GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray

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

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November 30, 2018

Climate change’s highest cost: Overheated employees too miserable to work

There is something in this but not much. So let me speak as if global warming might happen.

People tend to move to the climate they like. My forebears did. Their ancestry was British but they liked warm weather. So all four of my grandparents were born in the tropics. And mostly people do tend to move to warmer places -- American sunbelt migration is an obvious case. So any adverse effects of warmth would be greatly ameliorated by mobility.

So warming is most likely to improve people's satisfaction with where they live. So it is possible that their productivity might improve because of that.

And much of the world's population lives in areas that are frozen-in for part of the year. That sort of weather is not good for productivity. So having less severe winters must surely improve productivity.

And outdoor work is relatively rare in today's economy. Even farmers sit in the airconditioned cabs of their harvesting machinery for most of the time. And harvesting is increasingly mechanized anyway. Australia has no illegals to harvest their crops so there is a high level of mechanization instead

And I know I am treading on dangerous ground here but I cannot help noting that Africans were brought to America precisely because of their ability to do manual work in hot conditions. So a warmer climate could open up employment opportunities for them. In the early days they were found to work better in the fields than the ancestors of the "Hispanics"

If any Leftist ever reads this, they will automatically accuse me of condoning slavery so let me point out that as a libertarian slavery is the antithesis of all I stand for
The US economy could lose $221 billion annually by 2090 as people stop working as much or as hard.

The costs of lower labor productivity under soaring temperatures could reach as much as $221 billion a year in the United States by 2090, making it the largest category of potential economic damages from climate change.

As temperatures rise, worker output slows and cognitive performance declines, with a dramatic drop-off around 28 ?C (82 ?F), says Reed Walker, an economist focused on climate issues at the University of California, Berkeley.

Scientists have long recognized that extreme temperatures can reduce productivity, as well as lowering lifetime earnings, widening wealth disparities, inciting violence, and increasing suicides and deaths (see “Death will be one of the highest economic costs of climate change”). But the report estimates the total US cost in lost productivity based on projected temperature increases in the decades ahead, says Brian O’Neill, director of research at the University of Denver’s Pardee Center for International Futures and a coauthor of the report.

Faced with sizzling temperatures, workers compensate by changing the timing, location, level, or type of work they do, all of which can affect their output and pay.

The effect is particularly pronounced with manual outdoor labor like farming and construction, but it shows up even in air-conditioned factories or offices, Walker says. In the United States, auto plant production drops by 8% during weeks with six or more days above 90 ?F, according to a 2012 study.

There are various ways that companies can try to minimize the effects, including installing air conditioning, shifting work hours, and moving a greater portion of pre-assembly work indoors. None of these were included in the estimate of economic effects, O’Neill says. But most of these steps add costs that many businesses can’t afford or wish to avoid.

Significant decreases in greenhouse-gas emissions could lower the economic impact on labor productivity by as much as 60%, the national assessment found.

SOURCE

Supreme Court sided with landowners Tuesday in a dispute over the reach of the Endangered Species Act

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Fish and Wildlife Service was wrong to designate a 1,500 acre tract of land in Louisiana as a “critical habitat” for the endangered dusky gopher frog, even though the species has not lived there for decades.

“I am really overjoyed that an eight to nothing court agreed with me that the service’s decision was absurd and nightmarish for property rights in the United States,” landowner Edward Poitevent told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a Tuesday interview.

“We all actually thought something like this would happen, but what’s really stunning is this is an eight to nothing decision,” Poitevent said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service told Poitevent in 2011 his land, which has been in his family for generations, would be listed as backup critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog, which hasn’t been seen there since 1965. The only known domain of the frogs was a single pond in southern Mississippi as of 2001, but the government said the Louisiana zone was the only other possible habitat it could identify.

The government conceded drastic alteration to the land would be needed in order for the gopher frog to survive, including replacing thousands of trees and conducting controlled burns to kill off underbrush.

The government also said designating Poitevent’s land as critical habitat could cost his family as much as $34 million, which doesn’t include the cost to alter the landscape.

Poitevent and others sued, arguing the government could not designate land the frogs do not inhabit as “critical habitat.” They also said the service wrongly ignored the significant economic costs its decision imposed on them.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the federal agency, finding the government was entitled to deference on both points. An appeal to the Supreme Court followed.

Federal officials listed the dusky gopher frog as endangered in 2001 in response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an environmental group. The group also worked with the government to oppose Poitevent’s lawsuit.

The Trump administration supported the agency before the high court.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote Tuesday’s unanimous decision, which largely sides with the landowners.

“Only the ‘habitat’ of the endangered species is eligible for designation as ‘critical habitat,'” Roberts wrote. However, he noted the 5th Circuit did not define the term “habitat” in its decision, and sent the case back to the appeals court with instructions to do so.

As such, the crux of Tuesday’s ruling provides that only land that qualifies as “habitat” may be designated “critical habitat,” but the exact definition of “habitat” remains unresolved.

The high court also agreed that the 5th Circuit should consider whether the Fish and Wildlife Service properly evaluated the burdens imposed on the landowners before marking the area “critical habitat.”

“The message here is that the unanimous Supreme Court considered the lower court decisions to be incorrect, though they don’t ever say that,” Poitevent told TheDCNF. “The whole tone and tenor of the decision is there’s something very wrong with [the 5th Circuit] decisions.”

Poitevent is confident he and his attorneys at the Pacific Legal Foundation will prevail on remand in the 5th Circuit.

“While we’re disappointed, the ruling doesn’t weaken the mandate to protect habitat for endangered wildlife,” Collette Adkins, a CBD attorney who defended the frog’s protections before the Supreme Court, said in a statement. “The dusky gopher frog’s habitat protections remain in place for now, and we’re hopeful the 5th Circuit will recognize the importance of protecting and restoring habitats for endangered wildlife to live.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the case because it was argued prior to his Oct. 6 confirmation.

SOURCE

Chevy Volt Is A Dream Car: But a nightmare for GM

General Motors just killed the best car you’ve never owned.

I am talking about the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid GM has been producing since 2010. GM is idling the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that builds Volts and ending the car’s production altogether, the company announced on Monday. The last Volt will roll off the line in March.

The announcement was not a surprise. Sales never met expectations. Rumors about the end of the Volt had been circulating for months. Although workers said they got no warning about the plant closure, GM was following the lead of Ford, which announced cutbacks of its own a few months ago.

As always, the decision reflects a variety of factors, including a slowing economy likely to reduce sales next year. All of the factories slated to go dormant are operating well below capacity. And, at least in theory, the decision does not mean GM has lost interest in electric vehicles.

On the contrary, the Hamtramck plant idling is part of a larger downsizing that will include four other North American plants and reduce the company’s total workforce by more than 14,000. One of those plants is Ohio’s Lordstown facility, where workers produce the Cruze, a gas-only sedan that uses the same platform as the Volt and that GM will also stop producing next year.

GM officials say a major reason to trim its factories and workforce now is to prepare for a future with more electric vehicles, along with automated vehicles and car-sharing. The production of electric vehicles requires factories with different facilities and, ultimately, workers with different skills. Even now, the company points out, it is hiring programmers to develop new-generation vehicles.

It’s impossible to know how seriously to take this explanation ? to tell whether GM is really making a long-term bet on hybrids and plug-ins, or simply shedding production lines that are less profitable, for the moment, in order to make money for today’s executives and shareholders. But it would certainly be in society’s interest for GM to be thinking about the future in the way that it claims.

SOURCE

Watchdog clears Zinke in Utah monument probe

An internal watchdog has cleared Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of wrongdoing following a complaint that he redrew the boundaries of a national monument in Utah to benefit a state lawmaker and political ally.

The Interior Department's office of inspector general says it found no evidence that Zinke gave veteran state Rep. Mike Noel preferential treatment in shrinking the boundaries of Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Noel, who publicly pushed for the monument to be redrawn, owns land near the monument site, including a 40-acre parcel that was surrounded by the monument but now is outside its boundaries.

The report says investigators found no evidence that Zinke or other department officials knew of Noel's financial interest in the revised boundaries or gave him preferential treatment. Noel, an outspoken critic of federal land management, is retiring next month after 16 years in the legislature.

The Associated Press obtained a summary of the report, which has not been released publicly.

Noel, a Republican, was on stage in Salt Lake City with President Donald Trump last December when Trump announced he was shrinking Grand Staircase and another Utah monument, Bears Ears National Monument.

The monuments were among four that Trump targeted for cutbacks to reverse what Trump calls overreach by Democratic presidents to protect federally controlled land. The other two monuments, in Oregon and Nevada, remain intact despite Trump's promise to shrink them.

A spokeswoman for Zinke told the AP that the report "shows exactly what the secretary's office has known all along - that the monument boundaries were adjusted in accordance with all rules, regulations and laws."

The report "is also the latest example of political opponents and special interest groups ginning up fake and misleading stories, only to be proven false after expensive and time consuming inquiries by the IG's office," spokeswoman Heather Swift said in a statement.

Zinke faces other investigations, including one centered on a Montana land deal involving a foundation he created and the chairman of energy giant Halliburton, which does significant business with the Interior Department.

Investigators also are reviewing Zinke's decision to block two tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut and a complaint that he reassigned a former Interior official in retaliation for criticizing Zinke.

At least one complaint has been referred to the Justice Department.

Zinke has denied wrongdoing and told the AP this month that he's "100 percent confident" he will be cleared of all ethics allegations.

Trump has said he does not plan to fire Zinke but would "look into any complaints."

Noel said in an email Monday that he never talked to Zinke or anyone at Interior about the monument boundaries "associated with my private property, nor did I receive any favorable treatment regarding my property." He called the allegations against him and Zinke "reckless, unsubstantiated and totally without any facts."

Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project, a Montana-based environmental group that filed a complaint against Zinke, said the inspector general's office should immediately release the full report "and let the public judge the merits of the findings." The groups said photos taken of Zinke and Noel together during a visit to Grand Staircase last year "seem to contradict" the report's conclusion.

Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, who is set to become chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee in January, said he accepts the report's findings, but added, "Secretary Zinke should have known the people he was listening to while destroying our national monuments had disqualifying conflicts of interest."

Grijalva vowed scrutiny of the decisions to shrink Grand Staircase and Bears Ears when Democrats take control of the House.

SOURCE

Australia: Adani to begin construction on scaled-back Carmichael coal mine

Greenie hostility to the project meant that all the banks refused to fund it

The controversial mine in Queensland will move ahead but it will be scaled back after the project failed to find financing.

Adani says it will self-fund the construction of its controversial Carmichael mine and that work will begin soon.

The mining giant said a scaled-down mine and rail project would be 100 per cent financed through the Adani’s Group’s resources.

Adani Mining chief executive officer Lucas Dow made the announcement at the Bowen Basin Mining Club luncheon in Mackay, Queensland today.

It follows recent changes to simplify construction and reduce the initial capital requirements for the project.

The mine was originally expected to be a $16.5 billion project but will now only cost $2 billion, according to the Townsville Bulletin.

“Our work in recent months has culminated in Adani Group’s approval of the revised project plan that de-risks the initial stage of the Carmichael mine and rail project by adopting a narrow gauge rail solution combined with a reduced ramp up volume for the mine,” Mr Dow said.

“This means we’ve minimised our execution risk and initial capital outlay. The sharpening of the mine plan has kept operating costs to a minimum and ensures the project remains within the first quartile of the global cost curve.”

According to the Bulletin, Mr Dow said work on the mine would start first, after management plans were approved by state and federal governments. Work on the rail line was expected to begin early in the New Year. The first coal experts would be produced in 2021.

Once spruiked as Australia’s biggest coal mine, which would produce 60 million tonnes of coal per year. The scaled-back version will now produce 27.5 million tonnes at its peak.

Initially production will only be 10 to 15 million tonnes but it will ramp up to 27.5 within 10 years.

A rail line to service the mine will also be scaled back. Earlier this year Adani scrapped plans for a 388km standard gauge rail line and will instead build a 200km line that will connect to Aurizon’s existing Goonyella and Newlands rail network. This will more than halve the cost from $2.5 billion to $1 billion.

Mr Dow said the project would deliver 1500 direct jobs during the initial ramp-up and construction phase of the mine and rail projects.

Townsville and Rockhampton were still expected to be the primary source markets for jobs but workers would also be hired from other areas.

The company had to find its own funding for the project after banks overseas and in Australia distanced themselves from coal export projects in the area, or introduced policies that prohibited financing Adani’s mine.

Early this year rail operator Aurizon walked away from plans to build a rail line linked to the mine, withdrawing its application for a $5 billion government-funded loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF).

The decision comes after Adani was previously denied a $1 billion NAIF loan to build its own rail line, after the Queensland Government vetoed it ahead of the state election.

The Carmichael mine was previously delayed by court challenges brought by environmental groups as well as the need to change the Native Title Act to legitimise an Indigenous Land Use Agreement it had signed.

Today’s announcement is not the first time Adani has announced it was going to start construction. Adani Australia chief executive Jeyakumar Janakaraj previously said physical construction of the mine was scheduled to start in weeks in October 2017.

This year it was announced that pre-construction work on the project was expected to begin in the September quarter.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 29, 2018

How climate change could be causing miscarriages in Bangladesh

This is total speculation. In some parts of Bangladesh land levels are rising. Who knows what is at work?

Poor people live in worse areas and poor people have worse health. That is probably all we are seeing in the statisticsIn small villages along the eastern coast of Bangladesh, researchers have noticed an unexpectedly high rate of miscarriage. As they investigated further, scientists reached the conclusion that climate change might be to blame. Journalist Susannah Savage went into these communities to find out more.

"Girls are better than boys," says 30-year-old Al-Munnahar. "Boys do not listen. They are arrogant. Girls are polite."

Al-Munnahar, who lives in a small village on the east coast of Bangladesh, has three sons but wished for a girl. Once she thought she would have a daughter, but she miscarried the baby.

She is among several women who have lost a baby in her village.

Almost all the food they eat in Al-Munnahar's village now has to be bought at markets some distance away
While miscarriages are not out of the ordinary, scientists who follow the community have noticed an increase, particularly compared to other areas. The reason for this, they believe, is climate change.

The walk to Failla Para, Al-Munnahar's village, is arduous: in the dry season, the narrow track leads into a swamp, and in rainy season, into the sea. The village itself is not much more than a mound of mud with a few shacks and a chicken pen perched precariously on the slippery surface.

"Nothing grows here anymore," says Al-Munnahar. Not many years ago - up until the 1990s - these swamp lands were paddy fields.

The village, in the district of Chakaria, is built on salty mud, and families often live in wet, damp conditions when the water gets into their home
If rice production back then was not profitable, it was at least viable. Not anymore. Rising waters and increasing salinity have forced the wealthiest among the villagers to change to shrimp farming or salt harvesting. Today, few paddy fields remain.

"This is climate change in action," says Dr Manzoor Hanifi, a scientist from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research Bangladesh (ICDDRB), a research institute. "The effect on the land is visible, but the effect on the body: that we don't see."

Brine and bribery

ICDDRB have been running a health and demographic surveillance site in and around the district of Chakaria, near Cox's Bazaar, for the last thirty years, enabling them to detect even small changes in the health of the communities they monitor.

Over the last few years, many families have left the plains and moved inland, into the forest hill area—mostly those with enough money to bribe forest wardens.

"We paid a 230,000 Taka ($2,752, £2,106) bribe to build the house," says Kajol Rekha, who moved to the hills from the plains with her husband and two children three years ago. "Because of the water, my kids would always have a fever, especially when our house remained wet after the flood. Everything is easier here."

These environmental migrants are faring relatively well, able to grow crops and nearer transport routes to access jobs and schools. They are also in better health than those they left behind.

In particular, women inland are less likely to miscarry. Between 2012 and 2017, the ICDDRB scientists registered 12,867 pregnancies in the area they monitor, which encompasses both the hill area and the plains.

They followed the pregnant women through until the end of the pregnancy and found that women in the coastal plains, living within 20km (12mi) of the coastline and 7m above sea level were 1.3 times more likely to miscarry than women who live inland.

SOURCE

Global Warming Alarmism Meets a Blizzard of Reality

In a bit of irony lost on big media, the government, on the eve of winter and during a slew of recent snowstorms, released a doomsday report on global warming. As reported in the New York Times,

"A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end"

Electing Democrats could do far more damage to the US economy in a much shorter time span, but don’t expect the NY Times to discuss that.

One only has to go back in time eight years, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, passing Obamacare, and flatlining the US economy.

The NY Times then blames everything on climate change.

"But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health, and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds."

Are the California wildfires due to climate change? Or government mismanagement and ineptitude? Certainly, hot and dry weather may have contributed to the fires, but such weather is nothing new for California.

Even the California Governor acknowledges his government’s role in fire prevention.

Months ago, California Gov. Jerry Brown urged state lawmakers to loosen restrictive logging regulations put in place to appease environmentalists — a move that appears to have confirmed that President Trump’s recent critiques of state logging practices were correct.

The climate assessment is based on computer models, attempting to predict events 50 to 100 years in the future.

Recall the spaghetti line plots predicting hurricane tracks, each line based on a computer model, dozens of such lines sending the hurricane north, south, straight ahead, or harmlessly out to sea.

If computer modeling were easy and accurate, only one line would be needed, reflecting the model that correctly predicts the hurricane track. And these predictions are for a week into the future, not a century.

This climate assessment originated in Congress. “The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) deliver a report to Congress and the President no less than every four years.”

Why not a similar economic assessment for other initiatives such as a carbon tax, Medicare-for-all, raising taxes on “the rich”, or continued open borders and amnesty for illegals?

Or as the Heartland Institute describes the report,

“This latest climate report is just more of the same – except for even greater exaggeration, worse science, and added interference in the political process by unelected, self-serving bureaucrats,” Tim Huelskamp, president of the Heartland Institute said in statements released by the free-market think tank following the report’s release.

The irony of such a climate report on the eve of winter is the observable weather around us, not projections for the end of the century.

None of the authors of the climate assessment will be around at the end of the century to gloat over the accuracy of their economic forecast, or to explain how wrong they were. In fact, these predictions may quickly be forgotten.

Does anyone remember Walter Cronkite’s 1972 predictions of a “new ice age”? Without the internet, few would remember either Walter or his prognostications. And he is not around to explain how his prediction turned out.

In fact, here is a list of failed climate predictions that no one in the media today cares to review and analyze why they were so off the mark.

That won’t stop Hollywood celebrities from tweeting about the upcoming frying of Planet Earth from their air-conditioned mansions or private jets. Rather than predictions, what’s the word on the street? Let’s see some of that global warming.

Kansas City experienced its earliest snowfall ever this past October. Thanksgiving weekend, Kansas City received 4 inches of snow. “Kansas City has not experienced a 3-inch snowfall since February 2014.”

Further east in New York City, “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the coldest parade on record.”

Has a panel been convened on CNN or MSNBC to explain how this could occur in the face of catastrophic global warming? Don’t hold your breath.

If anything, they will find some “climate scientist” to twist himself into a pretzel explaining how such cold and snow is evidence of global warming.

My own observations are similar, having spent Thanksgiving weekend in Vail. The famous back bowls, over 3000 acres of rugged and exposed terrain, typically do not open early in the season due to lack of snow and abundant sun exposure. Their opening date is a good measure of seasonal snowfall and cold temperatures.

This year, they opened on Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. The last such early opening was in 2014. In 2012, the back bowls didn’t open until mid-January. In 2015, the opening day was in early December. Last year opening was also mid-January.

“Locals’ consensus is that it’s a good season if the back bowls are open by Christmas.” So, opening this year at Thanksgiving is an exceptional season, with cold and snow. Enough to close some the Colorado mountain passes.

Those flying home after Thanksgiving could have used a bit of global warming. Instead, as USAToday reported, “Airline passengers faced delays and cancellations across the Midwest on Sunday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.” Over a thousand flights canceled and close to 5,000 flights delayed.

Why? Too much heat? Not quite. “Most of those came in the Midwest, where a winter storm was bringing snow, ice, and rain to a swath of the Great Plains and Midwest. Blizzard conditions were possible Sunday across parts of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin.”

Some winters are warmer, some are colder. Some snowier and others drier. The only real climate change is cyclical changes based on ocean currents and sunspot activity.

If the planet were warming as much as the doomsayers are predicting, why are we seeing so much cold and snow?

Predictions are nothing more than educated guesses. Unfortunately, there are policy and economic implications to such predictions including carbon taxes, curtailed energy exploration, environmental regulations, and increased costs of virtually any type of business.

Those making such bold predictions and proclamations, which cannot be verified in a practical time frame, with no track record of previous predictions coming true, should temper their certitude.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits, “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

Reality, including winter storms, serves as a reminder of the folly of turning science into political propaganda.

SOURCE

Building the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will make it cheaper to deliver natural gas in Va. and N.C.—and Congress should approve it

By Robert Romano

Virginia and North Carolina are in need of low-cost natural gas to heat homes, produce electricity and build industrial capacity, and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will be the most efficient way to deliver it. That is why Congress should act in the lame duck session to make sure it gets done as quickly and safely as possible.

Demand for natural gas has been rapidly on the rise the past decade, with consumption growing nationwide 19 percent since 2007 from 23,104 billion cubic feet a year to 27,487 billion cubic feet in 2016, according to data compiled by Energy Information Agency.

In Virginia and North Carolina, the increase has been even more dramatic, with natural gas consumption rising 70 percent and 120 percent, respectively, as the shale boom has made natural gas more plentiful and many power plants have shifted to natural gas to produce electricity.

Unlike coal, which can be stored in large quantities on site at power generators, natural gas requires transportation in order to be used, which is where the pipeline comes in. The fact is that is cheaper and far faster to use a pipeline than it is to put the gas onto trucks and trains.

That is why Congress should make sure that the pipeline gets done as soon as possible in the current lame duck session. This is a worthy project that has been in the planning since 2013 and ought to be expedited so that local communities can see the benefits as soon as possible.

According to Atlanticcoastpipeline.com, “The 600-mile underground Atlantic Coast Pipeline will originate in West Virginia, travel through Virginia with a lateral extending to Chesapeake, VA, and then continue south into eastern North Carolina, ending in Robeson County. Two additional, shorter laterals will connect to two Dominion Energy electric generating facilities in Brunswick and Greensville Counties.”

That’s a lot of land to cover, and Congress can help ensure that it gets done quickly with its imprimatur.

Utilities which provide home heating, electricity and industrial power to homes and businesses will be the major customers of the new flow of natural gas into the region with rate payers being the ultimate beneficiaries.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning supported Congressional action to allow the Atlantic pipeline to move forward saying, “It is a no-brainer for Congress to clear the way for the safe, reliable transportation of natural gas. America is the natural gas Saudi Arabia of the world, and transporting it using pipelines simply makes the most sense.”

An abundant, clean power source like natural gas can and should be used, but for it to become available, the U.S. needs more pipelines like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline — giving consumers and industrial interests the access they need to it. With time running out on the Republican majority in the House, now is the perfect time for Congress to make building the Atlantic Coast Pipeline national policy.

SOURCE

Smokey the Bear has a new message for far left environmentalists and they ignore his warning at their own peril.

It’s harsh but it’s accurate:

The wildfires devastating California are terrible, but they are not a new phenomenon. Indeed, wildfires in California and throughout the Western United States have been common, seasonally, throughout history. However, in recent decades, the damage caused by and costs from wildfires has increased greatly.

For three years running, like a broken record playing the same notes over and over again, California Gov. Jerry Brown has blamed human caused climate change for the wildfires that have engulfed much of the Golden State. By contrast, President Donald Trump’s thoughts about the cause of the wildfires currently blazing in California came, in typical Trump fashion, via tweet:

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests,” tweeted Trump on November 10, following up in a second tweet on November 11, “With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get smart!”

Concerning wildfires, Brown is wrong, Trump is right.

The average temperature in California has barely moved over the past 30 years, and numerous analyses, including Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, a peer-reviewed survey of the literature, demonstrate conclusively neither the Earth in general, nor California in particular have experienced worsened drought conditions or wildfires in greater number or size during the past 150 years—the period when carbon-dioxide-producing humans have purportedly been causing dangerous climate change.

By contrast, forest management has changed radically since George Herbert Walker Bush was elected president in 1988. Historically—prior to burdensome federal regulations—forests on federal lands were logged to provide lumber for commercial activities, to promote forest recreation, species protection and management, and to prevent wildfires.

However, in recent decades forest management policies have substantially changed—and not for the better. Pressure and lawsuits from environmental lobbyists have prevented or delayed commercial and salvage logging, turning many of our national forests into tinderboxes. Moreover, environmentalists successfully lobbied to remove thousands of miles of forest roads, making it more difficult to fight wildfires before they endanger population centers.

SOURCE

Why climate litigation is out of place

Between the Acting New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil and the Supreme Court’s decision to not intervene to prevent a lawsuit brought by 21 young Americans from moving forward, climate litigation is once again a hot news topic. But, we should be sensible when deciding what branches of government should navigate the heated debate.

The issues surrounding climate change are scientific and largely political. To the extent the law is involved, we need deliberative legislatures and expert agencies to craft responses after considering evidence and examining competing policy recommendations.

From the perspective of comparative institutional competency, those branches of government are best suited to those tasks. Judges, on the other hand, do none of that well. For those who want judges to get involved: Would you want a judge to have the power to deny climate change and give that conclusion legal effect? If not, then why would we trust judges who recognize climate change as a danger to know how to balance concerns and effectively regulate to control climate change?

The bottom line is that we can believe climate change is real and needs to be addressed, yet disbelieve that courts are well-suited to the task of setting policy on it.

Nevertheless, a recent nationwide strategy has looked to unelected judges and juries to craft climate policy. What might be called “the judicial strategy” started in 2015, with states like New York and Massachusetts beginning “civil investigative demand” inquiries into energy companies. And these efforts reached new heights recently when Acting New York AG Barbara Underwood filed a civil suit against ExxonMobil claiming it defrauded shareholders by supposedly hiding knowledge of climate change impacts through accounting practices that are not all that unusual across myriad industries.

In concurrent and coordinated action starting in 2017, a series of lawsuits have also been filed across the country — by municipalities in California, Colorado, New York, Maryland and Washington, as well as by the state of Rhode Island — against energy companies claiming they are liable for billions in damages for climate change, asking the courts to endorse novel modern expansions to ill-fitting common law tort doctrines like “public nuisance.”

Some of these efforts have been rebuffed in the courts. Two federal district courts have already wisely dismissed major lawsuits that were brought under this regulation-by-litigation template.

In June, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a public nuisance climate change-based lawsuit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco. The court held that it was not the proper role of the courts in a system of separated powers to resolve these types of claims. It refused to entertain a theory of liability that the court called “breathtaking” in scope, especially when court intervention may actually “interfere with reaching a worldwide consensus” on how to address climate change. The judge explained that “questions of how to appropriately balance these worldwide negatives [of climate change] against the worldwide positives of the energy itself, and of how to allocate the pluses and minuses among the nations of the world, demand the expertise of our environmental agencies, our diplomats, our Executive, and at least the Senate.”

A month later, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a similar public nuisance case against energy companies brought by New York City. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, the court explained that Congress has displaced the courts from any role that they might have had in identifying fault or prescribing remedies for claimed climate change contributors by “expressly delegat[ing] to the EPA the determination as to what constitutes a reasonable amount of greenhouse gas emission under the Clean Air Act.”

Put simply, the court concluded that “the serious problems caused” by climate change “are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”

These two federal judges got it right. Furthermore, the same separation of powers rationale causing those courts to dismiss those lawsuits applies whether the novel theory is one of public nuisance, consumer fraud like in the new New York lawsuit, or some other creative tactic to get policy issues into court.

Yet, many states and municipalities persist in trying hard to pursue one or another type of climate case through this judicial strategy.

The message from these recent federal court opinions should be clear: If we are to resolve the complex issues regarding climate change, we should turn our attention away from the courts and back to the policymaking branches.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 28, 2018

An aging America: Old people will outnumber children for the first time in the country's HISTORY

This is an old scare. It treats as permanent trends that may not be permanent. The major cause of the birth dearth among white women would seem to be mainly a delay of birth, not a cessation of birth. Where women once tended to have children in their teens and 20s, it is now often in their 30s. So once all those delayed births start happening, the statistics should look very different.

And an older population is not a total disaster. In some places already the retirement age has risen to 70 and there are laws in place that prevent forced retirement due to age. Many oldsters want to continue working and they are increasingly being allowed to do so.

And, finally, the economy could be rearranged to make do with a proportionately smaller workforce. As any libertarian will tell you, most government work could be dispensed with and the workers thus released could go into more productive occupations

The article below also hints at another interesting process that can be summed up as "Asian mothers often have Caucasian children." That sounds rather mad but the underlying fact is that East Asians and Caucasians tend to get along fine and the result is many Eurasian births. And Eurasians often look indistinguishable from Caucasians. More detail on that here

Adults 65 and older will soon outnumber children for the first time in America's history, it has been revealed.

The US Census Bureau released new projections this year that showed the country's changing - and aging - demographics.

By 2030 all baby boomers will be older than age 65 and one in every five Americans will be retirement age.

The Census Bureau said that deaths will 'rise substantially' between 2020 and 2050, meaning the country's population will naturally grow very slowly.

Projections also revealed that America will become more racially and ethnically diverse, with the country's share of mixed-race children set to double.

The non-Hispanic White-alone population is projected to shrink from 199 million in 2020 to 179 million in 2060.

Meanwhile, the 'Two or More Races' population will be the fastest growing over the next several decades.

SOURCE

Coral Reef Island Initiation and Development Under Higher Than Present Sea Levels

Higher sea levels will cause some coral islands to GROW

H. K. East et al.

Abstract

Coral reef islands are considered to be among the most vulnerable environments to future sea level rise. However, emerging data suggest that different island types, in contrasting locations, have formed under different conditions in relation to past sea level. Uniform assumptions about reef island futures under sea level rise may thus be inappropriate. Using chronostratigraphic analysis from atoll rim islands(sand- and gravel-based) in the southern Maldives, we show that while island building initiated at different times around the atoll (~2,800 and~4,200 calibrated years before present at windward and leeward rimsites, respectively), higher than present sea levels and associated high-energy wave events were actually critical to island initiation. Findings thus suggest that projected sea level rise and increases in the magnitude of distal high-energy wave events could reactivate this process regime, which, if there is an appropriate sediment supply, may facilitate further vertical reef island building.

Plain Language Summary

The habitability of reef island nations under climate change is a debatedand controversial subject. Improving understanding of reef island responses to past environmental changeprovides important insights into how islands may respond to future environmental change. It is typically assumed that all reef islands will respond to environmental change in the same manner, but suchassumptions fail to acknowledge that reef islands are diverse landforms that have formed under different sealevel histories and across a range of settings. Here we reconstruct reef island evolution in two contrastingsettings (in terms of exposure to open ocean swell) in the southern Maldives. Important differences in islanddevelopment are evident between these settings in the timings, sedimentology, and modes of islandbuilding, even at local scales. This implies that island responses to climate change may be equally diverse and site-specific. We present evidence that island initiation was associated with higher than present sea levelsand high-energy wave events. Projected increases in sea level and the magnitude of such high-energy waveevents could therefore recreate the environmental conditions under which island formation occurred. If thereis a suitable sediment supply, this could result in vertical island-building, which may enhance reef island future resilience.

SOURCE

Ocasio-Cortez Doubles Down: We’re All Going To Die From Climate Change

The fact that madam emptyhead says it, is pretty good proof that it is wrong

Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is doubling down on her first week’s agenda in Congress, calling on her colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass a “Green New Deal” because “people are going to die” from climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez cited a report released Friday by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a voluntary committee of scientists from 13 federal agencies and a number of outside pressure groups, that warned that thousands could die, and the United States could suffer a striking 10% reduction in its gross national product by the end of this century if humans do not curb their fossil fuel consumption.

CNN reports that the US Global Change Research Program estimates tens of thousands of “premature deaths” from the effects of climate change, including deaths from starvation, mosquito-borne illnesses, extreme heat, flooding and other natural disasters.

The report seems extreme on its face, and critics were quick to point out that the computer models used to predict the “thousands” of deaths may be outdated, but leftists, including Ocasio-Cortez, soaked up the report without question, inciting mass panic.

“People are going to die if we don’t start addressing climate change ASAP,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “It’s not enough to think it’s ‘important.’ We must make it urgent. That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, & why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy.”

The U.S. Global Change Research Program makes no recommendations on how to curb “climate change,” but it’s quite clear that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes the only way to make real in-roads on the subject is to enact a massive, socialistic environmentally focused legislative package, using taxation and other “incentives” to help Americans cut down on fossil fuel usage, while pouring millions into “green jobs” and “alternative energy.”

The issue is obviously important to Ocasio-Cortez; her first act upon finding herself in Washington, D.C., as a freshman Congresswoman was to join a sit-in protest at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Capitol Hill offices, designed to pressure the presumptive House Majority Leader into tackling the “climate change” issue with a select committee. Ocasio-Cortez called the protest “important work,” but seemed to heavily temper her follow-up criticism of Pelosi, announcing late last week that she intends to support Pelosi’s bid to reclaim the Speakership.

But Ocasio-Cortez seems to miss that the United States is well ahead of its global peers when it comes to curbing fossil fuel emissions, with or without a complex “climate change” legislative scheme. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the United States ranks at the top of most major countries in regularly reducing its own carbon footprint.

“The major reason for the reduced pollution levels is the shale oil and gas revolution that is transitioning the world to cheap and clean natural gas for electric power generation,” the Daily Signal reports. “Meanwhile, as our emissions fell, the pollution levels rose internationally and by a larger amount than in previous years. So much for the rest of the world going green.”

The worst climate offender? China. But Ocasio-Cortez’s plan doesn’t include any foreign policy recommendations.

SOURCE

Why a Carbon Tax Is the Wrong Solution

The release of the National Climate Assessment this year and the recent formation of the new bi-partisan, pro-business advocacy group Americans for Carbon Dividends have given new life to promoting a carbon tax as the best approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Climate change activists will endorse any policy that they believe will reduce fossil fuel use. But others should be cautious in embracing a complicated and unnecessary tax scheme.

The goal of Americans for Carbon Dividends is to advocate for the “Baker-Shultz carbon dividends plan,” a proposal put together by the Climate Leadership Council and, specifically, two of its founding members, former Secretary of Treasury James Baker and former Secretary of State George Shultz. The plan would impose a tax on carbon-based fuel wherever it first enters the economy, whether it’s the oil refinery, the mouth of mine, or the port of entry. The starting fee would be $40 per ton of carbon dioxide, which would gradually increase as the tonnage increased. The revenue generated would be returned to all Americans monthly on an equal basis. In exchange for passing the carbon tax, Congress would phase out regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.

Anyone who knows how Congress operates knows that it is extremely unlikely for Congress to enact a simple carbon tax that gives the proceeds back to taxpayers and simultaneously eliminates regulations on carbon emissions. Congress simply does not operate that way. Being able to get broad based support for legislation involves making deals across the aisle to get votes. This means that obtaining votes for a bill enacting the Baker-Shultz plan would probably involve provisions that would benefit low income earners, farmers (because they use a lot of carbon-based fuels), coal miners (whose industry will be negatively affected), and other special interests where a plausible case for exemptions can be made. It will also be difficult to roll back existing regulations because of opposition from environmental advocacy organizations, members of Congress who have strong environmental interests, and organizations that have already made significant investments to comply with those regulations..

But this is simply how Congress works. Consider the history of ethanol subsidies. Members of Congress sold ethanol subsidies by initially claiming ethanol production would reduce the imports of oil, and then by saying it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions as a cleaner form of energy than fossil fuels. It does neither, but subsidies and mandates on use continued to be expanded to benefit corn farmers and ethanol manufacturers while costing motorists billions of dollars annually.

Even if there was a way to get Congress to enact the kind of carbon tax favored by the ACD, there are other reasons to oppose the plan. The size of the tax is supposed to be based on an assessment of damages that are reflected in the social cost of carbon. EPA defines the social cost of carbon as “an estimate of the economic damages associated with a small increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, conventionally one metric ton, in a given year. This dollar figure also represents the value of damages avoided for a small emission reduction.” But the estimates for the social cost of carbon calculated by the Obama administration for the period from 2010 through 2050 ranged from $11/ton of carbon to $90. But how do you decide which is the more realistic damage estimate?

The social cost of carbon is based on model calculations that involve numerous assumptions. The damages that advocates cite, such as those in the National Climate Assessment, are based on higher temperatures than have been observed since 1998. For example, although the sea level is estimated to have risen by about 7 inches since 1900, the National Assessment states that it could rise by 4 to 8 feet by 2100. Based on the work of oceanographers such as Carl Wunsch, a reasonable person would have to conclude that such an increase is unrealistic.

Fossil fuels produce both positive and negative externalities. An honest calculation of the social cost of carbon would incorporate the benefits they produce and the net damages after the costs of regulations are taken into account. That is a very challenging analytical task.

If most economists were honest on the subject, they would admit that with the exception of a very low probability outcome—e.g. the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet—the benefits of fossil fuels outweigh the costs: that is, realistic economic growth is going to be far greater than the projected damages from climate change. The magnitude of damages to the United States from climate change are 1.2% for every 1 degree of temperature increase according to an article in Science. If we double GDP by 2050 to about $40 trillion, which is an achievable goal, but lose as much as 6% GDP to climate damages, that means GDP would come to $37.6 trillion—not that big of a difference.

Finally, a carbon tax that is based on assumed damages over the next century can never be right because the future reveals uncertainties and unknowns that are impossible to incorporate in model calculations. Given that, the carbon tax exercise violates a basic principle of planning—as uncertainties increase, the planning horizon should be reduced. A Lewis and Clark approach is best. In their explorations, Lewis and Clark made decisions based on the best information available, collect new information as they moved west, and then adjust their decisions based on that new information. In the case of climate change, we should use the knowledge at hand for short-term decisions and invest in research that can be used to make better informed decisions down the road.

That is not a do-nothing strategy. If sea levels are rising, we have solutions: dikes and man-made dunes. If we fear climate change causing drought, we can genetically engineer crops that are drought resistant. If we are worried about climate disasters, we can focus research and development on mitigation strategies. There are many other ways to address climate change without passing a new, costly piece of legislation.

SOURCE

Zinke Blames ‘Radical’ Environmentalists for California Fires

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “radical” environmentalists for blocking efforts to clear forests of dead and dying trees that have fueled destructive and deadly wildfires in California.

Work to manage forests and prevent wildfires has been stymied by “lawsuit after lawsuit by — yes — the radical environmental groups that would rather burn down the entire forest than cut a single tree or thin the forest,” Zinke said Tuesday. During a conference call with reporters, Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue asked Congress to give the federal government more authority to clear trees and conduct controlled burns that can pare forests of fire-fueling underbrush.

President Trump later issued a statement calling on Congress to pass legislation “to improve forest management and help prevent wildfires.”

Zinke stressed he didn’t “want to finger point,” and cited a number of factors that have contributed to the blazes, including hotter temperatures, drought conditions, excessive underbrush, and a bark beetle infestation. But he maintained that special interest groups have pushed an agenda favoring pristine forests that has resulted in a “buildup of fuels.”

Experts say forest management can mitigate some wildfire risk but isn’t a panacea.

Perdue and Zinke said they want Congress to expand the availability of an existing “Good Neighbor” program so that Indian tribes and county governments can collaborate in forest restoration activities. They also asked lawmakers for more power to waive required environmental analysis.

The White House said in a fact sheet that Congress also needs to expedite salvage operations after catastrophes and management activity on Forest Service lands surrounding at-risk communities.

Both the House- and Senate-passed farm bills would broaden the Good Neighbor program. But lawmakers are still negotiating environmental waivers. The House-passed farm bill would create 10 so-called “categorical exclusions” allowing forest management activities to be waived from environmental analysis, but the Senate version of the legislation is more limited.

The scale of these wildfires “requires more authority,” Zinke said, adding that the waivers could expedite projects to thin forests and improve the accessibility of forestland. “We’re not talking about clear-cutting” forests, he said.

The appeals come as firefighters are struggling to control blazes that have swept across California.

Environmentalists argued Zinke’s criticism is misplaced and ill-timed.

