GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray

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

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

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31 October, 2019

How rising seas will sink COUNTRIES: Scientists calculate that current satellite-based predictions are wrong and three times as many people will be hit by rising shore lines by 2050

If the previous model was wrong, how do we know this one is right?

New estimates from scientists suggest that three times as many people could be affected by rising seas than previously thought.

According to a paper published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, new models show that 300 million are currently living on land that will flood at least once a year by 2050.

This eclipses a former estimate from NASA which projected 80 million people were currently at risk.

The new estimates eclipse projections from NASA which previously put the number of people at risk of floods at 80 million. New models say as many as 300 million people are at risk    +4
The new estimates eclipse projections from NASA which previously put the number of people at risk of floods at 80 million. New models say as many as 300 million people are at risk

A revamped model, which more accurately takes into account land elevation using satellite readings and artificial intelligence, portends that swaths of countries like Vietnam and India will be under water by midcentury.

According to researchers, the new estimates came as a shock even for them, given their dramatic difference from previous tallies.

'These assessments show the potential of climate change to reshape cities, economies, coastlines and entire global regions within our lifetimes,' Scott Kulp, the lead author of the study and a senior scientist at Climate Central told The Guardian.

At-risk areas include large portions of heavily populated cities like Mumbai, which is home to more than 18 million people and could be almost entirely underwater in the next 30 years.

Models show the worst effects could be seen across Asia where countries like India saw a sevenfold increase in the number of people set to be affected by annual floods, and China which saw a threefold increase.

The threat isn't reduced to Asia, however. In the UK, 3.5 million people could be at risk of flooding by 2050 according to their estimates.

The US wasn't among the most affected areas according to the researchers, but previous estimates have shown that dozens of cities across the country's coastal regions could soon be submerged, especially in states like New Jersey and Florida.

While the projection is significantly worse than previous models, researchers note that the disconcerting results may still get worse.

According to them, models are dependent on an increasingly volatile Antarctic ice sheets which continues to hemorrhage ice into the sea.

Scientists say that if conditions there worsen, as many as 640 million people could be threatened by rising tides by 2100.

The estimates are also based on countries keeping stride with emission reductions outlined by the Paris Agreement - benchmarks which have continually gone unmet.

Likewise, estimates of the financial impact could also be much greater than previously thought.

As noted by The Guardian, World Bank data that projected the cost of climate change globally to be about $1 trillion per year were based on former models.

SOURCE

California Can't Keep the Lights On

California is staying true to its reputation as the land of innovation — it is making blackouts, heretofore the signature of impoverished and war-torn lands, a routine feature of 21st-century American life.

More than 2 million people are going without power in Northern and Central California, in the latest and biggest of the intentional blackouts that are, astonishingly, California’s best answer to the risk of runaway wildfires.

Power — and all the goods it makes possible — is synonymous with modern civilization. It shouldn’t be a negotiable for anyone living in a well-functioning society, or even in California, which, despite its stupendous wealth and natural splendor, has blighted itself over the decades with misgovernance and misplaced priorities.

The same California that has been the seedbed of world-famous companies that make it possible for people to send widely viewed short missives of 280 characters or less, and share and like images of grumpy cats, isn’t doing so well at keeping the lights on.

The same California that has boldly committed to transitioning to 50 percent renewable energy by 2025 — and 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 — can’t manage its existing energy infrastructure.

The same California that has pushed its electricity rates to the highest in the contiguous United States through its mandates and regulations doesn’t provide continuous access to that overpriced electricity.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has to try to evade responsibility for this debacle while presiding over it, blames “dog-eat-dog capitalism” for the state’s current crisis. It sounds like he’s referring to robber barons who have descended on the state to suck it dry of profits while burning it to the ground. But Newsom is talking about one of the most regulated industries in the state — namely California’s energy utilities that answer to the state’s public utilities commission.

This is not exactly an Ayn Rand operation. The state could have, if it wanted, pushed the utilities to focus on the resilience and safety of its current infrastructure — implicated in some of the state’s most fearsome recent fires — as a top priority. Instead, the commission forced costly renewable energy initiatives on the utilities. Who cares about something as mundane as properly maintained power lines if something as supposedly epically important — and politically fashionable — as saving the planet is at stake?

Meanwhile, California has had a decadeslong aversion to properly clearing forests. The state’s leaders have long been in thrall to the belief that cutting down trees is somehow an offense against nature, even though thinning helps create healthier forests. Biomass has been allowed to build up, and it becomes the kindling for catastrophic fires.

As Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation points out, a report of the Western Governors’ Association warned of this effect more than a decade ago, noting that “over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires.”

In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown actually vetoed a bill that unanimously passed the state Legislature to promote the clearing of trees dangerously close to power lines. Brown’s team says this legislation was no big deal, but one progressive watchdog called the bill “neither insignificant or small.”

On top of all this, more people live in remote areas susceptible to fires, in part because of the high cost of housing in more built-up areas.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that California, susceptible to drought through its history and whipped by fierce, dry winds this time of year, is always going to have a fire problem. But there also shouldn’t be any doubt that dealing with it this poorly is the result of a series of foolish, unrealistic policy choices.

California’s overriding goal should have been safe, cheap and reliable power, a public good so basic that it’s easy to take for granted. The state’s focus on ideological fantasies has instead ensured it has none of the above.

SOURCE

Eco-imperialists impose a biomess on Africa

Instead of cutting forests and burning dung and charcoal, shouldn’t Africa have cheap electricity?

Duggan Flanakin

China, India, Vietnam and other nations are using more and more oil, natural gas and coal every year to electrify and modernize their nations, create jobs, and improve their people’s health, living standards and life spans. Why in this day and age are the World Bank and other international institutions demanding widespread use of charcoal for heating and cooking in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)?

During the recent 2019 “climate week,” the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change touted increased reliance on biomass – which already comprises 60% of European “renewable” energy – as a tool in fighting climate change and stabilizing Earth’s never-stable climate.

(Europe’s “renewable” energy includes England’s Drax Power Plant, which is fueled by wood from millions of trees from thousands of acres of American and Canadian forest habitats. The trees are turned into wood pellets, which are hauled by truck to coastal ports and transported to North Yorkshire on oil-fueled cargo ships. From there the pellets are taken by train to the Drax Power Plant and burned in place of coal, to generate electricity – so that the UK can “meet its renewable fuel targets,” even though the overall process generates more carbon dioxide than coal or gas plants on a total life-cycle basis, and the trees are cut and burned much faster than new ones can grow. This is hardly sustainable.)

The Dogwood Alliance objected to the IPCC report, claiming that biomass (largely charcoal) contributes to deforestation. Dogwood’s arguments reflect the views of Norimitsu Onishi, whose 2016 New York Times article pointed out that burning charcoal not only poses human health concerns, but also constitutes a massive threat to the environment and numerous plant and animal species whose habitats are being destroyed by people using their trees to make charcoal.

The UN Environment Programme predicts that Africa’s demand for charcoal – currently 23 million tons a year – is likely to double or triple by 2050. Africa’s charcoal production doubled in the past two decades and now accounts for more than 60% of the world’s total, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Rapid urbanization increased demand for charcoal, the preferred way to cook in SSA cities.

Onishi acknowledged that charcoal is cleaner and easier to use than firewood, and cheaper and more readily available in much of Africa than gas or electricity. As a result, 80% of SSA families use charcoal as their primary energy source.

The World Health Organization reports that worldwide over 4.3 million people a year die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household air pollution resulting from burning charcoal and other solid fuels in open fires and leaky stoves. That’s more deaths than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

The WHO also noted that the lack of access to electricity for at least 1.2 billion people around the world exposes families to very high levels of fine particulate matter and other toxic materials in smoke – and to many intestinal diseases from spoiled food and unsafe drinking water. Lack of electricity also results in other health risks, such as burns, injuries and poisonings.

The lack of plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity also restricts opportunities to read and study at night, enjoy access to computers and the internet, engage in small crafts and trades, develop larger businesses and industries, create jobs, build modern homes, hospitals, schools and infrastructure, and take other steps that greatly improve people’s living standards, health and nutrition.

Why, in heaven’s name, more than century after affordable electricity began to transform Western society, is over half of Africa still not connected to any electric grid? Can any American, European, Australian or Canadian imagine life without abundant, reliable, affordable, 24/7/365 electricity?

The World Bank points out that SSA’s household electrification rate averaged a mere 42% in 2016 – with Rwanda at 80% and Guinea-Bissau at an abysmal 30% – leaving hundreds of millions of Africans with no electricity or only very limited, totally unpredictable access to this vital energy source.

ZimbabweSituation.com says three factors hinder demand for electric power in much of Africa. First, many firms and households that are already connected to the grid in SSA face regular blackouts, due to insufficient electricity and poor grid reliability. That means continued reliance on charcoal, forcing connected households and businesses to pay for two energy sources.

Next, where electricity bills take up a large share of household income, access to electricity is very low. Countries with poor grid penetration typically use high tariffs to finance infrastructure to improve their electric grids. But high tariffs translate into high energy bills that deter consumers and make it very hard for to launch and sustain businesses that create jobs and enable people to afford electricity.

Third, the cost and complexity of the connection process further hampers electrification. Where generation capacity is insufficient, utilities may delay new connections until infrastructure investments catch up with consumer demand. The Catch-22 is that these administrative barriers, red tape and connection costs drive down demand, postponing electrification almost forever.

In most places, says Patrick Conners, The Energy Guy, wood competes dollar for dollar with natural gas but pollutes much more and requires far more work: hauling and stacking the wood, stoking and tending the fire, and cleaning out the ashes afterward. A modern furnace gives much more uniform heat without the smoke and draft issues, but even these are unavailable and unaffordable in Africa.

African electricity costs and reliability will only come with modernization and expansion of the electric grid. The late Steven Lyazi, who worked with the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, acknowledged that the availability of solar energy is good news to millions of Africans who rely on firewood, dung and charcoal for cooking. However, he added, solar and wind are at best stopgap solutions on the way to energy security – which UN, World Bank and other policies all but ensure will never arrive.

“Many people,” said Lyazi, “don’t know that Africa has some big dreams.” Just one – the proposed 466-mile Trans East Africa electric railway – would require much more energy than wind and solar can provide. Much of Africa has great potential for nuclear energy, coal, oil and natural gas, he explained – but powerful (largely European) environmentalists (including the World Bank) have opposed funding such projects.

