years later, not a single cubic foot of gas has been extracted.
Compare
this with the Vaca Muerta shale basin in Argentina, discovered just
over three years ago. The first horizontal well was drilled within 12
months. One year on, it produced over 20,000 barrels of shale oil per
day.
For too long, the coalition has been talking the talk. Chris
Wright, a leading US shale investor, told a parliamentary committee
last year that he won’t invest in UK shale exploration because green
tape and bureaucratic hurdles are making the approval process far too
long and convoluted.
The government has promised a new,
fast-track regulatory framework for fracking licences. Whether it will
remove the existing obstacles remains to be seen. But in any case, the
government seems far more concerned with speeding up the approval of
costly green energy projects. This week, energy secretary Ed Davey
announced generous subsidies for new offshore wind farms and other
renewable projects. They will cost consumers more than twice the amount
they have to pay for the current wholesale price of electricity,
increasing household electricity bills by 2 per cent.
Interestingly,
Davey no longer denies the growing burden of his subsidies, but argues
that renewable energy is essential to boost energy security in light of
Ukraine. In reality, wind and solar energy have become a serious energy
security risk in a number of European countries, because they are
intermittent and thus an unreliable way to generate electricity.
Preferential support for green energy projects and environmental
opposition to fracking have also slowed or stopped shale exploration in
many parts of Europe.
Only now that the Ukraine crisis is
intensifying by the day are European leaders calling for the EU to speed
up the development and exploitation of shale resources. They have
identified shale gas as one of the “indigenous” sources of energy that
will help reduce dependency on gas imports from an increasingly erratic
Russia.
In light of this, and the need to bring down (rather than
drive up) energy prices, the UK would be well advised to proceed as
rapidly as possible with its domestic shale development.
SOURCE Big Win for Obama's EPA, As SCOTUS Upholds Cross-State Pollution RuleThe SCOTUS majority just made the law up as they went alongIn
a major anti-pollution ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday backed
federally imposed limits on smokestack emissions that cross state lines
and burden downwind areas with bad air from power plants they can't
control.
The 6-2 ruling was an important victory for the Obama
administration in controlling emissions from power plants in 27
Midwestern and Appalachian states that contribute to soot and smog along
the East Coast.
It also capped a decades-long effort by the
Environmental Protection Agency to ensure that states are good neighbors
and don't contribute to pollution problems elsewhere. The rule upheld
Tuesday was EPA's third attempt to solve the problem.
The rule,
challenged by industry and upwind states, had been cast by foes as an
attempt by the Obama administration to step on states' rights and to
shut down aging coal-fired power plants. Opponents said the decision
could embolden the agency to take the same tack later this year when it
proposes rules to limit carbon pollution. EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy has said the agency will be flexible and work with states on
the first-ever controls on power plants for the gases blamed for global
warming.
On Tuesday, the court upheld a rule adopted by the EPA
in 2011 that would force polluting states to reduce smokestack emissions
that contaminate the air in downwind states. Power companies and
several states sued to block the rule, and a federal appeals court in
Washington agreed with them in 2012.
The Supreme Court reversed
that decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
acknowledged the complexity of the problem before EPA. "In crafting a
solution to the problem of interstate air pollution, regulators must
account for the vagaries of the wind," Ginsburg wrote.
The high
court said the EPA, under the Clean Air Act, can implement federal plans
in states that do not adequately control downwind pollution. But the
court also ruled that the EPA can consider the cost of pollution
controls and does not have to require states to reduce pollution by the
precise amount they send to downwind states.
McCarthy called the
court's ruling "a resounding victory for public health and a key
component of EPA's efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to
breathe."
But Justice Antonin Scalia, in a vigorous dissent from
the outcome, said, "Today's decision feeds the uncontrolled growth of
the administrative state at the expense of government by the people."
Reading part of his dissent from the bench, Scalia said the result
"comes at the expense of endorsing, and thereby encouraging for the
future, rogue administration of the law."
Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia in dissent. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in consideration of the case.
The
new downwind pollution rule was triggered by a federal court throwing
out a previous Bush administration regulation. The Bush-era rule has
remained in effect while the courts have weighed challenges to the
latest version, and EPA officials said the Bush rule would remain in
place while they digested the Supreme Court's opinion.
The new
rule would cost power plant operators $800 million annually, starting in
2014, according to EPA estimates. Some $1.6 billion per year has been
spent to comply with the 2005 Bush rule.
The EPA says the
investments would be far outweighed by the hundreds of billions of
dollars in health care savings from cleaner air. The agency said the
rule would prevent more than 30,000 premature deaths and hundreds of
thousands of illnesses each year.
"The Supreme Court today laid
to rest the well-worn issue of how to regulate air pollution that is
transported hundreds of miles throughout the eastern U.S. and that makes
it nearly impossible for states acting alone to protect the health and
welfare of their citizens," said Bill Becker, the executive director of
the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents air
pollution control agencies in 45 states and territories and 116 major
metropolitan areas nationwide.
Texas led 14 states and industry groups in challenging the rule. Most downwind states support it.
States
had argued, and the lower court had agreed, that they deserved a chance
to figure out how much they were contributing to pollution in other
states and how to reduce it before the EPA prescribed fixes. The lower
court also faulted the EPA for requiring states to reduce pollution
through a complex formula based on cost that did not exactly match how
much downwind pollution a state was responsible for.
Agreeing
with the EPA, Ginsburg wrote that the realities of interstate air
pollution "are not so simple." She wrote, "Most upwind states contribute
to pollution to multiple downwind states in varying amounts."
The
lower court will still have to decide if the EPA acted properly when it
rejected state plans that had been approved under an earlier version of
the rule.
Opponents of the decision Tuesday said it violated the
intent of the Clean Air Act, which envisions states and the EPA working
cooperatively to reduce air pollution.
"The Supreme Court
majority has refused to allow the states to have any voice in the
practicalities of determining the impact of their emissions on
neighboring states," said Richard Faulk, senior director at George Mason
Law School's Energy and Environment Initiative.
As for legal
grounds, Scalia said the majority had "zero textual basis" in the Clean
Air Act for justifying the EPA's approach, and he mocked its analysis as
"Look Ma, no hands!"
Ginsburg said Scalia's approach would result in "costly overregulation" and called it "both inefficient and inequitable."
SOURCE ***************************************
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.
Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.
But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a
week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January
2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this
blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together --
which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer
coming up on this site. See here or here*****************************************
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.
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. Warmism is a money-grubbing racket, not science.
By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.
![](gremay14_files/x7tImkO.jpg)
WISDOM:
"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
"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
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.”
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
"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
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.
SOME POINTS TO PONDER:
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
Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at
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
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.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "HEAT TRAPPING GAS". A gas can become
warmer by contact with something warmer or by infrared radiation
shining on it or by adiabatic (pressure) effects but it cannot trap
anything. Air is a gas. Try trapping something with it!
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.
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"
Cook the crook who cooks the books
The great and fraudulent scare about lead
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)
Index page for this site
DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:
"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International" blog.
BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:
"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
"Paralipomena"
To be continued ....
Queensland Police -- A barrel with lots of bad apples
Australian Police News
Of Interest
BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
Western Heart
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
The Kogarah Madhouse (St George Bank)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues
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