“The blame game at this juncture — when we are still digging dead people out of the rubble — is pretty callous,” said Susan Jane Brown, an attorney with the Oregon-based Western Environmental Law Center. “We are a nation of laws, and when conservation organizations feel like the federal government has violated those laws we sometimes do resort to the federal court system in order to redress those grievances.”

SOURCE

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

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

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November 27, 2018

What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment

Below is the first part of an NYT article. It is totally uncritical. The days of journalists examining evidence critically are now gone -- except for anything favouring Mr Trump, of course.

Yet the report has glaring holes. Attributing South coast flooding to global warming without mentioning all the reports showing land subsidence there is just not serious reporting. It is a perfunctory restatement of an item of faith. It is a sort of chant of the global warming religion, not anything scientific

Global warming is now affecting the United States more than ever, and the risks of future disasters — from flooding along the coasts to crop failures in the Midwest — could pose a profound threat to Americans’ well-being.

That’s the gist of Volume Two of the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,656-page report issued on Friday that explores both the current and future impacts of climate change. The scientific report, which comes out every four years as mandated by Congress, was produced by 13 federal agencies and released by the Trump administration.

This year’s report contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. Temperatures are still going up, and the odds of dangers such as wildfires in the West continue to increase. But reflecting some of the impacts that have been felt across the country in the past four years, some of the report’s emphasis has changed.

Predicted impacts have materialized

More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality.

For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That’s no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of “nuisance flooding” events during high tides in cities like Miami and Charleston, S.C.

“High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast,” the report says.

As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.

SOURCE

Scientists trash new federal climate report as ‘tripe’ – ’embarrassing’ – ‘400-page pile of crap’

The new federal climate report, the National Climate Assessment, released on Black Friday, is being hyped by climate activists and the media. But scientists are rebuking the study and its claims.

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore ripped the new federal climate report: “The science must be addressed head-on. If POTUS has his reasons for letting this Obama-era committee continue to peddle tripe I wish he would tell us what they are,” Moore told Climate Depot.

“This new federal climate report even flies in the face of the UNIPCC admission that there is no evidence of a connection between AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and extreme weather. Ms. Hayhoe reigns supreme. Very worrying,” Moore added.

The National Climate Assessment report by the National Academy of Sciences, is basing one of its headline scare scenario on a study funded by climate activist billionaire Tom Steyer. Climate expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted on November 24 that the claim of economic damage from climate change is based on a 15 degree F temperature increase that is double the “most extreme value reported elsewhere in the report.” The “sole editor” of this claim in the report was an alumni of the Center for American Progress, which is also funded by Tom Styer.” “Shouldn’t such an outlandish, outlier conclusion been caught in the review process?” Pielke Jr. added.

“Not a good look that sole review editor for this chapter is an alum of the Center for American Progress … which is funded by Tom Steyer. Even rudimentary attention to COI (conflict of interest) would avoided this,” he added.

“By presenting cherrypicked science, at odds w/ NCA Vol,1 & IPCC AR5, the authors of NCA Vol.2 have given a big fat gift to anyone who wants to dismiss climate science and policy,” Pielke Jr. wrote

Dr. John Dunn lamented that he was disappointed that President Trump has not halted these federal reports written to promote climate fears. “Two years into the Trump administration it is sad to see this 400-page pile of crap,” Dunn told Climate Depot.

As Climate Depot has previously reported:

“This is pre-determined science. If you are reading this report and you say: ‘This sounds like a press release by environmental groups’ — that’s because it is! The lead authors are activists with environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists.”

“The government is paying our National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to come up with alarming report with a bunch of scary climate computer models. (NAS is almost entirely dependent on federal funding).

The lead authors of this report Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe, have come out and said every storm is now impacted by global warming. It is a political report masquerading as science. We knew what it was going to say before it was issued. The media is hyping a rehash of frightening climate change claims by Obama administration holdover activist government scientists. The new report is once again pre-determined science.

The 2017 National Climate Assessment report reads like a press release from environmental pressure groups — because it is! Two key authors are longtime Union of Concerned Scientist activists, Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe.

Wuebbles is on record as believing global warming has powers and abilities far beyond those of any other phenomenon. “There’s really no such thing as natural weather anymore,” Wuebbles said in 2011. “Anything that takes place today in the weather system has been affected by the changes we’ve made to the climate system,” he added.

SOURCE

Give thanks that we no longer live on the precipice

Fossil fuels helped humanity improve our health, living standards and longevity in just 200 years

Paul Driessen

Thanksgiving is a good time to express our sincere gratitude that we no longer “enjoy” the “simpler life of yesteryear.” As my grandmother said, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”

For countless millennia, mankind lived on a precipice, in hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer and primitive urban industrial societies powered by human and animal muscle, wood, charcoal, animal dung, water wheels and windmills. Despite backbreaking dawn-to-dusk labor, wretched poverty was the norm; starvation was a drought, war or long winter away; rampant diseases and infections were addressed by herbs, primitive medicine and superstition. Life was “eco-friendly,” but life spans averaged 35 to 40 years.

Then, suddenly, a great miracle happened! Beginning around 1800, health, prosperity and life expectancy began to climb … slowly but inexorably at first, then more rapidly and dramatically. Today, the average American lives longer, healthier and better than even royalty did a mere century ago.

How did this happen? What was suddenly present that had been absent before, to cause this incredible transformation?

Humanity already possessed the basic scientific method (1250), printing press (1450), corporation (1600) and early steam engine (1770). So what inventions, discoveries and practices arrived after 1800, to propel us forward over this short time span?

Ideals of liberty and equality took root, says economics historian Deidre McCloskey. Liberated people are more ingenious, free to pursue happiness, and ideas; free to try, fail and try again; free to pursue their self-interests and thereby, intentionally or not, to better mankind – just as Adam Smith described.

Equality (of social dignity and before the law) emboldened otherwise ordinary people to invest, invent and take risks. Once accidents of parentage, titles, inherited wealth or formal education no longer controlled destinies, humanity increasingly benefitted from the innate inspiration, perspiration and perseverance of inventors like American Charles Newbold, who patented the first iron plow in 1807.

Ideas suddenly start having sex, say McCloskey and United Kingdom parliamentarian and science writer Matt Ridley. Free enterprise capitalism and entrepreneurship took off, as did commercial and international banking, risk management and stock markets.

Legal and regulatory systems expanded to express societal expectations, coordinate growth and activities, and punish bad actors. Instead of growing, making and buying locally, we did so internationally – enabling families, communities and countries to specialize, and buy affordable products from afar.

The scientific method began to flourish, unleashing wondrous advances at an increasingly frenzied pace. Not just inventions like steam-powered refrigeration (1834) but, often amid heated debate, discoveries like the germ theory of disease that finally bested the miasma theory around 1870.

All this and more were literally fueled by another absolutely vital, fundamental advance that is too often overlooked or only grudging recognized: abundant, reliable, affordable energy – the vast majority of it fossil fuels. Coal and coal gas, then also oil, then natural gas as well, replaced primitive fuels with densely packed energy that could power engines, trains, farms, factories, laboratories, schools, hospitals, offices, homes, road building and more, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The fuels also ended our unsustainable reliance on whale oil, saving those magnificent creatures from extinction. Eventually, they powered equipment that removes harmful pollutants from our air and water.

Today, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 80% of America’s and the world’s energy for heat, lights, manufacturing, transportation, communication, refrigeration, entertainment and every other aspect of modern life. Equally important, they supported and still support the infrastructure and vibrant societies, economies and institutions that enable the human mind (what economist Julian Simon called our Ultimate Resource) to create seemingly endless new ideas and technologies.

Electricity plays an increasingly prominent and indispensable role in modern life. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine life without this infinitely adaptable energy form. By 1925, half of all U.S. homes had electricity; a half century later, all did – from coal, hydroelectric, natural gas or nuclear plants.

Medical discoveries and practices followed a similar trajectory, as millions of “invisible hands” worked together across buildings, cities, countries and continents – without most of them ever even knowing the others existed. They shared and combined ideas and technologies, generating new products and practices that improved and saved billions of lives.

Medical research discovered why people died from minor wounds, and what really caused malaria (1898), smallpox and cholera. Antibiotics (the most vital advance in centuries), vaccinations and new drugs began to combat disease and infection. X-rays, anesthesia, improved surgical techniques, sanitation and pain killers (beginning with Bayer Aspirin in 1899) permitted life-saving operations. Indoor plumbing, electric stoves (1896) and refrigerators (1913), trash removal, and countless other advances also helped raise average American life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 76 (men) and 81 (women) in 2017.

Washing visible hands with soap (1850) further reduced infections and disease. Wearing shoes in southern U.S. states (1910) all but eliminated waterborne hookworm, while the growing use of window screens (1887) kept hosts of disease-carrying insects out of homes. Petrochemicals increasingly provided countless pharmaceuticals, plastics and other products that enhance and safeguard lives.

Safe water and wastewater treatment – also made possible by fossil fuels, electricity and the infrastructure they support – supported still healthier societies that created still more prosperity, by eliminating the bacteria, parasites and other waterborne pathogens that made people too sick to work and killed millions, especially children. They all but eradicated cholera, one of history’s greatest killers.

Insecticides and other chemicals control disease-carrying and crop-destroying insects and pathogens. Ammonia-based fertilizers arrived in 1910; tractors and combines became common in the 1920s. Today, modern mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, hybrid and biotech seeds, drip irrigation and other advances combine to produce bumper crops that feed billions, using less land, water and insecticides.

The internal combustion engine (Carl Benz, 1886) gradually replaced horses for farming and transportation, rid cities of equine pollution (feces, urine and corpses), and enabled forage cropland to become forests. Today we can travel states, nations and the world in mere hours, instead of weeks – and ship food, clothing and other products to the globe’s farthest corners. Catalytic converters and other technologies mean today’s cars emit less than 2% of the pollutants that came out of tailpipes in 1970.

Power equipment erects better and stronger houses and other buildings that keep out winter cold and summer heat, better survive hurricanes and earthquakes, and connect occupants with entertainment and information centers from all over the planet. Radios, telephones, televisions and text messages warn of impending dangers, while fire trucks and ambulances rush accident and disaster victims to hospitals.

Today, modern drilling and mining techniques and technologies find, extract and process the incredible variety of fuels, metals and other raw materials required to manufacture and operate factories and equipment, to produce the energy and materials we need to grow or make everything we eat, wear or use.

Modern communication technologies combine cable and wireless connections, computers, cell phones, televisions, radio, internet and other devices to connect people and businesses, operate cars and equipment, and make once time-consuming operations happen in nanoseconds. In the invention and discovery arena, Cosmopolitan magazine might call it best idea-sex ever.

So, this holiday season, give thanks for all these blessings – while praying and doing everything you can to help bring the same blessings to billions of people worldwide who still do not enjoy them.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.

Oil plunges to lowest price in a year

Fracking is doing its job

Oil prices slumped more than 6 percent to the lowest in more than a year on Friday amid fears of a supply glut even as major producers consider cutting output.

Oil supply, led by U.S. producers, is growing faster than demand and to prevent a build-up of unused fuel such as the one that emerged in 2015, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to start trimming output after a meeting on Dec. 6.

But this has done little so far to prop up prices, which have dropped more than 20 percent so far in November, in a seven-week streak of losses. Prices were on course for their biggest one-month decline since late 2014.

A trade war between the world's two biggest economies and oil consumers, the United States and China, have weighed upon the market.

"The market is pricing in an economic slowdown - they are anticipating that the Chinese trade talks are not going to go well," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, referring to expected talks next week between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

"The market doesn't believe that OPEC is going to be able to act swiftly enough to offset the coming slowdown in demand," Flynn said.

Brent crude fell $3.13, or 5 percent, to $59.47 a barrel by 1:01 p.m. EST (1801 GMT), after earlier touching $58.41, its lowest since October 2017.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) lost $3.35, or 6.1 percent, to trade at $51.28, and earlier touched a low of $50.53, also the weakest since October 2017.

For the week, Brent was on track for a 11 percent loss and WTI a 9.4 percent decline.

Market fears over weak demand intensified after China reported its lowest gasoline exports in more than a year amid a glut of the fuel in Asia and globally.

Stockpiles of gasoline have surged across Asia, with inventories in Singapore, the regional refining hub, rising to a three-month high while Japanese stockpiles also climbed last week. Inventories in the United States are about 7 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude production has soared as well this year. The International Energy Agency expects non-OPEC output alone to rise by 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) this year while demand next year was expected to grow 1.3 million bpd.

Adjusting to lower demand, top crude exporter Saudi Arabia said on Thursday that it may reduce supply as it pushes OPEC to agree to a joint output cut of 1.4 million bpd.

However, Trump has made it clear that he does not want oil prices to rise and many analysts think Saudi Arabia is coming under U.S. pressure to resist calls from other OPEC members for lower crude output.

If OPEC decides to cut production at its meeting next month, oil prices could recover, analysts say.

"We expect that OPEC will manage the market in 2019 and assess the probability of an agreement to reduce production at around 2-in-3. In that scenario, Brent prices likely recover back into the $70s," Morgan Stanley commodities strategists Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant wrote in a note to clients.

If OPEC does not trim production, prices could head much lower, potentially depreciating toward $50 a barrel, argues Lukman Otunuga, Research Analyst at FXTM.

SOURCE

Giving Thanks for Climate Authenticity

The philosopher Aristotle once observed, “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” This is true of many political movements. It’s also applicable to the issue of climate change. Simply by revisiting 20th-century climate predictions, we can see that the extreme fear generated by global cooling-turned-warming was unfounded. Yet the climate alarmists’ outlook today continues to worsen despite a dearth of verification.

This week we were handed yet another overheated forecast. Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa is the lead author of a comprehensive new study on forthcoming climate conditions. According to NBC News, “Mora’s team combed through more than 3,200 studies to try to paint a broad picture of what climate change is going to do to people over the coming century. They cross-referenced their findings against known disasters.” Here’s how The New York Times summarized the team’s findings:

Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say. … The paper projects future trends and suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet, like the Atlantic coast of South and Central America, could be hit by as many as six crises at a time.

Dr. Mora even likened this outlook to “a terror movie that is real,” while NBC warned that “climate change is going to make life on Earth a whole lot worse.” Yet it’s worth asking how such conjectural precision is even possible given past failures. The short answer is that it’s not. As meteorologist Joe Bastardi muses in an email to The Patriot Post, “It’s their strategy — blame every event on climate change. Never mind that most of the planet is peaceful and the area affected is trivial. There just happen to be people living in the affected areas who are recording every event with their cameras. There are also people who refuse to look at both sides of the issue.”

To the Times’s credit, it also notes, “The authors include a list of caveats about the research: Since it is a review of papers, it will reflect some of the potential biases of science in this area, which include the possibility that scientists might focus on negative effects more than positive ones; there is also a margin of uncertainty involved in discerning the imprint of climate change from natural variability.” This is a pertinent point that is frequently overlooked.

As reported by space.com this week, another study purports: “As Earth’s tectonic plates dive beneath one another, they drag three times as much water into the planet’s interior as previously thought.” This would appear to mitigate sea-level rise, which is among climate scientists’ top concerns. In fact, most dire outlooks are predicated on sea levels rising.

Which brings us full circle to Aristotle’s point. Social and political movements that are borne out of fear eventually reach a point at which “deviation from the truth is multiplied … a thousandfold.” Global warming is surely real, but it’s obvious that the assertions behind it are increasingly cock and bull. Despite the clamorous predictions of doomsday, humanity continues to survive and adapt. All the while, scientific analysis is fluid and in constant flux as research evolves.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 22, 2018

Melting Antarctic ice could slow global temperature rise, study says

Another evidence-free speculation. In fact it's not only free of evidence, it is against the evidence. As Zwally showed, the Antarctic is in fact GAINING mass overall

Cold meltwater running off Antarctica’s ice sheets and into the ocean could dampen the pace of global temperature rise, a new study suggests.

The research, published in Nature, finds that the rate of ice-sheet melt in a high-emissions scenario could see the oceans cooled by the influx of frigid water. This could knock as much as 0.4C off global temperature rise, the researchers say, potentially delaying exceeding the 1.5C and 2C Paris temperature limits by around a decade.

However, the study adds that the meltwater could have wider impacts on the Earth’s climate, increasing the formation of Antarctic sea ice, reducing rainfall in the southern hemisphere and increasing rainfall in the northern hemisphere. It could also cause warming of the ocean beneath the surface layer around the Antarctic coast, the researchers add, leading to further ice-sheet melt and additional sea level rise.

Scientists not involved in the research tell Carbon Brief that while the results are intriguing, some caution is warranted given that the study relies on a single climate model. It also uses a speculative ice-melt scenario and focuses on a region – the Southern Ocean and Antarctica – which climate models can struggle to simulate accurately.

Additional work, including running similar simulations using other climate models and including the impact of meltwater from Greenland, may provide a more complete picture of the climate impacts of melting ice sheets, the scientists note.

SOURCE

Symptoms Of Global Warming And Global Cooling Are Identical

Tony Heller: In this video I show how climate scientists have continuously changed their story over the past 40 years. The same things they used to blame on global cooling and excess sea ice, now they blame on global warming and shrinking sea ice.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline construction provides good jobs

VIRGINIANS ARE experiencing the best economy they have seen in decades.

At just below 3 percent, Virginia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Jobs are growing in virtually every sector, with manufacturing, construction and mining especially strong.

A good job for a family provider is not about what political party controls what chamber. It’s not red or blue. It’s green.

It’s prosperity, and it’s non-partisan. It’s food on the table, new baseball shoes for your child, and a movie on the weekend. At the end of the day, it’s a better life.

The future looks bright, and it’s about to get even better. More jobs are on the way.

Virginia has given the final go-ahead to begin building the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The pipeline will carry clean-burning natural gas from wellheads in West Virginia to customers in Virginia and North Carolina.

This is the abundant energy our families depend on to heat and light our homes. This is the affordable energy that gives our industries an advantage over the rest of the world and powers the American growth engine, which has been hitting on all cylinders.

In addition, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline — and other pipelines carrying natural gas throughout the country — fits perfectly into President Donald Trump’s "America First" energy dominance national security policy. In Massachusetts, for example, state and local government officials have blocked pipeline construction from reserves in Pennsylvania. As a result, natural gas had to be purchased from Russia and shipped across the ocean in foreign tankers to Boston to meet the eastern region’s energy needs last winter. How does that make any sense?

Trump has a four-pronged strategy to get our economy moving again: tax reform, trade reform, regulatory reform and energy reform. The ACP embodies how these four parts work together. Tax reform encouraged the pipeline builders to make the investment, regulatory reform cleared the pathway for obtaining well-scrutinized federal permits, and trade reform will boost exports of our energy resources.

As our energy exports expand, our record trade deficits across the globe will be reduced, keeping cash and jobs in America — instead of going to other countries. Permanent energy self-sufficiency — once a pipe dream for Americans who remember waiting for hours in gas lines in the 1970s — is now very close to reality.

Besides carrying natural gas, the pipeline will also provide life-changing jobs that will help propel families into the middle class. It will add incentives for manufacturing companies to move to Virginia in order to tap directly into the pipeline’s efficient and affordable energy. More manufacturing brings more good-paying jobs to Virginians.

Construction has been underway in West Virginia and North Carolina for months. In Virginia, the construction means thousands of middle-class jobs in rural communities across the commonwealth.

The skilled tradesmen of the Laborers International Union of North America are stepping forward to train Virginians for the better-paying jobs that are out there right now for the taking.

This labor organization represents some 40,000 skilled tradesmen and women, primarily in the construction industry. They are teaching Virginia residents the skills they need to build the pipeline. The training takes place in classrooms and on the job, combining theoretical book knowledge with practical, hands-on experience.

At the end of the on-the-job training, students will have acquired skills employers want and a good-paying job. They will be able to use these skills well after the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is built and running.

Thanks to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Laborers International Union of North America, this generation of Virginians and the next will have in-demand skills, good jobs and a secure place in the middle class for themselves and their families in order to keep the American dream alive.

My father, a high school graduate, was a union worker and craftsman his whole life. He was proud of his job as a union craftsman.

Good jobs change lives. Let’s build this pipeline.

SOURCE

California failed to sufficiently manage its forests

At what should have been the close of an already devastating wildfire season, California residents brace themselves as three more large fires rage on. The 2017 season made history. Sadly, however, 2018 is on track to be California’s worst, with at least 23 fatalities at this writing and over 190,000 acres burned. This season has brought fires that burn hotter, move faster, and claim more lives and property than in past decades. Californians have been left to wonder, “Is this the new normal?”

As we choke on smoke and watch our beautiful state burn, we look for an answer. How can this level of destruction be prevented in the future? The governor and news media are quick to answer, citing a combination of climate change and weather as the culprit.

To be sure, California’s multiyear drought left the state dry and vulnerable, and Santa Ana winds coupled with low humidity created the perfect firestorm. Climate change, though, remains the go-to villain, with outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown (D) claiming that the Golden State will have to spend “probably hundreds of billions [of dollars]” to combat the “new abnormal” driven by global warming. Echoing Brown, Scott McClean, deputy chief of the California Department of Forest and Fire Protection (CAL Fire), claims that “the problem is changing climate leading to more severe and destructive fires.”

Apparently, then, the solution is to pour “hundreds of billions” of dollars into our state government. What specifically this money would fund is not clear, nor are the measures that should be taken to “fight” a changing climate. As a life-long California resident, I find little hope in this vague solution.

But one critically important, yet overlooked factor could inspire hope — forest management. As an avid hiker who’s trekked across my home state, I’ve experienced firsthand the irresponsible way in which our wooded areas are managed.

From the Ventana Wilderness in Big Sur to Warner Valley on Mt. Lassen, trails are overgrown and bordered by rotting trunks and dry limbs. When trees fall, instead of the dead wood being cleared, it’s left to decompose along paths and roadways. Underbrush is left untouched as well, with forest floors blanketed in dry kindling. This hands-off approach creates a literal tinderbox, leaving our forests incredibly vulnerable.

One practical solution, which would likely cost less than $100 billion, would be to clear the deadwood and dry brush. Additionally, greater firebreaks should be made along roads and highways, limiting a fire’s ability to spread. If these solutions sound simple, that’s because they are. Despite a stated policy of "chang[ing] the environment by removing or reducing the heat source," CAL Fire continues to allow our forests to develop dangerous amounts of dry material, that is, fuel.

If CAL Fire is ill prepared to follow its stated policy and adequately manage our forests, despite its $443 million budget, perhaps a more cost-effective solution should be implemented. One such solution would be to incentivize private loggers to clear densely packed forests and remote highway shoulders.

As far as incentives go, a good place to start would be streamlining the Timber Harvesting Plan Review Process, which currently can take up to 60 days just to approve a permit.

The Golden State is clearly overwhelmed and now has a proven track record of failing to sufficiently manage her forests. Rather than accept this as the “new abnormal” or throw more money at a system that we know has failed, a commonsense, market approach is in order.

SOURCE

Australian exports to India will be driven by coal and competition

I think we may have reached peak "stop Adani". In The Australian Financial Review on Monday last week, Richard Denniss prosecuted the fantastic argument that we should not allow Adani to open because that would hurt coal production and jobs in NSW!

So the message to North Queensland is, 'sorry you can't have jobs because we have to protect another part of the country'. Townsville's unemployment rate for the past 12 months has averaged 9.1 per cent, so you can imagine how such a message would be received north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The unemployment rate around Newcastle has averaged 5.7 per cent over the same period.

But let's take Richard's argument to its logical conclusions. Why allow pesky competition at all when the entry of new businesses sometimes puts other businesses out of action? Why do we allow Bunnings to open when they have caused Mitre 10s to close? Why do we allow Netflix to stream when so many video stores have shut down? Think of all the heartache we could stop if we just stopped all this wasteful competition and let some kind of modern, technocratic Politburo sort it all out.

Richard's argument reveals the warped misunderstanding green activists have of the market. Their largely socialist outlook of the world blinds them to the well-demonstrated benefits of competition. We should not seek to protect some businesses in Australia by limiting the prospects of others. If the coal from North Queensland ends up out-competing NSW coal, we will have a stronger and more competitive industry as a whole. (This is extremely unlikely given NSW thermal coal is the best in the world.)

What Richard is really suggesting is we reintroduce a single desk for the export of coal. If the export of coal from Queensland can influence the global price, then the export of coal from NSW can do the same. On this reasoning we should have every coal miner seek permission from Canberra before a ship leaves the Newcastle port, so we can ensure the maximum price. That is something the coal industry is unlikely to welcome.

In fact, we have tried this before in many commodities and they have all ended in failure. We may think we can outsmart global markets, but practical experience has taught us that trying to micro-manage such outcomes from a room in Canberra is a recipe for disaster. Thankfully such proposals have largely been consigned to the dustbin, notwithstanding their bizarre reappearance as an argument prosecuted by the unholy alliance of incumbent coal miners and greenies.

Room for both

Most happily for us, we are unlikely to have to make this choice between Queensland and NSW because world coal markets are booming and there is ample room for both. Last year the production of coal-fired power globally reached a new record at 9723 terawatt hours.

It is this increased demand that has pushed coal prices to near record highs, and increased the margin for high-quality Australian coal over Indonesian coal by six times. Coal has once again become Australia's biggest export and this wealth is helping pay for important public services by bringing state and federal budgets to balance sooner.

Last week the International Energy Agency forecast that coal demand is set to grow by 492 million tonnes in the Asia Pacific region by 2040. Australia exports just under 400 million tonnes so this is a massive opportunity for us to create more wealth and more jobs right nationwide. The IEA conclude that new mines in Australia, such as Adani's, would be required to meet this increased demand.

The biggest opportunity lies in India. With coal demand there set to grow by over 600 million tonnes by 2040. Last year, India imported 160 million tonnes of thermal coal but Australia accounted for just 3 million tonnes of that. As the world's largest coal exporter that performance is not good enough.

This week The Australian Financial Review will host an important summit on Australian-Indian relations. The Adani project, as the largest potential Indian investment in Australia by far, offers the most direct way to cement a strong and ongoing relationship between our two countries.

We are sometimes too complacent about Australian-Indian relations. Sometimes we rest back on the "three C's" of "cricket, Commonwealth and curry". These won't be enough, to take our relationship to the next level we must add a fourth C of "commerce" and the quickest way to do that is to grow our trade in a fifth C of "coal".

SOURCE

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

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

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November 21, 2018

Climate change will make us more likely to wet the bed and may trigger a plague of ticks, snakes and VOLES as 'devastating' droughts and flooding send nature haywire by 2100

Just another speculation-based scare. I can give you some non-speculation-based information about hot climates. I was born and bred in the tropics well away from major European population centres and it was WAY hotter there than in those major European population centres. And guess what? We lived relaxed and pleasant lives -- so much so that people moved there from cooler climes. We probably did drink more beer though.

There were indeed more ticks, snakes, spiders, crocodiles, poisonous jellyfish and sharks but we worked out systems for avoiding much in the way of problems with them. The jellyfish were/are the biggest problem. But you only get them in the sea
Climate change will make us more likely to wet the bed and trigger a plague of ticks, snakes and voles, research claims.

A rise in 'devastating' droughts, floods, wildfires and other weather events caused by global warming will impact nature in a number of bizarre ways, the study shows.

As emissions increase, society faces a much larger threat from climate change than previously thought, the team from University of Hawaii in Manoa said.

They analysed thousands of scientific papers on climate change, uncovering 467 different ways that greenhouse gases impact life on Earth.

They include an increase in floods, drought, wildfires and hurricanes that the team projects will hit both rich and poor communities.

Some of the stranger effects included changes to animal behaviour, including ticks, snails and snakes.

Rising temperatures will likely alter the distribution of snails in China, pushing them into regions that were previously too cold for them to inhabit.

Snakes and ticks are also heavily impacted by atmospheric temperatures, and countries with low numbers of the creatures could see a rise by 2100.

In Sweden, an invasion of voles in 2007 was attributed to reduced snow cover after an unusually warm winter - similar plague could become more common.

The team behind the new study said warmer temperatures may also cause people to wet the bed more.

Previous research has shown that pregnant women exposed to heavy flooding gave birth to children who wet the bed more, and were aggressive toward other children.

The increasing exposure to the multitude of climate hazards will impact both rich and poor countries - especially in tropical coastal areas.

In the year 2100, New York is expected to face up to four climate hazards, if greenhouse gas emissions are not mitigated.

Sydney and Los Angeles will face three concurrent climate hazards, Mexico City will face four, and the Atlantic coast of Brazil will face five.

The study was co-authored by 23 scientists, including several who are on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and they have released an interactive map of the threats.

SOURCE

Bitter Cold Thanksgiving Will Be Among the Coldest on Record in Parts of the Northeast

After alleged warming going back over 70 years (to 1945) we are still having this? Exactly where is this alleged warming?

For some Northeast cities, high temperatures on Thanksgiving could be close to the coldest on record no matter what day of the month the holiday was celebrated (e.g. Nov. 22, Nov. 24, Nov. 26, etc.).

The official U.S. Thanksgiving Day has been celebrated the last Thursday of November from 1863 to 1938, the next-to-last Thursday from 1939 to 1941 and the fourth Thursday from 1942 to the present.

New York City has only had three Thanksgivings dating to 1870 when the high temperature failed to rise out of the 20s, according to National Weather Service statistics. The coldest was a high of 26 degrees on Nov. 28, 1901.

Forecast highs Thursday could be near that all-time record-coldest high set almost 117 years ago.

In southern New England, Boston looks increasingly likely to shatter its coldest Thanksgiving high of 24 degrees, also set Nov. 28, 1901.

Providence, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and Burlington, Vermont, are also increasingly likely to see their coldest highs on record for Thanksgiving Day.

Low temperatures Thanksgiving morning and Black Friday will likely be 15 to 30 degrees below average for late November.

The temperature for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City is expected to be in the low 20s. It will feel even colder when you factor in the wind chill, possibly in the single digits.

A low temperature of 20 degrees Thursday morning would also be near the record-coldest Thanksgiving low at New York City's Central Park.

Elsewhere, low temperatures Thursday and Friday mornings will be in the single digits and lower teens across the interior Northeast. Closer to the coast, it will be in the teens or lower 20s.

Wind chills Thanksgiving morning, will be in the teens, perhaps 20s below zero in northern New England and the Adirondacks of upstate New York. Subzero wind chills are possible in parts of southern New England, western and central New York, and northern Pennsylvania, including Boston, Hartford, Providence, Albany and Syracuse.

Daily record lows for Nov. 22 (Thursday) or Nov. 23 (Friday) will likely be broken from parts of New York state and Pennsylvania into New England.

This includes Albany, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island, where the daily record-low temperature Thursday is 9 degrees and 16 degrees, respectively.

Although it will be cold, the air will also be dry, which means there won't be any snowfall to worry about Thursday and Friday.

SOURCE

Trump Announces Major EPA Shakeup

Andrew Wheeler, a former congressional aide and lobbyist who has led the Environmental Protection Agency since his predecessor resigned earlier this year, has gotten President Donald Trump’s nod for the permanent job.

Wheeler’s promotion from acting to permanent EPA chief would keep him as a methodical and effective agent in Trump’s mission of rolling back environmental regulations that the administration regards as excessive and burdensome to business.

A veteran on Capitol Hill, Wheeler worked from 1995 to 2009 as a staffer for Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and then for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“The perfect choice to lead the EPA,” Inhofe tweeted Friday. “Great pick.”

Wheeler later worked as a lobbyist, including for coal giant Murray Energy Corp., which pushed hard at the outset of the Trump administration for coal-friendly policies from the EPA and other agencies.

The grandson of a coal miner, Wheeler told staffers in his first days as the agency’s acting head this summer that he was proud of his roots in coal country. In the acting role, Wheeler has a reputation as a more open and cordial boss for employees than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt was, and for producing regulatory rewrites more likely to stand up to court challenges.

Trump announced his plans for Wheeler almost in passing Friday at a White House ceremony for Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees.

Singling out Cabinet members in the audience at the ceremony, Trump got to Wheeler and said, “Acting administrator, who I will tell you is going to be made permanent.”

“He’s done a fantastic job and I want to congratulate him, EPA, Andrew Wheeler. Where’s Andrew?” Trump continued. “Congratulations, Andrew, great job, great job, thank you very much.”

The White House said Trump was signaling his intent to nominate Wheeler. The nomination would require Senate confirmation. Senators approved Wheeler as the agency’s deputy administrator in a 53-45 vote last April.

Since becoming acting EPA head, Wheeler has advanced proposals that would ease emissions limits for power plants, for cars and for oil and gas facilities, rejecting earlier EPA findings that some of the moves would lead to increased deaths from pollutants.

However, Wheeler also has slowed another Pruitt-era rollback that would have allowed trucks rigged with outdated, dirtier-burning engines to stay on the road.

“Compared to Administrator Pruitt, Mr. Wheeler is better,” Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat and one of the most consistent critics of Trump’s EPA, said Friday in a statement after Trump’s announcement.

“Compared to Administrators Ruckelshaus or Whitman, he’s not doing nearly as well,” Carper added. He was referring to William Ruckelshaus, who was appointed by Richard Nixon to head the EPA in 1970, and Christine Todd Whitman, who was appointed to the post in 2001 by George W. Bush.

“If the president intends to nominate Andrew Wheeler to be the administrator of EPA, then Mr. Wheeler must come before our committee so that members can look at his record as acting administrator objectively to see if any improvements have been made at the agency since he took the helm.”

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Environmental groups condemned the announcement.

“In normal times, a zealous fossil fuel apologist and the top official in charge of protecting children’s health from pollution would be two separate people with conflicting agendas,” Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. “But this is the Trump administration, where a former top coal lobbyist could become administrator of the EPA.”

SOURCE

Ice Melt And Sea Level Rise Refute Alarmist Predictions. Again

The year 2018 could mark the beginning of the end of climate change alarmist reporting. Projections of catastrophic melting of the ice sheets and sea level rise swallowing up the Earth’s coasts are increasingly undermined by observations.

Extensive glacier and ice sheet melt resulting in an accelerated sea level rise threatening the world’s population centers living along the coasts is indeed the most legitimate threat posed by a global-scale warming trend.

Alarming sea level rise predictions abound. Several meters of sea level rise due to the catastrophic melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been predicted based on anthropogenic CO2 emissions scenarios.

For example, claims that we shall experience 260 centimeters (2.6 meters or 8.5 feet) of global sea level rise by 2100 unless we dramatically curtail our fossil fuel consumption have been published by authors like Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Richard Alley (Garner et al. 2017).

These same authors even suggest seas will rise by 17.5 meters (19.1 yards) in the next 180 years (Mörner et al., 2018).

Despite the hackneyed practice of reporting “staggering” ice sheet melt for both Greenland and Antarctica in recent decades, the two polar ice sheets combined added just 1.5 centimeters (0.6 in) to sea level rise between 1958 and 2014 (graph from Frederikse et al., 2018); global sea levels only rose by “1.5 ± 0.2 mm yr?1 over 1958–2014 (1?)” or “1.3 ± 0.1 mm yr?1 for the sum of contributors”.

That’s about 7.8 centimeters (3.1 inches) of global sea level change in 56 years.

Even more significantly, satellite observations all across the globe show that the coasts of islands and sandy beaches and continents have not only not been shrinking for the last several decades, but they’ve also been stable to growing on net average.

Along the world’s coasts, there is today more land area above sea level than there was in the mid-1980s (Donchyts et al., 2016), leaving scientists “surprised”.

“We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world,” said Dr. Baart. “We were able to create more land than sea level rise was taking.” (BBC press release for Donchyts et al., 2016)

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner – a world-renown sea level expert who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University – and three other co-authors have concluded that sea-level rise projections of 2.6 m by 2100 and 17.5 m by 2300 are “deeply flawed” and “not rooted in facts” (Mörner et al., 2018).

What follows is a very abbreviated summary of the dozens of alarmism-quelling papers published in 2018 pertaining to ice sheet melt, sea level rise, and coastal expansion.

More HERE (See the original for links)

ANOTHER blackout in South Australia

Their "Green" electricity supply is very fragile and easily knocked out by normal wind

Strong wind gusts cut power to thousands of South Australians and whipped up a giant dust cloud over Adelaide as a cold change swept in on Monday evening.

After a 36C day, a southwesterly wind change swept across the Yorke Peninsula towards Adelaide, causing damage across the metropolitan area, Mt Lofty Ranges and parts of the Mid North.

The bureau issued a warning for damaging winds, which was cancelled later on Monday evening.

At the height of the blackout more than 11,000 customers were without power — these were across all the metropolitan area, as well as some towns on the western Eyre Peninsula.

The larger outages included almost 3000 people at Henley Beach, 2000 near Goodwood and 3000 in Somerton Park.

Power is now being restored. Today’s forecast is 20C, with medium chance of showers in the morning.

Accompanying the cool change were high winds of more than 90km/h that brought down trees and power lines.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 20, 2018

NASA Scientist Warns Lack of Sunspots Could Bring 'Mini Ice Age' on Earth

A lack of sunspots on the sun could be a sign of a looming 'mini ice age' As climate scientists continue to push the Global Warming narrative through the mainstream media, other scientists are focused on studying the true master of the Earth's temperature: The sun.

One NASA scientist has made an alarming discovery, warning that the global temperatures could be on the verge of plummeting, taking our planet into a "mini ice age."“The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” Dr. Tony Phillips warned in late September.

Dr, Philips research found that the lack of sunspots on our sun could bring about record cold temperatures, and perhaps even a mini ice age, which is in total contrast to the warnings from Climate Change alarmists.

Our sun was not expected to head into a solar minimum until around 2020, but it appears to be heading in that direction a little early which could prove to be bad news for warm weather lovers.

The last time there was a prolonged solar minimum, it did, in fact, lead to a mini ice-age which was scientifically known as the Maunder minimum

Mac Slavo writes that sunspots have been absent for most of 2018 and Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, says Phillips, the editor of spaceweather.com. “The bad news,” according to Phillips, is “It also delays the natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth.”

“It could happen in a matter of months,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center on the cold snap that may be coming.“If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold,” says Mlynczak.“We’re not there quite yet,” he said.

However, “months” is not all that far away.

The new NASA findings are in line with studies released by UC-San Diego and Northumbria University in Great Britain last year, both of which predict a Grand Solar Minimum in coming decades due to low sunspot activity.Both studies predicted sun activity similar to the Maunder Minimum of the mid-17th to early 18th centuries, which coincided to a time known as the Little Ice Age, during which temperatures were much lower than those of today.

SOURCE

Will The Snowiest Decade Continue?

BOSTON (CBS) — Despite the snow blitz of 2015, many baby boomers still insist that, overall, we don’t get the harsh bitter cold and deep snowy winters like we did in the good ole days.

Weather records prove that just isn’t the case and despite the ongoing claims that snows are becoming rare and hurting winter sports, this millennium has been a blessing to snow lovers and winter sports enthusiasts.

Just as the Saffir-Simpson and Fujita Scales were devised to categorize hurricanes and tornadoes, the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) was created by Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini of the National Weather Service to rank high-impact Northeast storms. This scale has 5 categories including extreme, crippling, major, significant and notable. In addition to meteorological measurements, the index uses population information which provides an indication of a storm’s impacts on society.

The NESIS scores are a function of the amount of snow, the area affected by the snowstorm and the number of people living in the path of the storm. The aerial distribution of snowfall and population information are combined in an equation that calculates a NESIS score which varies from around one for smaller storms to over 10 for extreme storms.

The last decade stands out like a sore thumb! It has had 29 major impact northeast winter storms with NO previous 10-year period with more than 10 storms! In Boston, 7 out of the last 10 years have produced snowfall above the average 43.7 inches.

2008-09: 65.9?
2009-10: 35.7?
2010-11: 81.0?
2011-12: 9.3?
2012-13: 63.4?
2013-14: 58.9?
2014-15: 110.6? Greatest On Record Back To 1872
2015-16: 36.1?
2016-17: 47.6?
2017-18: 59.9?

Additionally, the trend for fall snow across the northern hemisphere has been increasing, defying the forecasts over the last two decades for snows becoming an increasingly rare event.

The 10-year running mean of the Boston area snowfall has skyrocketed to the highest level since snow records were kept and that goes back about 145 years! Fluctuations in the temperature regime and annual snowfalls are a function of about 25 global factors including changing oceanic oscillations mainly sea-surface temperature anomaly locations which impact atmospheric conditions creating certain jet stream configurations plus others such as solar activity and irradiance, geomagnetic activity, volcanism, etc.