Lyazi, who died in a bus accident in 2017, urged Africans to use their abundant natural resources. He challenged Africans to defy European environmentalists, who have stymied fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear power projects in Africa. He said Uganda and other SSA countries should build natural gas pipelines to power plants, to generate affordable electricity for millions. Today, African oilfields mostly burn and waste the gas, while exporting the oil is mostly exported, benefitting elites while leaving millions energy-deprived, impoverished and desperate.

Why not also build nuclear and coal power plants and hydroelectric projects? Why not indeed? Why should Africans continue to barely survive at the hands of eco-imperialist, neo-colonialist, environmentally destructive organizations policies that ignore the most basic human rights: the rights to energy, modern health and living standards, and decent lives?

As South African nuclear engineer, energy consultant and activist Kelvin Kemm has noted, no single energy source will work for all of Africa. All have shortcomings in various regions, for a wide variety of reasons – except that small pebble bed modular nuclear reactors could probably be employed anywhere.

But Africa, and individual African countries and regions, should be the ones making those decisions – not outsiders, and not based on disinformation, pressure and bullying from those outsiders. They should not be forced to accept biomess energy imposed on them by global eco-imperialists.

Via email

The crusade to curb ordinary life

The crusade to curb the lifestyles and ordinary choices of Americans continues its decent to new levels of absurdity. The latest examples that caught our attention: banning release of helium balloons and drive-thrus at fast food restaurants. While neither idea is new, they represent examples of the ongoing effort by extremist politicians and enviro groups to exert greater control over society, one step at a time.

Will this ever cease?

In New York State, which is competing with California to be the most environmentally extreme nirvana on Earth, legislation has been introduced to outlaw the release of more than 25 latex balloons within a 24-hour period.

At least five other states ban balloons for release, including—you guessed it—California.

Banning release of such balloons would be one more step to “protecting our planet,” according to one of the bill’s sponsors, primarily by protecting birds, which may get tangled in the strings or eat the latex.

Birds may deserve protection, but banning release of balloons, assuming it is enforceable, will hardly compensate for the environmental assault from wind turbines that already imperils them. As CFACT has reported numerous times in recent years, wind turbines are killing birds by as many as 39 million annually. This travesty also has been downplayed and covered up by the industry and interests trying to expand wind power as a renewable energy source.

Casualties of wind turbines are not limited to winged creatures. Offshore wind turbines are taking their toll on whales.

New York state government is in the midst of pushing wind power to generate electricity. The state’s Energy Authority just signed a mega-contract with Sunrise Wind to develop an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Island.

If New York legislators succeed in protecting a handful of birds from eating spent latex balloons that were released from children’s birthday parties, it will merely prolong their lives until they get sliced and diced by the state’s proliferating wind turbines.

While New York seeks to join a small number of states trying to curb balloon use, several localities around the country are prohibiting new drive-thrus on fast-food restaurants, with the city of Minneapolis being the latest example. The effort here is two-fold: curbing automobile emissions and discouraging fast-food consumption and obesity.

Research from 2015 on the fast-food drive-thru ban in Los Angeles revealed the folly of such efforts, which had no positive health effect. With or without drive-thrus, people are going to eat fast food if they want to, especially those from lower-income households who eat less often at higher-priced restaurants. The absence of drive-thrus also would inconvenience more elderly individuals and people with disabilities who may be less inclined to get out of their cars.

Before adopting policies that pick on the elderly, disabled and lower-income patrons of fast food restaurants, the proponents of bans on drive-thru facilities should at least be made to quantify the benefits. Of course, they can’t. Rather, they typically spew feel-good sound bites about reduced emissions and curbing obesity while demonstrating neither.

Regardless of facts or evidence, the environmental and food extremists will continue to tell Americans the dos and don’ts for how they should live their lives. This, all in the interests of their doctrinaire need to supposedly stop man-made global warming to keep the earth from burning up years or decades or centuries from now.

States and localities have banned paper receipts, plastic straws, Styrofoam cups and containers, and plastic grocery bags. It will not stop there. The Green New Deal, sponsored by so many national and local politicians is about someday banning the internal combustion engine and the use of oil, gas and nuclear power.

This moral crusade to inconvenience and curb our consumer choices and lifestyles, if not opposed, will continue to greater levels of seriousness. The very purpose of these proposals is, like so much else in life, about power and control. The insatiable urge to control others, one silly proposal at a time, will never cease until people say “enough already” and it is stopped.

SOURCE

$102m to help keep the lights on in Australia

The usefulness of interconnetors consists in some suppliers having excess capacity. With all states shutting down traditional generators, that seems to be less and less likely. It's a poor substitute for new coal or gas-fired generators

An upgrade of the Queensland-NSW Interconnector will be underwritten by Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian in a move to increase competition between generators in the electricity market and drive down wholesale energy prices amid pressure from coal station closures.

The federal and NSW governments will underwrite the project up to $102m to help TransGrid fast-track early works ahead of final approvals by the Australian Energy Regulator.

Ahead of the Liddell coal-fired power station closing in the Hunter Valley in 2023, the Prime Minister said unlocking transmission infrastructure was crucial in ensuring the future of the NSW energy grid. "This is about putting downward pressure on wholesale prices so businesses and households have access to reliable and affordable power," he said.

"Industry needs certainty. They need to know their electricity won't cut out, and their power bill won't suddenly double. "You can't run a business like that, and you can't employ people. That's why we are underwriting this interconnector. It's a practical step to make sure it happens, and it happens quickly."

Support for the interconnector upgrade is separate to the Morrison government underwriting the new generation investments program, which has shortlisted 12 renewable pumped hydro, gas and coal upgrade projects in NSW, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria.

In mid-2018, the Australian Energy Market Operator released an integrated system plan outlining transmission investments required to preserve long-term affordability and reliability in the national electricity market.

The QNI project, which will provide an extra 190MW of transmission capacity from Queensland to NSW and an upgrade of the Victoria/NSW interconnector provide an extra 170M W. of transmission capacity, were identified as key priorities by the AEMO.

Upgraded interconnectors would increase wholesale market competition in NSW and push down prices. Upgrades would also provide a reliability buffer in NSW, delivering an extra 360MW of supply across the state during peak demand.

Ms Berejiklian said her government committed to the QNI up-grade to "ease cost of living pressures across NSW" and provide "reliable and affordable power to households and businesses".

"Last year, the NSW government announced its transmission infrastructure strategy, which outlined our commitment to accelerate the delivery of key interconnector projects, including the QNI," Ms Berejiklian said. The joint federal-state agreement, of which the Commonwealth's liability is capped to a maximum of $51m, will see upgrades to the QNI brought forward to late-2021 and help cushion the impact of the Liddell closure.

Regulatory approvals for the QNI project were progressing under the NSW transmission infrastructure strategy but further action would be required to ensure the upgraded QNI was "fully operational by the summer of 2022-23".

Under the arrangement, the federal and state governments
would be liable only for early work costs not yet approved by the AER. TransGrid chief executive Paul Italiano said the underwriting commitment was essential to the "early delivery" of the transmission project: "TransGrid is building the interconnector to ensure a reliable supply of electricity to cus-tomers over the summers ahead and as older, coal-fired generators shut down."

NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean said the project would help "keep the lights on and keep power costs down as the energy market transitions", while federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor said NSW industries required lower energy prices and reliable transmission to protect jobs.

From "The Australian" of 28/10/2019

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

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

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30 October, 2019

AOC Gets Schooled on Realities of Climate Science By Expert After Prior Attempts to Silence the CO2 Coalition

Arlington, VA - The CO2 Coalition had the opportunity to correct the falsehoods lawmakers are using to push alarmist climate policies during Congressional hearing on October 23rd.

CO2 Coalition member Mandy Gunasekara, who served as the Trump administration's top air and climate adviser at the EPA, was questioned by alarmist climate change activists such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at a hearing entitled Examining the Oil Industry's Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change.

"It's important to understand that asking questions in the context of science is not denialism," said CO2 Coalition member and Former EPA official Mandy Gunasekara. "The very essence of better scientific understanding is by asking tough questions and challenging the status quo. What's different in the context of climate change science compared to different areas of science I've worked on is that anyone who speaks up and mentions some measure of uncertainty gets attacked and there's a massive backlash for any scientist willing to ask tough questions and have some measure of reason and balance in assessing these sophisticated issues."

"The problem with the Green New Deal is that it's completely unrealistic," she added. "It would force an unnatural shift to renewable energy sources, would lead to an exponential increase of the price of electricity, and there's significant economic consequences to that. The technology that would be required to maintain access to a reliable source of energy in a system that is overly reliant on wind and solar power simply doesn't exist."

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, clearly unable to address the concerns brought up by Ms. Gunaskara, proceeded to use her time to attack the CO2 Coalition's funding sources. This was the first time that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez actually talked with members of the CO2 Coalition.

In January of this year, she wrote to Facebook and Google, asking them to ban CO2 Coalition's scientists and economists from speak at tech-sponsored conferences. In April she refused to engage with CO2 Coalition climate statistician Caleb Rossiter during his testimony before the same committee, and instead joined a rally in the hallway trying to shout him down.

The full exchange can be found below -- at 2.12 mark

Via email

Bleak Outlook For UK Energy Usage

Andy Rowlands

A few days ago I was told about a website called Gridwatch. It was created to monitor the daily power requirements for the UK, and shows the contributions of all the current power generators around the country. It updates itself every 15 minutes.

This is the link to the gridwatch website. Below is a screenshot from the site.

The UK currently gets electricity from a variety of sources, depending on the time of year and the prevailing weather conditions each day. The breakdown of the different methods of electricity generation are, in roughly descending percentages of average daily requirements, gas turbines, coal, nuclear, biomass, wind farms, solar arrays, hydroelectric and pumped storage.

As of the time of writing this article, the actual breakdown was:-

Combined Cycle Gas Turbines – 58.8%
Nuclear – 17.2%
Wind – 6.3%
Solar – 5.5%
Biomass – 2.9%
Coal – 2.16%
Hydro – 1.56%
Pumped Storage – 0.37%

Add up the full list of contributors, and you get to around 95% of our daily electrical requirements, so most days we import around 5% through what is known as the French Interconnector, using their spare nuclear capacity.

There are two other Interconnectors through which we can import electricity; the Belgian and Dutch. If you click on the coloured ‘France’ symbol in the top left corner of the screen, you can see the French power requirements and see they get around 75% of their energy from nuclear power.