Interestingly, some scientists have stated that increasing snow is consistent with climate change because warmer air holds more moisture, more water vapor and this can result in more storms with heavy precipitation. The trick, of course, is having sufficient cold air to produce that snow. But note that 93% of the years with more than 60? of snow in Boston were colder than average years.

The reality is cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Note the graph depicting declining January through March temperatures for 20 years at a rate of 1.5 degrees F. per decade in the Northeast!

So, what gives? What can we expect going forward in the decades ahead? Are we indeed looking at a new paradigm? There is great uncertainty about the scope and prediction of climate change. Will there be a switch in direction? The Earth has experienced major cooling occurrences five times over the past 1000 years. When will the pendulum swing?

Arctic temperatures and arctic ice extent varies in a predictable 60-70 year cycle. The greatest warming has been happening in the Arctic region and that can produce a weaker, less stable jetstream that allows frigid air to dive farther south to mix with the warmer oceans to trigger more potential snow events.

It’s all cyclical. Ocean cycles are driven by solar cycles. Above and beyond that, important drivers are the Earth’s orbital cycles being comprised of such variables as the changes of the angle at which the Earth tilts on its axis plus the wobble of Earth on its axis. For now, we can be accurate in saying that the shorter range prediction of seasonal trends is more forecastable.

SOURCE

France demands UK climate pledge in return for Brexit trade deal

France is pushing the UK to incorporate future European climate change directives into law automatically in return for an ambitious trade deal with the EU.

A large number of member states fear that the UK could enjoy an economic advantage after Brexit if it were able to diverge from European laws and regulations, and they want to use their leverage now to force a commitment from future British governments.

The demand by Emmanuel Macron for the UK to be tied into the EU’s Paris 2030 targets was just one of a series of interventions made by member states during recent meetings with Michel Barnier and his negotiating team.

While a UK withdrawal agreement dealing with citizens’ rights, the £39bn financial settlement and the Irish border have been agreed in principle, the political declaration on the future relationship is yet to be finalised. A seven-page declaration published last week is set to become a much heavier document after member states made a series of interventions in meetings with the European commission for additional text. One EU diplomat said: “It’s a Christmas tree and all the member states are putting their baubles on it.”

Olly Robbins, Downing Street’s Brexit adviser, was in Brussels this weekend for meetings with the commission. On Sunday, ambassadors for the 27 member states are to meet Barnier to discuss the text. Negotiations will have to be completed when ministers for the 27 meet on Monday, with a draft due to be made public on Tuesday.

Downing Street is hopeful that the political declaration can be a “sweetener” to the withdrawal agreement, which has faced a storm of protest in Britain.

On Saturday, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom insisted there was “more to be done” before a special European council meeting on Sunday 25 November to get “the best possible deal for the UK”.

But the extra demands on the UK are likely to be unwelcome to Brexiters, who fear that the government is allowing the UK to be permanently sucked into the EU’s regulatory orbit.

While the UK is a leading light among the EU member states on climate change, the French government is concerned that in a post-Brexit world there will be calls within Britain to undercut the rest of the continent.

The EU has been steadily ratcheting up its targets as part of the 2015 Paris climate change accord, and France wants the UK to be bound to them.

Last week the European parliament adopted energy-savings targets of 32.5% and a renewable energy uplift of 32% by 2030. That will put the bloc on course to cut emissions by 45% from 1990 levels by 2030.

The most politically sensitive demand from the EU is likely, however, to concern the trade-off the bloc wants to make between access for the European fishing fleet to British waters and the wider trade deal.

It is understood that a clause will be included in the political declaration making a link between British companies having access to the European market, and maintaining the “existing reciprocal access to fishing waters and resources”.

The EU wants a deal on access to UK waters by July 2020, with the UK being tied to making its “best endeavour” to get an agreement, or British exporters will face a loss of access to its market for their own goods.

A number of member states are also championing more positive language in the political declaration on the future trading relationship.

One diplomat from a European country on the western fringe of the EU said: “The relationship as sketched out in the political declaration doesn’t do enough for us. It doesn’t protect the supply lines and we should aim higher, and lock ourselves in to achieve more.”

Andrew Duff, a former MEP, and visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre thinktank, said: “The political declaration needs to do two things – corral the 27 behind a settled course of action leading to an unprecedented association agreement with the UK, and secondly to commit the British prime minister – and if possible her successor – in that same direction.

“It can’t be too loose, therefore, but also can’t be so tightly drafted that it pre-empts the association agreement negotiations. It’s the first chance for the EU 27 to plot the future of Europe without the Brits – an important moment, therefore.”

SOURCE

How The Industrial Revolution Single-Handedly Saved Mankind

Environmentalists have spent decades lamenting the Industrial Revolution. In their view, we all lived in Eden once. Then noisy, smelly machines came along and ruined paradise.

Canada’s David Suzuki, for example, says that because automobiles run on fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide, they’re nothing to celebrate. In his view, everything industrial, large-scale, or efficient generates pollution and is, therefore, a curse.

The “path we embarked on after the Industrial Revolution,” he insisted in a 1997 book, “is leading us increasingly into conflict with the natural world.”

Research analyst Luke Muehlhauser presents another perspective. He’s the author of an essay titled How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? The short answer is that it was the single most important thing ever to happen to humanity.

Muehlhauser has visually charted six lines across multiple centuries:

* Life expectancy at birth

* GDP per capita

* Percentage of people who’ve escaped extreme poverty

*Access to energy (for cooking, lighting, heating, and for producing tools and clothing)

* Technological developments

* Political freedom (the percentage of people who live in democracies).

*Muehlhauser events

These lines speak volumes. For the vast majority of human beings who’ve inhabited this planet – generation after generation, century after century – life was precarious. Almost everyone was poor.

In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, human lives improved dramatically. Muehlhauser says the history textbooks to which he was exposed in school discussed at great length:

The transformative impact of the wheel or writing or money or cavalry, or the conquering of this society by that other society, or the rise of this or that religion…or the Scientific Revolution.

But they could have ended each of those chapters by saying “Despite these developments, global human well-being remained roughly the same as it had been for millennia, by every measure we have access to.” And then when you got to the chapter on the industrial revolution, these books could’ve said: “Finally, for the first time in recorded history, the trajectory of human well-being changed completely, and this change dwarfed the magnitude of all previous fluctuations in human well-being.” [bold added]

His one sentence summary of human history:

Everything was awful for a very long time, and then the industrial revolution happened.

David Suzuki is right, to some extent. Many industrial processes produce pollution. But then something else occurs.

Human populations that emerge from desperate poverty soon acquire sufficient good health, education, and financial means to clean up that pollution.

Once we humans have enough to eat, once half our children no longer die before age five, we start to care about the environment.

The crucial point is that, in order to get to stage B, you first need to pass through stage A.

SOURCE

High energy costs send Pact packing

Australia's largest manufacturer of rigid plastic packaging, billionaire Raphael Geminder’s Pact Group, says it will move more of its operations offshore to Asia because of the soaring cost of doing business in Australia.

Pact has closed three local manufacturing sites over the past 12 months among more than 60 it runs in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US after undertaking extensive work on establishing a reliable and cost-effective import supply chain for select product categories.

Pact, which has more than 4000 staff, supplies a wide range of plastic and steel packaging to the food, household cleaning, pharmaceutical, personal care, agricultural, chemical and industrial markets....

The manufacturer’s second-largest shareholder, the $9 billion Investors Mutual’s Anton Tagliaferro?—?who has previously written to the Pact board questioning the company’s performance?—?said Australian manufacturers faced a gloomy outlook given slipshod government policy and higher energy prices than many of its global competitors.

“All of manufacturing in Australia is feeling the pinch of failed government policies and that includes electricity,” Mr Tagliaferro told The Australian. “Manufacturers are seeing their costs going up, their margins being squeezed and they’re grappling with having to put their prices up to customers,” he said.

“It’s a diabolical situation where the price of electricity in Australia is three times what it is in the US. Unfortunately we’re living in this crazy environment where we sell coal, uranium and gas to everyone else in the world but it doesn’t seem like we are able to effectively use it here for our own needs.”

More broadly, he said a decade of ineffective government policies had put a handbrake on the ability of Australian business to succeed.

“Unfortunately, eventually the country is going to have to pay the price for this poor management.”

Mr Tagliaferro said there may be a pick-up under a Bill Shorten-led Labor government.

“At the moment I don’t think things could be any worse. We basically have a government that’s basically running the country by opinion poll and every week the policies change depending on what the polls say. What we need is some certainty,” he said. The impact of ineffectual policy had added to the pain of sharemarket investors reeling from weeks of volatility, he said.

Manufacturing Australia chairman James Fazzino has previously claimed high costs and declining energy security were materially damaging the ability of local manufacturers to compete against imports, impacting both potential and current manufacturing investments.

He claimed the business case for undertaking essential reinvestments and plant maintenance in many existing manufacturing operations was increasingly being scrutinised by boards and executive teams and that plant closures and job losses flowing from high energy costs were inevitable.

But chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Innes Willox, said recently that challenges remained for the sector.

“While manufacturers are working hard to sustain these robust conditions, the uncertainties hanging over energy prices and energy policy continue to cloud the medium and longer-term outlook, particularly for the more energy-intensive segments of the industry,” he said.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 19, 2018

Wildfires need not be disastrous

This is from the NYT, no less. I have however omitted the initial throat clearing

The southeastern United States has not lost significant numbers of homes or lives to fire, despite its vast expanse of the “wildland-urban interface” — the mixture of rural homes and towns with wild vegetation. That’s not because the region is immune to fire. It’s because, in part, the Southeast uses prescribed fire across millions of acres each year to reduce how much vegetation is left to burn, effectively using intentional fires to limit out-of-control wildfire.

In California, some communities aggressively prepare residents for the eventuality of wildfire. Montecito, a community east of Santa Barbara, saw the need to address wildfire risk following the 1990 Painted Cave Fire nearby, which killed one person and consumed 427 homes. The Montecito Fire Protection District works with residents to reduce vegetative fuels along roadsides, create “fuel breaks” — essentially areas where native shrubs have been thinned or removed — at strategic locations on private property, and harden homes against embers by putting screens over vents and replacing siding and roofs with less flammable materials.

Fire personnel help residents create “defensible space” around their homes by removing brush and dead trees. (As the name suggests, defensible space is an area where a home can be defended by firefighters.) The district also set up a neighborhood chipping program to help residents dispose of excess logs and branches.

It created a robust evacuation plan and educated residents on how it worked. And it changed certain codes, requiring new driveways to be wider and with enough turnaround space for large fire engines. Those things make it safer and easier for residents to evacuate and firefighters to get in to protect lives and homes.

All of this preparation was tested in the Thomas Fire last December. The ongoing drought had primed the vegetation for explosive growth. Downhill winds developed, gusting over 60 miles per hour, pushing the fire into the community and raining embers down on homes. It was the worst-case scenario imaginable. Fire-behavior models projected that hundreds of homes could be lost in such conditions. When it was over, however, Montecito emerged with no fatalities, no injuries and only seven homes lost.

I was part of a team that reviewed how Montecito’s preparation paid off, and I saw how well the multipronged approach had worked. Yes, firefighters still had to protect homes. But they were able to do so safely, and many homes withstood the flames without any firefighter support. A lot of things went right, and there is no question that the changes Montecito made over many years contributed to the outcome. As a former wildland firefighter, what I saw in Montecito was a community that prioritized life safety and made sure firefighters could do their jobs safely and effectively, and it made all the difference.

Other communities in the West are implementing their own strategies. In San Diego, new subdivisions are being built with fire-resistant designs and materials so residents can stay safe in their homes while the fire burns around them, instead of risking evacuation and the perils of clogged roads. San Diego Gas and Electric has also focused on strategic blackouts during high wind events to reduce the risk of power line ignitions.

SOURCE

Another danger in California: Bad air. Even far from wildfires, smoke is taking a toll

Greenie-caused pollution. I hope they are proud of themselves

The wildfires that have laid waste to vast parts of California are presenting residents with a new danger: air so thick with smoke it ranks among the dirtiest in the world.

On Friday, residents of smog-choked Northern California woke to learn that their pollution levels now exceed those in cities in China and India that regularly rank among the worst.

In the communities closest to the Paradise fire, an apocalyptic fog cloaked the roads, evacuees wandered in white masks, and officials said respiratory hospitalizations had surged. Nearly 200 miles to the south, in San Francisco, the smoke was so thick that health warnings prompted widespread school closings. Even the city’s cable cars were yanked from the streets.

And researchers warned that as large wildfires become more common — spurred by dryness linked to climate change — health risks will almost surely rise. “If this kind of air quality from wildfires doesn’t get people concerned,” said Dr. John Balmes, a pulmonologist at the University of California at San Francisco, “I don’t know what will.”

At fault, researchers say, is a confluence of two modern events: More people are moving to communities in and around wooded enclaves, pushed out by factors like the rising costs of housing and the desire to be closer to nature — just as warming temperatures are contributing to longer and more destructive wildfires.

Wood smoke contains some of the same toxic chemicals that city pollution does. While humans have long been around fire, they generally inhale it in small doses over cooking or heat fires. Humans have not, however, evolved to handle prolonged inhalation of caustic air from something like the Paradise blaze, Balmes said.

Research into the long-term health effects of large wildfires is still new. But a growing body of science shows how inhalation of minuscule particles from wood fires can nestle in the folds of lung tissue and do harm to the human immune system.

The body creates zealous responses to what it sees as an alien presence, and those effects can last for years by priming the body to overreact when it encounters subsequent lung irritation, said Dr. Kari Nadeau, a pediatric allergy and asthma specialist at Stanford.

In short, researchers like Nadeau believe that a person’s short-term exposure to wildfire can spur a lifetime of asthma, allergy, and constricted breathing.

By Friday, the death toll from the Paradise fire, north of Sacramento, had reached 71 people, with more than 1,000 people still missing, according to Sheriff Kory Honea of Butte County.

The 142,000-acre fire was 45 percent contained, and officials said they expected to reach 100 percent by Nov. 30. Full containment does not mean that the fire is extinguished, only that firefighters were able to complete a perimeter around the flames and stop them from spreading.

President Trump was planning to visit the region Saturday, and the White House said he would tour the affected areas and meet with evacuated residents.

Already, research shows that fires can directly affect lung health.

An extensive study of the 2015 wildfire season in Northern California found that smoke exposure led to increased emergency room visits for adults of all ages, but particularly those over 65. One of the biggest research projects on the subject, the study looked at nearly 1.2 million emergency room visits during the summer of 2015, and found that during smoke-dense periods, there was a statistically significant increase in emergency room visits for heart attack, stroke, and respiratory infection.

In recent days, as California’s air pollution map shifted from healthier green and yellow to red and purple — and then dark purple — officials from Los Angeles to Northern California urged residents to stay indoors and wear white N95 masks when they could not avoid leaving their homes. Even in Los Angeles, where smoke from the Woolsey fire had subsided by late Thursday, the air was still hazy and many schools forced children to take recess inside.

In the Bay Area, the National Weather Service said smoke would linger in the region into the coming week. The unhealthy air in Berkeley forced Saturday’s California and Stanford football showdown to be pushed back until Dec. 1, the first postponement of “The Big Game” since the rivals’ 1963 match was delayed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In the communities around Paradise, air quality is considered hazardous for everyone, and the county health department is urging everyone to remain inside. But this has been difficult for evacuees. More than 81,000 people have been forced from their homes and many are sleeping outside in tents.

“I’ve got 18 grandkids here,” said Jewel Taylor, 50, an evacuee from nearby Magalia, standing in a hotel lobby where she had managed to find a room for the previous night.

Taylor said she was most worried about her infant grandson, 1-month-old Evan, who had developed a cough. “What do you do when you see your kids like this?” she said, her voice catching.

This week, some around Paradise said that when they inhaled, they could feel the particles cutting their throats. Others likened breathing to a persistent low-level anxiety attack.

“Let me put it this way,” said Becky Dearing, 66, who already has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, “you almost feel like you’re choking.”

“We’re like zombies,” she went on, “walking around, all the unknowns.”

Researchers say that climate change leads to ill health through wildfire, but also through prolonged pollen seasons, dust storms. and other events that affect air quality.

“We’re setting up a tipping point in the immune system that leads to more inflammation and disease,” said Dr. Sharon Chinthrajah, a pulmonologist and allergist at Stanford.

“California,” she added, “is being reset to a new reality.”

SOURCE

The smog machines in Britain's homes: Wood-burning stoves emit six times as much pollution as a diesel truck... and they're ruining your health even if you don’t own one

They are the Greenies' preferred alternative to gas and electrical heating

Their march has been unstoppable, from traditional farmhouses and cosy country cottages all the way to the front rooms of suburban semis. No family home, it seems, is complete without a stylish wood-burning stove.

And why not? Anyone who has ever watched the gently dancing flames will know that real fires are relaxing and reassuring, a nostalgic link to an age when life was simpler.

Featuring in endless glossy photoshoots, wood-burning stoves have even acquired something of a ‘green’ image, viewed as a clean, efficient and renewable source of heat.

Yet this cosy reputation conceals an altogether dirtier reality.

Because, whether in open hearths or specialist burners, wood fires are choking the British atmosphere, adding to the smoke particles from traffic, industry and farming that cause thousands of preventable deaths.

Although barely discussed, the evidence is shocking: just one of the latest ‘eco-friendly’ wood-burning stoves – those meeting all European tests – can produce about six times more particle pollution than a modern diesel lorry, or 18 times more than a modern diesel car.

Worse, still, they release their fumes into residential areas and at times when people are likely to be at home.

Few of us need to heat our homes with wood, rather than gas or electricity. In other words, the stoves and hearths we spark up for that extra cosy glow on a winter evening are little more than a lifestyle accessory.

One reason there’s so little discussion of this silent threat is that the smoke they produce is almost invisible, particularly when compared with the killer smogs of the 20th Century.

Those filthy, sometimes deadly combinations of fog and smoke caused by burning coal, led directly to the widely acclaimed Clean Air legislation of the 1950s.

It wasn’t until a chance discovery in Paris in 2005 that the modern menace of urban wood-burning was even identified.

Oliver Favez, a young PhD student, was measuring air pollution in a city park when he noticed a pattern that could not be linked to diesel fumes.

Instead, his instruments recorded a chemical signature previously seen in Alpine valleys, where wood-burning has a serious impact on air pollution. If the readings were correct, it was a serious problem in Paris, too.

Favez continued his measurements for five weeks, concluding that each night – especially at weekends – the air was polluted by wood-burning and that wood smoke was adding between ten and 20 per cent to the city’s particle pollution.

Stranger still, this new pollution was not drifting in from the countryside as you might expect, but was instead coming from within the city itself.

Fellow scientists leapt on the findings and, gradually, traces of wood-burning pollution were found in other major European cities.

Public authorities had long since assumed that wood-burning was a thing of the past, but scientists measuring the air that people breathed were now proving them wrong.

Today in Britain there are more than 1.5 million wood-burning stoves, and about 200,000 are added to that total every year.

Yet nobody bothered to measure the effects until the winter of 2010, when my research team at King’s College London placed sampling devices in a 20-mile line across London.

As we suspected, a great deal of wood was being burned and it was making up ten per cent of the particle pollution that Londoners were breathing during winter.

There was other information, too. Wood-burning happened mainly at weekends, for example. It seemed that, to Londoners at least, the stoves were largely decorative or used as an extra heating source.

How bad was the problem? Two years earlier, London had introduced a low emission zone, banning the most polluting diesel vehicles from the city.

Now we had established that the extra particle pollution from wood-burning was six times greater than the particle pollution that the low emission zone had saved.

If wood-burning were to continue unabated, the money invested in cleaning up transport and industry could be negated.

In fact, wood-burning could halt the progress on air pollution that has been made since the middle of the 20th Century.

If we introduce still more wood burning, particle pollution in the air of British cities is expected to be similar in 2030 to what it was in 2015, despite improvements in vehicle emissions.

Along with other scientists, we presented our data to the environment ministries here and in Europe, but the politicians were so focused on traffic pollution that they didn’t want to hear.

It was only in 2015, when a Government survey revealed that about one home in 12 in the United Kingdom was burning wood, that it was finally recognised as a problem. Wood-burning was producing 2.6 times more dangerous polluting particles than traffic exhaust.

A lot of these fires are actually illegal. Major British cities still have the smoke control laws put in place following the terrible four-day London smog of 1952 which killed at least 12,000.

These ban the burning of non-smokeless coal in open fires and prohibit the burning of wood, too, but the law is rarely enforced and widely ignored.

Almost all of London is designated as a smoke control area, for example, but in 2015, 68 per cent of wood-burning homes in London were using an open fire, even though most UK homes have gas or electric heating.

Why the lack of action?

In part, there’s political resistance to the idea of telling people what to do in their own homes, particularly when it comes to banning something pleasurable.

What happened in France is instructive. In 2015, the city of Paris got within a hair’s-breadth of banning wood-burning in open fires, but with just days to go, the French Ecology Minister, Ségolène Royal, attacked the proposal as ‘ridiculous’.

In a series of extraordinary statements, she seemed to suggest that banning a romantic evening with a glass of wine in front of the fire was an attack on the French way of life.

Another obstacle is the clean image that wood-burning stoves present. Stoves have been promoted as ‘green’, renewable and carbon-neutral compared to the environmental evil of burning fossil fuels.

It is certainly true that the most modern stoves and wood-pellet burners produce less than a fifth of the particle pollution that comes from an open fire.

So, upgrading from fireplaces to modern wood-burners should reduce air pollution at a stroke – but those upgrades are unlikely to happen any time soon because fireplaces and stoves go on for ever.

The people who burn wood in open hearths in Britain probably use the fireplace that was built with their house a century or more ago. Inefficient old stoves can pump out heat and fumes for generations to come.

In other words, it is not enough to set pollution standards for new wood-burners – we need action on existing fireplaces and stoves.

The testing regime itself is another obstacle to real improvement. Yes, stoves are getting better, and by 2022 those sold in Europe will have to meet Ecodesign standards that set limits on how much smoke they can produce.

However, as with diesel vehicles, there is a very large disparity between test performance and the smoke that comes from stoves in the real world.

Stoves are tested in idealised conditions using dry wood burnt for just an hour or so rather than the variety of wood that people use at home with frequent refuelling and adjustment to keep a fire going all evening.

So the results from laboratory tests have been nothing like results from those same wood-burners when they were tested in normal houses – and produced ten times as much pollution.

Some days the emissions were close to those of the laboratory test and at other times they would be as much as 16 times higher.

There has been huge variability in results even from the same stove, and it was a puzzle to find out why. Using wet wood appears to be one factor that increases the pollution; closing the air vents on the stove is another.

The biggest factor, though, is the person who lights the fire and the skill with which he or she does so. (Some countries have introduced videos and classes aimed at encouraging the best wood-burning techniques, such as lighting their fires from the top of the stacked wood and using plenty of kindling.

A lack of kindling is one of the reasons why wood-burners sometimes produce smoke when they are first lit.)

What you burn matters, too.

There is worrying evidence from air- quality testing carried out at a bowling club in the small New Zealand town of Wainuiomata, near Wellington.

As expected, the town’s air was full of wood smoke throughout the winter, but the smoke contained arsenic at a level 50 per cent greater than the legal limit in Europe.

The only possible explanation was that people were burning construction timber, treated with a preservative known as chromated copper arsenate (CCA).

New Zealand scientists rapidly found that it was not just a local problem. Treated wood was being burnt everywhere. Arsenic and lead were found in the air of suburbs of the Greek capital Athens, suggesting that people were burning construction waste and old painted wood. This is inevitably happening in Britain, too.

It is difficult to measure the direct effect on public health in detail, but wherever wood is burnt, we find air-pollution problems.

And air pollution, we know, endangers health. It has been calculated, for example, that particle pollution caused 29,500 premature deaths in Britain in 2010 and that a short period of high air pollution in March and April 2014 caused about 1,650 ‘excess’ or additional deaths.

The latest research suggests that the damaging effects of wood smoke are worse than we thought. In particular, it does not dissipate harmlessly.

On the contrary, scientists have discovered that wood smoke changes over time as the gases and particles in the smoke react and then make yet more pollution particles.

In some experiments, the concentration of particle pollution in the smoke increased by about 60 per cent as the hours passed. In others it tripled.

Because the problem is invisible, the health implications often become clear only when the wood-burning is removed or reduced.

In areas where this has happened as part of government-sponsored anti-pollution initiatives, the number of older people admitted to hospital has dropped by as much as 11 per cent, and winter death rates have dropped by a similar amount.

And there’s the great injustice. The smoke from a small numbers of homes that are burning wood – often as a lifestyle choice – can pollute a whole neighbourhood or even an entire city.

Changing centuries-old attitudes and habits will not be easy – who doesn’t love a crackling fire?

However warm, cosy and no-doubt stylish they make us feel, we have to question the place of wood fires in towns and cities.

SOURCE

Renowned Physicist Freeman Dyson: “Theories Of Climate Are Very Confused”…”Models Are Wrong”!

In his new documentary “The Uncertainty has Settled“, Dutch filmmaker Marijn Poels focuses on climate science and politics and found that the issue is in fact as controversial and as UNSETTLED as any issue could possibly get.

The production of the film took Poels to a variety of locations from Manhattan to the Austrian Alps.

The first part of the film depicts the plight of farmers in former East Germany (Saxony Anhalt), who are struggling to practice their livelihoods under the heavy burden of German agricultural regulation and market distortion that result from bureaucrats having decided that 0.01% of our atmosphere (man-emitted CO2) is a monumental problem.

That’s the narrative the media and leading politicians keep ramming. But a number of skeptics doubt it, and so Poels investigates if this doubt is just right wing politics or if there is something really behind it.

In the end he finds that the science is fully in dispute.

Belief we can stop climate change “enormously egocentric”

At the 38:00 Poels says that the [alarmist] Potsdam Institute refused to grant him an interview and so he set out for Hamburg to meet with climate scientist Hans von Storch, who is in the warmist camp.

Von Storch confirms that climate change is real, man-made and is a problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. But he adds that the claim that we can “rescue” the climate is “nonsense” and characterizes the claim the individual can play a role on controlling climate as “enormously egocentric”.

Later in the film (1:04:45) von Storch says he doesn’t see climate change as a danger, but as “a challenge” that he is not afraid of.

CO2 as a climate driver “complete, delusional nonsense”

Next astrophysicist Piers Corbyn tells Poels that the amount of man-made Co2 in the atmosphere is like a “tiny blob of birdshit” and calls the claim that this is causing the climate to change “complete, delusional nonsense”. Corbyn also believes the globe will see continued cooling until about 2035. He calls the datasets showing warming “frauds”.

Freeman Dyson: Climate models “very dangerous game”…”they’re wrong”

Next Poels makes his way to Princeton where he meets with “living legend” Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, one of the leading skeptic voices on man-made climate change.

Dyson has harsh, critical words for climate science and the models they rely on (1:10:30). He calls the science of climate modeling a “very dangerous game”, adding:

When you work with a computer model for years and years and years – always improving the model – in the end you end up believing it. […] It’s very difficult to remain objective.”

Models “wrong”…”disagree with observations”

On why we should not trust the models, Dyson says flat out: “Because they’re wrong. It’s very simple. They’re wrong.” Dyson says they “disagree with observations”. He then commented on modeling scientists: Those people don’t look at observations. They are in a world of their own.”

“Scaring the public”

The 93-year old Princeton professor also notes that although the models are “very good tools for understanding climate”, they are a “very bad tool for predicting climate” and that these scientists “live by scaring the public”.

Climate theories are “very confused”

Dyson continues: Unfortunately the thing has become so political it’s no longer science when you have strong political dogmas, as you say, on both sides.”

Overall Dyson advises that we need to believe the observations and pointed out that “the theories of climate are very confused.”

Herd, tribal mentality: He also told Poels a large sociological part of the problem is that climate scientists have in large part gotten caught in herd and tribal mentality. It’s still more important to belong to the tribe than to it is to speak the truth.”

SOURCE

Australia: Greens policy would outlaw thermal coal as it is 'no longer compatible' with human life

The Australian Greens will propose a phase-out of thermal coal exports by 2030 in a significant strengthening of the party’s existing policy, which has focused on banning new mines.

The Greens’ climate change spokesman, Adam Bandt, will outline the shift on Friday in a speech to the United Firefighters Union in Hobart. The speech focuses on the growing risk of wildfires as a consequence of climate change.

Against the backdrop of catastrophic destruction in California, Bandt will tell his audience Australia’s biggest chance of avoiding climate catastrophe is by ceasing coal exports.

Under the reworked Greens policy, by 2030, it will no longer be legal to dig, burn or ship thermal coal. The proposal includes maximum penalties for breaches of the prohibition of seven years imprisonment, and hefty fines.

According to the speech circulated in advance, Bandt notes Australia’s current status as the world’s largest coal exporter and the likelihood that demand will remain high “for some time”.

Australia’s economy relies heavily on coal exports, which in 2017 were valued at $56.5bn, and governments rely on revenue from royalties and tax collections.

The latest World Energy Outlook, released this week, suggests coal has enjoyed a mini resurgence over the past two years because of demand from developing economies in Asia. That report also points out Australia is the only export-oriented country projected to ramp up coal production significantly over the next 20 years.

Bandt will say on Friday the current outlook indicates Australia “will continue to export hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal every year which, when burnt, produces about twice as much global warming pollution than Australia’s domestic economy”.

“The reality is every tonne of coal that is burnt makes the bushfire threat worse, and every tonne of coal burnt brings us closer to climate catastrophe – in other words the burning of coal is no longer compatible with the protection of human life.”

Bandt will flag bringing forward legislation, based on laws regulating the use of asbestos, to ban thermal coal exports in January 2030, and impose quotas in the interim so exports scale down between now and the proposed cut-off.

The policy proposal would see export permits auctioned annually, with the revenue raised supporting a transition fund for displaced coal workers to assist with structural adjustment.

Bandt says the science is clear – the world needs to shut down two-thirds of the coal fleet in the next 12 years, and the rest shortly after. He says Australia should take the opportunity of the coal phase-out to develop the clean energy economy and pursue renewable hydrogen exports, with burgeoning demand in Asia.

He will also acknowledge his proposed coal ban isn’t absolute. Bandt says there will continue to be a role in the short term for coking coal, which is used for the manufacture of steel.

With the Morrison government strongly supportive of the coal industry, and Labor flagging a managed transition, the bill Bandt proposes has no prospect of passing the parliament.

Labor is currently finalising the energy policy it will take to the next federal election. It is mulling a package of measures to guide the transition away from coal that will be triggered because of a more ambitious emissions reduction target.

The Labor package, expected to be outlined in coming weeks, is likely to include the creation of a new statutory authority to oversee the transition and the programs intended to ameliorate it; specific industrial relations arrangements to ensure workers are managed through the process; and programs to drive economic diversification.

Bandt on Friday will compare coal to tobacco and asbestos. “When we found out tobacco companies knew their product killed but kept on selling it anyway, they got sued and they got regulated.

“We once used asbestos in our buildings because we thought it was safe. But we now know better, so we have banned it. Now it is coal’s turn. “Coal is a product that kills people when used according to the seller’s instructions.”

SOURCE

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

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

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November 18, 2018

Some forecasters get it right

Meteorologists who build global warming into their forecasts routinely get it wrong. Any unusual weather event will nonetheless be attributed by them to global warming after the event. Joe Bastardi gets his forecasts right WITHOUT reference to global warming. Some details below

Well, this headline from The Daily Caller is interesting: “Democrats Will Hold A Series Of Hearings On Global Warming Once They Take Power.”

I volunteer to come in and explain to them how, using nature, we predicted several major events that ended up being blamed on climate change. As a patriotic American, I consider it an honor to have a chance to explain this to people who may not readily know about the forecasting aspect of the climate situation in real terms, where lives and property are involved.

1.) First up is the wildfire season prediction, made on May 17:

Before the Fact: Why Another Big Wildfire Season May Be on the Way

2.) Our forecast for a hot summer was made two days later:

More Reason for a Climate Ambulance Chaser Watch: Summer

3.) On July 13, I wrote about our concern about the East Coast being struck by a hurricane:

The Past Is a Reason to Worry About High-Impact East Coast Hurricanes

4.) I explained the natural aspect of wildfires and provided hints about them in August:

A Word About Wildfires

There are many reasons for why wildfires occur, but the point is that “climate change” is at best tiny among them and represents a gross oversimplification of the matter.

5.) On Oct. 8, I showed “the why before the what” with Hurricane Michael and also linked the major hurricane phenomena in October to the onslaught of an early cold and stormy winter, which you are seeing evolve in front of your very eyes.

Climate Ambulance Chaser Warning for Well-Telegraphed, Natural Pattern

All these articles appeared not only on our website but were issued publicly on The Patriot Post.

So if the duly elected party wants to have these hearings in the middle of a cold, stormy winter, it should keep in mind that this was our initial winter forecast, which came out on Aug. 7!

The forecast was updated in October, but as you can see, it’s still very cold for much of the country.

This would put significant pressure on energy prices, and this realization is beginning to take hold. In addition, other companies and industries, from retail to big box stores to salt producers — in fact, anything you can think of — are affected.

SOURCE

Jay Lehr - the slide show I showed Trump

Contrary to Predictions, U.S. Nears Energy Independence

Prognosticators have long warned that the world is on the verge of oil depletion — i.e., we’ve reached “peak oil” — while at the same time Democrats have torpedoed the idea of U.S. energy independence. Fortunately, oil forecasts have been just as unimpressively inaccurate as climate change predictions. Energy innovation has stimulated this effect while also bringing America to the brink of genuine energy independence.

According to Investor’s Business Daily, “The International Energy Agency forecasts that the U.S. will account for 75% of the growth in global oil production through 2025.” This growth is coming on the heels of already impressive gains. “Crude oil production in the U.S. has climbed more than 67% in just the past six years,” Investor’s reports, adding that “the Department of Energy expects it will climb an additional 11% next year.” Keep in mind that U.S. oil production is already second to none. Our current daily yield of 11 million barrels is higher than both Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The chief catalyst? Fracking. Yet as Investor’s notes, “It was never supposed to happen.” Recall back in 2008 when Obama asserted, “If we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only 3% of the world’s oil reserves — 3% for a country that uses 25% of the world’s oil.” This claim — which was regurgitated in slightly different forms all through Obama’s tenure — was obviously fabricated. Investor’s says that true U.S. oil reserves are sixtyfold higher than Obama’s estimate.

“Not all of that was recoverable at current prices,” Investor’s acknowledges. “But ‘recoverable’ is a highly flexible term. It’s based on oil prices and the cost of getting it out of the ground. The fracking revolution dramatically redefined the term recoverable because it made vast oil supplies accessible that once were once economically off-limits. So why would Obama mislead the country throughout his presidency? Because he was determined to force the country to dump billions of taxpayer subsidies on ‘renewable’ energy, and needed a reason to justify it.”

The issue here is not that renewable energy as a primary resource isn’t an admirable goal; it’s that Obama’s idea of how to properly nurture it was terribly misplaced. And his lying about the facts as a means to an end only added insult to injury. The solar company Solyndra alone squandered half a billion taxpayer dollars. Not only has oil always been far more abundant than naysayers claim, but taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to prop up whatever industry a president decides should be cultivated using powerful government levers.

Similar to how oil extraction evolved into fracking, the private sector will eventually find its game-changing renewable energy breakthrough. In the meantime, more oil production means more government revenue. Shouldn’t Democrats, who want to roll out a plethora of very expensive, government-paid-for initiatives, be for that?

SOURCE

Climate Hoax: Not A Single G-20 Country Is Close To Hitting CO2 Emission Targets

A new report calls the lie on the grand Paris climate change treaty. None of the promised cuts in CO2 emissions that 200-plus countries made will come close to preventing a climate "catastrophe." And many of the industrialized nations aren't even living up to the promises they did make.

Two years ago, when the Paris agreement took effect, then-President Obama declared that "history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet."

It was a turning point in the level of empty rhetoric, perhaps. But it won't make a bit of difference to the planet.

This farce was made abundantly clear in an annual report by Climate Transparency, an international group focused on the G-20 nations.

Empty Promises

What did it find? "None of the G-20 (emissions targets) is in line with the Paris Agreement." The report shows an enormous gap between what the countries have pledged to do, and the far lower CO2 emissions levels that the U.N. says are needed to keep the planet from warming by 2 degrees Celsius.

In other words, even if every country lived up to their Paris pledges, it wouldn't come close to preventing "catastrophic warming."

It gets worse. As the report shows, most G-20 countries aren't on track to meet the modest greenhouse gas reductions they pledged to achieve by 2030.

As the Climate Transparency report notes, the EU "is not on track to meet its 2030 target." Nor is Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan or Turkey.

A number of G-20 countries actually saw their emissions increase in 2017, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia's emissions will likely double by 2030, compared with 2014. Turkey continues to increase coal-power capacity even though it "runs strongly counter" to its pledges. Japan also has several coal plants in the pipeline. Brazil's deforestation rate has increased, despite its Paris promises to the contrary. Russia's "target is so weak that it would not require a decrease in (greenhouse gas) emissions from current levels."

And, to top it off, CO2 emission in China, already the world's largest emitter, will likely continue to increase until 2030, the report finds. It notes that coal consumption in China "increased again in 2017."

Faulty Doomsday Scenarios

Longtime IBD readers know that we are highly skeptical of all the climate change doomsday scenarios. They're all based on 100-year forecasts made by computer models that have trouble predicting what's already happened. And then there's the fact that climate scientists keep getting caught fudging numbers and making basic math errors. The latest involves a highly publicized study on ocean warming. These errors, by the way, always seem to go in one direction: toward making global warming look more ominous.

But even if the dire prediction environmentalist make is true, trying to cut CO2 emissions to prevent it is pointless. As we noted in this space recently, the U.N. says global CO2 emissions must be cut in half within 12 years, and reduced to zero in 32 years.

It should be abundantly clear now that not a single G-20 nation is taking the climate change issue seriously — no matter how much they preach about it, and no matter how many empty promises they make.

A Better Way to Deal with Climate Change

That's fine by us, since we think it's a waste of money. President Trump was right to pull the U.S. out of this farce rather than lend it any more undue credibility.

There is a better and far more sensible and frugal approach to deal with "climate change." Forget about wasting money in a futile attempt to quickly decarbonize every economy on the planet. Instead, deal with localized changes if they ever occur. Adaptation to hostile climates is something humanity has shown an amazing ability to achieve, even without modern technology.

The only drawback to this approach is that politicians won't be able to pat themselves on the back for "saving the planet."

SOURCE

Anti-Carbon-Tax Revolt Threatens To Paralyse France

France is bracing for a nationwide revolt over the weekend as angry drivers plan to block roads nationwide in protest against the government’s carbon tax and rising fuel prices.

The French government approved a measure in late 2017 increasing a direct tax on diesel as well as a tax on carbon, allegedly to fight against climate change. The so-called Contribution Climat Énergie (CCE), a French version of the carbon tax, has steadily increased fuel prices in recent years. Drivers across the country have balked at the rising price of diesel as it disproportionately affects workers who depend on their vehicles to get to and from their jobs. Two-thirds of French people expect a “social explosion” in coming months.

In just a few weeks, the yellow hi-vis vest has become such a potent political symbol that one risks being mistaken for a supporter of the rebellious gilets jaunes when cycling in Paris.
The gilets jaunes are a grass-roots revolt against high fuel prices, and they threaten to paralyse France on Saturday.

The cause of the price hikes are “eco taxes” meant to dissuade the French from using cars. “We choose to tax pollution and harmful products rather than workers,” budget minister Gérald Darmanin explains. Yet the fuel taxes penalise the poor disproportionately.

In the hope of deflating the protests, prime minister Édouard Philippe on Wednesday announced €500 million of compensatory measures, including a €5,000 bonus for low-income earners who trade in polluting cars for a hybrid model.

The gilets jaunes have organised at least 630 protests nationwide via the blocage17novembre.com website, designed by an 18-year-old student. Some call for go-slows on highways. Others want to block roads, which is punishable by two years in prison and a €4,500 fine. Interior minister Christophe Castaner says no “total blockage” will be tolerated.

But several police unions have expressed sympathy, and promised not to punish petty or “middle-size” offences “out of solidarity with the citizens”.

Unlikely heroine

The movement has found an unlikely symbol in Jacline Mouraud, a 51-year-old accordion player, hypnotist and spiritual medium from Brittany who on October 18th posted a video message hectoring President Emmanuel Macron for “persecuting drivers”.

Mouraud’s video went viral, and has been viewed by more than six million people. “I have a thing or two to tell you,” she starts out. The stream of accusations includes the price of fuel, the “hunt” for diesel vehicles, the “forest” of radars, the number of traffic tickets, the possibility tolls may be charged to enter large towns and rumours of mandatory bicycle registration.

“What are you doing with the dough, apart from changing the china at the Élysée and building a swimming pool?” Mouraud asks Macron.

A senior adviser to Macron spoke scathingly of “this Madame Mouraud who generates spirits from under her fingernails”. He expressed consternation that a video “stuffed with lies” has reached such a wide audience, saying: “I have the feeling that our democracy is also at stake.”

Yet the Élysée “is absolutely not condescending towards this movement”, the adviser continued. “We don’t underestimate its amplitude. Our vigilance is total, even if the signals are blurred.”

The rise of the gilets jaunes coincides with Macron’s record low 26 per cent approval rating. A poll published by Ifop on November 14th indicates two-thirds of French people expect a “social explosion” in coming months.

SOURCE

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

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

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

November 16, 2018

Climate change may cause mass extinctions, new report shows

Calling this "research" is a joke. It is just modelling games -- using models of no known predictive skill. Reality tells us that life on earth has survived many great extremes in the past, from the steamy age of the dinosaurs to great ice ages

New research has found that extreme climate change risks an extinction effect that could annihilate all life on earth.

The extinction of plant and animal species from extreme climate change could lead to a "domino effect" that annihilates all life on earth, new research has found.

The worst-case scenario is outlined in the journal Scientific Reports and describes how organisms die out because they depend on other doomed species in a process called co-extinctions.

The study found just five to six degrees in average global warming would be enough to wipe out most life on the planet.

"Our paper demonstrates that even the most tolerant species ultimately succumb to extinction when the less-tolerant species on which they depend disappear," lead author Giovanni Strona said.

In their work, researchers from Italy and Australia simulated 2000 virtual earths, linking animal and plant species.

Using sophisticated modelling, they subjected the virtual earths to catastrophic events including extreme environmental change, an asteroid strike and nuclear war.

While all such events could be devastating, the research found that climate warming creates extinction "cascades" in the worst possible way when compared to random extinctions or even from the stresses from a nuclear winter.

Co-author Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University, said failing to take into account co-extinctions underestimates the loss of entire species from events like climate change by up to 10 times.

"Not taking into account this domino effect gives an unrealistic and exceedingly optimistic perspective about the impact of future climate change," Professor Bradshaw said.

SOURCE

Climate contrarian uncovers scientific error, upends major ocean warming study

Dr. Roy Spencer comments: 'For decades now those of us trying to publish papers which depart from the climate doom-and-gloom narrative have noticed a trend toward both biased and sloppy peer review of research submitted for publication in scientific journals.'

'If the conclusions of the paper support a more alarmist narrative on the seriousness of anthropogenic global warming, the less thorough will be the peer review. I am now totally convinced of that. If the paper is skeptical in tone, it endures levels of criticism that alarmist papers do not experience. I have had at least one paper rejected based upon a single reviewer who obviously didn’t read the paper…he criticized claims not even made in the paper.'

The peer review process, presumably involving credentialed climate scientists, should have caught the error before publication.'

Researchers with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Princeton University recently walked back scientific findings published last month that showed oceans have been heating up dramatically faster than previously thought as a result of climate change.

In a paper published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature, researchers found that ocean temperatures had warmed 60 percent more than outlined by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

However, the conclusion came under scrutiny after mathematician Nic Lewis, a critic of the scientific consensus around human-induced warming, posted a critique of the paper on the blog of Judith Curry, another well-known critic.

“The findings of the ... paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media,” Lewis wrote. “Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.”

Co-author Ralph Keeling, climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, took full blame and thanked Lewis for alerting him to the mistake.

“When we were confronted with his insight it became immediately clear there was an issue there,” he said. “We’re grateful to have it be pointed out quickly so that we could correct it quickly.”

Keeling said they have since redone the calculations, finding the ocean is still likely warmer than the estimate used by the IPCC. However, that increase in heat has a larger range of probability than initially thought — between 10 percent and 70 percent, as other studies have already found.

“Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that’s going on in the ocean,” Keeling said. “We really muffed the error margins.”

A correction has been submitted to the journal Nature.

According to the most recent IPCC report, climate emissions need to be cut by 20 percent by 2030 and then zeroed out by 2075 to keep warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

Authors of the recent study had previously claimed that emissions levels in coming decades would need to be 25 percent lower to keep warming under that 2-degree cap.

While papers are peer reviewed before they’re published, new findings must always be reproduced before gaining widespread acceptance throughout the scientific community, said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

“This is how the process works,” he said. “Every paper that comes out is not bulletproof or infallible. If it doesn’t stand up under scrutiny, you review the findings.”

The report relied on a novel approach that still has the potential to revolutionize how scientists measure the ocean’s temperature.

Much of the data on ocean temperatures currently relies on the Argo array, robotic devices that float at different depths. The program, which started in 2000, has gaps in coverage.

By comparison, Keeling and Laure Resplandy, a researcher at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute who co-authored the report, calculated heat based on the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean, filling round glass flasks with air collected at research stations around the globe.

Keeling said they will continue to experiment with the data in coming years in an attempt to fine-tune the data.

“It’s a promising new method, but we didn’t get the precision right on the first pass,” he said.

The study is still the first to confirm that the ocean is warming using a method independent of direct ocean temperature measurements.

SOURCE

The Chill of Solar Minimum

The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding.

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

These results come from the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air 100 to 300 kilometers above our planet’s surface. By measuring the infrared glow of these molecules, SABER can assess the thermal state of gas at the very top of the atmosphere–a layer researchers call “the thermosphere.”

“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” explains Mlynczak, who is the associate principal investigator for SABER.

When the thermosphere cools, it shrinks, literally decreasing the radius of Earth’s atmosphere. This shrinkage decreases aerodynamic drag on satellites in low-Earth orbit, extending their lifetimes. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it also delays the natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth.

To help keep track of what’s happening in the thermosphere, Mlynczak and colleagues recently introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index” (TCI)–a number expressed in Watts that tells how much heat NO molecules are dumping into space. During Solar Maximum, TCI is high (“Hot”); during Solar Minimum, it is low (“Cold”).

“Right now, it is very low indeed,” says Mlynczak. “SABER is currently measuring 33 billion Watts of infrared power from NO. That’s 10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle.”

Although SABER has been in orbit for only 17 years, Mlynczak and colleagues recently calculated TCI going all the way back to the 1940s. “SABER taught us to do this by revealing how TCI depends on other variables such as geomagnetic activity and the sun’s UV output–things that have been measured for decades,” he explains.

Mlynczak and colleagues recently published a paper on the TCI showing that the state of the thermosphere can be discussed using a set of five plain language terms: Cold, Cool, Neutral, Warm, and Hot.

As 2018 comes to an end, the Thermosphere Climate Index is on the verge of setting a Space Age record for Cold. “We’re not there quite yet,” says Mlynczak, “but it could happen in a matter of months.”

“We are especially pleased that SABER is gathering information so important for tracking the effect of the Sun on our atmosphere,” says James Russell, SABER’s Principal Investigator at Hampton University. “A more than 16-year record of long-term changes in the thermal condition of the atmosphere more than 70 miles above the surface is something we did not expect for an instrument designed to last only 3-years in-orbit.”

SOURCE

Green Energy is the Perfect Scam

Green energy is an incredible money-making scam. The promoters of green energy make billions of dollars promoting dumb energy schemes that are completely useless.

What makes the scam extremely clever is that the scammers have convinced the public that the purpose of their scam is to improve the environment. The scammers pretend to be earnest environmental advocates.

Any really good scam needs endorsements from authoritative-sounding sources. In the case of green energy, the authoritative sources are in on the scam. The beneficiaries of the green energy scam go way beyond the wind and solar industries.

Non-profit environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, need to be seen as fighting against an urgent looming catastrophe. If they don’t have something dreadful to fight against, no one is going to join their organizations or give them money.

Global warming, allegedly caused by carbon dioxide, is the looming catastrophe and green energy is the solution. When the globe failed to warm they renamed the looming catastrophic climate change in place of global warming.

Now they blame every instance of bad weather on climate change created by burning coal and oil. What were formerly acts of God are now the fault of the oil and coal companies.

Scientists are a special interest group largely financed by the federal government. Global warming is a magnificent gift to the science industry.

The industry has been corrupted by pathological science that is primarily intended to increase the flow of money from Washington. Science directed toward discovering the truth is out of fashion.

The many scientists that are global warming skeptics don’t exist as far as the science industry is concerned.

Government agencies, and the politicians that give the agencies money, have embraced the threat of climate change.

It gives them something to do that is more noble, even romantic than highways and making the trains run on time. The government spends billions on subsidizing wind and solar energy.

Ironically, electric utility companies love wind and solar green energy. They know perfectly well that wind and solar are useless because wind and solar generate electricity erratically and have to be backed up by reliable conventional electric generating plants.

The only economic benefit is the fuel saved in the backup plants when wind or solar is actually generating electricity. But the cost of the wind or solar electricity is much higher than the benefit of fuel saved.

Thus, the more wind or solar that you have, the more money you lose. But, electric utilities are regulated by public utility commissions. The amount of profit they are allowed is calculated as a fraction of the utilities’ capital investment.

So, the utilities want to make capital investments, even if those investments are wind and solar plants that waste money on a grand scale. The electricity consumers bear the cost and the utilities are allowed a larger profit.

In some parts of the country rooftop solar is fashionable. Homeowners who install rooftop solar often save money because the reduction in the cost of electricity from the utility is greater than the cost of solar electricity.

These homeowners brag to their friends about how clever they are, and the purveyors of rooftop solar place advertisements claiming that rooftop solar is cheaper than buying electricity from the electric company.

This is part of the scam. Rooftop solar is profitable because it is heavily subsidized and because the electric utility is forced, by the governmental authorities, to provide a connection to back up the solar without compensating remuneration.

The real cost of rooftop solar electricity, exclusive of subsidies, is around 30-cents per kilowatt-hour and the real benefit is around two cents per kilowatt hour from fuel saved in the utility’s backup plants.

The subsidy, financed by taxpayers and electricity consumers, is greater than ninety percent.

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners, under the delusion that they have discovered cheaper electricity, are walking and talking advertisements for solar energy.

The biggest victim of the green energy scam is the public in general. Everybody pays more taxes and pays more for energy as a consequence of the scam.

But the waste of billions of dollars may not be noticeable when spread over the 320 million Americans.

The public has been exposed to relentless propaganda promoting green energy as beneficial and less expensive.

The public is the greatest victim, but most people don’t know that they are being victimized, so there is little incentive to organize against the scam.

There are certain other victims such as the coal industry and coal miners. But these groups mostly don’t understand that they are victimized by a scam.

Due to the propaganda, they may actually believe that burning coal is undesirable and dangerous. Thus, they lack a clear mandate to organize against the scam. (Modern coal generating plants are environmentally clean.)

The manufacturers of fossil fuel generating plants are beneficiaries, not victims. Wind and solar don’t reduce the demand for fossil fuel plants because wind and solar have to be backed up by traditional plants.

A campaign against coal, by the Sierra Club, has resulted in the closing of many coal plants. The closed plants are typically replaced by new natural gas plants.

Due to the strain imposed on the electric grid by erratic wind and solar, there are many commercial opportunities for upgrading the traditional components of the electricity grid.

Rather than hurting the manufacturers of fossil fuel generating equipment, the green energy movement actually helps them.

The green energy scam is the perfect scam because the beneficiaries include many influential individuals and institutions, while the victims are dispersed among large numbers of unorganized people.

The few concentrated groups of victims, like coal miners, are psychologically handicapped by propaganda that has convinced them that they, rather than the scammers, are at fault.

Wind and solar are truly useless, like having a 6th toe or an appendix. A detailed exposition on the uselessness of wind and solar is given in my book – Dumb Energy: A Critique of Wind and Solar Energy.

Green energy is often justified on the grounds that it reduces carbon dioxide emissions and thus prevents global warming. Of course, global warming, now called climate change, is itself a scam.

The science on which the predictions of global warming doom are based is incredibly weak. But, the weak science is presented as if it is reliable by self-interested parties.

In any case, wind and solar are very expensive methods of reducing CO2 emissions. Other, far more practical, strategies for reducing CO2 emissions are available.

Anyone who criticizes the green energy scam is ruthlessly attacked. Critics are often accused of being in the pay of fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies are too timid to risk the wrath of the green movement, so they hardly ever give money to the critics of the green movement.

A favorite line of attack is to accuse the critics of using tobacco company tactics to cover up the danger from using fossil fuels.

Critics are often depicted as being mental cases, as when Al Gore said that critics of his global warming promotions were like people who think the moon landing was filmed in a Hollywood studio or think that the Earth is flat.

James Hansen, often considered that father of the global warming movement suggested that executives of fossil fuel companies should be sent to jail for crimes against humanity.

Green energy is the perfect scam because it is disguised as a do-good movement and the victims are dispersed, unorganized and disarmed by propaganda.

Green energy is endorsed by government agencies, environmental non-profits, and scientific groups.

These are people that are often seen as sources of reliable information but that, in reality, work to promote their own parochial interests. This is a scam that needs to be exposed.

Norman Rogers is the author of the book Dumb Energy and writes often about political and environmental issues.

SOURCE

Australia: Greenies protect their own

Greenies can do no wrong, apparently

Let’s re-imagine, just for a minute, last week’s furore around the alleged sexual assault of ABC journalist Ashleigh Raper by former NSW Labor leader Luke Foley.

Let’s imagine that instead of resigning from the leadership within 24 hours, that Foley and the Labor Party instead branded Ms Raper a drug-using slut. Deeply offensive, I know, but stick with me.

Let’s imagine that after levelling those allegations, Foley refused to stand down and the Labor Party refused to even debate internally whether or not he should.

Now let’s try and imagine the public and media response to Ms Raper having her character assassinated for having the audacity to speak out against a politician in a position of power who sexually assaulted her.

The fact is, you don’t actually have to try particularly hard to imagine it. You only need to know the story of Ella Buckland, a former Greens NSW staffer who earlier this year levelled startlingly similar allegations against Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham.

Like Ms Raper, Ms Buckland alleges that after a work function, she was sexually assaulted by a drunken politician.

Like Ms Raper, Ms Buckland alleges that following the alleged assault, she received a phone call from her alleged attacker.

Like Ms Raper, Ms Buckland waited a considerable period of time to air those allegations.

Like Ms Raper, Ms Buckland was the subject of defamation threats when the issue became public.

Those are the commonalities. The differences, however, are stark.

In Ms Raper’s case, Luke Foley allegedly slipped his hand down her dress and between her underpants, resting his hand on her bare buttocks. In Ms Buckland’s case, Mr Buckingham allegedly approached her from behind, grabbed her “roughly on the vagina” and kissed her neck.

In Ms Raper’s case, she was dragged into the public fray by a Coalition politician seeking to exploit a political advantage. In Ms Buckland’s case, her motivation in coming forward was publicly and falsely ascribed to her being involved in a factional move against Mr Buckingham. Ms Buckland has not been a member of the Greens for several years and has no day-to-day involvement in politics.

In Ms Raper’s case, she received a phone call from her alleged abuser, who apologised and promised to resign. In Ms Buckland’s case, she received a phone call from her alleged abuser who threatened that she should be ‘careful in her job’.

In Ms Raper’s case, she subsequently received threats of defamation when the issue became public, only to have those threats widely shouted down. In Ms Buckland’s case, she received threats of defamation before the issue even became public, and Mr Buckingham has gone on to threaten to sue – and actively sue – multiple people.

In Ms Raper’s case, there was a startlingly swift resolution to the issue. Luke Foley announced his resignation almost immediately. Ms Buckland made her complaint internally through the Greens in April. It took months to progress, but not before a subsequent internal investigation finally turned the blow torch on Ms Buckland herself, investigating the baseless allegations that she was a ‘promiscuous drug user’.

The other glaring differences, of course, included the reactions of media and politicians.

In terms of the media response, the alleged assault on Ashleigh Raper was a major news story that dominated news coverage last week. The fall out is still being felt a week later. Ella Buckland’s alleged assault attracted far less interest. With the exception of the ABC, who broke the Buckland story in August and followed it up on Radio National just a day before the Foley allegations broke, no other mainstream media outlet has seen fit to report a syllable of the allegations levelled by Ms Buckland.

The most unkind interpretation of that silence is that when women are allegedly sexually assaulted, media interest is optional. But when journalists are allegedly sexually assaulted, it’s stacks on.

Fortunately, in the brave new world of social media, mainstream news outlets no longer control all the channels of public communication. That’s where the reactions of politicians come into focus.

Over the past week, anger at the difference in the treatment of Ms Buckland and Ms Raper has been blowing up on social media, with a growing number of people doing the job of the mainstream media by calling out the obvious hypocrisy between the two approaches.

Square in the gun of that growing public outrage has been the actions of Greens politicians, most of whom stayed silent for months over the Buckland allegations, but wasted no time in coming out to condemn Luke Foley.

Greens MLA Cate Faehrmann weighed into the Foley issue last week. The condemnation of her obvious hypocrisy was swift.

That public condemnation of Faehrmann comes in the absence of all the facts, which are actually much worse than they appear. Not only has Faerhmann said nothing publicly about the alleged assault on Ella Buckland, she recently voted in a Greens NSW State Delegates Council meeting against any debate on whether or not Mr Buckingham should stand down from his position while an internal investigation was ongoing.

Read that again: Faerhmann didn’t just vote against any action being taken against Buckingham, she voted to suppress any debate about any action being taken against Buckingham.

Greens MP for the seat of Newtown, Jenny Leong has also seen fit to weigh publicly into the fray around Foley, while having nothing to say about Jeremy Buckingham.

Labor, obviously, handled their crisis much better. Even Bill Shorten, the federal leader of the Labor Party and a man known for his inability to avoid spin at every available opportunity, weighed into the debate, saying, “Modern society has no tolerance for the behaviour described.”

So how did the Greens federal leader, Richard Di Natale respond to the Buckland allegations?

Helpfully, he was asked about them by Fran Kelly, on ABC Radio National less than 24 hours before the Foley allegations broke. The response is telling.

FRAN KELLY: Are you satisfied this matter has been dealt with appropriately?

DI NATALE: Well as you’ve said Fran, that was the subject of an independent external investigation and obviously it’s a matter for the NSW Greens to respond to that.

KELLY: Have you intervened in any way?

DI NATALE: We have very clearly protocols about how these are dealt with. We’ve respond based on the advice of a number of women’s groups, a number of experts in this field. We’ve got clear protocols. We had an independent investigation take place and we’ve made it very clear the party needs to take these cases, treat them really seriously, create an environment where women come forward and are supported in taking action, and we’ve done those things, and now this is a matter for the NSW Greens.

KELLY: Does Jeremy Buckingham have your confidence?

DI NATALE: Well, as I said Fran this is now a matter for the NSW Greens…

KELLY: Well you’re the leader of the Greens, does he have your confidence?

DI NATALE: Well I’m the leader of the federal party. And our federal party has made it very clear there is no role for members of parliament to be making judgements about cases that have been thoroughly investigated, and that’s as it should be.”

The deafening silence and spin aside, that last statement – about a ‘thorough investigation’ – is the claim on which Di Natale should perhaps stand most condemned.

It is that very ‘thorough investigation’ which led directly to the allegations against Ella Buckland that she was a ‘promiscuous intravenous drug user’.

If that’s what a ‘thorough Greens-led investigation’ looks like, you have to wonder what hope there is for the party.

Having said that, there are good people within Greens NSW, and the party more broadly, who have worked hard internally to take the right path on this issue. I acknowledge that sometimes, the right path is a difficult one to map out.

The Greens have, to some extent, been frozen by a strong belief in affording procedural fairness to Jeremy Buckingham, while also supporting Ella Buckland. But that begs one simple question: Why have Greens MLA’s been prepared to afford Jeremy Buckingham that ‘procedural fairness’, but not Luke Foley?

Why did Greens politicians who had nothing to say about the alleged assault of one of their own, by one of the own, not feel the same weight of ethical constraints when it came to a member of the Labor Party?

The answer is obvious: politics.

While that plays out, in all its unedifying glory, the Greens continue to tie themselves in knots, determined to ‘respect the process’, despite the outcome.

As we speak, fresh moves are afoot within the party to remove Jeremy Buckingham from the Greens’ ballot in the March 2019 state election. We’ll have that story in a day or so, and there are more revelations to come. New Matilda’s investigation into the Greens handling of sexual assault allegations is ongoing, albeit moving at the snail’s pace for which we’re famous (you can help speed it up by clicking on the link directly below and contributing to our fundraiser).

Whatever the outcome though, the Greens, as a party, has clearly lost its way. On this issue at least, it is hopelessly compromised.

The last word belongs to Ashleigh Raper, whose dignified and moving statement should be required reading for all men in power, and for all political parties.

“It is clear to me that a woman who is the subject of such behaviour is often the person who suffers once a complaint is made,” Ms Raper wrote.

“I cherished my position as a state political reporter and feared that would be lost. I also feared the negative impact the publicity could have on me personally and on my young family. This impact is now being felt profoundly.”

I’m sure Ella Buckland, who did lose her dream job, can empathise.

SOURCE

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

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

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November 15, 2018

The great lie that 97% of scientists are Warmists

Global Warming: 31,487 Scientists say NO to Alarm

The E15 Mandate Is Poor Environmental Policy

Concerning “Trump Gives Farmers a Jolt of Fuel” (Op-Ed, Oct. 16), it certainly is true that corn farmers and ethanol producers stand to gain from President Trump’s decision to allow year-round sales of E15 motor fuel (corn-based ethanol blended with gasoline). But raising gasoline’s ethanol content to 15 percent—E15 contains 50 percent more ethanol than today’s E10 blend—is costly both for consumers and for the environment.

The so-called Renewable Fuel Standard has outlived its usefulness. At its inception in 2005, the RFS was promoted primarily as a means of reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil. But we now are on track to become a net oil exporter. Thanks to technological advances that led to the shale revolution and more drilling offshore, U.S. oil production has grown significantly, while imported oil as a share of total domestic oil consumption has fallen sharply.

What’s more, when Congress approved the RFS, it was presumed that cellulosic ethanol (made from non-food materials like switchgrass and wood chips) eventually would replace corn-based ethanol. But cellulosic ethanol production never got off the ground. Today, virtually all of the ethanol produced in the U.S. (15 billion gallons per year) is derived from corn.

Although corn used in ethanol production is not fit for human consumption, food prices are pushed up because corn grown for the table is pushed out by corn grown for ethanol. As Arthur Wardle and I wrote in The Beacon recently, grassland for grazing cattle and other livestock is disappearing, the soil is eroding, groundwater is being depleted, and ocean dead zones are expanding.

A comprehensive meta-analysis in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found the greenhouse gas benefits of ethanol to be almost zero. For other pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ozone, burning ethanol actually is worse than burning gasoline.

The E15 standard raises the public sector’s ethanol wager and supplies political cover for the EPA to ratchet that percentage up later on. No one should be surprised that President Trump announced his support for E15 in Iowa, nor that the state’s two senators find E15 to be more politically popular than E10.

The RFS is a poster child for environmental policies having few benefits and very real costs. E15 may buy votes in Iowa and other corn-belt states, but does so at the expense of nearly everyone else.

SOURCE

Blood on their hands: Greenies have killed a lot of Californians

By stopping foresters from taking preventive measures

Californians burnt to death while trying to drive away from the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history.

At least 42 people have died, but with an estimated 200 people missing authorities expect that toll to rise.

More than 8,000 firefighters were battling the wildfires that have destroyed more than 7,000 buildings and scorched more than 325 sq m (842 sq km), with the flames, driven by blowtorch winds, feeding on dry brush. It is not clear how the fire started.

Authorities have brought in two mobile morgue units and requested 150 search and rescue personnel, with chaplains accompanying coroners and recovery teams desperately searching for bodies.

Butte county sheriff Kory Honea said: “I want to recover as many remains as we possibly can, as soon as we can, because I know the toll it takes on loved ones.”

Lisa Jordan drove 600 miles from Yakima, Washington, to search for her uncle Nick Clark and his wife, Anne, in Paradise, California. Mrs Clark suffers from multiple sclerosis and is unable to walk. No one knows if they were able to be evacuated, or if their house still exists, Ms Jordan said. “I’m staying hopeful,” she said. “Until the final word comes, you keep fighting it.”

Meanwhile, Betsy Ann Cowley, a landowner near where the blaze began, said she received an email from the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) company the day before the fire last week informing her that engineers needed to come onto her property because power lines were causing sparks. PG&E refued to comment on the email.

California has suffered wildfires at both ends of the state. Firefighters appeared to be gaining ground against a roughly 143 sq m blaze in Malibu that destroyed at least 370 buildings, with hundreds more feared lost.

The blaze in northern California is the deadliest single fire on record, since a 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

SOURCE

Why We Need More Climate Change Skeptics

Instead of demonizing such skeptics, we need to encourage and respect such people who work hard to identify where biases have interfered with the pursuit of truth.

Climate scientists are not prophets. Those who believe them on faith provide no good service to the pursuit of truth.

Those who blame climate change for every storm or forest fire are silly. Equally silly are those who claim that a particularly cold day proves that climate change is a farce.

Fear of environmental calamity has caused human destruction before, such as when Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, led to the banning of the pesticide DDT. As a result of the “success” of the environmentalist movement in banning DDT, an estimated 30-50 million people in Africa—mostly children—died from malaria carried by the renewed growth in the mosquito population. Malaria deaths increased from tens of thousands per year pre-ban to millions per year post-ban. The story was similar in India. These were preventable deaths that resulted from stoked fears.

Now the target is carbon dioxide. We are told that 97 percent of climate scientists agree with their own scientific consensus. But that’s a misleading statement in an important way. The actual figure refers to “97 percent of climate scientists actively publishing in scientific journals.” To understand the relevance of this 97 percent figure, we need to know: what are the determiners of “actively publishing?”

Could the selection process for entry and success (“actively publishing”) in the climate profession create a bias that compromises the information we rely on to make our critical decisions about climate?

Let’s ask the question, calmly and rationally, and see where it takes us.

The Distillation Process

More speculatively, if sufficiently reinforced, some of these youths might even develop some neuronally hardwired (unchangeable) biases as the brain matures.

1. It is reasonable to consider that children raised in climate-conscious families are more likely to become interested in the environment than those raised by families who either don’t care or who deny. The climate-conscious children are more likely to undertake science fair projects and write papers about climate change. Climate work is rewarded in school, so it shouldn’t be any surprise if such children, more than others, later consider environmental science as a college major. If this occurs, which seems likely, this childhood process would be Distillation Step 1 in creating a future climate scientist. More speculatively, if sufficiently reinforced, some of these youths might even develop some neuronally hardwired (unchangeable) biases as the brain matures.

2. As is true in all fields, college climatology professors encourage the most dedicated students in introductory environmental studies classes to pursue climate science as a major. Other students—such as those who are skeptical—may never again see the inside of a climate science classroom. The selection of academic major is Distillation Step 2.

3. When students pursue their master’s degrees, the crop of future climate scientists is further distilled. Those who don’t align with their professors’ views are less successful getting into PhD programs. Then, success within a PhD program relies (in any field) on abiding by one’s dissertation committee’s wishes so as to get their PhD in as few years as possible and finally make some money. During this phase, those who best comply will be more likely to obtain their doctorate and get set up in post-doc positions working for experienced senior scientists. Distillation Step 3 has occurred, along with further psychological reinforcement to agree with those more senior. The climate liquor is getting more concentrated.

He chooses hypotheses and writes his grant application with care, knowing he’ll need the approval of committees populated with scientists who are invested in promoting their previously published papers and who make their living from government-funded studies of climate change.

4. To succeed in academia, the newly minted PhD must apply for grants, mostly from government agencies or his own university. He chooses hypotheses and writes his grant application with care, knowing he’ll need the approval of committees populated with scientists who are invested in promoting their previously published papers and who make their living from government-funded studies of climate change. If he fails to craft his project to appeal to the needs of the reviewers on the committee, he won’t get funded. Funding failure increases the likelihood that he will wash out of academia. This selection of research grants to write is Distillation Step 4.

The process of nurturing and selection of the climate scientist starts in kindergarten and proceeds through high school and college, then to grant funding, manuscript preparation, and publication. His research is then only seen through the lens of the media’s selective presentation. The many reinforcing layers of bias create a distillate of pure concentrated climate orthodoxy, and this liquor is what we are offered to drink.

5. Successfully obtaining funding allows the young academic to perform a research project that will buttress the beliefs of the grant committee that channeled funding to him. Research studies are these days (improperly) designed to accomplish the affirmation of the hypothesized outcome as opposed to examining the truth of a hypothesis. If his project (done well or done poorly) appears to prove his hypothesis, then he tries to publish a paper to join the ranks of the “actively publishing.” He will craft the conclusion and abstract to promote his bias (again, this is true in any field). By the way, we should not underestimate the pressured academic’s skill at justifying to himself the removal of any data from his dataset that adversely affect his ability to get a publishable p value of “less than 0.05” (an arbitrary cut off in statistics that is needed for publication).

Note that if the project fails to prove his hypothesis, the young scientist probably will never write a manuscript about it, and therefore he won’t yet be “actively publishing.” Oh, and often there are multiple hypotheses in a project, and if only one of them is proven, it will be the only one written up and submitted for publication. The disproven hypotheses will not be written up and will never be seen by us. This is all part of Distillation Step 5.

6. Even if a scientist goes to the effort to write a manuscript that fails to support climate change concerns (which would be called a “negative manuscript” as it negates the hypothesis), it will be harder to get it published. Such “negative manuscripts” are, in any field, commonly rejected by the editor before going to peer review.

If a negative manuscript does get to peer review, the reviewers will be more critical because the manuscript will conflict with their prior publications.

If a negative manuscript does get to peer review, the reviewers will be more critical because the manuscript will conflict with their prior publications. Then the scientist will have to go to the considerable effort of resubmitting the manuscript elsewhere or have to respond to the reviewers’ critiques by getting more grant money and doing more studies, which will prove difficult. And it just isn’t worth it because publishing such a paper could only hurt his career. So the young academic understandably sticks the rejected manuscript and its data in a desk drawer, never to be seen again. This is Distillation Step #6.

Selective manuscript writing, editorial bias, peer-review bias, and selective re-submission are four important biases in any field. This could be a reason—completely unrelated to scientific facts—as to why climate literature slants the way it does.

After these multiple distillation steps, almost all impurities have been distilled away. Perhaps only 3 percent remains. It should be no more surprising that 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree with the climate change consensus than that 97 percent of actively preaching seminary graduates believe in their religion.

7. Those who make it onto the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), are the most highly distilled, fully vetted climate scientists of all. Pure 200 proof. For this reason and others, consensus at the level of the IPCC is even less useful than “expert opinion.”

In response to climatologists’ complaints that the IPCC is biased against nuclear power, Jonathan Lynn, an IPCC spokesman, rejected the accusation, telling Axios: “We completely reject the idea we are biased about nuclear power or anything else.”

I would call Mr. Lynn’s statement psychological denial. Of course the IPCC is biased. Everyone who cares, one way or the other, is biased. To say otherwise is poppycock.

Furthermore, journalists now manage to stick a scary line about climate change in any article they can. Bees, birds, ticks, human migration… it’s all climate change.

8. Now, if it bleeds it leads. The lay world only hears the most dramatic climate stories. What self-disrespecting mainstream click-baiting journalist will bother to read anything beyond a research abstract or would waste their editor’s time with anything positive (or even innocuous) regarding climate change? Answer: none. Furthermore, journalists now manage to stick a scary line about climate change in any article they can. Bees, birds, ticks, human migration… it’s all climate change. This continual exposure to unsubstantiated statements from journalists will bamboozle many readers.

What we in the lay world get to read and hear is a highly distilled climate change liquor and the most catastrophic fears of what climate change may cause. The climate-concerned lay reader is unlikely to be presented with, or click on, a climate story that opposes his worldview. Those with defensive personalities will reflexively lash out with vitriol at an author of such an article, as if the author were an infidel, often without reading past the title.

The Pitfalls of Politicization

We need to get our heads around the climate in an intellectually comprehensive way. We need science to do that. Unfortunately, the politicized climate field has many reinforcing biases entrenched within it. This must lead to the dissemination of biased or incomplete facts and biased conclusions.

Yet it is important we don’t get this wrong because people suffer and die when science becomes unquestioned dogma.

We need private watchdogs who go to the effort to examine the research that the climatologists produce, looking for flaws, biases, misrepresentations, malincentives, and even manipulations. Instead of demonizing such skeptics, we need to encourage and respect such people who work hard to identify where biases have interfered with the pursuit of truth.

Reinforcing layers of bias can occur in any field, but politicization exaggerates it.

I recognize the importance of a healthy climate. I am not ignoring facts, and I respect the scientific method. I’m not brainwashed by oil companies nor in psychological denial. To the contrary, any skepticism I have arises because I do not deny the weaknesses of the academic process that create a scientist and the research he produces. Reinforcing layers of bias can occur in any field, but politicization exaggerates it.

Let’s remember what saved the whales. It wasn’t Greenpeace. It was, rather, the successful distillation of petroleum that replaced the demand for the renewable fuel known as whale oil. That distillation made petroleum purer and more flammable. The distillation of climate science makes it purer, too—and more incendiary.

Are the many reinforcing layered biases of the climate field sufficient to have relevant effects on the research results that are presented to us?

Policymakers, teachers, journalists, environmentalists…all of us…really know nothing about climate change other than what trickles down from the climate scientists’ desks. Are the many reinforcing layered biases of the climate field sufficient to have relevant effects on the research results that are presented to us? Are the climate scientists getting some of it wrong, or maybe exaggerating it?

It has happened before—with DDT—with horrific consequences.

And the climate change field is even more politicized.

SOURCE

Australia: Climate, economy on govt agenda: Cormann

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has dismissed a colleague's concern that the Liberal Party needs to do more about climate change to gain support from younger Australians.

WA Liberal senator Dean Smith says the party's diminishing appeal to young voters is the "elephant in the party room" and is being ignored at the government's peril, The Australian reports.

"We are dealing with climate change," Senator Cormann told the ABC on Tuesday. "But in a way that doesn't undermine the opportunity for young people in particular to get a job, to build a career in Australia into the future.

"My view and our view is that we have to continue to take strong and effective action in relation to climate change but in a way that is economically responsible."

Senator Smith's concerns were reportedly fuelled after a Newspoll analysis showed 27 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds would hand their primary vote to the coalition, compared with 46 per cent who would support Labor.

Population and climate change policies were critical to the coalition's future success, he added.

Greens senator Larissa Waters says the federal government wouldn't know a climate policy "if it hit them in the face". "Young people can spot bullshit artists a mile off, so it's no wonder that young people don't buy the nonsense this prime minister is coming out with on climate," she told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. "The tragedy is, it's actually better for the economy to transition to clean energy."

A new report on climate change shows it has fuelled the drought, with changing rainfall patterns increasing the risk of water shortages for agricultural and urban uses.

The Climate Council [A private Leftist outfit] report released on Tuesday found the flow of water in the Murray-Darling Basin has declined by 41 per cent during the past 20 years, with fears it will continue to decrease. The catchment produces more than a third of Australia's food.

With no federal climate policy and rising emissions every quarter since March 2015, Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world on climate action, the Climate Council's Lesley Hughes told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.

SOURCE

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

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

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

14 November 2018

Trump Blames CA Fires on State's Forest Mismanagement

The president's criticism is absolutely right on the merits, if off on his timing

The wildfires currently bringing death and massive devastation to communities in California are a direct result of the state having embraced radical environmentalism years ago. The Camp Fire, now California’s most destructive fire on record, has caused the death of at least 31 people with over 200 still missing, and it has destroyed the entire town of Paradise, 120 miles north of Sacramento. The unfolding tragedy is truly hard to fathom.

In light of this growing disaster, President Donald Trump on Saturday vented his frustration, asserting, “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” But Trump also offered praise to firefighters struggling to contain the blaze and condolences for those lives lost, saying, “More than 4,000 are fighting the Camp and Woolsey Fires in California that have burned over 170,000 acres. Our hearts are with those fighting the fires, the 52,000 who have evacuated, and the families of the 11 who have died. The destruction is catastrophic. God Bless them all.”

Not surprisingly, Trump’s blaming of the state’s forest mismanagement and threatening to withhold federal funding didn’t play well with some, and they allege that the president is politicizing a tragedy. California Governor-elect Gavin Newsom (D) reprimanded Trump: “Lives have been lost. Entire towns have been burned to the ground. Cars abandoned on the side of the road. People are being forced to flee their homes. This is not a time for partisanship. This is a time for coordinating relief and response and lifting those in need up.”

We’ll concede that his timing in the midst of the ongoing catastrophe where people are dying comes across as tone-deaf and even politically opportunistic. However, as usual, Trump’s observations are actually right on the merits. California’s leftist leaders, guided by their ideological commitments, have appeased the environmentalist lobby’s anti-economic growth demands for decades. In so doing, the state adopted “feel-good” environmentalist policies rather than the more scientifically sound conservationist approach that would have balanced environmental considerations with that of industry. The resulting forest mismanagement has contributed to the current environmental conditions now responsible for these increasingly massive wildfires.

Meanwhile, California’s outgoing Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown has sought to shift the blame away from the state’s failed forest management policies and onto climate change, but research meteorologist Ryan Maue called him out in August, stating, “Please take a deep breath and read up on California’s forest management issues that are decades in the making. Governor Brown blames climate change for wildfires and avoids any meaningful conversation on policy solutions.” And meteorologist Joe Bastardi predicted this fire season in May.

SOURCE

Jerry Brown: Climate-Change Deniers 'Definitely Contributing' to the 'New Abnormal' of Wildfires

Just an empty assertion. An alternative comment: "In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees. In 2014, forestry professor David B. South of Auburn University testified to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “data suggest that extremely large megafires were four-times more common before 1940,” adding that “we cannot reasonably say that anthropogenic global warming causes extremely large wildfires.” As he explained, “To attribute this human-caused increase in fire risk to carbon dioxide emissions is simply unscientific.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown said all climate-change deniers are "definitely contributing" to the fatal wind-whipped wildfires that have pummeled northern and southern parts of the state over the past few days, as well as blazes "in the coming years."

Brown asked the White House for a presidential disaster declaration this morning; the state is already receiving FEMA assistance.

"This is truly a tragedy that all Californians can understand and respond to and be very sympathetic. We're going to do everything we can. We're requesting a presidential declaration, funding coming from the federal government; of course, there will be efforts from the state government as well. It's a time to pull together and work through this tragedy," Brown said at a press conference late this afternoon outside Sacramento at Cal OES.

"This is not the 'new normal.' This is the 'new abnormal.' And this new abnormal will continue, certainly in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years," he added. "And unfortunately the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they're going to intensify. Predictions by some scientists are we've already gone up one degree; I think we can expect a half a degree, which is catastrophic, over the next 10-12 years. So we have a real challenge here threatening our whole way of life."

"And we have to keep understanding it better, but we're in a new abnormal. And things like this will be part of our future... things like this and worse," he warned. "That's why it's so important that we take steps to help communities, to do prevention, and then adaptation to the extent we can -- some of that's forest management, vegetation management, but even with all of that you have to have escape routes, and ways to identify people and to notify them. So we're trying all that, but we're getting caught up here in a changed world that not so many people were aware of or thinking about. So I'd say people are doing the best they can, but it's not good enough and we're going to have to do a lot more."

"And we have to take care of the whole range of threats and conditions and actions that are part of our living with fire, living with fire threats. And while we do more forest management -- both the federal government, which has more land than the state government, and by private people in the state -- we have to all do more," the governor continued. "But managing all the forests everywhere we can does not stop climate change. And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we're now witnessing and will continue to witness in the coming years."

SOURCE

Radical Environmentalists Are To Blame For California’s Wildfires

At least 31 people are now dead, more than 200 are missing and 250,000 more were forced to flee for their lives from California wildfires over the weekend.