The Conservatives want to dispense with ‘fossil fuel’ and nuclear electricity generation by 2050, Labour by 2040 and Extinction Rebellion by 2025, and have us thereafter rely solely on wind & solar. The environmentalists also want to dispense with the hydroelectric & pumped storage installations.

Running flat out, our current wind farms can produce around 12.5gw & solar arrays around 10gw. On clear windy days this equates to just over half our daily energy requirements of around 38gw, the rest being made up by the other forms of generation listed above, but that assumes the wind is blowing every day not too little or too much, and every day is cloudless.

If the wind is too slight, the turbines don’t turn fast enough to generate the correct voltage. If the wind is blowing too strongly, the turbines have to be brought to a stop to prevent them over-speeding and damaging the electric motors and bearings.

If we acceded to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘demands’ by 2025 and discontinued every form of electricity generation in the UK apart from wind and solar, we would have permanent 50% power cuts, and that again assumes that every day from then on the wind will be blowing constantly at the right speed, and every day will be cloudless, which rarely happens.

In reality, we would be lucky to have electricity 20% of the time. The effect on homes, businesses and perhaps most importantly hospitals would be devastating.

There are two other major problems. Dispensing with natural gas, which the government wants to do by 2035, will mean that most people would no longer be able to heat their homes or cook, as most houses now have gas-fired central heating and ovens.

The government wants all heating and cooking to be electric, but the existing national grid cannot support such a large increase in demand, estimated to be around ten-fold, so a massive upgrade would be required of the entire electricity distribution system nationwide, which would involve replacing every pylon, every transmission line, every underground cable, all the associated switchgear and the wiring in most houses. Such a colossal project would take many years and cost hundreds of millions of pounds, costs that would be passed onto consumers.

The other major issue is if we stop using oil, we will not be able to maintain the wind turbines, as there will be no lubricants and greases, so once they fail or reach the end of their working lives, they will likely never work again. If we are to fully ‘de-carbonise’, it will require the virtual elimination of manufacturing and industry, so there will be no way to make any news ones, or replacement parts for existing ones.

Whichever way you look at it, the chances of us continuing to have 24-hour electricity on demand are receding with every passing year. The future for the UK is looking cold and dark.

SOURCE

British bird charity expected to announce opposition to game bird shooting

The RSPB is expected to voice its opposition to game bird shooting for the first time as it faces backlash from countryside organisations.

While the bird charity has spoken out about issues pertaining to wild birds on grouse moors, including hen harrier persecution, it has not taken a firm view on the shooting industry as a whole before.

At the organisation's Annual General Meeting on Saturday, Kevin Cox, the Chair of Council announced that the RSPB would be reviewing its policy on game bird shooting and associated land management. ?

He said that while it is an "emotive issue", policy makers would be developing "a set of conservation tests for management practices associated with game bird shooting."

Mr Cox added: "We will use these to guide the RSPB’s conservation policy, practice and communications, consistent with the ongoing climate and ecological emergency, respectful of our charitable objectives and maintaining the confidence and support of our members.

"We intend to do this, informed by the views of members and other stakeholders many of whom we have engaged with on these issues for decades."

The organisation has increasingly taken a firmer view on shooting, and earlier this year urged the government to more closely licence driven grouse shooting.

It is thought the RSPB has been wary in the past of criticising shooting because in the Royal Charter for the charity it says: "The Society shall take no part in the question of the killing of game birds and legitimate sport of that character except when such practices have an impact on the Objects."

This means the charity can comment on shooting if it affects the wild birds that the RSPB was set up to support, but it cannot comment on shooting for fun as a practice.

However, it is now using environmental concerns as a reason to review its policy.

Mr Cox explained: "Environmental concerns include the ongoing and systematic illegal persecution of birds of prey such as hen harriers on some sporting estates; the ecological impact of high numbers of game birds released into the countryside increasing the density of generalist predators; the mass culling of mountain hares in some parts of our uplands; the use of lead ammunition; the impact of burning peatlands and medicating wild animals for sport shooting.

"In response to the evidence about the scale of the environmental impact and growing public concern, including from our membership, the RSPB’s Council has agreed to review our policy on game bird shooting and associated land management."

This has drawn ire from countryside organisations. Tim Bonner, the chair of the Countryside Alliance, said: “Disappointingly this seems to be the final step in the RSPB’s long journey to becoming an anti-shooting organisation. It displays the organisation’s bizarrely warped priorities in the face of so many other pressing concerns that face the countryside we know and love.

"The environmental, economic and social benefits of shooting have been repeatedly illustrated by research and reports. The Countryside Alliance will continue to robustly promote and defend properly conducted game shooting.”

Former RSPB chief Mark Avery has become a vocal anti-shooting activist since leaving the charity, and set up lobby group Wild Justice with BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham, which has launched successful legal challenges to curtail shooting.

He said of the RSPB's announcement: "This is welcome news.

"This review is about repositioning the RSPB in an important public debate because it is realised that the RSPB has been lagging not leading. Perhaps it has taken a new Chair of Council and a new Chief Executive to grasp this nettle rather belatedly.

"I understand that some membership pressure has helped to push this statement along. I’m pretty sure that the existence of Wild Justice, getting into some areas where the RSPB has been nervous to tread, has also been a factor."

SOURCE

Climate Stalinism: Today’s radical green movement demands submission to an elite governing class—and its views are entering the mainstream

The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty. Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda. They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream. “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”

Today’s working and middle classes are skeptical about policies that undermine their livelihoods in the promise of distant policy goals. Even now, after a decade-long barrage of fear-mongering, a majority of Americans, Australians, and even Europeans doubt that climate change will affect their lives substantially. A recent UN survey of 10 million people found that climate change ranked 16th in concerns; most people in the developing world, notes environmental economist Bjorn Lonborg, “care about their kids not dying from easily curable diseases, getting a decent education, not starving to death.”

Like other people in high-income countries, most Americans want to improve the environment and many, if not most, are concerned about the potential impact of climate change. But they still rank climate as only their 11th leading concern, behind not just health care and the economy but also immigration, guns, women’s rights, the Supreme Court, taxes, income, and trade. A recent Harris-Harvard poll found that three-fifths of Americans reject the portfolio of Green New Deal policies, including a third of Democrats and half of people under 25.

Simply put, once the current green agenda is understood in terms of its impact on jobs and energy prices, it does not play well. In recent Australian elections, voters soundly rejected a progressive agenda that targeted suburban residents and the country’s large fossil-fuel industry. Opposition was particularly strong in primarily blue-collar areas like Australia’s Queensland. The results in Australia led local celebrities and pundits to brand their fellow citizens as unremittingly “dumb.”

Areas dependent on energy and manufacturing—such as Appalachia, Ontario, Alberta, the U.S. Midwest, and the British midlands, have pushed back against the prospective green regime. Even Germany has seen mounting opposition to green policies, which have sent the country’s powerful industrial base reeling from the associated high energy costs. But it’s not just miners, oil-riggers, and factory hands resisting the greens. French residents trying to make a living outside central Paris, and their counterparts in normally placid places like Norway and the Netherlands, have taken to the streets, sometimes violently.

Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania; in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost. Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession. And the environment itself would be somewhat of a loser in this game—natural gas has done more to reduce emissions than all the greens’ efforts.

Across the world, green-backed policies have hurt the working class far more than the affluent rich who most enthusiastically embrace them. The militant Extinction Rebellion—which the online magazine Spiked has described as “an upper-middle-class death cult”—has tried to disrupt commuters in Britain in their drive to “save the planet” but has earned more angry contempt than support from harried workers. Though cast by the media as heroic outsiders, greens have historically clustered in elite academic, nonprofit, media, and corporate sectors. The influential Limits to Growth, published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, was backed by major corporate interests, led by Fiat’s Aurelio Peccei. The authors’ long-term vision, based on the notion that the planet was running out of resources at a rapid rate, was to create “a carefully controlled balance” that would restrict growth, particularly in advanced countries.

Whatever its failings, twentieth-century socialism was growth-oriented and in principle devoted to expanding working-class wealth. In contrast, the green version of socialism consciously seeks to depress the average family’s prospects, since prosperity will generate more greenhouse gases. Some zealots, such as the Guardian’s George Monbiot, argue in favor of economic recession as a way to reduce carbon emissions, even if it causes people to lose their jobs and homes.

Draconian climate austerity does not threaten the jobs of the so-called “clean rich,” who may benefit as investors in solar and wind energy, the trading of carbon offsets, and other activities of the “climate industrial complex.” Some old-style leftists, like British Marxist historian James Heartfield, see the emergence of “green capitalism” as a new ruse for the upper classes to suppress the lower by creating artificial scarcity in everything from energy to housing and food. Greens seek to restrict air travel for the masses, but climate activists like Prince Charles, Richard Branson, Leonardo di Caprio, the rapper Drake, and Al Gore continue to fly in private jets, even to climate-crisis summits. They enjoy, and develop, luxury resorts far from population centers, and consume prodigiously while imploring the rest of us to curb our more modest habits.

For most families, the policies of climate radicals promise only a degraded quality of life, including calls for restrictions on having children due to their “carbon legacy,” a proposal endorsed by climate researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Oregon State University. Some scientists even suggest that we shift from eating hamburgers to low-resource-intensity “maggot sausages.” A Swedish economist recently suggested that we recycle ourselves and discover the refinements of cannibalism.

Not surprisingly, the advocates find democratic politics increasingly inconvenient. Climate scientist Roger Pielke’s 2010 notion of “the iron law of climate policy”—that support for reducing greenhouse emissions is limited by the amount of sacrifice demanded—determines people’s willingness to cut back on their carbon output. “People will pay some amount for climate goals,” he suggests “but only so much.” At a cost of $80 a year per household, he suggested, most people, polls found, would support climate measures—but raise it to $770 annually, and support drops below 10 percent.

Given this reality, it’s likely that a future president will not be able to get a majority of both houses to embrace extreme policies inimical to middle-class life. This will force the chief executive, following the model established by President Obama (and reversed by President Trump), to impose the climate agenda through executive orders and the administrative state. The idea of a top-down approach—handing over power to credentialed “experts” operating in Washington, Brussels, or the United Nations—has been advanced by influential progressives like former Obama budget advisor Peter Orszag and journalist Thomas Friedman.