The state known for pushing milestones just surpassed another one: the weekend’s fires in Malibu and Northern California became the deadliest fires in state history.

With California burning, the response from the state’s liberal political elite? It’s climate change, of course.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The wildfire crisis in California, like other crises plaguing the state, are mostly man-made — but not in the way environmentalists would have you believe.

President Trump was right to chastise state leaders over the weekend as he threatened to withhold federal funds over what he called the “gross mismanagement of forests.”

Indeed, the push from the environmentalist lobby on both the state and federal level has led to deadly consequences.

Thirty years of radical environmental policies which prohibit the proper trimming of forests and brush have created a literal tinder box just waiting to ignite.

A Reason Foundation study found that massive reforms were needed to stop the deadly fires. In their study, Reason reported that it was once the top priority of the U.S. Forestry service to suppress fires – something the professionals did with great success for four decades. From 1910 to the mid-1950s, forest fires fell from 1 million to approximately 250,000 and remained so until they began to rise again near the 1990s.

The reduction of fires continued until 1990, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This set off alarm bells for wildlife and environmental activists. By the time President Bill Clinton left office, he had implemented the 2001 Roadless Rule that restricted use of roads and prevented the building of new roads near nearly 50 million acres of forest. It may have saved the spotted owl, but the result was that it kept forest service professionals from being able to properly clear brush and manage forests. As a result, during Clinton’s reign from 1992 to 2000, removal of timber declined drastically and from 2000 to 2013, thanks to his rule there was an 80 percent decline in proper forestry removal to prevent deadly fires.

Adding insult to literal injury in an already-fragile state such as California, around the same time a politician-created drought robbed Southern California of precious water resources thanks to yet another environmentalist charade.

In a move that the National Center for Public Policy Research called “a man-made disaster,” Governor Jerry Brown diverted millions of gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay Area – and away from other parts of California – to save a fish the size of a minnow. The result has been water rationing, the killing of precious crops and the increase of dry lawns and brush surrounding residential areas. The single act of a politician dramatically altering a key source of water in California has placed the life of a small fish above the lives and safety of millions of human beings.

Talk about foolishness.

These man-made factors have led to a combustible situation, the likes of which were seen in Malibu and Northern California over the weekend.

Failure to see the cause and effect here is a stubborn refusal to see the evidence and a failure on the part of Democrat leadership and their radical environmentalist base. It’s ironic that the same Democrat leaders who often accuse Republicans of failing to pay attention to science are the ones now failing to do so.

Sadly, with Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom stating that this week’s fire was caused by climate change, it appears that state leaders have learned absolutely nothing from their mistakes.

Until they do, people will continue to die.

Any future solution to California’s vast wildlife crisis will require an honest — one that includes the hard truth — which is that Democrats’ long-heralded policies of radical environmentalism, restriction of proper forestry practices and a politician-created drought are what have led to California’s losses.

Until they realize they are sacrificing human beings on the altar of their environmentalism, every time we hear of a new death from a senseless wildfire California Democrats and their radical environmentalist friends will continue to have blood on their hands.

SOURCE

'So many bears:' Draft plan says Nunavut polar bear numbers unsafe

Too many polar bears in Nunavut, plan says

A proposed management plan, that relies on Inuit knowledge, says polar bears are becoming a public safety risk.

There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn't yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.

The proposed plan -- which is to go to public hearings in Iqaluit on Tuesday -- says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety and it's time Inuit knowledge drove management policy.

"Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern," says the document, the result of four years of study and public consultation.

"Public safety concerns, combined with the effects of polar bears on other species, suggest that in many Nunavut communities, the polar bear may have exceeded the co-existence threshold."

Polar bears killed two Inuit last summer.

The plan leans heavily on Inuit knowledge, which yields population estimates higher than those suggested by western science for almost all of the 13 included bear populations.

Scientists say only one population of bears is growing; Inuit say there are nine. Environment Canada says four populations are shrinking; Inuit say none are.

The proposed plan downplays one of the scientific community's main concerns.

"Although there is growing scientific evidence linking the impacts of climate change to reduced body condition of bears and projections of population declines, no declines have currently been attributed to climate change," it says. "(Inuit knowledge) acknowledges that polar bears are exposed to the effects of climate change, but suggests that they are adaptable."

Environment Canada's response says that's "not in alignment with scientific evidence." It cites two studies suggesting the opposite.

Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear expert, is blunter. "That's just plain wrong," he said. "That's been documented in many places now -- not just linked to body condition but reproductive rates and survival."

The government of Nunavut declined an interview request.

Its position is strongly supported by the 11 Inuit groups and hunters' organizations that made submissions. "(Inuit knowledge) has not always been sufficiently incorporated by decision-makers," says a document submitted by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Inuit land-claim organization. "The disconnect between the sentiment in certain scientific communities and (Inuit knowledge) has been pronounced."

Pond Inlet wants to be able to kill any bear within a kilometre of the community without the animal being considered part of the town's quota. Rankin Inlet simply wants to lower bear populations.

In its submission, the Kitikmeot Regional Wildlife Board expresses frustration with how polar bears are used as an icon in the fight against climate change.

"This is very frustrating for Inuit to watch ... We do not have resources to touch bases with movie actors, singers and songwriters who often narrate and provide these messages," it says.

"We know what we are doing and western science and modelling has become too dominant."

The management plan doesn't propose to increase hunting quotas immediately. It contains provisions for increased education and programs on bear safety for hunters and communities.

It does say hunting bans would no longer be automatically applied to shrinking populations and that "management objectives ... could include managing polar bears for a decrease."

Derocher doesn't dispute potentially dangerous bear-human encounters are becoming more frequent. But he, and other southern scientists, insist that's happening as climate change reduces sea ice and drives bears inland.

"They will move into communities seeking food. There's lots of attractants around northern communities."

Places where attacks have occurred are not areas with the highest bear densities, he said.

The plan reflects Nunavut's desire to control its own wildlife resources, Derocher suggested. "They don't ask for input from southern scientists. The less input from the south is where it seems to be moving."

Derocher said the Inuit's ability to export polar bear hides -- or the ability of their hunter clients to take such items home with them -- depends on whether the rest of the world trusts the animals are being well-managed. "If the stated goal is to have fewer polar bears, that may be the tripping point whereby polar bear management in Canada comes under renewed scrutiny."

Canada has fought off two international attempts to ban the trade of polar bear products.

The territory's wildlife management board will take what it hears at the public hearings and include it in a final document, which will go before the Nunavut cabinet for approval.

SOURCE

Why Won’t Liberals Look at the Evidence On Climate?

This is a theme that Steve and I have recurred to many times on this site. Today it is voiced by Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s most eminent scientists. Dyson, a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is famous among other things for unifying the three versions of quantum electrodynamics. He has been a harsh critic of the slovenly science practiced by climate alarmists.

Dyson wrote a forward to a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide by Indur Goklany which is quoted at length in the Science and Environmental Policy Project’s The Week That Was. Here are some excerpts:

To any unprejudiced person reading [Goklany’s] account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind. That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts? In this foreword I offer a tentative solution of the mystery.

There are many examples in the history of science of irrational beliefs promoted by famous thinkers and adopted by loyal disciples. Sometimes, as in the use of bleeding as a treatment for various diseases, irrational belief did harm to a large number of human victims. George Washington was one of the victims. Other irrational beliefs, such as the phlogiston theory of burning or the Aristotelian cosmology of circular celestial motions, only did harm by delaying the careful examination of nature. In all these cases, we see a community of people happily united in a false belief that brought leaders and followers together. Anyone who questioned the prevailing belief would upset the peace of the community.

Real advances in science require a different cultural tradition, with individuals who invent new tools to explore nature and are not afraid to question authority. Science driven by rebels and heretics searching for truth has made great progress in the last three centuries. But the new culture of scientific scepticism is a recent growth and has not yet penetrated deeply into our thinking. The old culture of group loyalty and dogmatic belief is still alive under the surface, guiding the thoughts of scientists as well as the opinions of ordinary citizens.

To understand human behavior, I look at human evolution. About a hundred thousand years ago, our species invented a new kind of evolution. In addition to biological evolution based on genetic changes, we began a cultural evolution based on social and intellectual changes. Biological evolution did not stop, but cultural evolution was much faster and quickly became dominant. Social customs and beliefs change and spread much more rapidly than genes.

Cultural evolution was enabled by spoken languages and tribal loyalties. Tribe competed with tribe and culture with culture. The cultures that prevailed were those that promoted tribal cohesion. Humans were always social animals, and culture made us even more social. We evolved to feel at home in a group that thinks alike. It was more important for a group of humans to be united than to be right. It was always dangerous and usually undesirable to question authority. When authority was seriously threatened, heretics were burned at the stake.

I am suggesting that the thinking of politicians and scientists about controversial issues today is still tribal. Science and politics are not essentially different from other aspects of human culture. Science and politics are products of cultural evolution. Thinking about scientific questions is still presented to the public as a competitive sport with winners and losers. For players of the sport with public reputations to defend, it is more important to belong to a winning team than to examine the evidence.

Cultural evolution was centered for a hundred thousand years on tales told by elders to children sitting around the cave fire. That cave-fire evolution gave us brains that are wonderfully sensitive to fable and fantasy, but insensitive to facts and figures. To enable a tribe to prevail in the harsh world of predators and prey, it was helpful to have brains with strong emotional bonding to shared songs and stories. It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true. Our scientists and politicians of the modern age evolved recently from the cave-children. They still, as Charles Darwin remarked about human beings in general, bear the indelible stamp of their lowly origin.
***
Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.

SOURCE

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

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13 November 2018

After 50 Years Of Failed Predictions, Science Is In Crisis

Whom or what to believe? After 50 years of failed predictions, people are reasoning that something other than science is behind this alarmism.

Last September the usual media suspects got wind of yet another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. To those familiar, it was obvious from the “fire and brimstone” headlines. No matter how inconsequential, no heatwave, drought, hurricane or flood was missed. This is the customary softening-up period, intended to ensure that when a scary IPCC report lands, politicians will be pushed into taking even more drastic action on “climate change”.

And so it came to pass. Last month, the world’s “leading climate scientists” confirmed we had only 12 years left to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Debra Roberts, a co-chairwoman of the working group on impacts, says: “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now.” Even half a degree more would significantly worsen the risk of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Crikey! It’s only three years since Paris, when we were assured 2C could save the planet. What’s next?

At least it’s 10 years longer than Prince Charles gave us. He warned in 2008 that “the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months, unless urgent action is taken to save the rainforests”. A decade later, in testimony before the US congress, Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies in the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, contradicted Charles, saying it was “misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales”.

But then in 2011 the International Energy Agency, after “the most thorough analysis yet”, warned that five more years of conventional development would make it impossible to hold global warming to safe levels. The prospects of combating dangerous climate change would be “lost forever”. Well now, in the tradition of ever-receding horizons, the IPCC gives us another 12 years to act.

Catastrophic scenarios aren’t new. In the 1960s and 70s, man-made global cooling was the fashion. In 1971, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich predicted: “By the year 2000, the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.” Ehrlich is now a warmist.

Whom or what to believe? After 50 years of failed predictions, people are reasoning that something other than science is behind this alarmism. And that something is the UN. What else? Its global reach, back corridors and duplicity have allowed it to build an unchallenged, mutually reinforcing $1.5 trillion industry of captive politicians, scientists, journalists, crony capitalists and non-governmental organisation activists bent on globalism through anti-Western sentiment and wealth transfer.

SOURCE

To fight climate change, environmentalists say yes to nuclear power

Analogies to Richard Nixon going to China tend to be overused.

But here’s one that’s the real deal: On Thursday, the venerable Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report on nuclear power endorsing measures to keep financially struggling nuclear power plants alive to combat climate change.

They aren’t the first environmentalists to reach the same conclusion, but it’s a convincing report — and, symbolically, a really big deal. The group’s name is practically synonymous with skepticism toward nuclear energy, and it played a leading role in the fights against nuclear reactors in New England in the 1980s.

In the report, the group outlined a hard truth about the future. With climate change accelerating, as a new UN report underscored, the time to be fussy about how to reduce emissions has passed.

“These sobering realities dictate that we keep an open mind about all of the tools in the emissions reduction toolbox — even ones that are not our personal favorites,” wrote Ken Kimmell, the group’s president. “And that includes existing nuclear power plants in the United States, which currently supply about 20 percent of our total electricity needs and more than half of our low-carbon electricity supply.”

There is no doubt that nuclear power carries risks, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has documented over the years. Policy makers need to start putting those risks in perspective, though. Yes, regulate plants closely. But don’t let such a massive source of zero-carbon electricity disappear, since it will inevitably be replaced with fossil fuels.

Steve Clemmer, the director of energy research at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview that the group wasn’t suggesting that all US nuclear power plants should be saved.

For instance, it doesn’t call for preserving the problem-plagued Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth, which is scheduled to shut down next year.

And, Clemmer recommended, any help should be conditioned on plants meeting the highest safety standards, opening their books to prove they really need assistance, ensuring that help is temporary, and providing assistance only as part of a broader clean energy program.

Massachusetts gets a big chunk of its electricity from Seabrook Station in New Hampshire — the plant that the Union of Concerned Scientists, among many others, criticized in the 1980s. That plant is thought to be profitable for now, but the state and the region should have a contingency plan to make sure that it doesn’t fall victim to the same trends claiming nuclear plants throughout the United States.

The ongoing woes of the nuclear industry have put a tremendous amount of non-emitting electricity at risk, and the potential to lose those resources could undo the nation’s recent progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s hard to imagine a group with stronger historic anti-nuclear bona fides than the Union of Concerned Scientists — in the same way that Nixon was an anti-communist beyond reproach. Hopefully the group’s climate pragmatism now will carry more weight with nuclear power skeptics and help ensure that states will have the full toolbox they need in the years ahead.

SOURCE

Living In The Forest And Risking Their Lives: The Extreme Measures Enviros Will Take To Stop A Crude Oil Pipeline

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a 163-mile crude oil pipeline being built in southern Louisiana, is expected to be operational by the end of 2018

Deep in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in the United States, a group of protesters have seemingly stopped at nothing to scuttle completion of a legal pipeline.

The construction project in question, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, is a 163-mile crude oil pipeline that extends across southern Louisiana. The pipeline will carry up to 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day when completed — taking a lot of oil off more hazardous means of transportation, such as road and train lines.

Despite the pipeline being overwhelmingly welcomed by locals and Louisiana politicians across the partisan spectrum, construction efforts have attracted an inordinate amount of pushback from national environmental groups. Organizations such as Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Waterkeeper Alliance and others have continually tried to torpedo the pipeline with lawsuits.

However, it’s the opposition happening outside the courtroom that is attracting some of the most extreme elements against Bayou Bridge. Groups such as Louisiana Bucket Brigade and 350 New Orleans have assembled protests at construction sites, temporarily preventing employees from working. The most active group on the ground is L’eau Est La Vie [French for “water is life”], a traveling camp within the Atchafalaya Basin that has repeatedly placed its members in the way of construction efforts, stalling work and placing themselves in danger.

The Daily Caller News Foundation traveled to St. Martinville, Louisiana, to find these protesters. A small camp that relocates every few days or weeks within the country’s biggest swamp — it was not easy to find. After several hours of traveling on air, boat and foot, and passing though what appeared to be a deserted campsite, TheDCNF was able to locate the anti-Bayou Bridge base.

“I don’t really want to speak on behalf of any organization. I am just out here as an individual trying to keep this area safe and make sure nobody cuts that line,” said a man donning a red dress and referring to himself simply as “Babyface.” The protester appeared to be alone, standing next to several tents and signs that railed against the Bayou Bridge pipeline. Clothes were strewn about, along with Twilight novels and a big bottle labeled “pee.”

Speaking softly, Babyface refused to reveal what organization he was with, but he did explain his opposition to construction of the crude oil pipeline.

“I’ve seen some of these valve stations and along the way while I’m traveling on the boat, and those aren’t well kept up at all,” he said to TheDCNF. “I worry about what this pipeline is going to look like 10, 15 years from now – whether they’re really going to do the upkeep to keep this safe. I have my personal doubts.”

After speaking to Babyface for some time, it was discovered that he was not alone. Up above were what appeared to be two separate tree houses, something he referred to as a “lifeline.” Within the lifeline contained his fellow protesters. The concept was simple, but dangerous. As long as the protesters remained suspended in tree houses, construction workers would be prevented from cutting the trees down. This tree-sitting strategy is widely implemented by pipeline protesters across the country.

While they believe their cause to be just, many residents of southern Louisiana are upset at the protesters’ actions. Many in the community welcome the jobs and income that come with Bayou Bridge.

“The people that work on these pipelines, they have a right to make a living too,” said Brett Stassi, sheriff of Iberville Parish, in a conversation with TheDCNF. “They are putting the livelihood of some of these workers in jeopardy, and they’re putting their own selves in harm’s way.”

Stassi also repeated what’s been long criticized about the Bayou Bridge protesters: many of them are from out of state.

“Most of these protesters are not even from Louisiana. They come from all over the United States – as far as California. We even arrested one from France,” he said.

A procurement agent who works between Energy Transfer Partners — the company behind the pipeline — and local landowners told TheDCNF he hasn’t met a single customer who appreciates what the protesters are doing. They welcome the development and extra income the project is bringing.

“I’ve been working with landowners and Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) this entire time. Every single local landowner I’ve worked with supports this project. None of them have any sympathy for the protesters,” he explained, speaking anonymously as he was not allowed to talk with media.

A spokeswoman for ETP told TheDCNF that over 98 percent of the easement agreements along the route were signed voluntarily by landowners.

However, protesters have vowed to stay as long as construction continues in the Atchafalaya Basin. A group of unemployed protesters camping in the middle of a swamp would seemingly be a short-term affair, but the organizations that support their efforts have been adept at online fundraising.

L’eau Est La Vie is very active online with a repetitive fundraising strategy. Members continually perform extreme acts of protest — such as chaining themselves to a 50-foot crane — and announce it on social media. The group then asks supporters for donations via GoFundMe. It also does this when alleging violence or misconduct by Energy Transfer Partners or arrest of their comrades.

For example, L’eau Est La Vie leaders recently accused ETP of driving past one of their boats in the water so quickly that the splash from the wake eventually sunk their boat. However, their claims about what exactly happened have changed over time, with one spokeswoman originally saying she wasn’t sure who drove the boat that caused the wake but others later claiming for certain that ETP was the offender. They have also given different numbers of how many protesters were affected.

Their tactics have proven lucrative. L’eau Est La Vie has raised over $72,000 in the past three months, according to their latest GoFundMe page. Members have launched several fundraising efforts since beginning their protest against Bayou Bridge, raising tens of thousands of dollars that allow them to keep camping.

“The bulk of their claims are either false or greatly exaggerated. They are using this narrative as a fundraising campaign,” said Alexis Daniel, a spokeswoman for ETP, in a statement to the The DCNF. “We have stated from the beginning of the project, as with any of our projects, that we understand and respect differing opinions about these types of infrastructure projects. But what we do not support are the illegal actions and false claims that are continually made about the project, our vendors and workers, and the industry in general. Our first priority always remains to the safe construction and operation for all of our assets.

Construction on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline is nearing completion and expected to be operational by the end of 2018.

SOURCE

CAFE Standards: The Most Obnoxious Regs of the Obama Era

With American voters having pretty decisively voted for divided control of Congress, it seems as if the next two years will be fraught with legislative gridlock. This presents the Trump administration with a great opportunity to keep satisfying its promise of repealing two regulations for every one implemented. A lack of legislative activity will give the Administration the time to focus on unraveling the central planning that’s taken place away from Congress for the past eight years and beyond.

One of the most absurd examples of this was the Obama administration’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards for cars and lightweight trucks. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) recently closed a comment period on a proposal that would roll back some of the CAFE standards imposed during the Obama era. The agencies should now move forward to execute this rollback before these regulations warp the market even more than they already have.

The Obama administration aimed to raise CAFE standards from a combined average of 24.1 miles per gallon in 2011, to a whopping 54.5 miles per gallon by model year 2025. The goal was to reduce emissions and to save consumers money at the gas pump. As with all government interventions, however, these intervention were not all that they seemed to be. Indeed, a slew of unintended consequences that come along with them.

First, they will raise the cost of new cars significantly. In order to achieve the astronomical efficiency demanded by Obama's planners, automakers will have to use different, more expensive technology to manufacture their vehicles. They won’t, out of the goodness of their hearts, take those losses themselves, nor should they. They will offset the extra costs by raising the price of new cars. This is the market at work, and a pretty predictable consequence of expensive rulemaking.

The Obama administration's rationale for the higher prices was that consumers would absorb them simply because drivers would save about a dollar per gallon on gas prices in the long term. The thinking was akin to justifying a drastic increase in housing prices by saying that homeowners would be able to save a few bucks on their electric bill. The costs are not even close to comparable for consumers.

The regulations also work against the Obama administration’s expressed emissions goals. Given the rising cost of new cars, this will shift demand towards older, serviceable cars that remain less expensive. Older cars, with lower fuel-efficiency standards, will stay on the road longer and will maintain the old emission status quo. For those who do pay the extra money to get new, fuel efficient cars, studies show the added efficiency will result in them driving more than they previously did. Academic studies show this will offset at least 15 percent of the expected emission declines. Central planners tried to direct the market for vehicles and, as it always does, it backfired.

The CAFE standards also work against vehicle safety. One of the ways automakers will try to make their new cars more efficient, as the fuel efficiency bar moves closer towards 54.5 miles per gallon over time, will be to make their cars lighter. Lighter vehicles provide less protection for their occupants, and are more susceptible to high-cost damage on impact. These are other factors consumers take into account when they have to make a decision on a new car choice. The Obama-era standards actually make it more attractive to go for older cars, once again keeping them on the road longer.

The most obvious issue with the CAFE standards, though, is that they just aren’t doable for car companies. In its final days, the Obama EPA even admitted in its technical assessment of the regulations that it would be near impossible for the industry to get to that kind efficiency by 2025. Central planners can cook up whatever idealistic dreams they want in agency backrooms, but that doesn’t mean businesses can actually make them a reality or that the market will cooperate with this meddling. It’s a lesson that the previous Administration had to learn time and time again.

If nothing meaningful can be accomplished the next two years in Congress, all the Trump administration’s attention should be directed to issues like this. Making our economy work to its maximum efficiency means letting it be driven by market forces, rather than faceless, unelected bureaucrats. The Obama-era CAFE standards are an egregious example of central planning that is still on the books. Adopting the current proposal to roll them back would be an excellent first step.

SOURCE

Australian politician mocks climate change 'exaggeration' in presentation to Liberal party members

Coral bleaching has been happening for centuries, threats of rising sea levels to countries such as the Maldives and Tuvalu are greatly exaggerated and temperature gains have been grossly exaggerated by scientists.

These are the assessments of the member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, who is part of a Tony Abbott-led speaking campaign to pull the Liberal party back from the centre.

The Guardian has obtained a tape of a presentation by Kelly at the right-aligned Mosman branch of the Liberal party in September that outlines in detail his climate scepticism.

Abbott himself was meant to be the star billing but was unable to attend, leaving Kelly and New South Wales senator Jim Molan to occupy centre stage, after running a gauntlet of about 100 demonstrators who turned up to protest against the Liberal party’s lack of policy on climate change.

Kelly’s PowerPoint presentation veered between mocking “the lefties” and arguing that there was no need to tackle climate change because its impact had been grossly overblown.

“Here we are in Paris, France,” he said of his first slide. “A whole lot of lefties here celebrating the Paris agreement, the achievement of the day.”

Kelly then said the debate about global warming was about trying to get “better weather, and that people wanted to dial down the CO2 knob.

“It’s CO2 we are talking about: it’s what turns water into soda water, its what makes chardonnay into champagne,” he said derisively, before claiming that the consensus view among the world’s scientists that the planet was warming was wrong.

Kelly said that “30 years ago, the temperature was the same globally about where it was today” – even though the Bureau of Meteorology and other international agencies estimate the planet has already warmed more than 1 degree in the past century.

“The reality is we live in a time where our generation has never ever been as safe from the climate because of fossil fuels, concrete and steel,” Kelly said. “The climate was always dangerous. We didn’t make it dangerous.”

He also claimed “coral bleaching was a centuries-old problem, science tells us” and that warnings about the polar icecaps were not borne out. While he acknowledged there had been some shrinking in the Arctic, he said this year the north-west passage had been closed owing to ice.

Kelly, who was a furniture salesman before he entered parliament, also cited a study that said Tuvalu was growing not sinking. The peer-reviewed study shows the island’s land mass has grown owing to sedimention and reef growth, but Kelly ignored part of the same study that said climate change remained the single biggest threat to the low-lying Pacific islands and their future.

As for Australia’s Paris target, Kelly said it was “the most onerous of any nation in the world because of our high rates of population growth”, and the Labor party planned to wreck the economy with its proposal to set a target of 45% reduction by 2030.

The chief scientist, Alan Finkel, had said Australia on its own could not change the world’s climate, Kelly said.

Now that “the US was out” of the Paris agreement, and “China and India weren’t doing anything”, Australia had “an escape clause” and it should use it.

SOURCE

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

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

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12 November 2018

Forget fast food – air pollution could be causing childhood obesity (?)

Groan! These stupid studies of roadside pollution never stop coming out. This latest one ("Longitudinal associations of in utero and early life near-roadway air pollution with trajectories of childhood body mass index") is a wonderful example of sophisticated statistics being wasted on crap data.

The authors went to great trouble to get defensible data but ignored the elephant in the room: income. The people who live by busy roads are generally those who can afford no better: The poor. So this is a study of poverty. And that poor people have worse health in all sorts of ways is probably the most frequent finding in health research. So their findings are most parsimoniously explained as yet another demonstration that poor people have worse health. There is no need to invoke nitrogen oxide exposure as an explanation of anything. Their findings prove NOTHING about NOx exposure. They are just an example of the hoary statistical fallacy that correlation is causation.

Note this recent study: "It’s poverty, not individual choice, that is driving extraordinary obesity levels"

Had they gathered a measure of income for each family they would have been able to use various statistical techniques (I personally like partial correlation) to remove the effect of income and see if there was anything else left to explain. But they had no measure of income so could not do that. If they had such data my guess would be that their quite weak effects would have vanished entirely once the effect of poverty was removed.

They did have a measure of education but some well educated people are poor and some poorly educated people are rich. Bill Gates was a dropout and there are plenty of Ph.D. burger flippers around these days. So education is not a reliable proxy for income.

The intellectual level of pollution researchers seems to be permanently stuck in the basement. If a student had handed this in to me for an assignment, I would have failed it

Exposing children to nitrogen dioxide air pollution from vehicles in the early stages of their life could increase the risk of them becoming obese.

The new research, lead by a team from the University of Southern California and published in the Environmental Health journal, studied 2,318 children the region to see whether there was a link.

It found children living on or near busy main roads in the first year of their life were almost a kilogramme heavier by the age of 10 than those with low exposure.

The scientists were not able to examine how the harmful chemicals increased weight gain in the children but said inflammation of the brain could have caused anxiety-induced overeating and changes in fat metabolism..

They said other factors such as gender, ethnicity and parental education are unlikely that variations in diet could explain the strong link found.

A recent report suggested spending a long weekend in some of Europe’s famous cities could have the same health impacts as smoking up to four cigarettes.

SOURCE

Trump Calls Out ‘Gross Mismanagement’ as Cause of Massive California Wildfires

President Donald Trump gave an ultimatum to California early on Saturday morning, following his declaration of a state of emergency for the state ravaged by wildfires.

Trump tweeted that he believed these deadly, and expensive, wildfires are the cause of mismanagement of the forest.

The president also warned that if the West Coast state didn’t get its wildfire problem under control, he wouldn’t be handing out more federal funding.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted early Saturday morning.

“Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

This message went out just hours after the president signed off on federal assistance for the fire-ravaged areas of California, The Associated Press reported.

The fire in question is making its way across the town of Paradise in Northern California and has killed at least nine people.

As of Saturday morning, 6,700 homes and businesses had been engulfed in the blaze being called the Camp Fire, which makes it the most destructive fire in California’s history, Reuters reported.

“This event was the worst-case scenario. It was the event we have feared for a long time,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a Friday evening news conference. “Regrettably, not everybody made it out.”

Southern California is also battling fires, including the town of Thousand Oaks, the location of the recent mass shooting.

There have been evacuation orders for more than 200,000 residence, do to the threatening nature of this blaze, Reuters reported.

The reason for the Northern California Fire is still under investigation, but it is believed that the spark might have come from a Pacific Gas & Electric Company electrical line, which experienced a problem near where the fire broke out, according to the AP.

The utility company has already been sued for starting another large fire in California, Mercury News reported.

One of the first firefighters to the scene of the fire on Thursday morning estimated that the fire was about 10 acres large with a “really good wind on it.”

The same first responder warned that when the fire left the “maintained vegetation under the power lines” the fire would quickly accelerate when it hit the brush and timber, according to Mercury News.

SOURCE

A mixed vote on global warming: Ballot measures lose, but Democrats gain power

Environmentalists lost high-profile ballot fights this week to combat climate change and promote conservation. But they took heart that new Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives and several governorships could pave the way for future victories against fossil fuels and global warming.

The biggest loss came in Washington state, where a measure to tax carbon dioxide emissions lost 56 percent to 44 percent, despite backing from a broad coalition of Democratic, environmental, union and Native American groups. The measure's lopsided defeat squashed hopes that the tax would become a model for other states to raise the cost, and reduce the desirability, of fuels that produce Earth-warming greenhouse gases.

The environmental movement lost on three other ballot measures Tuesday, but there were victories, too. And Democrats are counting on a decided edge in House and gubernatorial contests to increase the pushback against President Donald Trump’s support of oil, gas and coal interests.

“There was more progress than not,” said National Wildlife Federation President Collin O’Mara. “But it’s still miles to go before we sleep.”

The defeats for environmentalists:

Arizona voters overwhelmingly defeated a measure that would have required the state to get half its power from renewable energy sources like wind and solar power by 2030. That’s a fairly modest goal, in an era when some states have set 100 percent green energy goals. (California’s deadline for that threshold is 2045.) But the campaign against Proposition 127, funded heavily by a major utility company, said it would force up the cost of electricity and prematurely close coal plants and the state’s lone nuclear plant.

Colorado voted 57 percent to 43 percent to reject rules that would have pushed oil and gas drilling substantially farther from homes, businesses, streams and rivers. The “fracking setbacks” measure might have blocked new wells on as much as 95 percent of the land in fossil fuel-rich counties. A major campaign by the industry said it would cost the state jobs and slow the booming economy.

Alaska’s “Stand for Salmon” initiative would have toughened the review of mining, oil and other development to protect the state’s favorite game fish. But Measure 1 lost 64 percent to 36 percent. Proponents said the habitat protection would have had the added benefit of controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

The victories:

Nevada voters approved a measure much like the one Arizona rejected, requiring the state to get 50 percent of its electricity from green sources by 2030. Question 6 got more than 59 percent of the vote, though the measure must be approved again in 2020 to take effect. That double-approval process can be problematic, as proven on Tuesday when the state’s voters reversed their verdict of two years ago and rejected a measure that would have eliminated the monopoly for the state’s lone electric utility, NV Energy.

Georgia passed Amendment 1, to put 90 percent of sales taxes on sporting goods toward conservation efforts. The estimated $200 million collected over a decade would help create parks and protect wildlife habitat.

How Democrats and Republicans won in the midterms

In a phone call Wednesday, a half dozen environmental groups called the midterm election a success, mostly because of the increased focus they expect their issues to get from a House that will now be controlled by Democrats.

They expect the Democrats to hold hearings and potentially subpoena evidence on Trump administration policies — particularly at the Interior Department, Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency — that have encouraged the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“We need intensive oversight,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “We have seen the Trump administration try to repeal [President Barack Obama’s] Clean Power Plan, try to repeal the clean car rules... So we need intense oversight of the executive actions at Interior, EPA and other places.”

The green organizations also said they hoped that Congress moves ahead with long-stalled plans to build new infrastructure and that Democrats insist the work include expansion of forests and clean energy facilities. “Any infrastructure package could have a lot of clean energy attached to it. That would have bipartisan legs,” said the wildlife federation’s O’Mara.

Advocates also had high hopes for continued progress on the state and local level. Democrats won seven governor’s races in states where Republicans had been in power, while Republicans gained control only in Alaska. And some Republican elected governors — like Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Larry Hogan in Maryland — support policies to combat climate change. Baker in August signed a $2.4 billion package of global warming adaptation measures, and Hogan said Maryland would join states supporting the Paris Climate Accord, which Trump said the U.S. would abandon.

Image:Republican Gov. Charlie Baker acknowledges applause from supporters on election night in Boston.Winslow Townson / AP
The election results will accelerate action in the states, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. Brune said that could mean the shutdown of more coal-fired power plants and tougher regulation of the oil, gas and coal industries. “Governors play a big role in all that,” Brune said.

The environmental leaders said little about the loss of the Washington carbon tax. Two years ago, the last time Washington voted on a carbon tax, proponents tried to lure conservatives and moderates by promising to give the money back to taxpayers by cutting sales and other taxes. This time, they said they would spend the money on environmental cleanup measures. Neither approach worked.

A supporter of the ballot campaign said that, despite the loss, polls still showed that Washingtonians “agree that we must address global warming by weaning our state off of fossil fuels.” Now that campaign will turn to getting 100 percent of the state’s electricity from green sources and “electrifying” cars and trucks, the No. 1 source of global warming pollution, said Bruce Speight, director of Environment Washington, an environmental research and advocacy group.

The head of a pro-fossil fuel group praised voters for rejecting the state ballot measures. Robert Dillon of the American Council for Capital Formation acknowledged in a statement that the Democratic House victories could slow permitting of fossil fuel projects.

But at the state level, he found cause for optimism below the governor’s mansions in the office of attorney general, where four states flipped from Democrat to Republican. Wrote Dillon: “This is positive for the outlook for pipelines and other energy projects.”

SOURCE

UK: Government-subsidised hybrid cars may never have been charged up

Tens of thousands of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) bought with generous government grants may be burning as much fuel as combustion-engine cars.

?Data compiled for the BBC suggests that such vehicles in corporate fleets averaged just 40 miles per gallon (mpg), when they could have done 130.

Many drivers may never have unwrapped their charging cables, The Miles Consultancy said.

Subsidies for new PHEVs were recently scrapped, after seven years. The plug-in grant was introduced in 2011, gifting buyers up to £4,500 off new cars.

The incentive helped the UK become the biggest market for PHEVs in Europe.

The majority of the tens of thousands of eligible vehicles sold were bought by company fleets, including more than 70% of the 37,000 plug-in hybrids sold so far in 2018.

But data from The Miles Consultancy, a Cheshire firm which advises 300 blue-chip companies on fuel management, reveals that many businesses simply used the grant to save on buying regular cars.

Mileage records from 1,500 models, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Volvo vehicles, showed an average real-world mpg of 39.27, against an average manufacturer advertised mpg of 129.68.

Figures for 2,432 hybrids - including non plug-in varieties - showed an average real-world mpg of 49.06, still vastly lower than the potential range.

"There are some examples where employees aren't even charging these vehicles up," said Paul Hollick, The Miles Consultancy's managing director.

"The charge cables are still in the boot, in a cellophane wrapper, while the company and the employee are going in and out of petrol stations, paying for all of this additional fuel.

This practice, he added, was "ridiculous".

The UK government subsidised plug in hybrids for seven years
The British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), which represents many fleets, said higher taxes on diesel cars incentivised companies to buy plug-ins, even if they had no intention of using their electric capability.

"We unfortunately have got a situation where a poorly designed tax regime is driving some poor behaviours," said Toby Poston, ?the BVRLA's communications director.

"We have got some situations where company drivers are choosing the vehicle based on their tax liability, rather than having the right vehicle for the right job."

Some companies, he explained, were buying PHEVs - which are best suited to local trips - for employees who did a lot of motorway driving.

When presented with The Miles Consultancy's findings, a Department for Transport spokesperson said the government believed plug-in hybrids "bring significant environmental benefits", but would "now focus its support on zero emission models like pure electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars".

Plug-in hybrid vehicles continue to receive some government support, through lower car tax rates, grants for charging infrastructure and, in some local authorities, free parking.

SOURCE

How Australian shark attack prevention technology can stop deaths

Greenies want us to leave the sharks alone so try to obstruct shark control measures

In the past 50 days, Australia’s east coast has witnessed five serious shark attacks, one fatal.

In September, Tasmanian mum Justine Barwick and 12-year-old Victorian Hannah Papps were both attacked in separate incidents in the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland.

A month later, a shark latched onto the arm of a mine worker off a New South Wales nudist beach, north of Newcastle, that resulted in him being admitted to hospital.

Last Monday, Daniel Christidis, a 33-year-old Victorian urologist, was also bitten by a shark in Cid Harbour in the Whitsundays on the first day of a yachting holiday. He didn’t survive the attack.

Three days later, another shark dragged a surfer from his board on NSW’s far north coast and left him with a 20cm bite wound on his calf.

The spate of incidents has sparked an urgent meeting between multiple levels of Queensland government, tourism representatives and marine experts to try and work out how to best prevent swimmers in the future being mauled.

The discussions have spanned everything from culls to better education of tourists and the possible use of a world-first technology designed to replace shark nets and drum lines.

There’s no real answer, yet.

“I don’t think scientists really have the answer at the moment, unfortunately. That’s what has people perplexed,” Perth-based shark biologist Amanda Elizabeth told 9News.com.au.

So far this year 22 shark attacks have been recorded around Australia, according to data provided to 9News.com.au by Taronga Zoo. Ten of those occurred in Western Australia, seven in NSW, four in Queensland and another in Victoria.

How are attacks being prevented?

In Australia, there is a shift away from traditional prevention methods like shark nets and drum line bait traps to new technologies designed to ward the creatures off.

Ocean Guardian is an Australian company that develops the Shark Shield technology – the world’s only electrical deterrent system that emits electromagnetic pulses into water to scare off sharks.

“Sharks have these small little electrical receptors in their snout, they also have sight, smell and hearing, but they use these electrical receptors, the same we use touch,” Mr Lyon said.

“We create a very powerful electrical field, which causes the receptors to spasm, they get oversensitive and it turns the shark away.

According to Mr Lyon, the technology is the way forward, but has only been supported on a government level by Western Australia.

In WA, residents who buy Shark Shield packs for diving or surfing are offered government-backed rebates.

“Australia is known as the shark attack capital of the world and it affects our tourism by one percent - it costs the Australian economy nearly half-a-billion dollars a year.

“Technology is an answer, and it’s been proven to be an answer, so let’s embrace it and move on.

SOURCE

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

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

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11 November 2018

Warmist projection again

In an article under the title "The Role Harassment Plays in Climate Change Denial", Leftist organ "Mother Jones" complains about criticisms directed at Warmists, completely ignoring the torrent of criticisms and threats that Warmists pour out at climate skeptics -- not to mention the many attacks on the livelihood of skeptics. To amplify their criticisms they do their best to link critics with Nazis. Relevant excerpt below.

That is of course totally amusing: The Nazi party really was the first Green party. The end state desired by the current Greens and the Nazis is the same: A return to a romanticized rural past.

And the whole point of Hitler's "Drang nach Osten" (invasion of Poland and Russia) was because Hitler feared food shortages so wanted Slavic farmlands to feed Germans. And who is it today who are always predicting food shortages?

And, like the Nazis, the Greens never stop their attempts to make us all march in lockstep with them towards their addled goals. Like the Nazis, they think they have the right to tell everyone else what to do. Nazis and Greens are both fundamentally authoritarian. So, in the usual Leftist way, Ms Jones is projecting onto skeptics their own Green/Left characteristics.

For full details of how "Green" the Nazis were see "The Green Swastika: Environmentalism in the Third Reich", By William Walter Kay

But the right’s denial of climate change science nonetheless repeats many of the same patterns that have appeared in other extremist targets, from guns to immigration to abortion. These patterns include the appropriation of Nazi or anti-Semitic imagery, the demonization of funders and prominent advocates, and the distortion of the terms of the debate. Climate change has become another flashpoint for irrational, hateful, sometimes violent rhetoric, and even personal attacks on people who have risen to some prominence as scientists, funders, and advocates.

Stephan Lewandowsky, a University of Bristol cognitive scientist who studies science denial, notes how the virulently anti-government message that has long dominated climate denial discourse shares common themes with people who believe in conspiracy theories writ large. “Science as well as respect for others’ religions or ethnicity are considered establishment norms, just like truth-telling, and hence the people who support (and are incited by) Donald Trump are likely to reject all of those norms,” Lewandowsky tells Mother Jones, “which again would link science denial, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories as a cluster or related phenomena.”

The appropriation of particular labels, often involving Nazis, has also appeared in environmental debates. Self-described climate change skeptics have rejected being called “deniers,” arguing, as the conservative think tank figure and Trump EPA transition official Myron Ebell has, that the label is meant to tie“some people to Holocaust denial.” But the skeptic side has deployed an even more direct appropriation of Holocaust imagery.

In 2014, University of Alabama-Huntsville meteorologist Roy Spencer suggested on his blog that the best defense against the label “denier” would be to call those who were concerned with rising temperatures “global warming Nazis.” He even used an image of a swatsika [sic] on the post to illustrate his point, sparking a flurry of news coverage. His suggestion drew condemnation from the Anti Defamation League Southeast chapter.

[Read Roy Spencer's reply to that here]

SOURCE

Californians pay the price of Greenie interference with professional forest management

California Fires Caused by Environmentalists, Not Climate Change

A terrifying 'firenado' has been seen swirling in the scorched debris of a fire ravaged California.

The apocalyptic scenes showed a towering inferno of fire twisting through the air as charred cars and blackened trees surround it in Butte County., California.

Areas of northern and southern California continue to be evacuated as the fiery whirlwind of the the Camp Fire struck today.

Butte County Sheriff received reports of multiple fatalities, but officials are trying to confirm those reports, authorities told ABC News.

In video footage posted on line the tower of fire can be seen appearing from behind burnt trees near a long empty road covered in falling ash.

A 'firenado' whirl, also commonly known as a fire devil, fire tornado, fire swirl, or a fire twister, is a whirlwind induced by a fire and often made up of flame from a brush fire.

In Butte County, about 80 miles north of Sacramento, has seen strong winds hamper efforts by aircraft to drop retardant on the fast-moving fire that largely destroyed Paradise and moved into the eastern side of Chico this morning, a city with a population of around 90,000.

The blaze, which has grown to 20,000 acres in northern California, has raged since yesterday evening.

In less than 24 hours, the Camp Fire had torched over 31 square miles, or 20,000 acres, turning escape routes around the town of Paradise into tunnels of fire as the entire community of 27,000 residents were ordered to evacuate.

Cal Fire said the fire was only five per cent contained and had consumed 70,000 acres.

On Thursday, as flames engulfed Paradise, frantic residents racing to safety plunged into the thick smoke that darkened the daytime sky and made driving difficult.

More than 1,000 buildings face being damaged by the fast-moving blaze, Butte County Cal Fire Chief Darren Read said in the press conference.

One sheriff's deputy described his surroundings as 'blackout conditions' as others detailed roads that were 'completely blocked' due to roaring flames.

Police officer Mark Bass, who lives in the hard-hit town of Paradise and works in neighboring Chico, said: 'We were surrounded by fire, we were driving through fire on each side of the road.

'He evacuated his family and then returned to the fire to help rescue several disabled residents, including a man trying to carry his bedridden wife to safety.

'It was just a wall of fire on each side of us, and we could hardly see the road in front of us.'

Southern California was also under siege from raging wildfires a two separate blazes encroached on Thousand Oaks, the scene of Wednesday night's mass shooting, and upmarket Calabasas, home to celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, who was forced to evacuate her home.

Around 75,000 homes have been placed under emergency evacuation orders, meaning more than 100,000 homes in danger across the state.

The Los Angeles Police Department also issued a citywide tactical alert for the fire, allowing its units to assist in handling the fire.

SOURCE

Why will global warming kill only the cute animals?

Only loathsome species will flourish, according to certain studies. Why? Because 'rat explosion' is more alarming than 'two degrees'

Rats! It’s global warming again. Can’t we get a break? No, literally. Not from the warming part. It’s actually quite chilly outside and there hasn’t been any measurable planetary warming since 1999.

Monday’s Post headline actually said “Explosion of rats feared as climate warms.” So the good news is rats aren’t increasing any more than temperature. The bad news is a further increase in passive-voice predictions of doom.

It’s openly a story about hype not science

Before the rats reach your face I’d like to note that this “news” story is remarkable for having the plumbing on the outside. It starts “Scientists have shown that the likely 2 degrees of global warming to come this century will be extremely dangerous, but, you know, ‘2 degrees’ is hardly a phrase from horror films. How about ‘rat explosion?’ ”

Exactly. It’s openly a story about hype not science. “The physics of climate change doesn’t have the same fear factor as the biology.” So cue the Fu Manchu-style mandibles, mould and plague because “it’s the creatures multiplying in outbreaks and infestations that generate horror.”

It’s also old news. I’ve collected quite the file of creepy-crawly global-warming scare stories over the years including “super-sized, extra-itchy poison ivy” (Ottawa Citizen 2006), “tropical and potentially lethal fungus” (Globe and Mail 2007), venomous jellyfish the size of refrigerators (MSNBC 2009), mass starvation and the extinction of humanity (Globe and Mail 2009), bigger and more frequent kidney stones (Ottawa Citizen 2008), soggy pork chops (Globe and Mail 2009), asthma, allergies and runny noses (NBC 2015) and the conflict in Darfur (Ottawa Citizen 2007). Not to mention drought and flooding and the migration of France’s fabled wine industry to … um… Scotland (all Ottawa Citizen 2007), where they’ll be pairing a fine ruby Loch Ness with rat haggis I suppose. Och aye mon.

I could go on and on. But they already did. And don’t go reading these stories and thinking they offer evidence, or rather speculation, that warmth benefits life generally.

Far from it. Virtually none of these stories has anything cute or cuddly flourishing. Unless you count stray cats in Toronto (National Post 2007). Instead it’s a strangely un-PC combination of lookism and speciesism. So if you want to be a climate alarmist without all that tedious mucking about with facts, here’s how.

Make a collage of many living things. Circle everything you’d like to see, up close or from a distance, like coral reefs or polar bears. Now predict their catastrophic decline if it gets two degrees warmer. (Don’t worry about them having somehow staggered through the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Pretend it never happened and hope it’s gone in the morning.)

If you want to be a climate alarmist without all that tedious mucking about with facts, here’s how

Now circle all the really hideous stuff. Eyes on stalks, pointy noses, smelly, slimy. Predict a huge increase. Chocolate? Gone. (Globe and Mail 2012.) Diarrhea-inducing vibrio bacteria? Coming soon to an intestine near you. (MSNBC 2011.) Zika, or crabs swarming beaches? Oh yeah. (NBC 2016.) Insomnia, insanity and suicide? You bet. (Washington Post 2017, National Post 2018, Globe and Mail 2018.) Beer? Going going … (Guardian 2018.)

Friends, scientists, countrypersons, lend me your ears before some warmth-surfing pest chews them off. Even if a rapidly warming Earth were bad for man and beast, and our fault, the initial phases, with temperatures well within the range since the last glaciation ended 12,000 years back, can’t bring only bad consequences. No wind is that ill.

Nor is it plausible that every single new study says it’s worse than scientists thought. (Especially if “the science is settled”). If it were real science somebody would occasionally discover there’s a bit more time, climate somewhere will improve in the short run, some species that doesn’t have you fumbling for the Raid will flourish briefly. But no.

Even if climate change is going to have wiped out “sea spiders as large as a dinner plate” (Ottawa Citizen 2002) it’s the tragic loss of a unique species. But mostly it’s bumble bees (NBC 2015) or the coelacanth (Ottawa Citizen 2001), which cruised through the Permian-Triassic and Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinctions but now dangles by a rhetorical thread. Oh, and the emperor penguin gets it too (NBC 2014). Plus plankton (Globe and Mail 2000). And walruses (NBC 2014).

As for the rats, one pregnant female will send 15,000 loathsome offspring a year straight to your suburb. None of their natural enemies will flourish. And “Rats are just the beginning … populations of dangerous crop-eating insects are likely to explode … Similar horrors lurk offshore … a population explosion of purple sea urchins — ‘cockroaches of the ocean’ — is choking out other denizens of Pacific kelp forests … we’re all sharing this warming planet, and at the very least surely we can unite against a future filled with rats.”

Or one filled with imaginary horrors? No? Rats.

SOURCE

Fraudulent science behind radiation regulations

Toxicology scientist documents fraud in Nobel award for “Linear No Threshold” toxicity model

Paul Driessen and Dr. Jay Lehr

The 2018 elections underscore the need for bipartisan efforts to address scientific frauds that promote and justify ever more stringent regulations – often to the great detriment of people, patients and society.

In fact, world-renowned toxicology expert Dr. Edward Calabrese has now discovered and documented fraud behind the award of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The prize was given to Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe.

By contrast, toxicologists have long used actual experiments to establish dose response models and determine what exposure to various kinds of radiation (or chemicals) actually pose cancer (or other) risks for humans.

Low doses are generally benign, they have found. In many cases, low doses even help animals and humans ward off disease, safeguard bodies against certain chemicals or diseases, or actually cure cancer and other diseases. Higher doses can cause problems, and therefore must be calculated and regulated.

For example, via a process called hormesis, low levels of radon exposure can protect against cancer; 80 milligrams of aspirin are thought to prevent strokes; and trace amounts of selenium help our bodies counteract the harmful effects of mercury in our blood.

However, despite this evidence, government agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have followed Muller’s straight-line Linear No Threshold (LNT) model for decades. Besides giving rise to what many say are overly restrictive and even unnecessary regulations, the LNT model has actually harmed patients, by greatly precluding the use of radiation in curative medicine.

But now University of Massachusetts at Amherst health sciences professor Calabrese has documented LNT fraud – through an exhaustive review of communications that began July 22, 1927 in the journal Science, where Muller first put forth the claim that any amount of radiation causes cancer. Calabrese lays out his findings in an October 2018 analysis in the Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine journal.

Calabrese has spent years investigating Muller’s claims. His story unfolds like a detective novel with all the characters who played intentional or inadvertent roles in the deception indicted by their written and published communications 90 years ago. There are 34 documents in all.

They show that, without any supporting scientific data or peer review, Muller presented his claims at the Fifth International Genetics Congress in September 1927, where he described how he had supposedly induced hundreds of gene mutations by bombarding common fruit flies (Drosophila) with x-rays.

Muller’s closest friend and colleague, William Rice Institute biologist Edgar Altenburg, told Muller his experiment had not caused any mutations. Instead, they created changes by eliminating pieces of the flies’ chromosomes, enabling the creation of inheritable traits or progeny, but no mutations whatever.

As early as 1929, in a paper in the Journal of Genetics, geneticist Barbara McClintock demonstrated that Altenburg’s criticism of Muller was correct. She went on to win the 1983 Nobel Prize for her other work in genetics.

However, Muller repeatedly brushed off his friend’s advisories about his error and McClintock’s proof that his hypothesis was incorrect. The recriminations may have led to Muller’s failed suicide attempt in 1932. His suicide note was directed to Altenburg, rather than his family, and Altenburg never challenged Muller again. It appears that loyalty to a close friend may have overwhelmed his responsibility to science, medicine and humanity.

The scientific community was enthralled by Muller’s claims and the publicity it received. Scientists worldwide quickly and uncritically came to believe that Muller actually had produced gene mutations and was advancing one of the most significant questions confronting biology. His lack of data never slowed down the wave of excitement.

Muller resumed his duplicity quite strongly throughout the years leading to his Nobel Prize lecture on December 12, 1946. There he deceived the audience by arguing that there was no possibility of a threshold or harmless dose response for radiation-induced mutations. The deceit was apparently deliberate.

Calabrese documents that Muller had seen data that supported the “threshold or harmless” conclusion. It came from two scientists, Ernst Caspari and Curt Stern, who worked at the University of Rochester and released their findings one month prior to Muller’s Nobel Lecture. Muller ignored their findings and promoted his deception to support his long-held commitment to his Linear No Threshold claim, which is commonly referred to as the “LNT dose response for mutation and cancer risks.”

Muller’s story appears to be one of unbridled ambition, self-serving manipulation, a scientific community that failed to demand accountability, and a Nobel Prize committee that inadequately evaluated the findings which lead to the award. The implications of these actions have been incredibly damaging.

They resulted in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences adopting the LNT in 1956 for all regulatory programs relating to radiation. This convention was subsequently adopted worldwide.

The deceptions continue to justify over-regulation and deprive patients of potential cures, without any acknowledgement or change by the scientific community or government regulatory agencies.

Incredibly, modern nucleotide analysis methods have repeated Muller’s experiments with x-ray bombardments – and shown conclusively that Muller’s alterations to fruit flies resulted in modest to extraordinarily large chromosomal deletions, rather than point mutations.

In addition, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was exacerbated by a commitment to the LNT, which persuaded the Japanese government to mandate that people be moved unnecessarily miles from their homes. That led to an estimated 2,200 premature elderly deaths due to stress.

Not a single radiation illness or death occurred, because there was never enough radiation lasting long enough in the prevailing winds to cause either. But the Fukushima scare lasted for years afterward.

Most amazing and distressing of all, the deceptions have led to the rejection of low-dose radiation (LDR) treatments. Underscoring how devastating this can be for patients, Dr. Kiyohiko Sakamoto gave himself total-body LDR treatments for his systemic stage IV colon cancer. Thus far, he is a 20+ year survivor!

In his landmark paper, Calabrese says, regardless of Muller’s deceit, “the most significant criticisms and concerns should be directed to the scientific and regulatory communities, such as U.S. EPA, that have uncritically adopted and sustained Muller’s findings as the foundation for cancer risk assessment.”

They have permitted this process to be dominated by ideological perspectives that must end if healthcare is to be optimized by using low dose radiation to arrest or cure cancers, and prevent needless deaths.

The reasons behind this travesty of science and medicine are simple. First, prominent scientists do not like to be found incorrect on major issues. Second, an activist anti-nuclear population views all radiation as evil, whether that view is rational, irrational or actually harmful to people’s health and welfare.

Hopefully, a “refreshed” House of Representatives and stronger Republican Senate will team up with the White House to correct an egregious wrong that has negatively impacted the health of cancer victims and others who most need advanced radiation treatments that have too long been rendered unavailable.

Any LNT changes will likely be resisted by environmental and health activists and others committed to the status quo. However, Congress, EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, and other regulatory bodies worldwide need to reexamine and revise existing LNT rules. Countless lives hang in the balance.

Via email

Australia: Isaac Plains coalmine ramps up production

Stanmore Coal has secured additional long-term port capacity at Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal, Mackay, paving the way to step up production at its Isaac Plains mine near Moranbah.

The company said the extra capacity added certainty for the company to pursue options to take its coal handling and preparation plant to its nameplate capacity of 3.5Mtpa ROM.

In announcement to the ASX, it said the Isaac Plains complex’s reserves and resources were sufficient to allow it to ramp up production to match that capacity.

It is increasing its production guidance for the 2019 financial year from 1.8Mtpa to 2Mtpa.

SOURCE

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

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

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9 November

Headline-Grabbing Global Warming Study Suffers From A Major Math Error

The recent headline-grabbing study that claimed global warming was heating the oceans up faster than expected suffers from a major math error, according to two researchers.

The study, which was published in a prestigious scientific journal at the end of October, put forward results suggesting global warming was much worse than previously believed. The media ate the results up.

Independent scientist Nic Lewis found the study had “apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations.” Lewis’ findings were quickly corroborated by another researcher.

Numerous media outlets uncritically highlighted the study’s findings. The Washington Post, for example, reported the work suggested “Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted.”

The Post’s coverage of the “startling” climate study was echoed by The New York Times, which claimed the study suggested global warming “has been more closely in line with scientists’ worst-case scenarios.”

The BBC warned “[t]his could make it much more difficult to keep global warming within safe levels this century.”

However, Lewis found the new paper’s findings stemmed from a math error. Lewis said “a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.”

“Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations,” Lewis wrote in a blog post published on climate scientist Judith Curry’s website.

Lewis found the study’s authors, led by Princeton University scientist Laure Resplandy, erred in calculating the linear trend of estimated ocean warming between 1991 and 2016. Lewis has also criticized climate model predictions, which generally over-predict warming.

Resplandy and her colleagues estimated ocean heat by measuring the volume of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere. The results: the oceans took up 60 percent more heat than previously thought. The study only sent alarm bells ringing, especially in the wake of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment.

“The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already,” Resplandy told The Post at the end of October.

After correcting for the error, however, Lewis found the paper’s ocean warming rate “is about average compared with the other estimates they showed, and below the average for 1993–2016.”

Lewis’ results were replicated by University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr., who shared his analysis via Twitter on Tuesday.

"Lewis is correct that the linear trends reported by Resplandy et al are not matched by what the data indicate. See figure below which I just created based on data provided by Resplandy et al.
Mistakes happen in science, that's no crime. What matters more is what you do next"

Resplandy and her co-authors hoped their study would resolve problems many scientists have with measuring ocean temperatures before the use of Argo floats in 2007. Before then, scientists patched together data from boat engine intakes, buckets and buoys to measure ocean heat.

However, Resplandy did not respond to Lewis about the errors he found in her paper. “To date I have had no substantive response from her, despite subsequently sending a further email containing the key analysis sections from a draft of this article,” Lewis wrote on Tuesday.

SOURCE

‘Green Wave’ Crashes, Environmentalists Blame Oil Companies

Not only did a Democratic “blue wave” fail to materialize on Tuesday night, the “green wave” of major global warming and energy-related ballot measures largely failed to get voter approval as well.

Voters in Arizona, Colorado and Washington rejected measures aimed at fighting global warming, despite two of those states being in Democratic hands.

The “Green New Deal” pundits gushed over in Washington state went down in flames, with voters overwhelmingly rejecting a state ballot measure to tax carbon dioxide emissions, despite its support from Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.

Washingtonians voted against the carbon tax initiative 56 percent to 43 percent, according to state election officials.

“The voters have spoken,” Tom Pyle, president of the free market American Energy Alliance, said in an emailed statement.

“It’s time to listen to them and focus on policies that expand the availability, affordability, and reliability of energy, rather than on policies that makes energy more scarce, more expensive, and less reliable,” said Pyle, a former Trump transition team leader opposed to carbon taxes.

Environmentalists argue the oil industry’s $30 million cash influx into the ballot measure campaign tipped the scales, compared to the more than $15 million spent by carbon tax supporters.

“Democrats did not quite get the blue wave they wanted, but it was even worse for environmentalists,” The New Republic’s Emily Atkin wrote on Wednesday, before blaming, in part, spending by energy producers. “There was no green wave whatsoever.”

However, Washington voters rejected a similar carbon tax measure in 2016, and Inslee was forced to admit defeat earlier this year trying to pass a carbon tax through the state legislature.

In Arizona, voters rejected liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s campaign to increase Arizona’s green energy mandate from 15 percent by 2025 to 50 percent by 2030. Steyer’s campaign group, NextGen Climate Action, spent about $23 million backing the ballot measure.

Utility groups, including the owner of the state’s largest utility, spent nearly $31 million opposing Steyer’s effort. Nearly 70 percent of voters rejected the ballot measure, with only about 30 percent supporting it.

Steyer, however, was successful in getting Nevada voters to support a similar measure that was on the ballot in Arizona. Nevadans voted nearly 59 percent to 41 percent to increase the state’s green energy mandate to 50 percent by 2030.

NextGen pumped more than $10 million into the ballot campaign, but there was no group registered opposing the ballot — the group the Coalition of Energy Users did work against the green mandate increase, but their spending was not registered on Ballotpedia.

Environmentalists also saw voters overwhelmingly reject a measure that would have effectively banned new hydraulic fracturing operations in most of the state. Voters rejected the measure nearly 57 percent to 43 percent.

In that campaign, the oil and gas industry led opposition forces in spending more than $30 million to defeat the anti-fracking initiative, which would have required a 2,500-foot buffer between drilling and “vulnerable” areas.

Environmentalists only spent about $1.2 million in support of the anti-fracking measure, but the spending failure could stem from the fact Democrats were divided on the issue. Prominent Democrats, including former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and former Governor Bill Ritter, opposed the de facto fracking ban.

“Proposition 112 would have hurt more than just the natural gas and oil industry, as seventy-seven percent of the 43,000 jobs it would have eliminated in year one would have come from outside the energy sector,” said Colorado Petroleum Council executive director Tracee Bentley in a statement.

SOURCE

Oil drilling stocks surge after Colorado voters reject restrictions on industry

Oil and gas companies with operations in Colorado are seeing their shares jump after voters rejected a ballot proposal that would have placed tough restrictions on drilling in the Centennial State.

Colorado's proposition 112 would have prohibited energy companies from drilling within about half a mile from homes, schools, businesses and water sources. The measure would have cut the state's projected oil and gas output roughly in half by 2023, according to an estimate by S&P Global Platts Analytics.

Shares of Bonanza Creek Energy and Extraction Oil & Gas, two drillers that produce solely from Colorado's Wattenberg Field, surged about 9.5 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively. Shares of PDC Energy, another Wattenberg player, were up nearly 8 percent shortly after the opening bell on Wednesday.

Shares of more diversified drillers with a footprint in Colorado were also higher. Anadarko Petroleum's shares rose 6.5 percent in premarket trading, while Noble Energy's stock price jumped nearly 4 percent.

While Colorado voters rejected Proposition 112, they made Democratic Jared Polis their new governor. Polis campaigned on generating 100 percent of Colorado's electric power from renewable energy sources by 2040.

SOURCE

Going Backwards on Settled Science

On everything from climate to gender, leftists have an agenda of using science to manipulate

Global warming is far from the most pressing issue on voters’ minds. According to Reuters, just 16% said they feel motivated to vote because of climate change, which pales in comparison to the 84% who said they don’t. On a related matter, Reuters also found that 37.1% would “consider this issue as one of many important factors” when voting. This is slightly above the 30.7% who responded that “this issue will not impact” their ballots.

Given just how much we hear about the alarming state of the climate, why is global warming so low on voters’ totem pole? A big reason is the outcome of climate predictions. Not only has Al Gore proven to be a false prophet, but computer models are anywhere from 30% to 45% overzealous on warming, polar bears are alive and well, impropriety regarding the handling of temperature data is rampant, and frankly, most Americans enjoy global warming. It’s also good for things like U.S. corn yields — contrary, of course, to what we were told.

Yet there’s another related reason, and it has to do with where the scientific body is heading. Two examples tell the story. The New York Times recently ran a piece titled “Anatomy Does Not Determine Gender, Experts Say” wherein the author asserts, “Defining gender as a condition determined strictly by a person’s genitals is based on a notion that doctors and scientists abandoned long ago as oversimplified and often medically meaningless.”

A few days later, some 1,600 scientists cosigned a statement in which they bellowed, “As scientists, we are compelled to write to you, our elected representatives, about the current administration’s proposal to legally define gender as a binary condition determined at birth, based on genitalia, and with plans to clarify disputes using ‘genetic testing’. This proposal is fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity.”

Keep in mind, we’re not debating rocket science or space physics in these instances. We’re literally fighting over common sense and whether or not there are even two genders. The XX and XY chromosomes are what we can unequivocally refer to as “settled science,” yet the scientific body is going backwards by suggesting everything in life is relative. For this reason, it’s not inappropriate at all to ask the question: Why shouldn’t we question the prevailing narrative on climate change?

SOURCE

Australian students plan school strikes to protest against climate inaction

Government by children? Greenie parents behind it, no doubt

Hundreds of students around the country are preparing to strike from school because of what they say is a failure by politicians to recognise climate change as an emergency.

They’ve been inspired by 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, a Swedish student who has been sitting outside the parliament in central Stockholm to draw attention to the fears younger generations hold about the global climate crisis and the failure of countries to take urgent action.

Fourteen-year-old Milou Albrecht, a year 8 student at Castlemaine Steiner school in Victoria, her classmate Harriet O’Shea Carre, and 11-year-old Callum Bridgefoot from Castlemaine North primary school, started by protesting last week outside of the offices of their local representatives, the Labor MP Lisa Chester and the Nationals deputy leader, Bridget McKenzie. They’ve been joined by 50 students from local schools and are planning weekly events.

And what began as a small local protest is growing into a nationwide movement. Students in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Perth, Hobart, the Whitsundays, Lismore, the Gold Coast, Albury-Wodonga and the Sunshine Coast are planning to walk out of classes this month.

Similar plans are being explored in other regional areas including Coffs Harbour, Cairns, Townsville and the southern highlands of New South Wales. Hundreds of students have indicated they want to attend protests outside state parliaments in the capital cities on 28, 29 and 30 November.

The idea for the strikes came from the Castlemaine students, who contacted the Australian Youth Climate Coalition for help.

They have had assistance from the coalition and their parents with contacting media, building a website and spreading the word about the strikes through their social networks.

“We think it’s important because it’s a huge problem,” Milou said. “The Earth is already too hot, with droughts in winter in NSW and the coral reef is dying.”

She said students were speaking to Greta in Sweden each week. “I would like our politicians to acknowledge climate change is an emergency and take the necessary steps in order to have a sustainable world,” she said.

A 14-year-old Fort Street high school student, Jean Hinchliffe, is organising the Sydney walkout on 30 November. She said there was a template letter students who were worried about taking time off class could give to their teachers.

“We’ve got involved because at this stage we can’t vote, we’re not politicians and we want to make a difference,” she said. “We can’t stand around waiting.

“I think it’s because climate change is scary seeing that it’s our future. This is a fact and not to be debated.”

SOURCE

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

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

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8 November, 2018

Natural Disasters Are Destroying a Lower Percentage of Humanity's Stuff Since 1990

Absolute losses increased, but the proportion of losses relative to global GDP has dropped

"Economic losses caused by climate-related disasters have soared by about two and a half times in the last 20 years," reported Reuters citing a new United Nations report last month. The report, Economic Losses, Poverty & Disasters 1998-2017, cited direct losses of $2.9 trillion, of which 77 per cent were attributed to extreme weather events amounting to $2.25 trillion in losses. The report notes that this is a "dramatic rise" of 151 per cent compared with losses reported between 1978 and 1997, which amounted to $895 billion. That sounds bad and it is; after all hundreds of thousands of people were killed or injured in these disasters plus losing their houses and businesses.

But is toting up annual absolute losses really the best way to measure how disaster trends are affecting humanity? Actually, the United Nations doesn't think so. The U.N.'s General Assembly endorsed in 2015 the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which sets as a global target the reduction of "direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030." This target recognizes that as the world grows wealthier that people are building much more stuff that can to be exposed to natural disasters.

The U.N. report observes that with the notable exception of Puerto Rico (due to the destruction of Hurricane Maria) that the top 10 countries that have lost the highest proportion of their GDPs to disasters are all poor countries including places like Haiti, Honduras, Mongolia, and North Korea.

In a new study in Environmental Hazards, University of Colorada political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. reports that while absolute disaster losses have been increasing since 1990, percentage losses have been declining. Using loss data from reinsurance companies Munich Re and Aon Benfield, the study finds that in constant 2017 US dollars, both weather-related and non-weather related catastrophe losses have increased, with a 74 percent increase in the former and 182 percent increase in the latter since 1990. However, since 1990 both overall and weather/climate losses have decreased as proportion of global GDP.

Eyeballing the graph suggests that the annual disaster losses have trended downward from 0.3 to about 0.25 percent of global GDP since 1990. That means that some progress has been made toward meeting the Sendai Framework's global target of reducing direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030.

Pielke does warn that "extending this trend into the future will require vigilance to exposure, vulnerability and resilience in the face of uncertainty about the future frequency and magnitude of extreme events." Mother Nature never gives up trying to kill us and wreck our things.

SOURCE

New Book Out! "The Green Swastika: Environmentalism in the Third Reich", By William Walter Kay

Approx 185 pages, 400 footnotes and 20 years of research.

Available from Amazon

The Nazis had all sorts of Greenie priorities. They could be regarded as the world's first Green party. Their ideal world was the same: An imaginary rural past

    Study: Natural Cycles Caused As Much As Half Of Arctic Sea Ice Melt

Up to half the observed decline in Arctic sea ice is likely the result of natural climate cycles, according to a new study out of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

The study, published Monday, found that “internal variability contributes to about 40–50% of observed multi-decadal decline in Arctic sea ice” observed since the late 1970s, based on climate model simulations.

Natural climate cycles, like El Ninos and La Ninas, can speed up or negate Arctic sea ice retreat driven by man-made global warming, the study found.

“Internal variability can enhance or mute changes in climate due to greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, internal variability has tended to enhance Arctic sea ice loss,” co-author Stephen Po-Chedley, a climate scientist at LLNL, said in a statement.

Po-Chedley and his colleagues wanted to find out why Arctic sea ice decline has been larger than climate models predicted. Researchers hope their study can help climate models better predict changes in the Arctic in a warmer world.

Arctic sea ice reached its third-lowest extent on record in October, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Sea ice covered 2.34 million square miles of the polar seas that month.

October sea ice extent has shrunk 31,000 square miles per year, which is about 9.5 percent per decade below the 30-year average in the satellite record.

“When natural variability is taken into account, Arctic sea ice loss is quite similar across models and observations,” Po-Chedley said.

The study was led by scientist Qinghua Ding of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ding was also the lead author of a 2017 study that found natural fluctuations in the climate “may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline” in sea ice.

Scientists published similar findings in 2017 regarding Antarctic sea ice. In that study, British Antarctic Survey researcher John Turner found Antarctic sea ice decline recorded in 2016 was likely caused by a series of Southern Ocean storms, not global warming.

“It highlights the fact that the climate of the Antarctic is incredibly variable,” Turner said in 2017.

Antarctic sea ice had actually been increasing up until this point, hitting record levels in late 2014. South pole sea ice also defied climate model expectations by increasing, despite global warming.

SOURCE

UK Government Is Feeding The Green Blob

JAMES DELINGPOLE

Would you pay an Irish environmental lawyer £232,000 a year to lobby to the government to raise your taxes and to make it harder to do business if he told you it was for the “public good”?

Well if you’re a UK taxpayer you already do.

His name is James Thornton and he heads a charity called Client Earth, which the UK government currently funds to the tune of nearly £1 million a year via the Department for International Development.

The problem is, as Paul Homewood notes, Client Earth is the Green Blob with bells on.

Essentially, it’s an outfit of environmental lawyers who use the court system to obstruct industrial progress in the name of saving the planet.

One of their areas of specialty is, you guessed it, ‘climate change.’

They are working, for example, with the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to force “important financial institutions to engage with the risks posed to their businesses by climate change at a strategic level and to demonstrate to both regulators and customers that they are looking ahead to manage future risks as they develop.”

They are encouraging a Shell pension fund member to pursue the company for failing to act on “the threat that climate change poses to its investments.”

They are busily touting for more legal action like the Urgenda Foundation case brought by 886 Dutch citizens against their government for violating their human rights by failing to reduce the country’s CO2 emissions sufficiently.

Now it’s possible — if you’re a climate loon, say — that you’ll thoroughly applaud the kind of prissy, meddling, pettifogging, red-tape-increasing, tax-squandering, virtue-signaling, right-on busybodying in which this outfit specializes.

In which case, you’re perfectly entitled to spend your money (presuming you have a job which, as a greenie, you might well not) funding this splendid charity and keeping its hive of lawyers in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.

Judging by their accounts, unearthed by Homewood, they’re very, very good at spending their donors’ money, mostly on themselves.

As for aid itself, precious little seems to filter through to the third world. According to their latest accounts, their annual expenditure of £7.3m all goes on personnel costs, consultants, travel, publications, and Head Office costs.

They have 83 staff on their books, equating to the average remuneration of £50K a year.

What is less clear, though, is why the rest of us should have to stump up for their Teslas and their yoga retreats in Greece and their colonic irrigation treatments and whatever else it is that high-powered environmental lawyers do with their money.

This grinning enviro-loon James Thornton defines what his firm does as acting in “the public good.”

But as his expensive Yale education must surely have made him aware “the public good” is a subjective concept, dependent largely on the political outlook of the person defining it.

Speaking for myself — and I imagine most of my readers — I’d define most of what Client Earth does as the very opposite of public good.

I think they’re a bunch of do-gooding leftists who have no right to a penny of our earnings, let alone nearly an annual £1 million of them.

We’re told by Chancellor Phillip Hammond that the age of “austerity” must come to an end.

But if the shysters at Client Earth are the kind of people our government has been spunking our money on for the last few years, then it looks to me like the age of “austerity” never actually started…

SOURCE

Battered Australian Power Consumers Cry Mercy as Climate Cult Ramps Up Renewables Rhetoric

Wind and solar power have never been about logic and reason, it’s a deranged form of ideology that drives their promoters. The zealots that promote that pathetic pair are screaming blue murder, as the political tide turns against them. The rhetoric gets ramped up, even as reality bites.

Sydney billionaires living in $100 million Harbourside mansions are just the latest class of virtue signalling cynics to condescend from their very privileged positions to dictate the terms on the form of electricity that only their peers can afford. Mike Cannon-Brookes, who has a Masters in Smug, is now lecturing Australians on what constitutes ‘fair dinkum power’. He’s made his fortune out of the Internet, which in Australia runs on coal-fired power; always has, always will.

Now Cannon-Brookes is demanding an end to what powers Australia and his beloved Internet.

Naturally, Cannon-Brookes commences his pontification by claiming the moral high ground on climate change and runs the line that urgent action is required to save the planet from everybody else’s energy use (not his, of course).

Cannon-Brookes recently targeted STT as part of his Twitter storm, unleashing his push from all sun and wind powered future – he reckons he can take “Australia 100% onto renewables eventually”. A Sydney boy, Cannon-Brookes may have never heard of South Australia where, having only reached the halfway mark, it’s already the butt of international jokes, suffering the world’s highest power prices and Third World reliability, to boot.

Unwilling to deal with troubling facts such as the skyrocketing power prices and blackouts that plague SA, Cannon-Brookes and his ilk instead attack STT and our fellow travellers as “anti-wind, climate deniers”.

The guff about STT (or any other repository of common sense, for that matter) being “anti-wind” is … well … just plain silly.

STT loves a summer breeze just as much as the next family sweating on the beach – we’re partial to surfing a ‘winter-stormy’ – and love being tucked up inside during a winter squall. And sailing wouldn’t be much without a southerly bluster.

No, it’s the nonsense that is wind power that’s the prime target for STT.

The use of words and phrases such as “anti-wind”, “denier”, “denial”, “belief” and “believer” have no place in science, politics or economics. Then there’s the hysterical phrase: “climate denier”.

No one at STT, well, actually no one anywhere, denies that there’s such a thing as the “climate”.

That word, by definition, incorporates within it the concept of “change”; for if the climate had not changed over the 4.6 billion years that our Earth has been lapping around the Sun, it would have probably remained a solid frozen lump of ice; and we wouldn’t be here arguing the toss about a few degrees, one way or the other.

Climate hysterics run a kind of ‘Goldilocks fantasy’ that, at some point in the recent past (we can’t quite pin down when) the climate was “just right”. Ever since, apparently, we’ve been lurching towards a man-made climate catastrophe.

In the 1970s school kids were terrorised with forecasts of a looming ice age. 20 years on and the reign of terror was reversed: catastrophic global warming was the next big thing.

As global surface temperatures stubbornly refused to budge for nearly 20 years – ‘the pause’ – the rhetoric shifted from global warming to “climate change”: a tautology if ever there was one.

As any geologist will tell you, the Earth’s climate is in a constant state of change: change is endogenous to the model. Whether that change is significant or “dangerous”, as the most strident would have us believe, is yet to be seen. Humans have tolerated severe ice ages and, somehow, miraculously managed to survive. If the planet warms, we’ll survive that, too. It’s called “adaptation”: a central feature of humanity, without which the species wouldn’t have 8 billion units presently roaming the planet.

STT takes the position that man-made emissions of CO2 may increase atmospheric temperatures. But we don’t concede that wind or solar power has made – or is even capable of making – one jot of difference to CO2 emissions in the electricity sector; principally because they are not – and will never be – an ‘alternative’ to conventional generation systems, which are always and everywhere available on demand:

Assume that man-made CO2 emissions in the electricity sector are a problem. Then the only presently available solution is nuclear power; unless, of course, you’re prepared to live in Stone Age darkness.

STT’s work is aimed at a pair of meaningless power sources; that are insanely expensive, and utterly pointless, on every level. For those on both sides of the argument (including “climate deniers”) that slavishly connect industrial wind turbines or solar panels with global warming (or climate change) they, in effect, box themselves into a logical corner.

On the one hand, if the AGW champions are wrong and we are in fact on the brink of the next ice age, applying their (by then failed) man-made CO2/warming argument, we should scrap every last (planet cooling) wind turbine and solar panel and start burning coal and gas as fast as humanly possible and prevent the next ‘big freeze’.

Alternatively, if the “climate deniers” are wrong, temperatures start to rise and Australia becomes a lifeless desert, then the AGW camp gets to claim victory and the high moral ground.

From that platform, the anti-CO2 crowd will have the imperative to carpet the entire planet with an endless sea of giant industrial wind turbines and solar panels as far as the eye can see.

Having pinned their arguments against wind power on the basis that CO2 caused AGW is a furphy, the “deniers” would be forced to concede their opponents’ case; and to also concede the need for a completely wind and solar powered electricity system.

And that’s why STT seeks to disconnect arguments for and against global warming, from arguments about generating electricity with sunshine and breezes.

As wind power can only ever be delivered (if at all) at crazy, random intervals it will never amount to a meaningful power source and will always require 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time with fossil fuel generation sources; in Australia, principally coal-fired plant. As a result, wind power generation will never “displace”, let alone “replace” fossil fuel generation sources.

Contrary to the anti-fossil fuel squad’s ranting, there isn’t a ‘choice’ between wind power and fossil fuel power generation: there’s a ‘choice’ between wind power (with fossil fuel powered back-up equal to 100% of its capacity) and relying on wind power alone. If you’re ready to ‘pick’ the latter, expect to be sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark more than 60% of the time.

Placed in the practical context of the needs of a functioning industrial society, wind power can be seen as the patent nonsense that it clearly is. If a country didn’t have a conventional power generation system (as we have), it would build one, anyway.

Despite the hype from RE zealots, the completely chaotic and very occasional delivery of wind and solar won’t be cured with giant batteries. Sure, at a technical level, it is possible to store volumes of electricity for a period, such that it might be released when power consumers need it. However, were such a thing ever attempted, the cost of the electricity generated, stored and later released would be astronomical and beyond the reach of all but dot.com billionaires and rock stars – people just like Mike Cannon-Brookes.

The world’s largest battery cuts a lonely figure in a paddock near Jamestown in South Australia’s mid North; it doesn’t generate power; it stores a piddling 100 MW worth; it consumes power during each charge/discharge cycle, lost as heat energy; it cost taxpayers $150 million; and would satisfy SA’s minimum power demand for all of four minutes. On those numbers, anyone talking about batteries providing an economic solution to Australia’s energy crisis, is either delusional or hoping to sell them.

Facts, logic and reason of never stopped the likes of Mike Cannon-Brookes from trying to destroy the system that works, by pushing wind and solar, which never will.

But, always and everywhere, central to their case is the idea that the only way to save the planet is to run it entirely on sunshine and breezes.

SOURCE

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

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

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7 November, 2018

Energy storage capacity set to soar, 300 UK-based companies involved in new sector

More slippery Green/Left statistics. They give battery statistics in MW (Megawatts) and GW (Gigawatts). And they mean it as they do so repeatedly. And it is the post of a renewables website so it is official, not just some journalistic muddle.

But MW and GW tells you nothing. You want to know for HOW LONG you can supply current at that rate. You need to give your figures in MWh (megawatt hours). So the figures below are wholly meaningless from any practical viewpoint. If they supply current at any sort of high rate, batteries regularly go "flat" in a matter of minutes. And what use is that?

The Green/Left HAVE to deceive -- because reality constantly undermines their claims. And it doesn't bother them to lie. They believe that "There's no such thing as right and wrong" anyway. They are a very poisonous lot

A new database to be launched by RenewableUK today shows a massive increase in battery storage capacity is set to take place - enough to power nearly half a million electric vehicles.