Climate activists increasingly embrace these post-democratic notions. Some, including former California governor Jerry Brown, seem to prefer China’s authoritarian approach to addressing climate issues, despite that country’s largest-in-the-world and still-expanding carbon footprint. Brown has helped launch a “California-China Climate Institute” that embraces the Chinese model. He even embraces “brainwashing” the population to get support for draconian climate measures, along the lines of Chinese thought control.

Once respectable and mainstream, the climate movement now resembles something inspired by religious fervor. Instead of debate, there’s enforced ideological conformity. Climate skeptics of any kind—even those who agree that climate change poses a serious challenge—have been all but banned, with rare exceptions, from the mainstream media. Others, including those in the fossil fuel industry, face court challenges that portray them as so-called “climate criminals.”

Such movements don’t tolerate infidels and have little patience with constitutional limits and procedures. Social Democrat Wolfgang Thierse, former president of the German Bundestag, recently told Die Welt that green militants display an “anti-democratic affection.” A German television reporter covering climate protesters described a movement dismissive of “our understanding of freedom and responsibility” that “borders on a collective psychosis, paired with wild fear and demands. Ever shriller, ever louder, ever faster.”

Demands to “decarbonize” the planet at once draw inspiration from scaremongering as much as from science. Ever since the 1968 publication of Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and the 1972 Club of Rome report, environmentalists have predicted massive shortages of natural resources, the end of economic growth, and widespread starvation, claims generally accepted without skepticism in media, academic, and even political circles. Yet energy and food are more plentiful than ever, as the world has experienced the largest growth in affluence in its history.

Being proved wrong has failed to get greens to rethink their doomsday assumptions. Instead, every decade sees predictions that planet has five or ten years left if extreme measures are not taken immediately. After the election of President Obama in 2009, NASA’s James Hansen, an icon of the climate-change movement, announced that the new chief executive had four years to save the earth. Many phenomena ascribed to climate change—hurricanes and droughts, for example—turn out to have multiple and more complex causes. In the case of California’s wildfires, some of the problem can be traced back to green policies that prevent the thinning of the state’s forests. Similarly, the now-ended drought was made much worse by environmentalist opposition to new water infrastructure. Activists even blame the recent power outages on climate, though the primary cause was lack of investment and maintenance by local electrical utilities.

Today’s aggressive green policies have little chance of making an impact on the climate. California, the hotbed of climate radicalism, has reduced its greenhouse gases between 2007 and 2016 at rate that places it 40th, per capita, among the states. Similar failures can be seen in Germany, where much-heralded energiewende have led to soaring costs but disappointing results in terms of emissions declines. Even if the U.S. adopted the Green New Deal, the impact on climate, note some recent studies, would be almost infinitesimal. What we do in the West is increasingly irrelevant when virtually all the growth in emissions comes from developing countries, led by China, where hundreds of millions still live in near poverty. Globally, over 1 billion people lack reliable electricity. Leaders in countries such as India tend to be more concerned with access to power than with avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions.

Long-time environmentalist and author Ted Nordhaus suggests that, to make headway with the public, the green movement should give up “utopian fantasies” and “make its peace with modernity and technology.” Green virtue-signaling needs to be replaced by a practical program that could win public support, including focusing on resiliency against expected change and expanding production of hydroelectric, nuclear, and increasingly abundant natural gas rather than ruinously expensive renewables. In contrast, the Green New Deal’s pledge to abandon fossil fuels by 2030, notes former Obama energy secretary Ernest Moritz, presents “impractical targets” that may “lose a lot of key constituencies who we need to bring along to have a real low-carbon solution.”

The fundamentalist green approach now being adopted represents a political dead-end that requires authoritarian means while saving the planet at the expense of upward mobility for the vast majority. Rejecting the middle ground that exists in properly functioning democracies, green extremists are doing a profound disservice, both to our constitutional order and to the sustainability of our society—and planet.

SOURCE

Australia: Climate abounds with deception

Chris Kenny

Blatant deception has become endemic in what is an extreme debate on global warming. The alarmists who sneer at so-called climate deniers are, all too often, fact deniers. The ABC and The Guardian Australia have shown when the assessments of climate scientists don't fit their catastrophist narrative, they are prepared to ignore or verbal scientists and attack other media for sharing the information.

Consider a forum at the University of Sydney on "The Business of Making Climate Change" in June that included the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes director Andrew Pitman. Asked about climate and drought, Professor Pitman said this:

"This may not be what you expect to hear but as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought. Now, that may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented but there is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid. "And if you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last 100 years there's no trend in data, there's no drying trend, there's been a drying trend in the last 20 years but there's been no drying trend in the last 100 years and that's an expression of how variable the Australian rainfall climate is."

You will not have heard that comment, in full, on the ABC, nor read it in The Guardian Australia; yet they have run many comments from Greens and Labor politicians saying the drought is linked to climate change. This self-censorship is extraordinary enough because there could hardly be a more relevant and factual contribution from such a reputable source that puts the lie to the political posturing over a crippling drought that is dominating political debate.

But it gets worse. What the ABC's MediaWatch did a fortnight ago, and The Guardian Australia replicated last week, is run cut-down versions of that quote and accuse me and others at Sky News of misrepresenting Professor Pitman. That's right, it is commentators sharing a reputable climate scientist's own words, uncut, that they criticise.

These journalists failed to run the pertinent information but slammed others for running it. Their tenuous justification is a statement from Professor Pitman's centre claiming he should have said "no direct link" rather than "no link". The insertion of the word "direct" into his assessment is mere semantics and changes nothing. Indeed the statement begs the question of how and why this ex post facto qualification came about, not directly from Professor Pitman, but from his centre.

In that June forum Professor Pitman also said the "fundamental" problem in this field of science is that "we don't understand what causes droughts" — again under-scoring the absence of a climate change/drought link. Last week he was reported on the topic again in The Guardian Australia "But the fact that I can't establish something does not make it true or false, it just means I can't establish it."

Astonishingly, the website argued this quote bolstered its claims of misrepresentation when clearly it reaffirms his critical point; there is no link established between our drought and global warming. The evidence is in, no matter how much it is buried, denied and spun away by the ABC and Guardian Australia.

All of Professor Pitman's comments demonstrate that politicians are making a link between global warming and drought that climate scientists have not established. In comparison, some of us at Sky News have run Professor Pitman's comments in full a number of times, drawn our conclusions, asked others to comment and allowed audiences to make their own judgments.

Additionally, I have repeatedly invited Professor Pitman to discuss the issues, live and uncut to air. He shrinks away. We can imagine it is difficult for scientists to have their work pushed and pulled for political point-scoring but they have a public duty to share the facts.

Professor Pitman's work is being grossly misrepresented by the ABC and The Guardian Australia, who argue the opposite to his declared reality. His centre should be clearing the air but is doing the opposite.

The dishonesty of the reporting by Paul Barry's Media Watch, at your expense, is stunning. They cut, trim and misrepresent what has been broadcast on Sky News, fail to ask pertinent questions of Professor Pitman and try to convince the public that his research shows the exact opposite of what he has said repeatedly.

There has seldom been a clearer demonstration of George Orwell's 1984 maxim: "War is Peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."

The Guardian Australia should be left to its own devices, I suppose, but Ita Buttrose should not sit idly by and allow Media Watch to implement the antithesis ofthe ABC's charter mission.

From "The Australian of 28/10/2019

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

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

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29 October, 2019

Schumer Announces Plan To Nix Virtually Every Gas Powered Vehicle In The Country

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer is preparing to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on a plan that would fast-track the elimination of nearly every gas-powered vehicle in the country.

The Senate’s top Democrat wants to spend a massive amount of money enticing Americans to exchange their gas-guzzling vehicles for an electric car. Schumer’s proposal, which he announced in a New York Times editorial Thursday, shows Democrats are lurching leftward on the issue.

“That’s why I am announcing a new proposal designed to rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles and replace them with zero-emission, or ‘clean,’ vehicles like electric cars,” Schumer wrote after suggesting scientists agree that climate change represents an imminent threat to the U.S.

He added: “The goal of the plan, which also aims to spur a transformation in American manufacturing, is that by 2040 all vehicles on the road should be clean.” The plan would remove more than 63 million gas-powered cars from the road by 2030, Schumer estimates.

Schumer’s office expects the proposal to cost roughly $392 billion over a decade. The Washington Post referred to the idea on Friday as “essentially ‘Cash for Clunkers’ on steroids,” referring to a policy from the Obama-era encouraging Americans to trade their old vehicles for fuel-efficient cars.

Cash for Clunkers was the mechanism allowing the federal government to offer incentives of between $2,500 and $4,500 to citizens who traded in their older vehicles for newer ones. The policy received a lot of media play, but critics called the idea a failure even if it was designed with the best of intentions.

Under Schumer’s plan, car owners will get a rebate starting at $3,000 if they trade in their car for an electric vehicle, with the amount of rebate going up the longer the vehicle goes without recharging. The rebate could dramatically exceed the existing $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles.

Citizens are not the only ones who’d get a windfall. States and cities would also receive $45 billion in funding to install charging stations. The plan, which does not have legislative text, would also provide $17 billion to grant programs to build new factories for electric vehicles.

The senator’s idea comes as Democrats continue shifting leftward on environmental issues.

House Democrats introduced a Green New Deal in February calling for a “10-year national mobilization” toward a series of goals aimed at fighting global warming. The deal’s proponents called for the eradication of fossil fuels before lawmakers stripped the idea out of the final product.

Conservative analysts are already criticizing Schumer’s plan.

“The money would be wasted. Even if Americans stopped driving entirely today and forever, there would be no discernible impact on, much less improvement of the weather or climate,” Steve Milloy, a lobbyist on behalf of the energy industry, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

SOURCE

Russia Rejects Climate Change Plan After Business Uproar

The Russian government has drastically watered-down its new package of climate change legislation after push-back from the country’s leading businesses, the Kommersant business daily reported.

Plans for quotas on carbon emissions at Russia’s largest companies, a new national carbon trading system and penalties for the biggest polluters have now been scrapped.

Instead, Russia will only go ahead with proposals to measure and collect data on emissions as part of a five-year green audit.

The campaign against a stricter package of measures was led by the influential Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) — one of the main lobbying groups for Russia’s largest businesses.

The new laws were set to be introduced as part of Russia’s ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Originally, the Russian government proposed introducing new climate legislation in two phases. The first would be a five-year stock-taking exercise to measure company-level emissions and set appropriate quotas for reducing emissions.