Planning applications in the UK to install just 2MW of battery storage capacity in 2012 have soared since then to a cumulative total of 6,874MW in 2018. (92% of applications for storage projects are approved first time).

The database will allow RenewableUK members to access comprehensive information on nearly 400 UK energy storage projects. It will show where operational projects are located on an interactive map, as well as schemes being planned and under construction, including those sited alongside solar, wind and tidal energy projects.

It also reveals that the average capacity of applications for new battery storage projects has increased from 10MW in 2016 to 27MW today, and that more than 300 UK-based businesses are operating in this new sector.

3.3GW of storage capacity (including hydro projects) is now operational in the UK and a further 5.4.GW has planning consent - including 4.8GW of battery storage, which is enough capacity to fully charge 480,000 electric vehicles.

The database will be launched at the first joint conference on energy storage to be held by RenewableUK and the Solar Trade Association, in London today.

The conference will explore what our energy system would need from storage to achieve 100% of our power from renewable generation, and the new technologies that could get us there. Developers, investors, representatives from Government, National Grid, Ofgem, legal professionals and policy analysts will examine the new business models and energy services which are already up and running, and the shape of those to come, as well as the potential obstacles standing in the way of the rapid development of a low-carbon system.

RenewableUK’s Executive Director Emma Pinchbeck said:

“The energy sector is breaking new ground by making an unprecedented transition to a clean, flexible system which will power our country in the future. Energy storage is already playing a key part in that, from small local projects to grid-scale schemes. We’re decentralising the way the power system works and, at our conference, we’ll hear how an increased share of wind, solar and storage on the grid could transform UK energy markets”.

The Chief Executive of the Solar Trade Association Chris Hewett said:

“Energy storage has already begun to unlock the full potential of wind and solar energy, and it’s happening faster than almost anyone anticipated. It’s clear that storage will be the foundation of a smart, flexible and decarbonised future energy system, and this conference is an excellent opportunity to hear straight from the experts and business leaders who are working to make that future a reality”.

SOURCE

Ozone layer will be completely HEALED by the 2060s: Holes in the upper atmosphere are recovering at a rate of up to three per cent a decade, UN study says

What rubbish! How do they explain that the hole was at its maximum extent only recently -- in 2015?

The ozone layer that shields life from cancer-causing solar rays is slowly recovering, a UN study has revealed.

A hole was found in the ozone layer above Antarctica in the 1980s as a result of harmful chemicals being pumped into the atmosphere.

This has allowed large amounts of ultraviolet light to reach Earth unabated and has been linked to an increase in skin cancer diagnoses.

Severe bans on the manufacture of these products has seen the hole in the ozone recover at a rate of one to three per cent per decade, scientists have now found.

This process reverses the damage done by years of dangerous depletion and is expected to be fully repaired by the 2060s, the study revealed.

The study was a four-yearly review of the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 ban on man-made gases that damage the fragile high-altitude ozone layer.

It found long-term decreases in the amount of these gases in the atmosphere and that the stratospheric ozone was recovering.

'The Antarctic ozone hole is recovering, while continuing to occur every year, the report said.

'As a result of the Montreal Protocol much more severe ozone depletion in the polar regions has been avoided.'

The Antarctic ozone hole was expected to gradually close, returning to 1980 levels in the 2060s, the report said.

'Evidence presented by the authors shows that the ozone layer in parts of the stratosphere has recovered at a rate of 1-3 per cent per decade since 2000,' UN Environment and the World Meteorological Organisation said.

'At projected rates, Northern Hemisphere and mid-latitude ozone is scheduled to heal completely by the 2030s followed by the Southern Hemisphere in the 2050s and polar regions by 2060.'

SOURCE

Is repairing and recycling really worth it?

By Tim Worstall

The idea that we might want to save resources is fairly central to the subject of economics. It is, after all, the science of allocating scarce resources.

Yet as with any science we need to start by defining our terms – just what are the scarce resources which we want to save? The usual answer here is simple enough: a scarce resource is a resource which is scarce. Somehow we’ve got to find a balancing act between all of those various scarcities in order to have the best lifestyle we can, given the constraints the universe places upon us.

Of all the resources we have at our disposal, our time is the scarcest of all. Our lifespans are not something we can stockpile, we can’t save them up for later, and there are very few of us who go into that long dark night thinking life took too long. The preciousness of our time is the crucial thing we need to understand in order to analyse the repair movement.

We are forever told that we live in a throwaway society. We buy cheap gimcracks and when they crack we toss them, instead of saving those resources by repairing and mending them into further use. Therefore, the theory goes, it makes sense change the design of everything so that we can repair, learn the skills to do so and expend our time on such matters rather than further exploitation of Mother Earth to make ourselves more trinkets.

This is great religion and lousy economics. For what is that scarce resource that we’re trying to save the use of? Our time. Why learn to repair the £10 toaster, why bother to fix it, when for that £10 we can have another and use the time instead to sing Bach cantatas? Or watch Big Brother… each to his own.

It isn’t, of course, quite that simple. To insist that we must save our time, exclusively as a target, is to be overly specific and wrong. We are not trying to save one particular resource and to insist that we are makes the same mistake as the environmentalist mavens who tell us we must save metals, or energy, or land.

What we need is to economise on the use of all the varied resources in the optimal manner. That means some things are worth using our time to recycle or repair, and others can be tossed into landfill or incinerator. What we need is a method of deciding how we are to optimise the use of which resource.

Fortunately, we’ve got one, it’s called the market and the associated price mechanism. As long as externalities – say, CO2 emissions, pollution, the value of our time – are included in those prices then the economy itself becomes the great calculating engine that Hayek insisted was the only one capable of working this out for us.

Some estimates tell us that it takes 45 minutes per household per week to sort waste for recycling. That’s hundreds of millions of man hours a year of human labour. We should – but don’t – value that at something like the average wage of £14 an hour, perhaps the minimum wage of closer to £8. At which point recycling becomes an obvious waste of resources, the value of the time taken to do it being very much greater than the value of what is extracted from the rubbish.

Repairing the gears on a bicycle might tip the other way, a couple of hours labour in order to get working again a few hundred pound piece of kit. The £10 toaster rather depends upon how you value your time. The importance is not necessarily what we do, but the method by which we reach the decision.

Yes, of course, we should save resources, but that includes our own time and effort. Of course, if policymakers want us to recycle more, they could further incentivise us to do so. But such a move would come at a cost to us in terms of time or money.

Price our time into the decisions and market prices will then tell us which we should be doing. The answer is we should be landfilling and burning a great deal more than current fashion says we should. The fact that doing so is cheaper than recycling or repairing is all the proof we need that it uses fewer resources.

SOURCE

Trump: 'People very much dispute' climate change

President Trump questioned his administration's scientists in an interview broadcast last night on "Axios on HBO."

President Trump dismissed the National Climate Assessment that shows humans are driving climate change, and said he was focused on the reports that dispute it.

Jim VandeHei of Axios showed Trump a copy of the assessment, which was developed by his administration, and said the language identifies humans as the source of global warming. The interview was conducted in the White House by VandeHei and reporter Jonathan Swan for the debut "Axios on HBO" show.

Trump repeated a popular talking point among conservatives, acknowledging that humans contribute in some way to global warming, without accepting mainstream climate science that says consumption of fossil fuels is responsible for warming the planet.

Instead of dismissing it as a hoax, as he has in the past, Trump said humans play a role because "there's certain pollutants that go up and there's certain things that happen, certain things we do."

Trump then repeated a talking point he first used several weeks ago. The president claimed that climate change will "go back" on its own. Scientists dispute that characterization.

"Is there climate change? Yeah. Will it go back like this, I mean, will it change? Probably, that's what I think," Trump said as he waved his right hand. "I believe it goes this way, and I believe man, meaning us people — man and women, to be politically correct, because everyone says man, but now we have to add women to that one, too — man and women, we do have an impact, but I don't believe the impact is nearly what some say, and other scientists that dispute those findings very strongly."

E&E News reported recently that senior administration officials had sought a PowerPoint presentation on climate change from the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that works to cloud the findings of scientists. The group largely relies on the work of researchers who aren't climate scientists or who are funded by the energy industry.

Trump said he was focused on those types of scientists.

"I want everybody to report whatever they want, but ultimately, I'm the one that makes that final decision," Trump said. "I can also give you reports where people very much dispute that, you know, you do have scientists that very much dispute it. I want to make sure that we have the cleanest air."

SOURCE

Could Australia's reefs be saved after all? Weed-like cauliflower coral has evolved unique immunity genes that means it could survive global warming

So a very vigorous coral is a "weed". The Green/Left never miss a chance at negativity. And saying it has developed "immune" responses to survive is a stretch. Starfish, lowered water levels, and unexpected heat variations are the big enemies of coral, not viruses and bacteria

A common coral has evolved unique strategies to cope with environmental change. Scientists say the cauliflower coral - which is traditionally thought of as a weed - could be one of the only corals to survive dramatic changes in the climate.

As one of the most abundant and widespread reef-building corals in the world it could be crucial to the future survival of the world's reefs, scientists found.

Researchers from the University of Miami say the common coral species might have evolved unique immune strategies to cope with environmental change.

Roughly 30 per cent of the cauliflower coral's (Pocillopora damicornis) genome was unique compared to several other reef-building corals.

This adaptation could be crucial for the long-term survival of coral reefs as climate change and ocean acidification continue to ravage the oceans.

'This coral is traditionally thought of as a weed, and yet it may be one of the last corals to survive environmental changes such as climate change,' said senior author of the study Nikki Traylor-Knowles, an assistant professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami.

To conduct the research, scientists extracted and sequenced the genomic DNA from two healthy fragments and two bleached fragments of P. damicornis.

Their genome was then compared to publicly available genomes for several other coral species.

'The study shows that this is an important coral with a very complex and unique immune system, which may explain why it is able to survive in so many different locations,' said the paper's lead author Ross Cunning who is now a researcher at Shedd Aquarium.

The results suggest that the evolution of an innate immune system has been a defining feature of the success of hard corals like P. damicornis.

The immune system of corals, like humans, is vital to protect overall health and deal with changes in its surroundings.

If an animal has a stronger immune system then it will be better equipped to deal with environmental changes.

These new findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest that some corals have many more immunity genes than would be expected.

'This study helps us better understand how corals deal with stress,' said Dr Traylor-Knowles.

'Its complex immune system indicates that it may have the tools to deal with environmental change much more easily than other corals.'

SOURCE

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

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

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6 November, 2018

Climate change: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

What happened to the "consensus?". This study says that the consensus was 60% wrong. If so, why not 100% wrong? How can we be sure? Many skeptics do say that it is 100% wrong. Interesting that although their figures change radically, their scary conclusion remains the same. That's strange science

The world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years, researchers say.

Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.

They say it means the Earth is more sensitive to fossil fuel emissions than estimated.

This could make it much more difficult to keep global warming within safe levels this century.

What have the researchers found? According to the last major assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's oceans have taken up over 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases.

But this new study says that every year, for the past 25 years, we have put about 150 times the amount of energy used to generate electricity globally into the seas - 60% more than previous estimates.

That's a big problem.

Scientists base their predictions about how much the Earth is warming by adding up all the excess heat that is produced by the known amount of greenhouse gases that have been emitted by human activities.

This new calculation shows that far more heat than we thought has been going into oceans. But it also means that far more heat than we thought has been generated by the warming gases we have emitted.

Therefore more heat from the same amount of gas means the Earth is more sensitive to CO2.

SOURCE

A global assessment of atoll island planform changes over the past decades

Virginie K. E. Duvall

Abstract

Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted.

Atoll islands affected by rapid sea-level rise did not show a distinct behavior compared to islands on other atolls. Island behavior correlated with island size, and no island smaller than 10 ha decreased in size. This threshold could be used to define the minimum island size required for human occupancy and to assess atoll countries and territories' vulnerability to climate change.

Beyond emphasizing the major role of climate drivers in causing substantial changes in the configuration of islands, this reanalysis of available data indicates that these drivers explain subregional variations in atoll behavior and within-atoll variations in island and shoreline (lagoon vs. ocean) behavior, following atoll-specific patterns.

Increasing human disturbances, especially land reclamation and human structure construction, operated on atoll-to-shoreline spatial scales, explaining marked within-atoll variations in island and shoreline behavior. Collectively, these findings highlight the heterogeneity of atoll situations.

Further research needs include addressing geographical gaps (Indian Ocean, Caribbean, north-western Pacific atolls), using standardized protocols to allow comparative analyses of island and shoreline behavior across ocean regions, investigating the role of ecological drivers, and promoting interdisciplinary approaches. Such efforts would assist in anticipating potential future changes in the contributions and interactions of key drivers ........

Conclusion

This review first confirms that over the past decades to century, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization by sea-level rise. The global sample considered in this paper, which includes 30 atolls and 709 islands, reveals that atolls did not lose land area, and that 73.1% of islands were stable in land area, including most settled islands, while 15.5% of islands increased and 11.4% decreased in size. Atoll and island areal stability can therefore be considered as a global trend.

Importantly, islands located in ocean regions affected by rapid sea-level rise showed neither contraction nor marked shoreline retreat, which indicates that they may not be affected yet by the presumably negative, that is, erosive, impact of sea-level rise. Second, this review reaffirms that atoll island areal change was mainly influenced by island size. While the smallest islands (less thgan 5 ha, 52.90% of islands) exhibited contrasting areal changes (i.e., stability, increase, or decrease in size) and highly variable values of areal change (from ?22.7 to +125.5%), the islands larger than 5 ha (47.10% of islands) generally experienced areal and positional stability.

It is noteworthy that no island larger than 10 ha decreased in size, making this value a relevant threshold to define atoll island areal stability. We therefore propose to use this threshold, first, to define the minimum island size required for human occupancy or exploitation, and second, to assess atoll and atoll countries and territories’ vulnerability to climate change. Using this threshold for future island development (e.g., resort island) would considerably limit the risk for new developments to be negatively affected by island areal and positional instability, on condition of also avoiding any human intervention that may alter island sediment budget (e.g., sediment extraction) and natural dynamics (e.g., obstruction of sediment transport and deposition by constructions). In addition, the physical instability of small islands (less than 10 ha) suggests that atoll countries and territories’ vulnerability to sea-level rise is inversely proportional to the size of the islands composing them. This for example means that the Republic of Maldives (mainly composed of small islands) is, from a geomorphic perspective, more vulnerable to climate change than the French Tuamotu Archipelago (made up of larger islands).

Assessing atolls’ and atoll countries’ vulnerability to climate change using this threshold would offer a first comprehensive overview of atoll status and of atoll countries’ needs in terms of adaptation to climate change. Because they are the most vulnerable, atolls (at the national scale) and atoll countries (at the global scale) having small islands should be the focus of monitoring and assessment activities, and of adaptation efforts.

Third, this paper confirms the highly dynamic nature of some specific atoll island features, such as sand and gravel spits, island extremities, beaches, hoa shores, and ancient hoa areas, which exhibited marked areal and positional changes over the past decades. These changes occurred over short (i.e., several years) to multidecadal timescales, depending on the climate drivers involved (e.g., short term ENSO-influenced beach changes vs. multidecadal shoreline smoothing and spit extension).

The highly dynamic nature of these features indicates the continuous adjustment of island shores to climatic conditions, which in turn implies that it is imperative to limit as much as possible human interventions that may destabilize the fragile equilibrium of such islands. This once again emphasizes the crucial need for a better consideration of island dynamics in development
projects.

Fourth, this paper shows that over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited highly contrasting behaviors across ocean basins and subregions. No distinct regional (i.e., scale of ocean basins or ocean subregions) or subregional (i.e., scale of atoll groups) profiles emerge from this global review. In some cases, nearby atolls exhibited contrasting behaviors, for example, a majority of expanding vs. a majority of contracting islands, or opposite behaviors of their leeward and/or windward sides.

Likewise, within a given atoll, nearby islands and island shorelines (either ocean-facing, or lagoon-facing) commonly experienced opposite behaviors. The patterns of atoll island planform change are resolutely atoll- and even in some cases island-specific.

This conclusion suggests that the atoll and island “shadow effects” (Andrefouët et al., 2012), which contribute to the contrasting responses of nearby atolls and islands to rather similar climatic conditions, play a major role in explaining the contrasting behaviors of atolls, atoll sides, islands and island shorelines, within a given atoll group.

SOURCE

The UN’s Terrifying, But Ever-Receding, Human-Caused Climate Catastrophe

By Caleb Rossiter

Just in time for Halloween, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released yet another in a 30-year stream of spooky stories: Global Warming of 1.5 Degree Celsius, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Like its five predecessors, it makes terrifying predictions about human-caused climate catastrophes that are always just about to occur, unless governments reduce the level of the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from its current four-hundredths of one percent to the three hundredths it was before industrialization.

Notice that the title chosen by the UN gives the game away. It presents correlation as causation by implying that all the warming since pre-industrial times has been caused by industry. There’s no room here for a natural oscillation back from the well-documented lows of the 1700s, which themselves were rebounds from a higher temperature period in the 1400s. (See this NOAA chart).

So how will the UN engender so much fear that the public will agree to stop using fossil-fueled electricity to halt “climate change?” After all, the phrase in itself is benign and natural. With enough repetition as images of hurricanes play on the screen, however, climate change has come to be short-hand for fossil-fueled, civilization-threatening storms, droughts, and destruction of coastal cities and islands, a dubious hypothesis on which we are hilariously told “the debate is over.”

For years I assigned statistics students to pick any apocalyptic climate claim in the media and trace it back through the UN reports to its genesis in a scientific study. I knew they would discover that these reports are not scientific documents based on the peer review process, but political documents “approved by governments” and intended to scare the public into supporting constraints on the production and use of energy.

A powerful publicity machine magnifies the alarm, bombarding citizens with exaggerations and claims of certainty that are proven wrong as you dig down to their underlying scientific studies:

·      Public figures, news editors, and commentators make claims that are more alarmist than what individual IPCC authors say at the release of the report.

·      Individual IPCC authors make claims at the release of the report that are more alarmist than what the official press release says.

·      The official press release makes claims that are more alarmist than what the report’s summary for policy-makers says.

·      The summary for policy-makers makes claims that are more alarmist than the various chapters of the reports.

·      The chapters of the report make claims that are more alarmist than the studies they reference in the footnotes.

The studies referenced in the footnotes are often actually peer-reviewed and generally make cautious claims about a possible trend spotted in one or a small number of locations or in a global computer model.

Both types of studies are more speculative than definitive because, as they always acknowledge in the fine print, they are based on highly-uncertain measurements of highly-complex phenomena with many interacting causes, of which warming gasses generated by human activity are only one, and often a minor component.

For governments to make policy on such a hierarchy of exaggeration brings to mind James Madison’s warning: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both.”

The serial release of UN reports obscures the fact that the climate catastrophes they predict never occur. As the data contained deep in the bowels of this latest report again acknowledge, Mother Nature is simply not cooperating with the UN There has been no positive trend in hurricanes, floods, and droughts as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.

Even the average global temperature (whose rise is supposed to increase disasters) has barely budged, only rising a third of the amount that has been repeatedly been predicted by the IPCC computer models.

Sea levels, which are very difficult to measure due to human use of land and even to the natural rise and fall of land itself, chugs along at the same inch-per-decade that it has for thousands of years – not the terrifying 10 feet in a century warned about in previous reports. The islands and polar ice that we were repeatedly told would be gone by now are still there, and no closer to destruction.

The UN’s response to its failed predictions is simply to move the goal-posts, and make new dire predictions for some future date – in this case 2030. There is no reason to believe that this speculation will be any more accurate the ones that predicted human-induced climate catastrophes by certain dates, now passed.

But don’t be too frightened: the same governments who authorize the UN reports never take the steps needed to reduce the supposedly horrifying carbon dioxide level. Hidden behind their teeth-chattering fear of fossil fuels is their awareness that oil, gas, and coal have helped bring dramatic improvements in health, welfare, and life expectancy, and that alternative methods of generating power are currently available only at unacceptable economic (and hence political) cost.

SOURCE

DELINGPOLE: No, Vegetarianism Won’t Save the World from ‘Climate Change’

Vegetarians and vegans have been getting very uppity of late. One reason for this is that some idiot told them they hold the key to saving the world.

According to the (rampantly vego-loon) Humane Society “your diet could save the planet”.

According to Yvo de Boer, the former head of the UN climate agency, “the best solution would be for us all to become vegetarian.”

And according to George Monbiot in the Guardian: “The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy”.

All this nonsense has gone to the grass-eaters’ nutritionally-challenged heads. Instead of being a bunch of pale, anaemic, meat-shunning losers who have to keep taking vitamin B12 to stop themselves being blown over every time they go for a walk in their plastic shoes, they have now convinced themselves that they are like Frodo, Neo from the Matrix, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter all rolled into one.

Why do they believe this rubbish?

Because if you only read the left-wing media, as vegans do, all you ever get to see is hysterical drivel like this (from one of the house eco-loons in the Guardian):

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses.

Even formerly conservative newspapers have fallen for this nonsense. According to columnist Bryony Gordon in the Guardiangraph (formerly the Telegraph), the reason “we” dislike and fear vegans is that we know in our hearts that they are right:

We know that adopting a vegan lifestyle is better not just for our bodies but also for the planet; we are aware that the harvesting of animals for our convenience could one day kill us all.

I’m trying to envisage a scenario in which “the harvesting of animals for our convenience” could ever kill us all. Bacon poisoning? Cows and pigs and chickens accidentally breeding with sharks or polar bears and stalking us like clucking, mooing, oinking velociraptors? I don’t know what Bryony is eating right now but whatever it is, it clearly doesn’t involve enough of the meat we all need to stop us from turning into vegetables.

Basically, Bryony and all the other hacks that have bought into this bollocks are being played. Man-made global warming theory is a busted flush so, in order to keep the scam going, the climate industrial complex has been desperately seeking new ways to bolster its Enron-style business model. One of these is to use veggies and vegans as their useful idiots to keep the climate scare going.

In fact, if we all went veggie or vegan it would make next to no difference to the climate. As Bjorn Lomborg, himself a vegetarian, points out here, the claim is based on cherry-picked data.

Almost all articles on this topic suggest going vegetarian could achieve emission cuts of 50 percent or more. But these figures are never a reduction of total emissions, just those emitted from food. This is an important distinction because four-fifths of emissions are being ignored. The real impact is five times less.

Anyway, a systematic peer review of studies shows vegetarian diets likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of 540 kg (1,190 lbs.) of CO2. For the average person in the industrialized world, that’s the equivalent of cutting emissions by just 4.3 percent.

Vegetarian diets are also slightly cheaper, and saved money will be spent on goods and services that emit more CO2. A new Swedish study shows a vegetarian diet is 10 percent cheaper, freeing up about 2 percent of an individual’s budget. The extra money would likely be spent proportionally on existing purchases.

This boosts one’s carbon emissions by about 2 percent. So eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about 2 percent. This won’t save the planet.

Lomborg’s article triggered two researchers at Cambridge University, who quibbled with his statistics because, obviously, being at joyless, Cromwellian, tofu-munching Cambridge, they didn’t suit their green narrative.

To get an idea of where they are coming from, read — or cringe, rather, at — this paragraph:

However, poorer countries stand to benefit from widescale adoption of a plant-based diet. Mortality linked to strokes, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer could fall by 5m to 6m avoided deaths and trillions of dollars could be saved in healthcare costs and by preventing productivity losses.

Here are two Cambridge PhD students trying to tell us, straightfaced, what they think is best for the poorest, most nutritionally deficient countries in the world, where starvation is a way of life and where meat is almost never an option. More calories, maybe? A bit of animal protein now and again? Nope. What these countries could really benefit from, according to these deluded prigs, is a “plant-based diet.” (Just like they’ve got already whether they like it or not. So that’s handy, isn’t it?)

So in order to reduce global CO2 emissions by an amount so small it’s barely noticeable, a bunch of salad munching eco-fascists want us to abandon the following: t-bone steaks; foie gras; calves liver with onions; hamburgers; bacon, sausage and eggs; Thai green chicken curry; Rogan Josh; roast shoulder of lamb; shepherd’s pie; beef casserole; Wiener schnitzel; fish and chips; kedgeree; pulled pork; I could go on…

I speak with some feeling on this issue because I am myself currently enduring a vegan diet for medical reasons. Do you have any idea how boring a vegan diet is? Very, very, very, very, VERY boring indeed, whatever gleaming-eyed advocates of “plant-based” food may tell you. Food without butter or cheese or meat or eggs in the ingredients isn’t really food at all, I’ve decided.

So when my diet comes to an end, round about Christmas, how do you think I’m going to respond if some cream-faced loon in a chunky knit sweater knocks and my door and says: “Hi I’m George Monbiot and as part of my holy mission to save the planet I’d like to invite you, yes you, to forgo your turkey and sausages and trimmings this yuletide, or EcoKwaanza as I prefer to call it…”

Well, he’s not going to get himself invited in for my homemade sloe gin and mince pies, that’s for sure.

SOURCE

Hottest start to November in 13 years: Intense heatwave blasts Australia's east coast with temperatures to nudge 40 for the next three days

"Intense heatwave", bollocks! My well-calibrated thermometer reads 33.5 on the afternon of the 5th (Monday), which is a normal summer afternoon temperature in Brisbane. And summer onset has long been variable in Brisbane. You get both hot and cool days rather randomly for the whole November/December period

The east coast of Australia is expected to battle high temperatures and humid conditions for two more days before a cold front moves in.

South-east Queensland is anticipated to feel the brunt of the heat, with temperatures nudging towards 40C on Monday and Tuesday.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the temperature in Ipswich, south-east Queensland, will hit 39C on Monday.

The Bureau also upgraded their heatwave forecast to 'extreme' for south-east Queensland over the next three days.

According to the Courier Mail, south-east Queensland has experienced the hottest start to November since 2005.

Senior Meteorologist at Weatherzone Jacob Cronje said conditions are expected to be 'uncomfortable' in Queensland in the coming days due to unrelenting humid conditions.

'It looks like for Brisbane itself, the CBD, we are looking at temperatures in the low to mid 30s, each day until Wednesday before cooler weather arrives from the south, that'll also impact New South Wales before that,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Adding to the uncomfortable conditions, Mr Cronje said: 'It is an extended spell of heat and with that, evenings are unlikely to cool below 20C.'

The cool change is anticipated to begin on Tuesday night, as cold weather arrives from the south, hitting New South Wales first and arriving in Queensland on Thursday.

SOURCE

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

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

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5 November, 2018

Is the Arctic set to become a main shipping route?

The BBC is pushing this old fantasy again. And in good BBC style they start out with a deception -- when they claim: ‘But in 2014 the Nunavik became the first cargo ship to traverse the [Northwest] passage unescorted when it delivered nickel from the Canadian province of Quebec to China.’ It fails to mention the obviously important fact that Nunavik is an icebreaking bulk carrier with quite a high ice-rating

In 2014 the Nunavik became the first cargo ship to go through the Northwest Passage without an icebreaking escort ship leading the way. Climate change is increasingly opening up the Northwest Passage, an Arctic sea route north of the Canadian mainland.

Could it herald an era of more cargo shipping around the top of the world?

Back in the 19th Century there was a race to map and navigate the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean as a shortcut between the North Atlantic and North Pacific.

Explorers would take ships up Greenland's west coast, then try to weave through Canada's Arctic islands, before going down the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.

The problem was that even in the summer the route was mostly blocked by impenetrable ice. On one of the best-known expeditions - that of the UK's Sir John Franklin in 1845 - all 129 crew members perished after their two vessels got stuck.

Today, more than 170 years later, a warming Arctic means that the route is increasingly accessible for a few months each summer.

And according to some estimates, Arctic ice is retreating to the extent that the Northwest Passage could become an economically viable shipping route.

For shipping firms transporting goods from China or Japan to Europe or the east coast of the US, the passage would cut thousands of miles off journeys that currently go via the Panama or Suez canals.

The Canadian government is certainly hopeful that this will be the case.

Late last month the country's trade minister Jim Carr said that the route "will in a matter of a generation, probably be available year round".

At the moment it is still a risky business though, with ice remaining a serious problem.

But in 2014 the Nunavik became the first cargo ship to traverse the passage unescorted when it delivered nickel from the Canadian province of Quebec to China.

Tim Keane, manager of Arctic operations for the ship's owner, Canadian maritime transport firm Fednav, was on board the Nunavik for the journey.

He says that the trip was pleasantly "boring" - the ship didn't have to spend days struggling through ice.

Instead it did the journey from Quebec to China in 26 days, more than two weeks less than the 41-day return via the Panama Canal.

"From a distance point of view it makes tremendous sense to use the Northwest Passage when it's available to you," he says.

While Fednav doesn't have immediate plans to use the route again, it remains a possibility depending on the cargo's destination, and the time of year.

A year prior to the Nunavik's journey, another large vessel - the Nordic Orion - became the first cargo ship to go through the passage, albeit led by a Canadian coastguard icebreaker.

Owner, Danish company Nordic Bulk Carriers, said afterwards that "we hope and expect to do it" again.

SOURCE

The importance of unresolved biases in 20th century sea-surface temperature observations

Luke L. B. Davis et al.

Abstract

Biases in sea-surface temperature observations lead to larger uncertainties in our understanding of mid-to-late 20th century climate variability than previously thought.

A new analysis of sea-surface temperature (SST) observations indicates notable uncertainty in observed decadal climate variability in the second half of the 20th century, particularly during the decades following World War II. The uncertainties are revealed by exploring SST data binned separately for the two predominant measurement types: “engine-room intake” (ERI) and “bucket” measurements. ERI measurements indicate large decreases in global-mean SSTs from 1950 to 1975, whereas “bucket” measurements indicate increases in SST over this period before bias adjustments are applied but decreases after they are applied.

The trends in the bias adjustments applied to the “bucket” data are larger than the global-mean trends during the period 1950-1975, and thus the global-mean trends during this period derive largely from the adjustments themselves. This is critical, since the adjustments are based on incomplete information about the underlying measurement methods, and are thus subject to considerable uncertainty. The uncertainty in decadal-scale variability is particularly pronounced over the North Pacific, where the sign of low-frequency variability through the 1950s-1970s is different for each measurement type.

The uncertainty highlighted here has important – but in our view widely overlooked – implications for the interpretation of observed decadal climate variability over both the Pacific and Atlantic basins during the mid-to-late 20th century.

SOURCE

Climate skeptics are the knowledgeable ones

A unique and fundamental difference, IMO, between climate change sceptics or realists, and climate change alarmists is that sceptics must absorb alarmist ‘science’ and corresponding media releases in order to provide a broad understanding of both sides of the debate. Objectivity and oversight can then be carried out, where the mainstream media will not, by detecting errors, exaggerations and even outright lies that exist within the masses of human-induced climate change information disseminated by the CO2-centric legacy media.

THIS is not a scientific observation, though it is quite accurate when you assess the complete lack of knowledge by climate alarmists to the vast body of climate science contradicting global warming dogma. The story or finding that best fits the alarmists catastrophic narrative qualifies, everything else is outlawed.

THIS is problematic as it foments a culture of groupthink where objectivity is heresy, scepticism is “denial” and questions are forbidden. In this environment, scientific discovery and advancement is stifled, debate is (intentionally) shut down, truth and reason an unnecessary evil.

THANKFULLY there are a growing number of dedicated and unpaid sceptics or climate realists across many different forums and mediums who are questioning what is all-too-often demanded as fact or the accepted view of the (bogus) “97% consensus”.

TRUTH seekers working in their free time are doing what the post-modern mainstream media will not do any more – question dogma, authority and the preferred wisdom of the day using little more than empirical data, common sense and reason.

SOURCE

Canada's carbon tax could go much higher after 2022 review

A government document quietly posted online confirms what many have long suspected: that the government is eyeing raising the federal carbon tax beyond the current ceiling of $50 per tonne.

On Wednesday, amendments to the federal carbon tax legislation were posted on the Canada Gazette – the government’s official newspaper – and the document describes how the already controversial $50 per tonne price that comes into full effect in 2022 may be just the beginning following a five-year review that could very well call for steep increases.

“The overall approach will be reviewed by early 2022 to confirm the path forward, including continued increases in stringency. The review will account for progress and for the actions of other countries in response to carbon pricing, as well as recognition of permits or credits imported from out countries,” reads the text. This text does not make its way into the actual legislation but is rather part of the “regulatory impact analysis statement” that explains the amended legislation.

This actually isn’t the first time versions of this text have cropped up in government documents though.

Earlier this year, when journalists and the public were only just starting to really pay attention to the issue, the government released a technical briefing paper on the carbon tax that explained that “the Pan-Canadian Framework includes a commitment for a review of the overall approach to pricing carbon by early 2022 to confirm the path forward.” This is pretty common stuff though, periodic reviews of legislation, so it perhaps wasn’t flagged as noteworthy to anyone. And the sentence ends at “path forward”, without specific references to increases.

But the full sentence first cropped up at least two years ago, before the issue was under its current degree of scrutiny. An October 2016 backgrounder from Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna’s office uses that very sentence: “The overall approach will be reviewed by early 2022 to confirm the path forward, including continued increases in stringency.”

Now all of this makes total sense when you consider it from the Liberal perspective. As a number of astute observers, including my colleague Lorrie Goldstein, have pointed out multiple times, the current carbon tax levels are enough to be a pest on taxpayers but not enough to seriously put a dent on our current emissions levels or get us to our current targets.

Hence, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and McKenna have been criticized by environmentalists for basically just adopting the same targets as former PM Stephen Harper.

But surely the Liberals, with all of their passion for the issue, have known this all along. And they’ve left us a trail of breadcrumbs in their various backgrounder documents to tell us just that.

Besides, Postmedia revealed last year that other government docs show the Liberals were told by bureaucrats they’d need to ramp up the tax to $300 per tonne if they want it to be effective.

Here’s the question we should all now be asking then: just how high will this tax go? As The New York Times recently reported, “the United Nations report estimated that governments would need to impose effective carbon prices of $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution by 2030 to keep overall global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.”

That would be the same fear-mongering UN report that tells us if we don’t act within the next 12 years there will be irreversible catastrophe.

If the Liberals are re-elected, what will their 2022 report recommend? If that UN report, the new holy book for climate zealots, says we’ve got to at a minimum almost triple it to $135, surely they’ll at least recommend that figure, if not $300 or more.

We can’t say we weren’t warned. Expect it to go up in the years ahead. Way up.

SOURCE

Fake heatwave in Eastern Australia

At mid-afternoon in Brisbane on Saturday, my thermometer read 31C. But a normal summer mid-afternoon temperature is 34C, so there is nothing out of the ordinary about the current temperature

Good news for weekend beach-goers as Friday's heatwave will spill over onto Super Saturday.

Records were smashed across New South Wales on Friday, as Green Cape in the state's far south-east broke its November record by six degrees and Wollongong's highs of 36C represented its highest ever early Spring mark.

While temperatures will not reach as high as Friday's scorcher, those in Australia's east coast can expect the above-average heat to continue.

Persistent warm north-westerly winds blowing in from central Australia will see Sydney hit 30C on Saturday, making it perfect weather to hit the beach.

According to Bureau of Meteorology's (BOM) forecaster Rose Barr, temperatures in western parts of the state will stretch past 30C.

The western suburb of Penrith is expected to see highs of 36C.

Meanwhile in parts of Queensland, temperatures could push up to 40C over the weekend.

However those looking to top up their tan should bare in mind that the heatwave won't last much longer.

BOM meteorologist Rose Barr told Daily Mail Australia that the hot spell is likely to linger until Tuesday.

SOURCE

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

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

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4 November, 2018

U.S. Oil Production Allows America to Crack Down on Iran

Yet again, we have witnessed a heinous display of the anti-Semitism that has plagued the Jewish community throughout history. America cannot sit silently and allow anti-Semitism to prevail, be it domestically or internationally. While the act of terror in Pittsburgh was that of a domestic white supremacist, anti-Semitism remains a global issue. Iran perpetuates the virulent rhetoric that has fueled this global scourge, and its rogue actions pose a threat to the United States and its allies.

Anti-Semitism is not solely a Jewish issue or an Israeli issue. It is also an American issue. America must hold Iran accountable for its bad behavior. Iran must pay for its constant attempts to destabilize the Middle East. Its nuclear ambitions, its proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and its financing of terrorism through groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas are a threat to the entire region.

Before the American energy renaissance, any suggestion of upheaval in the Middle East sent oil prices skyrocketing. Sanctions against a leading oil producer such as Iran were guaranteed to add several dollars to the global price of crude.

Times have changed. The Trump administration’s looming imposition of sanctions against Iran has hardly caused a financial ripple in the oil market. Fortunately, this November, America will reinstate oil sanctions on Iran and thereby diminish Tehran’s ability to fund its hegemonic goals and impose its extremist ideology. The sanctions facing Iran are warranted, given its position as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran continues to incite violence against the United States, Israel, and other countries while repressing its own citizens.

The United States will no longer be held hostage to rogue states. Because of increases in U.S. oil-production capacity, the decision to enforce and augment the sanctions will not be as disruptive to oil markets as it would have been in the past. America’s status as a geopolitical powerhouse is enhanced as it grows into an energy exporter.

The global market’s pending loss of oil from Iran is an opportunity for American producers to become a supplier to the world. The United States can use the energy it produces domestically to ensure that its national-security concerns are met without harming American consumers. American energy independence will remind the world that it will no longer have to deal with wild price fluctuations spurred by unrest in the Middle East. The United States is capable of providing enough oil to help stabilize the global market, no matter what happens in countries such as Iran.

The deal arranged by the previous administration removed sanctions against Iran without offering any long-lasting solutions to the problems caused by this rogue nation. Making matters worse, that deal also funded Iran, allowing the regime to finance global terrorism, including the wars in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Even so, Iran violated the terms of that agreement, so the sanctions imposed by the current administration are justified on those grounds as well.

The geopolitics of the Middle East are changing. Historic alliances are shifting, as nations move to protect themselves against the looming existential threat posed by Iran. The only constant is that Israel remains America’s closest friend in the region. Israel and America stay linked through their shared democratic values and common interests.

It is incumbent on the United States to stand up for our allies in the Middle East. America is no longer beholden to past realities to keep the oil market in check. No longer is it the case that the flow of oil to the United States will be stifled if the Strait of Hormuz is shut down.

SOURCE

Why Wind Power Isn’t the Answer

On October 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that nations around the world must cut their greenhouse-gas emissions drastically to reduce the possibility of catastrophic climate change. The report emphasizes “fast deployment of renewables like solar and wind” and largely ignores the essential role nuclear energy must play in any decarbonization effort.

Four days earlier, to much less fanfare, two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land. How cartoonish? Consider: meeting America’s current demand for electricity alone—not including gasoline or jet fuel, or the natural gas required for things like space heating and fertilizer production—would require covering a territory twice the size of California with wind turbines.

The IPCC and climate-change activists love solar and wind energy, and far-left politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a wartime-style national mobilization to convert to 100 percent renewable-energy usage. But this credo ignores a fundamental truth: energy policy and land-use policy are inextricable.

The renewables-only proponents have no trouble mobilizing against land use for the extraction of hydrocarbons. Consider the battle in Colorado over Proposition 112, which will prohibit oil- and gas-drilling activities within 2,500 feet of homes, hospitals, schools and “vulnerable areas.” Environmental groups including 350.org, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace have endorsed the initiative, which will appear on the November 6 ballot. If it passes, Proposition 112 would effectively ban new oil and gas production in Colorado, the nation’s fifth-largest natural gas producer. Or consider the months-long demonstrations that ended last year in South Dakota over the Dakota Access pipeline. More than 700 climate-change activists and others were arrested during protests claiming that Dakota Access, by crossing the traditional lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, was violating the tribe’s cultural and spiritual rights. These energy- and land-use battles are waged by climate activists and environmental groups whose goal is to shutter the hydrocarbon industry. Most of these groups, including 350.org and Sierra Club, routinely claim that the American economy can run solely on renewables. Further, the Sierra Club has tallied 74 U.S. cities that have pledged to get all of their electricity from renewable energy.

But the new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, shows yet again that wind energy’s Achilles heel is its paltry power density. “We found that the average power density—meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant—was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts,” said lead author Lee Miller, a postdoctoral fellow who coauthored the report with Harvard physics professor David Keith. The problem is that most estimates of wind energy’s potential ignore “wind shadow,” an effect that occurs when turbines are placed too closely together: the upwind turbines rob wind speed from others placed downwind.