After that, Russia would then introduce a carbon cap on the country’s biggest polluters and penalties for those that exceed their quotas. Earlier plans also envisaged the creation of a national fund to support emissions reduction and a system of nationwide carbon trading.

However, the RSPP has successfully killed-off the entire second phase, including plans to set individual company quotas or targets, arguing that the government should await the results of the climate audit before introducing new laws and regulations to hold firms accountable for their emissions.

“The idea of putting a price on carbon dioxide in Russia has fallen victim to the industrial lobby,” analysts at VTB Capital said in a research note today.

This is despite the fact that “the Paris Climate Agreement envisages a greenhouse gas emission target which is higher than Russia’s current emissions. So introducing the quota system is unlikely to be punitive for businesses.”

The watered-down legislation would “essentially put any actively managed efforts by the government to reduce emissions on ice,” they added.

SOURCE

U.S. Smashes Another Oil Export Record

Growing U.S. crude oil production and exports have resulted in America selling oil to more destinations around the world than the number of countries from which it imports crude oil, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday.

A decade ago, the United States was importing crude oil from as many as 37 foreign sources per month, and its exports were restricted almost exclusively to Canada. After the lifting of those restrictions at the end of 2015, U.S. crude oil exports have been on the rise and reaching more destinations.

Between January and July 2019, the largest number of sources of America’s oil imports fell to 27 in any of those months, the EIA has estimated.

On the other hand, the number of destinations for U.S. crude oil exports rose, with exports to as many as 31 destinations per month in the first seven months this year.

Thanks to its growing domestic production—which increased by 2.6 million bpd between January 2016 and July 2019—the U.S. has been importing crude from fewer sources. The domestic production increase has been mostly light sweet crude, which U.S. refiners have accommodated by displacing imports of light and medium crude from countries other than Canada and by raising refinery utilization rates, EIA says.
Related: Is Eating Meat Worse Than Burning Oil?

On the other hand, expanding export terminals in the U.S. and global demand for light sweet crude have allowed the U.S. to export oil to more destinations.

U.S. crude oil exports jumped by nearly 1 million bpd in the first half of 2019 from the same period in 2018 to average 2.9 million bpd between January and June this year, the EIA said earlier this month.

Average U.S. exports of crude oil rose by 966,000 bpd in the first half of 2019, compared to the first half of 2018. In June this year, the U.S. set a monthly average record of 3.2 million bpd of crude oil exports, EIA data showed.

SOURCE

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest may be exempted from Clinton-era roadless rule

Responding to a 2018 petition submitted by the State of Alaska, the Trump administration is proposing to exempt Alaska’s giant Tongass National Forest from the Clinton-era Roadless Rule, a nationwide policy, which has been in effect since 2001.

The Roadless Rule banned all logging, commercial development, and road construction in Tongass, the largest national forest in the United States. Tongass, with its 16.9 million acres, is located in the Alaska Panhandle in the southeastern part of the state.

Under the proposal, the U.S. Forest Service would “remove all 9.2 million acres of inventoried roadless acres and convert 165,000 old-growth acres and 20,000 young-growth acres previously identified as unsuitable timber lands to suitable timber lands.”

But allowing logging in designated areas of the temperate rainforest, and opening up other economic opportunities to local residents, evoked howls of protest from environmentalists and their political allies in Washington.

“Once you have clear cut, the remaining trees or the edge of the forest becomes (sic) much more susceptible to what we think of as windthrow, or wind disturbance,” Northern Arizona ecologist Michelle Mack told Wired (Oct. 17).

Rep. Raul Grijalva, (D-Arizona), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, was also aghast.

“Weakening protections for one of the most important ecosystems our planet has left is a colossal mistake, and this Committee has questions about how this decision was made that this administration should prepare to answer,” he said.

For nearly two decades, however, serious questions have been raised about the last-minute inclusion of Tongass in the Roadless Rule. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 and the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 collectively set aside 5.6 million acres in Tongass as wilderness. Eight days before President Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, his administration’s Roadless Rule designated another 9.4 million acres as roadless areas in Tongass.

“In combination, these laws and regulation have resulted in the loss of 4,200 jobs in the timber industry and substantial interference in mining and renewable energy development,” former Alaska Senator and Governor Frank Murkowski pointed out in the Anchorage Daily News (Oct. 21).

Alaska lost no time in challenging the Roadless Rule. In 2001, the state sued the Forest Service, arguing that including Tongass in the rule violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Following a June 2003 settlement with the Justice Department, Tongass received a temporary exemption from the Roadless Rule from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the Forest Service. The Secretary of Agriculture pointed out that the “socioeconomic costs to local communities of applying the roadless rule’s prohibitions to the Tongass, all warrant treating the Tongass differently from other national forests outside of Alaska.”

The Secretary added:

“Because most Southeast Alaska communities are nearly surrounded on land by inventoried areas of the Tongass, the roadless rule significantly limits the ability of communities to develop road and utility connections that almost all other communities in the United States take for granted.”

But in 2009, environmental groups challenged the process by which USDA had temporarily exempted Tongass from the Roadless Rule. The Obama administration did nothing to provide 21st century infrastructure to the 32 communities surrounded by Tongass. All told, six Alaska governors and the state’s entire congressional delegation have, over the years, sought relief for the people living in the area.

In proposing to scrap the roadless designation for Tongass, the Trump administration has determined that the plight of local residents cannot be allowed to continue.

SOURCE

Conservative alliance targets climate army

The new voice of Australia’s conservative movement has vowed to go after radical left-wing groups in a national campaign against “climate alarmists”, after accusing members of activist group Extinction Rebellion of being criminals who pose a menace to society.

Liz Storer, a 36-year-old former Liberal councillor and ministerial adviser, will be announced on Wednesday as the new national director of centre-right campaign machine Advance Australia, which has positioned itself as the political counter to GetUp.

Her appointment comes as GetUp’s national director, Paul Oosting, fronts the National Press Club on Wednesday amid internal inquiries into its failed campaign to unseat a list of targeted conservative MPs at the May election.

But Ms Storer said while GetUp was on her radar, her first campaign would be aimed at Extinction Rebellion, which has risen from obscurity to prominence in the past week by closing down traffic in the CBDs of Brisbane and Melbourne.

“These people are seriously unhinged,” Ms Storer said. “They are going to be one of our first campaigns … These guys are very strategic but the truth is they are not a climate change action group.

“They may market themselves that way. They are hell bent on deconstructing society as we know it … they operate on a manifesto of delusions based on a rejection of European colonisation and traditional values that most mainstream Australians hold dear.

“They are a menace to society … We saw last week the Victorian police saying they had to stop normal policing to deal with them. ER are proving to be the real criminals …. Gluing themselves to streets (and) hanging from bridges.”

Ms Storer, who has a masters degree in human rights and was elected to the suburban Perth council of Gosnells before becoming an adviser to conservative federal Coalition senator and assistant minister Zed Seselja, said the militant advance of climate activism had not been effectively challenged and that Advance Australia’s mission was to be the voice of “mainstream Australia”.

It would also run counter campaigns against MPs with “radical agendas” and run lobbying and public campaigns against state governments over activism in the education system.

“A mate of mine called me this morning to tell me his daughter had texted him from school to tell him that her teacher said a third of their class would be dead by 2050 because of climate change,” Ms Storer said. “Climate anxiety is becoming a real thing.”

While Advance Australia is heavily outgunned by established groups such as GetUp, it quickly raised $2.5m in donations with a 45,000-strong supporter base in its first 12 months of operation since being formed in November last year with the backing of prominent businessmen including Maurice Newman and James Power of the Queensland brewing dynasty.

“GetUp are a well-oiled machine and we are in our infancy,” Ms Storer said. “But we intend to even the score. There is clout in the silent majority … we saw that at the May election.”

GetUp’s Mr Oosting, who ran the left-wing group’s failed election campaign strategy to unseat a rump of conservative MPs, will deliver a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday titled Politics Belongs to Everyone.

GetUp, which launched internal and external reviews after the May 18 election, has been targeted by Scott Morrison and Coalition frontbenchers, who have accused the political activist group of being a front for Labor and the Greens.

A prominent Liberal Party figure said the group had struggled to gain traction but claimed the appointment of Ms Storer signalled a significant gear shift in the conservative movement’s battle against the left-wing lobby. “I do love kicking doors,” Ms Storer 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 or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

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

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28 October, 2019

U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

This is just grantmanship: a plea for more money. Will the army that won in two world wars be unable to cope with a couple of degrees of average temperature rise? Armies have to be adaptable and this lot of adaptations should not be too demanding

Starvation? Note that the big problem for farmers is glut, not shortage (of grains etc.) Note also that global warming would increase rainfall, not lead to drought. So crops would thrive

The report is imagination run riot, not a scientific study of the issues

The report says a combination of global starvation, war, disease, drought, and a fragile power grid could have cascading, devastating effects.

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

The senior US government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse due to the impacts of climate change as we near mid-century.

The report was commissioned by General Mark Milley, Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer in the country (the report also puts him at odds with Trump, who does not take climate change seriously.)

The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time.

The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes.

“Increased energy requirements” triggered by new weather patterns like extended periods of heat, drought, and cold could eventually overwhelm “an already fragile system.”

The report also warns that the US military should prepare for new foreign interventions in Syria-style conflicts, triggered due to climate-related impacts. Bangladesh in particular is highlighted as the most vulnerable country to climate collapse in the world.

“The permanent displacement of a large portion of the population of Bangladesh would be a regional catastrophe with the potential to increase global instability,” the report warns. “This is a potential result of climate change complications in just one country. Globally, over 600 million people live at sea level.”

Sea level rise, which could go higher than 2 meters by 2100 according to one recent study, “will displace tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people, creating massive, enduring instability,” the report adds.

The US should therefore be ready to act not only in Bangladesh, but in many other regions, like the rapidly melting Arctic—where the report recommends the US military should take advantage of its hydrocarbon resources and new transit routes to repel Russian encroachment.

But without urgent reforms, the report warns that the US military itself could end up effectively collapsing as it tries to respond to climate collapse. It could lose capacity to contain threats in the US and could wilt into “mission failure” abroad due to inadequate water supplies.

More HERE

World’s largest ice sheet growing

The West Antarctic ice sheet, the biggest mass of ice in the world, has been growing since the end of the nineteenth century.