The study looks at 2016 energy-production data from 1,150 solar projects and 411 onshore wind projects. The combined capacity of the wind projects totaled 43,000 megawatts, or roughly half of all U.S. wind capacity that year. Miller and Keith concluded that solar panels produce about 10 times more energy per unit of land as wind turbines—a significant finding—but their work demands attention for two other reasons: first, it uses real-world data, not models, to reach its conclusions, and second, it shows that wind energy’s power density is far lower than the Department of Energy, the IPCC, and numerous academics have claimed.

Further: “While improved wind turbine design and siting have increased capacity factors (and greatly reduced costs), they have not altered power densities.” In other words, though Big Wind has increased the size and efficiency of turbines—the latest models stand more than 700 feet tall—it hasn’t been able to wring more energy out of the wind. Due to the wind-shadow effect, those taller turbines must be placed farther and farther apart, which means that the giant turbines cover more land. As turbines get taller and sprawl across the landscape, more people see them.

Rural residents are objecting to wind projects because they want to protect their property values and viewsheds. They don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those massive turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. Nor do they want to be subjected to the health-damaging noise—both audible and inaudible—that the turbines produce.

The backlash against Big Wind is coast to coast. In New York, which has mandated 50 percent renewable-energy usage by 2030, the towns of Yates and Somerset are fighting against Lighthouse Wind, a 200-megawatt wind project proposed for the shores of Lake Ontario. In Oklahoma, the tiny town of Hinton continues its battle against NextEra Energy, the world’s biggest wind-energy producer, over the siting of wind projects nearby. In California, which just boosted its renewable-electricity mandate to 60 percent by 2030, wind turbines are so unpopular that the industry has effectively given up trying to site new projects there. Meantime, in deep-blue Vermont, both gubernatorial candidates—incumbent Republican Phil Scott and Democratic challenger Christine Hallquist—favor renewable energy in principle but oppose further wind-energy development in the state.

Big Wind has attempted to intimidate some of its rural opponents by filing lawsuits against them. Last year, NextEra sued the town of Hinton in federal and state court after the town passed an ordinance restricting wind-energy development. The wind-energy giant also sued local governments in Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri, all of which had passed measures restricting wind-energy development.

Why the hardball tactics? Simple: rural residents stand between Big Wind and tens of billions of dollars in subsidies available through the Production Tax Credit. In September, Lisa Linowes, cofounder and executive director of the Industrial Wind Action Group, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit that tracks the wind industry, published an article on MasterResource.org. “The US Treasury estimates the PTC will cost taxpayers $40.12 billion in the period from 2018 to 2027,” Linowes wrote, “making it, by far, the most expensive energy subsidy under current tax law.”

The punchline here is obvious: wind energy has been sold as a great source of “clean” energy. The reality is that wind energy’s expansion has been driven by federal subsidies and state-level mandates. Wind energy, cannot, and will not, meet a significant portion of our future energy needs because it requires too much land.

Miller and Keith’s paper shows that the ongoing push for 100-percent renewables, and, in particular, the idea that wind energy is going to be a major contributor to that goal, is not just wrongheaded—it’s an energy dead end.

SOURCE

EPA's plan for tree-fired power could be worse than coal

The Trump administration on Thursday endorsed burning trees and other biomass to produce energy, vowing to promote a practice some scientists have declared more environmentally devastating than coal-fired power.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) joined the departments of Energy and Agriculture in a letter to congressional leaders committing to "encourage the use of biomass as an energy solution." The EPA also reasserted its view that power plants burning trees and other woody materials to generate electricity should be viewed as carbon neutral, because when new trees are grown, they remove carbon dioxide from the air.

The agencies also are committing to collaborate on policies promoting biomass, which could include Energy Department research and encouraging utilities to substitute wood for coal in power plants. EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the move "will support good-paying jobs in rural communities, protect our nation's air quality and remove unnecessary regulatory burdens."

But environmentalists say burning trees releases carbon dioxide previously trapped inside the plant. And when forests are cleared to produce energy, it can take them decades — or longer — to regrow, if they ever do.

The result is a power source that can generate more carbon dioxide emissions than the coal it is sometimes meant to replace.

"When biomass from forests is burned for electricity, it immediately emits CO2 to the atmosphere in amounts equivalent to, and often greater than, fossil fuels," more than six dozen scientists said in a letter Wednesday to Wheeler. "If trees are harvested for use in bioenergy production and then regrown, the combination of the regrowth and displaced fossil fuels can eventually pay off the carbon debt, but that 'payback period' typically ranges from decades to hundreds of years."

The EPA's own science advisers also warned that assuming biomass emissions are carbon neutral "is inconsistent with the underlying science."

Thursday's letter from the federal agencies responds to a provision Congress tucked into a spending bill directing federal agencies to establish policies that "reflect the carbon neutrality of forest biomass for energy production." Even before that directive, under former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the agency declared in April that it generally considered burning biomass for energy as carbon neutral.

The Trump administration now is effectively doubling down on that declaration, with the EPA promising to help unlock "the full benefits of biomass for energy" and encourage its growth "as a key part of our nation's energy supply."

The approach could be good news for timber companies and firms that pelletize wood for power plants.

The American Forest and Paper Association said the administration was ending "seven years of policy uncertainty" that "jeopardizes our companies' ability to invest in biomass and build and upgrade their facilities."

The EPA also has proposed giving utilities credit for cutting carbon dioxide emissions when they replace some coal in power plants with biomass. That kind of substitution would qualify as an efficiency upgrade under the EPA's proposal to relax Obama-era Clean Power Plan curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from electricity.

Shifting to biomass increases carbon dioxide emissions "in nearly every scenario," the Natural Resources Defense Council, Clean Air Task Force and seven other environmental groups said in comments filed on the plan Wednesday.

SOURCE

If You Want to Save the Planet, Drop the Campaign Against Capitalism

This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report concluding that it is all but inevitable that overall global warming will exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius limit dictated in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The report also discusses the potentially catastrophic consequences of this warming, which include extreme weather events, an accelerated rise in sea levels, and shrinking Arctic sea ice.

In keeping with the well-established trend, political conservatives generally have exhibited skepticism of these newly published IPCC conclusions. That includes U.S. President Donald Trump, who told 60 Minutes, “We have scientists that disagree with [anthropogenic global warming]. You’d have to show me the [mainstream] scientists because they have a very big political agenda.” On Fox News, a commentator argued that “the planet has largely stopped warming over the past 15 years, data shows—and [the IPCC report] could not explain why the Mercury had stopped rising.”

This pattern of conservative skepticism on climate change is so well-established that many of us now take it for granted. But given conservatism’s natural impulse toward protecting our heritage, one might think that conservatives would be just as concerned with preserving order in the natural environment as they are with preserving order in our social and political environments. Ensuring that subsequent generations can live well is ordinarily a core concern for conservatives.

To this, conservatives might (and do) counter that they are merely pushing back against environmental extremists who seek to leverage the cause of global warming as a means to expand government, eliminate hierarchies of wealth, and reorganize society along social lines. And while most environmentally conscious citizens harbor no such ambitions, there is a substantial basis for this claim. Indeed, some environmentalists are forthright in seeking to implement the principles of “ecosocialism.”

One of the most prominent voices in this space has been Canadian writer Naomi Klein, whose 2015 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, argued that capitalism must be dismantled for the world to avert catastrophe. While I am sympathetic with some of the critiques that Klein directs at corporations and “free market fundamentalism,” her argument doesn’t hold water—because mitigating climate risks is a project whose enormous scope, cost and complexity can only be managed by regulated capitalist welfare states. Moreover, it’s difficult to see how she isn’t simply using the crisis of climate change as a veneer to agitate for her preferred utopian socio-economic system. As has been pointed out by Jonathan Chait of New York magazine, Klein appears to be adapting a mirror image of the same strategy she critiqued in her previous book, The Shock Doctrine, wherein she claimed that cynical politicians, pundits and corporations seize on crises to lock in economic restructuring along radical free market principles.

Simply put, describing the call for climate action in economically or politically revolutionary terms is always going to be counterproductive, because the vast majority of ordinary people in most countries don’t want a revolution. Environmentalists such as Klein are correct, however, in their more limited claim that market mechanisms alone can’t prevent global warming, since such mechanisms don’t impute the environmental costs associated with the way we produce goods and live our lives. Without some means of capturing the social price of environmentally destructive practices—resource extraction, in particular—we will invariably embrace wasteful and damaging practices.

Consider, for instance, the vast quantities of natural gas that are flared at oil wells simply because it’s seen as too costly to build gas pipelines to these facilities. This is a context in which we’d urge government to exercise its regulatory power; or to impose some kind of pricing mechanism that, either by carrot or stick, incentivizes the capture of the flared gas. Public policy has a necessary role in guiding capitalist decision makers toward the long-term sustainability of the environment. Unfortunately, this outcome is hard to achieve in a political environment characterized by tribalism, polarization and blame-shifting.

It is true that when it comes to climate change, the political left is more closely grounded in science than the right (even if both sides often tend to deny inconvenient truths more generally). But the left also has proven to be blinkered when it comes to appropriate responses, a tendency that has seeped into the latest IPCC report. While it’s not surprising that the report advocates support for renewable energy, its authors fail to acknowledge the warming effect that scaled up renewable-energy generation would have on land use due to their low energy density (think of the enormous footprint of solar farms). Likewise, the pro-environmental left’s distaste for nuclear power persists, despite its status as a geographically dense, safe, virtually carbon-free energy source.

The whole issue has become a sort of microcosm of the blind spots and dogmas embraced by both sides. As Jonathan Haidt argues, conservatives tend to be skeptical of top-down governance, preferring to focus on smaller nested structures that are less ambitious in scope, and hence easier to manage. This general principle takes form in conservative philosopher Roger Scruton’s approach to environmentalism, which argues that activism on issues such as climate change should be undertaken by communities at the local level, rather than by national (or international) bureaucrats and politicians—because the local level is where “people protect things which they know and love, things which are necessary for their life, and which will elicit in them the kind of disposition to make sacrifices, which, after all, is what it’s all about.”

While Scruton’s environmentalism gives us a reason to protect our local environments, the reality is that the effects of many environmentally damaging practices are not just experienced locally. A community may be motivated to protect a nearby forest from logging because it forms part of their love of home, but greenhouse gas emissions are displaced and dispersed into the shared atmosphere, contributing to global atmospheric degradation. Because of this, any approach that dismisses broader policy initiatives is unlikely to succeed in bringing down global carbon emissions. But at the very least, Scruton’s analysis awakens us to the reality that such policies will gain popular support only if they are justified and implemented in a manner that takes into consideration the views and sentiments of conservatives and liberals alike. Wind and solar farms will face less opposition if local communities get a greater say in where they are located. And while carbon taxes are effective in reducing emissions in some jurisdictions, conservatives will usually oppose them unless they are structured in a revenue-neutral manner, by legislating them alongside equivalent reductions in income tax, for instance.

Environmentalists also should acknowledge that some conservative objections to large-scale, top-down global instruments such as the Paris Agreement are perfectly legitimate. The provisions in such treaties typically are non-binding and require the good faith of all signatories. With many authoritarian countries seemingly misleading the rest of the world about their levels of economic activity, it’s not unreasonable to assume they would do the same when it comes to reporting carbon emissions. Moreover, those countries without the means to enforce reductions in carbon emissions domestically can’t be regarded as reliable participants in a global agreement to voluntarily decarbonize their economies.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be discussing climate change at a global level, or that international agreements don’t have any value. But environmentalists’ tendency to treat these documents as holy writ comes off as naïve, and thereby tends to undermine their cause.

Overall, our best hope for dealing with the emissions of developing countries is likely to assist them in managing their energy infrastructure so as to bypass high-emissions technologies. China, despite often being lauded for the amount of renewable energy it produces, now emits more carbon dioxide than the U.S. and Europe combined. With technologies such as large-scale solar generation becoming cost competitive with coal, progress is possible, but far from guaranteed without Western support.

These measures aren’t revolutionary. But that’s the point: In the environmental sector, just as in every other arena, there’s an opportunity cost to adopting revolutionary postures—since these revolutionaries tend to make more enemies than allies. If this project is really about saving the planet, rather than destroying capitalism, cooling the earth will mean cooling our rhetoric as well.

SOURCE

Grim reef bleaching forecast

Prophecies, prophecies. They do this forecast most years. I come from Australia's Far North, adjoining the reef, and I can in fact remember such earnest forecasts from when I was a kid --60 years ago. But the reef is still there, much the same as ever. It has ups and downs but it always bounces back. It has bounced back recently in fact, something not mentioned below -- which is why they stick to prophecy

Predictions that the Great Barrier Reef could suffer severe coral bleaching by the end of summer is an urgent warning for the Federal Government to take immediate climate action, says the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) tentative forecast, out today, predicts the entire reef has a 60 percent chance of being subject to "bleaching alert level one"—meaning bleaching is likely— by March 2019, with possible coral mortality in some areas.

“How much more of the Great Barrier Reef has to die before the Federal Government acts on climate change?,” said AMCS spokesperson Imogen Zethoven.

“While our Reef is in danger, our politicians continue to ignore the issue of climate change with no credible plan to reduce pollution.

Parts of the southern half of the Reef are on higher alert with coral mortality likely in some areas, according to NOAA. An El Niño event could increase the odds of a severe bleaching event.

“The Reef is already suffering heat impacts. Add drought, bushfires and heatwaves into the mix and all Queenslanders, including our marine life, are in for a tough summer,” said Zethoven.

“The government’s claims that it is looking after the Reef—and the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on this—ultimately count for very little if it continues to ignore the greatest threat to the reef.

“By failing to protect the Reef, the Federal Government is also gambling with the 64,000 jobs that are dependent on the Reef, and the $6 billion that it generates every year for the Queensland economy.”

“The Government knows what the solutions to this are all too well: no new coal mines, including Adani’s monstrous Carmichael mine, a rapid transition to renewable energy, a phase out of all coal-fired power stations by 2030 and an immediate end to all fossil fuel subsidies.”

“But instead of acting on these recommendations, the government continues to pander to the demands of the fossil fuel industry instead of delivering a cleaner, safer future for Australia.

“The Government is on notice ahead of the next election. Australians want the Government to protect the Reef and its amazing wildlife. The time to act is now.”

Greenie Media release. Interviews available from Imogen Zethoven, a Greenie from way back. 0431 565 495

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

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

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2 November, 2018

Climate change blamed for flooding at Scottish park

The key sentence below: "Flooding there has caused issues for many years". So why blame global warming? It's become an automatic reflex in the media

CLIMATE change is being blamed for expensive flooding problems at one of Edinburgh's busiest parks. The council hopes to spend £220,000 to solve the flooding at Inverleith Park but will have to wait until next year for the funding to be allocated in the authority's budget. The council admits there is a risk that "more frequent and heavier rainfall events caused by climate change" means more water needs to be drained from Inverleith Park

Flooding there has caused issues for many years with playing fields regularly inundated after heavy rainfall. In 2013, the council invested £82,000 on drainage works. Transport and environment vice convener, Cllr Karen Doran, said: "Inverleith Park is one of the city's largest and most popular green spaces and attracts tens of thousands of people each year to relax in its surroundings, play sport in its fields or attend one of the key events taking place there. "For some time the park has been subject to flooding"

SOGGY: Heavy rainfall has meant playing fields in Inverleith Park are regularly flooded, despite drainage works in 2013, adversely impacting the enjoyment of those who visit, and it has been recognised that a long-term solution is required to limit the effects. Proposals to improve drainage would go some way to achieving this and funding will be considered as part of the 19/20 budget process." Organisers of commercial events are required to pay towards damage caused to the ground. Following last year's Foodies Festival, £13,127 was used for repairs.

A report by officers to the council's transport and environment committee, said: "It has been determined that some of the existing drainage system is no longer able to effectively drain surface water, given the frequency and scale of current rainfall events. "It is therefore proposed that the ineffective sections are replaced with larger and better aligned piping, and that the installation of lateral and secondary field drainage supplements these. A bid for capital funding will be made as part of the 2019/20 budget process."

Green councillors have pointed to large-scale commercial events being held at Inverleith Park for adding to the flooding problems. Green Cllr Steve Burgess said:"In recent years, pressure on the park ground has been increased by large-scale commercial events. So it is important that engineering work to sort flooding now is not undermined by heavy machinery and equipment out of keeping with parks. "Sadly, with climate change, flooding events like this   are going to be more frequent in the future - yet another reminder that prevention is better than cure."

The report to councillors adds: "During storm events, the volume of water being received is exceeding the flow capacity of the downstream pipes. This results in water backing up and the surrounding areas becoming flooded." Last year, Liberal Democrat Cllr Hal Osler put forward a motion calling for action to alleviate the flooding. At the time, Cllr Osler said: "Standing water is a health risk to people and animals and we need to investigate this problem and stop the flooding."

Edinburgh News, June 20, 2018 p.14

Legislation would require Fish and Wildlife Service to publish the science that backs up endangered species designations

The once well intentioned Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been hijacked by environmental radicals and the far left to impose an agenda rather than save animals, the Executive Director of the House Western Caucus, Jeff Smalls, is warning and a bill by U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) would change that.

"This bill requires the science to be published on the internet so it can be available to the public. It can be peer reviewed. And it also requires agencies no longer just ignore states, tribal governments, and local governments. That has been a big problem that we have seen in the past," Small explained in an interview on Conservative Commandos with Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning.

The interview discussed the modernization of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and how McClintock's bill would help return the Fish and Wildlife Service to sound science.

Environmental regulations have been based on science which has not been peer reviewed or available to the public. One of the Western Caucus's missions has been to change this through the legislation offered by McClintock.

Currently, federal environmental regulators operate with little to no discussion with local and state governments, this often produced ineffective policy that hinders local industries. State governments should have the best knowledge of how policy will impact their activity, yet federal regulators cut them out of the equation.

Manning noted in the interview, "[The Obama Administration] ignored what the people who actually had a stake in what the outcomes were said related to the science and the species and essentially imposed top down solutions which didn't have bringing the species back as a top priority but instead had changing the development and making it so people couldn't actually coexist with the species in many, many areas."

Smalls also noted how the Western Caucus was successful in overturning a policy which would have eliminated mining ability in over 10 million acres of land to protect a bird which is not actually endangered. Now, the Caucus is working with the Trump Administration to remove additional regulations that limit land use.

In July, Manning spoke at the Western Caucus on the issue and noted, "The House Western Caucus is to be applauded for reigniting this effort to reform the ESA so that there is a balance between the economic and environmental needs of our nation. It is particularly important that sound science with full transparency be employed in reaching and reviewing any findings under the Act as called for by Representative McClintock's HR 3608. Hopefully due to today's activities, the reform effort will lead to sound, transparent and replicable science with frequent and regular reviews being required before knee-jerk actions destroy other industries and communities. Ending forever the ability of fundraising driven environmental hysteria to destroy people's way of life, with the actual protection and recovery of the threatened or endangered species being a secondary concern."

SOURCE

Adani solar plant guzzles illegal fresh water in drought-hit Tamil Nadu, India

The world's largest solar PV farm uses 200,000 litres of water each day to keep the panels clean. Yet some people think that we are soon going to source all our electricity from solar farms in deserts.

The world's largest solar power plant, installed by the Adani Group in 2,500 acres in Kamuthi taluk of Tamil Nadu, is not as green or sustainable as it seems. Local residents claim the 648 MW renewable energy plant is a water guzzler.

It takes as much as 2 lakh litres of good quality water to keep its 25 lakh solar modules clean each day. That water is sourced from borewells 5 km away without permission from the district authorities, the villagers allege.

Near the dried Gundar riverbed on Kamuthi-Mudukulathur road at Kottai Medu, one can find borewells functioning round the clock, filling 6,000-8,000 litre tanks that are attached to tractors.

Around 40 tractors are said to have been contracted by Adani Green Energy (TN) for cleaning the giant solar modules, each of which is approximately 125 ft long and 28 ft wide. Two contract workers in each vehicle fetch water and clean the modules, often twice a day. The panels need to be kept clean, else production could drop by as much as 25 per cent.

The plant's security head S K Sharma told Express they were not drawing or buying borewell water directly. Since cleaning work has been outsourced, it's up to contractors to manage the water source. That part has been specifically written into the contract, he claimed. The Adani top brass was unavailable for comment.

A revenue official attached to Kamuthi taluk confirmed "no person or company has got permission to sell the groundwater, but they are selling it to contractors to clean the solar modules."

Seeman threatens to protest

NTK leader Seeman says the State provided all support needed for Adani's group to set up the plant, right from land acquisition to setting up an exclusive sub station of TANTRASCO. "But the company has now started exploiting the water source," he said, threatening to protest

SOURCE

How the green movement is humiliating itself

Despite its general lack of merit, a lawsuit by the New York attorney general's office is an entertaining symbol of all that has gone wrong with the green movement in the era of climate-change politics.

Exxon is accused of failing to adopt sufficiently penitential accounting for its oil and gas projects in light of climate regulations that, ahem, don't exist. Indeed, politicians around the world have declined to enact the green wish list even when given the chance, notwithstanding their endless verbal opposition to climate change.

Presume for a moment the accusations against Exxon are accurate. Then greens should actually be glad because Exxon has spared them future embarrassment when the company is forced to increase the recorded value of its assets to account for the failure of green politics to deliver the expected carbon regulations.

Words are challenged to express how laughable this case is. Before getting lost in distinctions that Exxon internally draws (and the attorney general muddles) between project-specific costs and policies that would suppress demand for fossil fuels generally, let's remember a few things.

Like all businesses, Exxon seeks to take only those risks that will pay off, and has every incentive to anticipate future regulatory costs correctly. The attorney general's office and its green backers have an entirely different purpose: They want Exxon to use its internal disciplines to prevent oil and gas development even if it would pay off.

The mood ring the greens are wearing is not a pretty colour. They can't enact meaningful curbs through the political process. They failed to use the courts to hold Exxon and others liable for global warming, never mind that the damages they sought would have been paid by producing more oil and gas (and therefore more greenhouse gases).

They have not succeeded in slowing the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, but now are suing Exxon for not pretending otherwise in its accounting. It's almost as if extorting Exxon's participation in a fantasy of green success has become a substitute for actual green success.

The lawsuit is the last dribble of the grand inquisition launched by now-departed Attorney-General Eric Schneiderman, subsidised (as we later learned) by outside climate lobbyists. Mr Schneiderman was forced to leave office in May due to his practice of hitting women he was dating. He set out originally to prove that Exxon had lied about climate science, which Mr Schneiderman apparently believed is devoid of uncertainties. (Exxon had pointed to uncertainties.)

That fell through, perhaps when his staff opened any of the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These not only testify to the continuing uncertainties, but ironically have themselves become a five-volume testament to science's inability to reduce these uncertainties despite tens of billions invested in climate science.

Here's another embarrassment. Since climate change moved to centre stage and became the holy cause of the green movement 20 years ago, greenhouse gases have grown faster than ever. The climate-change lobby has devolved into an angry cult. It does not seek to build bridges to others. It has run, by now, an exhaustive experiment showing conclusively that hysterical doom-mongering and vilifying sceptics as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers is a recipe for political failure.

Most of all, it has abdicated on the crucial grounds of cost and benefit, though it's entirely possible to envision climate-related policies that would meet a cost-benefit test. Investing in basic science and research is almost always high-return. All governments must tax something; most governments tax hundreds of things. A carbon tax is one strategy that could command support across the political spectrum if sold with a touch of the conciliatory mindset that is crucial to democracy.

The idea was not alien to the green movement, before it went insane. In the 1990s, environmentalists promoted a "double dividend" strategy - in which a carbon tax would be used to reduce taxes on socially useful activities like work and investment. As the Resources for the Future's Richard Morgenstern said in a 1996 paper: "Taxes on labour discourage work effort; those on savings reduce the pool of capital available for investment; and those on investment discourage risk-taking."

Today's greens and their Democratic allies would rather chant about the need for impossible, inherently corrupting, never-going-to-happen command-and-control actions to ban fossil fuels and subsidise alternative energy. And bonkers beyond words are the legionnaires of Naomi Klein, who insist that before we can address climate change, we must get rid of capitalism. Whatever is driving such people, it's not a desire for progress on climate policy.

No less observable is the bad faith of the New York attorney general's office. It debases itself and the law by trying to invent some kind of complaint against Exxon merely as payback for its green allies.

SOURCE

"Killer heatwave": What the heck are they talking about?

At mid afternoon Thurs 1st November in Brisbane (S.E. Queeensland), my thermometer reads 29.5C -- and my thermometer synchronizes well with Brisbane BoM readings. And a normal summer afternoon reading is 34C

Killer heatwave strikes: Temperatures on Australia's east coast soar towards 40C - and it won't end until next week

Australia is sweating its way through the first heatwave of the season, prompting dire warnings from fire and health authorities.

Temperatures in Sydney are set to reach the mid-to high-30s by Friday and more than 40C in regional areas.

Unusually dry conditions, strong winds and scorching temperatures have also increased the risk of dangerous fires.

Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke told Daily Mail Australia the heatwave would be contained to inland areas for southern parts of the country.

'In the far north of the country parts of the tropics are getting the heatwave, such as the eastern part of Cape York,' Mr Dutschke said.

Most of southern Australia is set to endure three to four days of the scorching heatwave. However, areas such as northern New South Wales and southwest Queensland will be met with much more severe heat.

Most of the coast will be lucky to avoid the heatwave due to sea breezes, but will still see warmer than normal temperatures.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Jake Phillips said it was the first heatwave of the season and while it won't be very intense, it could impact people more than normal given the recent run of mild conditions.

'One of the characteristics of heatwaves is not just hotter maximum temperatures but also hotter minimums,' he said in a statement.

As the heatwave stretches across most of the country, authorities have urged residents to prepare themselves for a 'killer' bushfire season.

Friday and Saturday will be the hottest days as the heatwave makes its way across the east coast before being pushed north.

Weatherzone meteorologist Jacob Cronje said the heatwave was the result of a cold front pushing the warm weather towards the coast. 'At the moment there is very hot air over the interior of Australia, which has had very little cloud cover,' Mr Cronje said. 'A cold front is forcing and dragging all that warm air down.'

SOURCE

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

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

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1 November, 2018

THE planet has tipped into its sixth mass extinction event and scientists warn we may have passed the point of no return

And we may have done nothing of the sort. And do they seriously expect us to believe that "humans have wiped out about 60 per cent of the planet’s animal life since 1970"? It's just speculation based on hokey statistics. And the "sixth mass extinction event" is just a Greenie invention. And it must be one of the wildest prophecies yet that "more than two thirds of the world’s wildlife could be gone" in two years time. The whole thing is transparent BS. You would have to be mad to believe all their fantasy statistics

IT’S not a horror book, but the latest Living Planet report makes for some seriously frightening reading.

Perhaps the scariest statistic: humans have wiped out about 60 per cent of the planet’s animal life since 1970.

Equally worrying: more than two thirds of the world’s wildlife could be gone by 2020 if current trends continue.

The World Wildlife Fund and its various partners have tracked population changes in Earth’s animal species for decades and the details of the latest report are more grim than ever, they warn.

The Living Planet Index tracks more than 4000 species spread across nearly 17,000 populations. From 1970 to 2014, the number of animals with a backbone — birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and fish — plummeted across the globe, on average, by about 60 per cent.

For freshwater vertebrates, losses topped 80 per cent. Geographically, South and Central America have been hit hardest, with 89 per cent less wildlife in 2014 than in 1970.

But Australia’s region didn’t fare particularly well either. The report found that Australia’s Koala population is disappearing at a rate of about 20 per cent a decade.

Environmental degradation and what critics say is a lack of government oversight to protect koala habitats led environmentalists to declare the koala was “functionally extinct” in Queensland in 2016.

Australia’s deforestation along the east coast put us among the worst in the world and the only developed country on the list of big deforesters, according to the report.

MASS EXTINCTION EVENT

The index of extinction risk for five major groups — birds, mammals, amphibians, corals and an ancient family of plants called cycads — shows an accelerating slide towards oblivion. Depending on which categories are included, the current rate at which species are going extinct is 100 to 1000 times greater than only a few centuries ago.

By definition, this means that Earth has entered a mass extinction event. It is only the sixth such event in half-a-billion years — and this one has been led by humans.

Louise McRae from the Zoological Society of London worked with the WWF to produce the data which underpins the report. Speaking to ABC radio this morning she said human-led agriculture and exploitation was the overwhelming culprit.

“We can put the cause down to humans in some form or another,” she said.

“We looked at what was threatening these populations and the biggest cause was loss or fragmentation of their habitat, that’s the primary cause and the driving force of that is conversion of land for agriculture.”

The second biggest threat to species was over exploitation such as hunting, over fishing and the illegal wildlife trade.

In fact, the report was released the same day as China announced it is relaxing the ban on trade in rhinoceros and tiger parts for scientific, medical and cultural purposes.

The introduction of invasive species in certain environments was also a factor in the dramatic species decline.

Ms McRae noted the increased role of environmental groups in protecting wildlife habitats and called on world governments to do more to protect the planet’s biodiversity.

“We’ve actually got more land protected than ever before but it’s not enough to stem the decline,” she said. “So what this report is asking for is top level commitments by governments — something similar to the Paris Climate Accord — that is going to take the decline of biodiversity seriously.”

CROSSING THE LINE

In 2009, scientists weighed the impact of humanity’s expanding appetites on nine processes — known as Earth systems — within nature. Each has a critical threshold, the upper limit of a “safe operating space” for our species.

The do-not-cross red line for climate change, for example, is global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a new UN report.

So far, we have clearly breached two of these so-called planetary boundaries: species loss, and imbalances in Earth’s natural cycles of nitrogen and phosphorous (mainly due to fertiliser use).

For two others, climate and land degradation, we have one foot in the red zone. Ocean acidification and freshwater supply are not far behind. As for new chemical pollutants such as endocrine disrupters, heavy metals, and plastics, we simply don’t know yet how much is too much.

More generally, the marginal capacity of Earth’s ecosystems to renew themselves has been far outstripped by humanity’s ecological footprint, which has nearly tripled in 50 years.

“In terms of a tipping point, for certain habitats, for certain ecosystems, for coral reefs for example, they are at a very critical stage. The alarm is quite real for certain areas of the planet,” Ms McRae told the ABC.

SOURCE

DC moves toward getting rid of fossil fuels altogether

They won't. But being green has become virtue signalling

Washington, D.C., could adopt the nation’s first 100 percent renewable energy bill, in what supporters say would be the most aggressive, fastest-acting climate change legislation in the country.

“This would be strongest climate change legislation anywhere in the country,” Jamie DeMarco, who focuses on state and local policy for Citizens' Climate Lobby, told the Washington Examiner.

A D.C. Council committee on Monday held a public hearing on the bill, which would move the district to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2032, compared to its current policy of obtaining 50 percent of its power from renewables by that year.

The Democrat-dominated states of California and Hawaii also have laws mandating 100 percent electricity from carbon-free sources, but those set a later target date than D.C. is proposing — 2045.

“This bill would be a leading piece of legislation for our country,” Mary Cheh, a Democrat on the D.C. Council who first introduced the bill in July, told the Washington Examiner in the lead-up to the hearing held by the Committee on Business and Economic Development.

Washingtonians are “dismayed at what they are seeing at the national level,” Cheh said. The district, under Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, is already among the furthest along in transitioning away from fossil fuels and conserving energy.

Little coal is consumed in the District, less than in any state other than Vermont or Rhode Island.

The District uses less energy than any state except Vermont, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Cheh’s bill, which could be voted on by the end of the year, would also create energy efficiency standards for existing buildings, both privately-owned ones and those owned by the District, a first-of-its-kind proposal in the nation.

Tommy Wells, director of the district’s Department of Energy and Environment, told the committee that 74 percent of D.C.'s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings.

The bill would also allow the District to enact regional agreements with neighboring Virginia and Maryland to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To help pay for the transition to renewables, the bill would impose a fee on electricity and natural gas consumption that the legislation’s authors say would add $2.10 to D.C. residents’ average monthly gas bills and less than $1 to their average monthly electricity bills.

About 20 percent of the money raised from those fees would be used to provide financial help to low-income D.C. ratepayers. The rest would go to local “sustainability” projects.

More than 100 witnesses were scheduled to testify at Monday’s all-day hearing including representatives from environmental groups, business leaders, and officials from D.C. utilities Pepco and Washington Gas.

Almost all of those who testified spoke positively about the bill, although some suggested changes.

“I haven't heard anyone say kill the bill,” DeMarco noted during his testimony. “That is as close to consensus as humanly possible.”

Erika Wadlington, director of government relations at the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, contested a provision of the bill that would require electricity suppliers to engage in long-term contracts, lasting at least seven years, for renewable energy.

Long-term contracts, supporters say, are intended to encourage the building of new wind and solar — with guaranteed long-term financing — while protecting ratepayers. Buying energy in bulk, so to speak, can help lock in a lower rate.

But Wadlington, along with utility officials, testified that these long-term contracts are inflexible, because the established rate may not reflect changing market conditions.

Wadlington offered praise for the District's energy policy goals, saying “we support and applaud the mayor’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050.”

Other witnesses said the legislation should expand to allow for carbon-free “clean” energy sources that aren’t renewable to account for the 100-percent target.

These include advanced nuclear reactors, or carbon, capture, and storage technologies that can collect carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants and store it underground.

Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and former EPA deputy administrator in the Obama administration, noted that the District currently gets almost half of its electricity from nonemitting sources, a mix that includes nuclear, hydropower, and biomass, along with solar and wind. The rest is mostly natural gas.

Josh Freed, who leads the clean energy program at the center-left think tank Third Way, testified that D.C. could achieve 100 percent carbon-free electricity within a year or two of the law’s passage — a much faster timeline than the renewable-only target set in Cheh’s bill.

Lawmakers in California recently recognized the limitations of a wind- and solar-only approach, passing a bill this summer to require that 100 percent of the state’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2045 — allowing nonrenewable sources to qualify.

Hawaii’s 100-percent law, meanwhile, calls for the state’s electricity to come from entirely “clean energy” by 2045.

Cheh, however, insisted that the more aggressive 100 percent renewable energy target is “not pie in the sky.”

A recent United Nations report said global emissions should be net-zero by midcentury to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, heightening the urgency to act.

“If we want to get there, we have to chart the path to get there,” Cheh told the Washington Examiner. “In D.C., we are doing that.”

SOURCE

'Government Motors' Chief Calls for Electric Mandate

General Motors CEO Mary Barra wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling for the federal government to step even more heavily into the automobile market and subsidize electric vehicle production.

There was a time long ago when GM was the pinnacle of American industrial might. It was one of the world’s largest companies, and by far the world’s largest automobile producer. Employing hundreds of thousands worldwide, GM was an innovator and a leader. In the 1950s, nearly half of all the cars on America’s roads were produced by General Motors.

Those days are over. Just a few years removed from receiving a massive taxpayer bailout, Barra is looking to the government to make GM great again by forcing consumers to buy electric vehicles.

Because nothing says American greatness like forcing people to buy things. It worked for health insurance, right?

Right?

“We are calling for a National Zero Emission Vehicle (NZEV) program to create a comprehensive approach to help move our country faster to an all-electric, zero emissions future,” writes Barra.

This sounds well-intentioned at first glance. GM laid out its vision last year for zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion, a plan to increase electric vehicle production while making cars that were safer and more tech friendly for the 21st century. With this plan, you would think GM is looking to become the leading innovator in the automotive industry again. The only difference is this time Barra wants the government and the American taxpayer to do the work.

Barra’s NZEV plan basically nationalizes California’s draconian electric-car mandate. It would call for 7% of all new auto sales to be electric by 2021, with a 25% market share by 2030. She sees this happening by expanding the refundable tax credit for electric car purchases, investing in infrastructure to expand the number of charging stations nationwide, and tightening regulations to steer manufacturers and consumers toward greater production and purchases.

Barra shrugs aside the cost to taxpayers for such a venture. We’ve already spent close to $5 billion to subsidize electric car buyers. Barra would have us believe that if we stop these giveaways, it will stifle the growth of the electric-car market. But if the federal government needs to pay consumers to buy electric cars, then there is no market — or at least one insufficient to achieve Barra’s goal on her timetable.

A CEO of a major company should know better. Instead, Barra touts the NZEV’s potential to reduce carbon emissions, and she makes note that car makers and governments in Europe and Asia are already entering into similar partnerships. “The stakes are high, and time is short,” she insists.

The U.S. is already the world leader in reducing carbon emissions without creating unholy alliances between the private sector and the federal government. And simply stating the tired old argument that “other countries are already doing it” does not highlight the inflated auto markets in those countries, the poor quality of many of their vehicles, or the high taxes that consumers are paying.

The bottom line is that the electric car cannot be forced on the American public. The market has been around for several years, but the cons still outweigh the pros.

SOURCE

Al Gore Proves to Be a False Prophet, Again

Despite the dire warnings, Trump exiting the Paris Agreement hasn't brought greater emissions.

Back in June 2017, Al Gore raged against President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, insisting that the climate deal was “reckless” and “indefensible.” Gore declared, “It undermines America’s standing in the world. It threatens the ability of humanity to solve the climate crisis in time.” But predictably, it is Gore’s dire warnings that have proven to be “reckless” and “indefensible” when applied to real world facts.

Earlier this month the Environmental Protection Agency released a report “showing overall decreases across sectors and that total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reported decreased by 2.7 percent from 2016 to 2017.” EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler noted, “Thanks to President Trump’s regulatory reform agenda, the economy is booming, energy production is surging, and we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major industrial sources. These achievements flow largely from technological breakthroughs in the private sector, not the heavy hand of government. The Trump Administration has proven that federal regulations are not necessary to drive CO2 reductions. While many around the world are talking about reducing greenhouse gases, the U.S. continues to deliver, and today’s report is further evidence of our action-oriented approach.”

In fact, U.S. emissions are now at their lowest levels since 1993. So much for needing the Paris Agreement to bring about lower emissions, as the U.S. now has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country on the planet. And several countries who signed the accord, like Canada, China, Spain and the EU, have actually seen carbon emissions increase, which once again provides proof that the Paris climate deal was little more than a socialist boondoggle primarily designed for wealth redistribution, not combating climate change.

Once again, Gore has been caught crying wolf.

SOURCE

Australia: Endangered Koalas?

More stupid Greenie prophecy. If they ever get a disaster prophecy right will be the time to heed them, and not before. As it is, this is just another of their old scares. Scares are their stock in trade.

And it is as dishonest as usual. They say, for instance, that Koalas are "at serious risk of disappearing entirely from some areas". A more honest statement would be that Koalas are "at serious risk of disappearing entirely from some areas while being in pest proportions in other areas, such as Kangaroo Island in South Australia". There is no truth in them (John 8:44)

EARTH has lost a staggering 60 per cent of its wildlife populations since 1970, a bleak new report has revealed.

But koala numbers in Australia have declined at an even faster rate, and the beloved national animal is at serious risk of disappearing entirely from some areas.

The group WWF today released its Living Planet Report, a comprehensive study tracking 16,704 populations of 4005 vertebrate species across the world from 1970 to 2014.

It described the global decline in species — an average rate of 13.6 per cent every 10 years, or 60 per cent in total — as a “grim” result of the pressure humans place on nature.

While the figures are alarming, koala populations along Australia’s east coast have plummeted even faster, at a rate of 21 per cent per decade.

That shocking statistic can be explained by another figure in the report — eastern Australia is one of the 11 worst deforestation fronts in the world, and the only developed country on the list.

“It is a wakeup call for our east coast to appear alongside notorious forest destruction hot spots such as the Amazon, Congo Basin, Sumatra and Borneo,” WWF Australia boss Dermot O’Gorman said.

Clearing for livestock is listed as the primary cause of forest loss, with unsustainable logging an important secondary cause.

By 2050, koalas are likely to disappear completely from the wild in NSW, WWF Australia estimates.

The group blames the axing of forest protection laws by the State Government, saying it all but signing the species’ death warrant.

“The Government needs to urgently reverse its recent axing of laws that has led to a tripling of koala habitat destruction in northwest NSW,” Mr O’Gorman said.

SOURCE

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

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

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IN BRIEF

Home (Index page)

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

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