Marc Morano featured a post about a fascinating Chinese study from Dr. Patrick Michaels at the website of CFACT’s friend and ally the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The forthcoming study by six Chinese authors is scheduled to appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. The study concludes that Antarctic ice exhibited a “significant negative trend” during the nineteenth century, then a “significant positive trend” throughout the 20th.

This doesn’t help the narrative for those seeking to spread climate alarm one bit.

Here’s the latest example: Artist Thomas Starr of Northeastern University has been placing fake historical markers in New England towns. “Gazebo relocated due to recurring flooding caused by sea level rise, March, 2058,” reads a plaque on a gazebo in Durham, New Hampshire. He calls it the Seacoast Remembrance Project. Starr’s plaques have been garnering the laudatory media write-ups we’re sure you’d expect.

Hey Durham Town Council, want to sell us the land your lovely seaside gazebo’s on at a generous discount? We’ll take the problem off your hands. It is doomed after all.

That sea level has been slowly rising at only 1 to 3 mm per year since before the industrial revolution, with no sign of meaningful acceleration, does not make it into the articles. Hysterical sea level claims are not based on reality. Dangerously rising seas exist only in the virtual world of climate computer simulations.

Those ever-faulty computer models project extreme Antarctic ice melt. That it has not actually occurred does not seem to matter. They even stoop to attributing extra high tides caused by natural lunar cycles, combined with ground level subsidence, to sea level rise.

Pity the tide gauges don’t show it. Sorry Miami, your occasionally wet streets were not caused by electrical generation, air travel, bovine flatulence, or even SUVs.

Dr. Michaels speculates that the media will have no appetite for a study showing Antarctic ice gaining. What do you think?

We’ll do him one better. If they do cover it, they’ll try and spin it as justifying global warming alarm!

We factored the situation into our own computer models. They project shamelessly disseminated climate propaganda.

Let’s see whose projections pan out.

SOURCE

The Green New Deal’s solar absurdity

Those who support the Green New Deal (GND) want what they claim to be the only real solution to the global warming problem which is solar power, and other so-called renewables to save our planet from the ravages of fossil fuel.

They insist our dependance on fossil fuels can be ended by having the world become fully dependent on green energy they wrongly claim to be environmentally friendly, producing no pollution. None of which is true or possible. But their real motivation for the climate change delusion is to shift control of all energy from oil and gas companies to the government. It is a move toward the socialist goal of the Green New Deal.

With the exception of hydropower all so-called “renewable” energy is expensive and inefficient. They are only thought to be economical and competitive through massive government subsides which are hidden in our tax burden. Let’s try and show the real costs of rooftop solar power.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Livermore Laboratory says that as of 2015 the total energy consumed in America was the energy equivalent to 17 billion barrels of oil, 38% is used for electricity , 29% for transportation and the remaining 33% as onsite power for business and industry. Only 11% is used domestically. Fossil fuels provide 82% of that power, nuclear 9% and hydropower 2.5% (IBID). Of the renewable energy sources preferred by the GND, biofuels such as ethanol in gasoline provides 5%, wind power 2%, and solar one half of one percent.

Yet in light of these government generated statistics the GND calls for all fossil fuel burning power plants to be shut down over the next 12 years, along with all Nuclear plants as anything radioactive is considered inherently evil. In addition it demands that as many hydroelectric power plants as possible be closed to protect fish spawning grounds. (No this is not a joke). Finally it eliminates gasoline powered vehicles switching to electric cars and public transportation.

According to the 2017 Solar Electric Handbook (www.solarelectricityhandbook.com/solar-radiation.html) the maximum amount of sunlight hitting one square meter (roughly a square yard) of the Earth’s surface, delivers 1000 watts of power (that would light 10, 100 watt bulbs). But the shifting angles of the sun drops that number to 600 watts. Commercial photovoltaic cells can only harvest 15% of that energy dropping us to only 90 watts under ideal conditions or lighting about one 100 watt bulb.

But the sun does not shine at night so we are down to 45 watts. But solar collectors only take up a little over 50% of the land area of a solar farm bringing us to 25 watts, and then average clouds, smoke and dust could drop us all the way down to zero.

The average output across the US of a typical solar power facility is in fact between 5 and 7.5 watts per square meter (Electric Power Monthly , U.S. Energy Information Administration , Dec.22,2017. https://www.eia.gov.electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?/t=epmt_6_07_b)). Is the problem getting clearer, but wait there is more.

Photoelectric cells used to create electric energy consume more energy in their production than they collect. The complex steps required to create raw quartz used to eventually make the wafers that become the collectors surface, require 3370 kilowatt hours of energy per square meter of collector material produced (Williams,E.D.,Ayres.R.U., and Heller,M., “The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip: Energy and Material Use in the Production of Semiconductor Devices”, Environ.Sci. Technology., 36, 5504-5510 (2002). )

But wait there is still more. Solar energy can’t be turned on and off to meet shifts in energy. The sun shines during the day but power needs peak in the morning and evening. Less energy is collected in winter than summer due to shorter days and lower sun angles. One solution is to have backup fossil fuel power plants and now you are paying for two systems instead of one and the use of fossil fuel continues. The other solution is to store extra energy in batteries. A typical lead-acid car battery has a storage capacity of one kilowatt hour, according to McGraw-Hill’s Handbook of Batteries

(Linden,D.,Reddy, T.B..,Eds., Handbook ofBatteries, Third Edition,McGraw-Hill, New York , 2002, Chapter 23).

A total replacement of fossil fuels by solar energy and a battery storage component would require many trillions of such batteries. Lithium batteries would offer more storage but at twice the price.

While a solar farm can be built anywhere, sunny areas of the country are not evenly distributed requiring transmission lines from the sunniest areas to the less sunny areas. As the distance increase the cost of solar skyrockets.

Finally the land areas required for solar farms are extraordinary. Using the most generous capacity numbers for photovoltaic cells in the sunniest areas, a 1000 megawatt solar farm (the standard output of most fossil fuel plants) would require 51 square miles which is the approximate area of San Francisco (Land Requirements for Carbon-Free Technologies, Nuclear Energy Institute Policy Paper, July 9 2015, https://www.nei.org/CorporateSite/media/filefolder/Policy/Paper/Land_Use_Carbon_Free_Technologies.pdf?ext=pdf)

Where is the land to be sacrificed in the name of the GND to come from? In fact there is not enough land in the United States to harvest the Solar energy to play a major role in the nations energy requirements .

Solar energy is too expensive for most countries or individuals to afford. The World Bank says that over 1.5 billion people live without electricity.

(World Bank Group, Access to Electricity (% of Population)Sustainable Energy for All Database, https://data World bank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS)

Although coal is vilified while producing a third of the world’s energy, it’s use continues to increase as it costs only 7 cents a kilowatt hour (Coal International Energy Agency https://www.iea.org/about/faqs/coal/.). Natural gas costs are even less at 6 cents a kilowatt hour. The costs reported for solar operations have dropped to 16 cents a kilowatt hour, but government subsidies come to 24 cents a kilowatt hour giving it a real cost of 40 cents (Hansen,M.E., Simmons,R.T., Yonk,R.M., The Unseen Costs of Solar-Generated Electricity, The Institute of Political Economy, Utah State University,April 2016,www.usa.edu/ice.)

Few Americans could afford this to save the planet let alone people living in poor countries. Both widespread solar energy and the Green New Deal are but a fantasy of those who truly wish to destroy the nation as envisioned by our founding fathers.

SOURCE

A cardinal has drunk the Kool-aid

The archbishop of Luxembourg said this week that climate change is the most important issue faced by the Vatican synod on the Amazon, so its final document “should be very strong” on ecological issues.

“If our planet is destroyed, we can shout as much as we want about married priests or women priests, but there will be no priests needed anymore,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) and a vocal ecological activist.

“So, it’s the most important problem and it’s a problem with the greatest urgency,” the cardinal told Jesuit-run America magazine.

Hollerich stressed the need for “ecological conversion” on the part of everyone, declaring that he no longer uses plastic bottles, buys fair-trade coffee instead of Nespresso, and has changed his diesel car for a hybrid one.

“We bishops have to change our lifestyle, and if we older people succeed in doing it, then the younger ones can do it too,” he said. “But if I cannot change my own lifestyle, how can I say to young people to do so?”

In late 2018, the Luxembourg archbishop signed an appeal calling on government leaders to take immediate action to overcome the “devastating effects of the climate crisis.”

The appeal called for keeping global warming below 1.5º C as well as a shift toward sustainable lifestyles, respect for indigenous communities, and the implementation of a “financial paradigm shift” in line with global climate accords.

This paradigm shift entails “putting an end to the fossil fuel era and transitioning to renewable energy” as well as rethinking the agriculture sector to ensure it provides healthy and accessible food for everyone, with a special emphasis on promoting agroecology, it said.

Following last May’s European elections, Hollerich said he was delighted with the successes of green parties while lamenting the rise of populist-nationalist groups.

“It is positive that in several places numerous young people voted for ecological parties, which means that the themes of environment and creation can become important in the future,” Hollerich said, noting that “as a Church” the victory of the green parties “makes us happy.”

Populist victories, on the other hand, would have been even “worse” if not for the pope’s constant call for a more welcoming attitude toward migrants, Hollerich said at the time.

The Italian vote does not mean that Italians are rebelling against the pope, the archbishop insisted, because “the Holy Father’s message and our message as a Church comes from the Gospel, and it is not a political or media message.”

“Then again, there are Catholics and Catholics,” he said.

Cardinal Hollerich told America he was most struck during the synod by “the violence the indigenous people have to experience. It’s violence against the rainforest and at the same time violence against the ethnic groups, violence against people.”

He said he also hopes the synod’s final document will include “something about the ordination of married men, and new ministries for women.”

SOURCE

Household recycling nightmare. Italy is a warning

I have seen the future of household recycling; it wasn’t a dream — it’s a nightmare.

A five-coloured rainbow of daily rubbish duties for the householder; constant sorting in the basement; living under the threat of having your garbage left behind because you failed to follow the rules; being bossed about by a council worker in hi-vis rejecting your rubbish; rules that your garbage must be in transparent plastic to allow inspection, or costly biodegradable bags for organic waste; and colour coding that is an immutable law unto itself.

In addition to daily duties for household waste there are the supplementary collection days for old clothing and large items and garden waste that can take months to organise.

Last Monday’s report from Infrastructure Victoria that sees a future for Melburnians separating materials into organics, plastics, paper and cardboard, glass, metals and “regular” waste is part of a global shift to recycling and sorting by the householder to make the rubbish handlers’ job easier.

Scott Morrison has adopted a personal campaign to encourage recycling as an industry, to cut waste, reduce landfill and help the environment.

But the prime ministerial vision is at an industrial level. On his visit to the US he attended the opening of Anthony Pratt’s cardboard factory in Ohio, which is recycling waste paper, and the largest recycling plant in North America, also Australian-owned, where glass, rubber and plastic are turned into building materials.

This is a vastly different view of recycling than the idea that households have up to six bins to sort a family’s waste.

I have lived it in a mountain village in Italy — what evolved was a complicated, increasingly costly and endlessly time-consuming rubbish collection system.

Ten years ago there was a weekly garbage collection for everything. Then the commune — the council — introduced large communal bins to take bottles and paper for recycling as the system of waste management changed across Italy. (The irony being this is a country where corruption and inefficiency would regularly create mountains of garbage on the streets of Naples and the illegal dumping into the sea of everything from toxic waste to radioactive materials.)

Because the collection of our garbage was often delayed, the communal bins filled with all sorts of waste so the council moved to control garbage by increasing household sorting.

This summer in the little mountain village in the Abruzzi — and across Italy — there will be five separate rubbish bins; every household must put out or bring in a rubbish bin every day of the week and spend every evening sorting the rubbish to avoid contamination that would see collectors leave it behind.

There are five categories of rubbish, each with their own colour-coded bin, which must have its own designated bin-liner of a specified type.

The categories are organic (a five-litre brown bin and biodegradable bag); glass (a 10-litre bin and green transparent plastic bag); paper and cardboard (10-litre blue bin with transparent bag); plastic and metal (10-litre yellow bin with transparent bag) and; “secco”, loosely described as “hard” rubbish (a five-litre grey bin with a transparent bag).

Of course, all bins can’t be collected on the same day. Each is collected on a set day of the week.

But because organic waste has to be collected more often, the collection days shift and you must keep a daily calendar. No bin is collected on Sunday but you need to put one out Sunday night.

Typically there are three organic — food scraps from the kitchen — collections a week, with two as close to the weekend as possible but never guaranteed. There is also a sorting issue: plastic trays from the supermarket that have had meat in them can be placed in the organic bag, as can kitchen paper towels. But nonetheless, there’s a risk it will be deemed incorrect and left on your doorstep.

Likewise, glass and plastic collections are in transparent bags so they can be inspected to ensure there is no sheet glass or unwashed containers.

My neighbours this summer, up from Rome for their annual holiday, had their rubbish rejected three days in a row because they used black plastic bags. The garbage man told them that I was “from Australia” and even I knew the rules.

The real problem is “secco” such as CDs, DVDs and toothpaste tubes, but there is a limit to how many CDs you are throwing out and our village simply shrugs its shoulders and says “secco” is for “too hard” waste. It ends up the rubbish of the rubbish.

Apartment dwellers without a basement are cursed; they must store five bins or are given keys to small communal bins appropriately coloured and locked.

The cumulative result of rejected rubbish, a lack of public bins, confusion over categories and a reluctance to store putrid rubbish is that sneaky piles of trash appear around the place, and in the rural areas woodstoves and fires have the distinct smell of burning plastic.

My wife reckons I’m obsessed but I think it’s a modern recycling equivalent of fear of missing out — missing out on having our stinky rubbish removed.

SOURCE

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

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

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27 October, 2019

Green Climate Fund short-changed by rich, polluting countries - Oxfam

The Green Climate Fund is not serious politics, thankfully

Rich, polluting countries such as Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States are short-changing poor countries of billions of dollars that they need to cut emissions and adapt to the climate crisis, Oxfam said today.

The two-day pledging conference to the Green Climate Fund begins in Paris today (Thursday).

To date, developed countries have pledged $7.5 billion to the Fund to cover the next four-year spending period. This is just half of the $15 billion that Oxfam believes should be the target for the replenishment process in order to meet the growing needs of developing countries, with more than 300 potential project proposals in the fund’s pipeline.

Australia has indicated that it will join the United States and refuse to provide new funds in this round.

Canada, Austria and the Netherlands have contributed a third of what Oxfam calculates would be their fair share.

Countries such as Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and New Zealand have yet to announce their contribution.
By comparison, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Norway and Sweden have doubled their contributions since the first funding round in 2014-15.

Oxfam Australia’s climate change expert, Dr Simon Bradshaw, said it was shameful that Australia has joined the United States as one of only two countries walking away from the Green Climate Fund and turning its back on the world's poorest people – who will be hit first and worst by the climate crisis.

“We are dismayed that at a time when vulnerable communities – in particular our neighbours throughout the Pacific – are facing ever more grave threats to their livelihoods, security and wellbeing, that Australia would stop funding one of their most critical lifelines,” Dr Bradshaw said.

“The Green Climate Fund is both a vital source of support to those on the frontlines of the climate crisis and key to enabling developing countries to build the zero-carbon economies of the future.

“For Australia, walking away from the Green Climate Fund is particularly bizarre and self-defeating. Our Government played an active and positive role during the early years of the Fund, in particular working to ensure that it would better serve the unique challenges faced by Pacific island countries.

“While recognising the Government will continue to provide some assistance to countries directly through bilateral aid, the multilateral Green Climate Fund remains a key pillar of the support available to developing nations responding to the climate crisis. It’s at the heart of international cooperation under the Paris Agreement.

“Walking away will further undermine our waning international credibility and puts the Government squarely at odds with the millions of people across Australia and our region demanding we do more to respond to the climate crisis.”

The Green Climate Fund was established in 2010 and is the main multilateral channel through which rich countries can support poor countries to tackle the climate crisis. Over the past four years, more than 110 projects in developing countries have been allocated financial support from the fund for projects such as the expansion of solar power in Nigeria and Mali, the restoration of forests in Honduras, and the creation of more resilient agriculture systems in Bhutan and Belize.

Armelle Le Comte, Climate and Energy Advocacy Manager for Oxfam France, who is at the pledging conference, said, “The Green Climate Fund is a lifeline for poor countries that need help to cut emissions and adapt to an increasingly erratic and extreme climate. Global investments in oil, gas and coal supply and power generation topped US$933 billion in 2018 – we are spending 100 times more on fossil fuels than governments appear to be willing to put into the world’s flagship climate fund,” Ms Le Comte said.

Press release: Contact Dylan Quinnell on 0450 668 350 or dylanq@oxfam.org.au

Breathe Free: Capitalism Helps Protect the Environment

A recent Rasmussen poll found 20% of voters feel we should eliminate capitalism to protect the environment. That’s like saying we should eliminate teachers to improve education.

Truth be told, capitalism has helped cleanse our planet—improving living standards while protecting the environment. Rather than eliminate capitalism, policymakers need to unleash it.

Markets incentivize efficiency by rewarding people for coming up with ways to do more or do better with less. People choose—and businesses make—more efficient products because it saves them money while delivering what customers want.

Over the past decade, market forces have driven a massive transition within the energy industry. In 2008, coal provided roughly half of the country’s electricity generation. Now, coal’s share is about a quarter. Increased production of natural gas has driven energy bills and emissions downward.

In direct response to cheap gas, the Nuclear Energy Institute organized nuclear power plants nationally to find operating efficiencies that have reduced costs by 19%, saving consumers $1.6 billion and keeping emissions-free electricity in the marketplace.

The energy industry is far from the only sector that has made positive economic and environmental contributions. For instance, the cement industry is collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to explore how to refine its processes in ways that will improve resiliency, reduce emissions, and save lives. Investments in cement, steel, plastic, and other building materials will make our houses and highways sturdier and our products more durable—with a smaller environmental footprint.

All of these activities result directly from free enterprise—companies providing consumers with the goods and services they want while using fewer resources and emitting fewer unwanted emissions.

As a country prospers, its citizens are better able to care for the environment and reduce pollutants emitted from industrial growth. In fact, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index show a strong correlation between a country’s environmental performance and economic freedom (i.e., its embrace of capitalism).

The bigger problem, typically, is that Washington can’t keep up. Policy and regulations significantly lag behind the pace of innovation, market trends, and consumer preferences. Thus, government ends up retarding economic and environmental progress.

A significant obstacle to investment in producing or switching to cleaner energy sources is the lack of infrastructure needed to deliver the energy to would-be customers. Natural gas offers a cheaper, cleaner alternative to home heating oil; however, pipeline capacity is lacking in America’s Northeast. Of the 5.7 million American households still relying on oil heat, 85% are in the Northeast, where nimbyism and opposition to any carbon-based fuel run strong.

The obstructionism isn’t limited to conventional fuels, either. Efficiently siting and permitting new transmission lines could expand the consumption of renewable power from, say, Canada, which enjoys a surplus of hydroelectric power. Additional infrastructure would also allow energy-intensive manufacturing processes, like the cement industry, to switch to cleaner, cheaper fuel.

Another sound policy would be to make immediate expensing a permanent fixture of the tax code. This would allow newer equipment to come online faster, improving energy efficiency and the overall economy. The current system of depreciation raises the cost of capital and discourages companies from hiring more workers and increasing wages for existing employees.

Too often, we use phrases like “balancing economic growth and environmental protections.” This suggests that more growth necessarily degrades the environment. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

When America and the rest of the world embrace policies rooted in economic freedom, both prosperity and the environment flourish. In this instance, you really can have your cake and eat it, too.

SOURCE

The presidential debates and China

Climate change, we are relentless told, is the urgent existential threat to the entire planet, even more so than the nuclear arms race we all grew up with. Yet the Democratic candidate who tried to make this the centerpiece of his campaign, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, was one of the first to drop out, having never broken 1% in the polls. Steve Milloy notes a pattern here about the most recent Democratic debate:

CNN and New York Times reporters did not ask any candidate any question about climate change and its offspring, the Green New Deal. It was a surprising omission. In the abstract, climate has polled as a very high priority among Democrat voters, so much so that in September, CNN televised a seven-and-one-half hour town hall meeting on climate for the candidates.

This week, both Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer briefly protested the lack of attention to climate, but to no avail. A few other candidates mentioned the term “climate” in passing (Andrew Yang, Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar), but the CNN and New York Times reporters did not take the bait. . .

The omission of climate did draw the attention of New York Times climate reporter Lisa Friedman. Noting a TV ad run during the debate by the climate skeptic Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that criticized the Green New Deal, Friedman tweeted, “That CEI ad against the Green New Deal is officially the longest discussion of climate change during the 4th #DemDebate.”

China now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined:

With China threatening to end life as we know it on planet earth, just what do climate-conscious Democrats propose? When are we going to attack China’s coal plants?

China feeds coal addiction with 17 new mines this year

China is expanding its coal power infrastructure despite pledges to curb carbon emissions. Analysis reveals that the amount allocated to large infrastructure projects by Beijing has doubled this year, with airports and high-speed rail lines among 21 schemes allocated a total of £83.9 billion. Included in the new allocations is funding for 17 new coal mines across China, despite Beijing’s pledges to reduce reliance on the power source.

China’s pledges to reduce emissions appear to be about as credible as their pledges to abide by trade rules.

SOURCE

Coal is still best for poor nations

Many western donors love the idea that instead of dirty, coal-fired power-plants, poor nations should ‘leapfrog’ straight to cleaner energy sources such as off-grid solar technology.

The World Bank is at the forefront of these efforts, no longer funding coal energy projects.

Off-grid solar projects begin with grand intentions, but too often end with recipients barely better off. We can see this in the small Pacific island nation of Fiji, where the government — advocates of strong global climate policy — teamed up with a Japanese technology company to deliver off-grid solar power.

In the village of Naceva, individual household solar energy systems were provided. But only 15 households out of 42 took part, because the installation fee (about $US50) was far too high for the locals to afford. In Fiji, nearly half of the population lives on less than $5.50 a day.

In Rukua, a centralised solar unit was provided. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama proudly declared he had “no doubt that a number of development opportunities will be unlocked” by the provision of “a reliable source of energy”.

Coal fired power: the harsh reality is that it still represents the best choice for the developing world. Picture: Stuart McEvoy
Coal fired power: the harsh reality is that it still represents the best choice for the developing world. Picture: Stuart McEvoy
Understandably, all of Rukua was thrilled to get energy access and wanted to take full advantage. So more than 30 households purchased fridges.

Unfortunately, the off-grid solar energy system was incapable of powering more than three fridges at a time, so every night the power would be completely drained.

That led to six households buying diesel generators. According to researchers who studied this project, “Rukua is now using about three times the amount of fossil fuel for electricity that was used prior to installation of the renewable energy system.”

In rather understated language, the researchers conclude that the project did not “meet the resilience building needs” of either village.

This experience isn’t unique. When Greenpeace created the first 100 per cent-solar powered community in Dharnai, India, it provided locals with expensive power that drained the system’s batteries within hours. Dharnai residents protested at being given “fake electricity”, and demanded successfully that the government supply it with “real electricity” from the coal-powered electricity grid.

Globally, the International Energy Agency expects that 195 million people with off-grid solar will get a meagre 170kWh per year — that’s half of what one US flat-screen TV uses in a year.

The first rigorous test published on the impact of solar panels on the lives of poor people found they got a little bit more electricity, but otherwise there was no measurable impact on their lives: they did not increase savings or spending, did not work more or start more businesses, and their children did not study more.

Off-grid solar panels can power a single light or a cell phone. In some situations, especially where fossil fuel solutions can’t reach, that can play an important but limited role. The benefits of solar are higher than zero. But in Rwanda, researchers recently found that the household’s benefits of solar energy (their so-called “willingness to pay”) were much less — between 30 and 41 per cent — of their cost. Developing country households will of course accept solar panels if handed out for free, but they are doing less good than their cost.

Moreover, solar panels are mostly useless for tackling the main power challenges of the world’s poor. Three billion people continue to suffer from the dangerous effects of indoor air pollution, burning dirty fuels like wood and dung to cook and keep warm. Solar panels don’t solve that problem because they are too weak to power clean stoves and heaters. Nor can off-grid solar panels power machinery for agriculture or factories that create jobs and pathways out of poverty.

Fiji is famous for its bounteous sunshine, but even so, solar power experiments have had poor outcomes for the Pacific nation.
Fiji is famous for its bounteous sunshine, but even so, solar power experiments have had poor outcomes for the Pacific nation.
Indeed, a study in Tanzania found almost 90 per cent of households with off-grid electricity wanted — like the citizens of Dharnai — to be hooked up to the national grid, typically powered by fossil fuels. Prime Minister Bainimarama’s faith that off-grid energy could unlock development opportunities was always misplaced.

Many Westerners would love to believe that solar outcompetes fossil fuels, but typical case studies highlighted by boosters only look at the costs when the sun is shining, ignoring what to do at night when citizens in Fiji and Dharnai ran out of power. The International Energy Agency finds that when correcting for intermittency, existing coal power remains cheaper than new solar everywhere at least until 2040.

Moreover, there is a strong, direct connection between more power and less poverty. A study in Bangladesh showed that grid electrification has significant positive impacts on household income, expenditure, and education. Electrified households experienced a 21 per cent average jump in income and a 1.5 per cent reduction in poverty each year.

If we want to solve global warming, we should invest much more in research and development to innovate down the real cost of renewables below fossil fuels. That way everyone will eventually switch. But telling the world’s poor to live with unreliable, expensive, weak power is an insult.

SOURCE

Carbon fears put heat on festivals

I must say that I see no loss for Australia in a pack of gullible Leftists deciding not to visit us

International artists and writers are snubbing Australia as a journey too far, turning down expenses-paid invitations from leading festivals and events because of their desire to reduce carbon emissions.

While artists in Europe and North America can opt for rail over air travel to minimise their carbon footprint, the prospect of long, fossil fuel-burning flights to Australia means some are simply refining to come. The Swedish buzzword newly circulating among Australian arts groups is flygskam, or "flight shame" — a taboo on polluting the atmosphere with jet travel.

Adelaide Writers Week director Jo Dyer said three authors recently had turned down invitations, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Eliza Griswold, who declined on environmental grounds.
British natural history writer Robert Macfarlane reportedly will not fly to Australia because of his carbon footprint, and another writer had accepted an invitation to Adelaide but then had a "crisis of conscience".

While there may be other reasons why authors decide not to travel, Dyer said, "a number of authors this year are saying that they do not want to expand their carbon footprints".

Jonathan Holloway, a former director of the Melbourne and Perth festivals, could not name specific instances of artists refusing to travel but said: "I am sure it has been a factor for some people." "I think there has been a sea change about travel ... and people are considering the environmental impacts of what they do," he said.

The Adelaide Festival's co-artistic director, Rachel Healy, mentioned renowned Canadian,. choreographer Crystal Pite as an artist who was sensitive about reducing her carbon footprint. Pite's agent, Jim Smith, said Pite continued to use air travel but her company, Kidd Pivot, considered the financial and carbon impacts of its touring activity.

"The company is trying to raise awareness that there is a need to work collaboratively in terms of touring a production, to ensure that carbon footprint of the tour is being considered," Smith said.

Dyer, formerly chief executive of the Sydney Writers Festival, said concern about reducing carbon emissions had emerged as a potential new barrier to Australia's cultural dialogue with the world.

From "The Weekend Australian" of 26/10/2019

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

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

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

25 October, 2019

Warnings over ‘carbon bomb’ Amazon’s dangerous tipping point. The Amazon rainforest is dangerously close to an irreversible tipping point and should be described as a “carbon bomb” we need to avoid going off

I don't know whether this is ignorance or bulldust but it shows no knowledge of rainforest. Rainforest does NOT burn, whether in Brazil or Australia. When the fires hit a rainforest, it is too damp to be set alight.

The fires seen in Brazil were in areas -- mostly areas cleared for farming -- that had lost their original rainforest cover or never had it

What the satellites show: "MAAP’s findings show that the dramatic photos that garnered worldwide attention of smoky fires sweeping the Brazilian Amazon in August do not correspond with burning rainforest, but instead coincide with areas intentionally deforested this year"

You have to know so much to counteract Green/Left lies and stupidity

The Amazon would be dangerously close to the estimated “tipping point” as soon as 2021, beyond which the rainforest could no longer generate enough rain to sustain itself, a senior economist says.

Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, calculates that if the current rate of deforestation is maintained over the next few years and government policy failure continues, that’s when the world-renowned rainforest will reach tipping point.

In her policy brief that states the Amazon is a “carbon bomb” the world needs to avoid setting off, she outlines how the fires in Brazil represent a government policy failure over many years, with Brazilian public agencies that are supposed to curb man-made fires “deliberately weakened”.

She said in keeping with his far-right nationalist campaign promises, President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has intentionally backed away from efforts to combat climate change and preserve the environment, which has emboldened farmers, loggers, and other players to engage in predatory activities in the rainforest.

The trees of the Amazon store 60 billion to 80 billion tonnes of carbon.

“The rainforest is often wrongly called ‘the lungs of the world’,” de Bolle said. “It stores carbon, but that is not what fights climate change. It would be more apt to describe it as a ‘carbon bomb’.

“Setting fire to the forest for deforestation may release as much as 200 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere a year, which would spur climate change at a much faster rate, not to mention associated changes in rainfall patterns that may result from deforestation.

Ms de Bolle said the tragic fires had demonstrated that protecting the Amazon was a global cause. She said the international attention provided an opportunity for the governments of Brazil and the United States to stop denying climate change and co-operate on strategies to preserve the rainforest and develop ways to sustainably use its natural resources.

Some climate scientists believe the tipping point is still 15 to 20 years away.

The briefing highlighted that in August Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research estimated that total deforestation was 222 per cent higher than it was in August 2018.

The Amazon Basin contains 40 per cent of the world’s tropical forests and accounts for 10-15 per cent of the biodiversity of Earth’s continents.

In August, Professor Will Steffen, a member of Australia's Climate Council said there was credible evidence that a tipping point may exist for the Amazon rainforest.

“A combination of direct human landclearing and climate change - primarily through changing rainfall regimes - can trigger a rapid conversion of much of the forest to savanna or grassland ecosystems, thereby emitting large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere,” he said.

“Yet there seems to be little attention given to such global-level feedbacks and abrupt shifts associated with land systems.”

SOURCE

NZ farmers trumpet win in do nothing, pay little climate deal

NZ used to be pretty righteous about global warming. So this is a big slowdown. It is the work of Winston Peters, sometimes compared to Donald Trump. "NZ First" is his party. Peters has only a few votes in parliament but he keeps the minority Labor government in power so they have to listen when he speaks up

Peters is not a explicit denialist but he is very cynical about climate change legislation -- about the same as Trump

New Zealand farmers won’t have to enter the country’s emissions trading scheme until 2025 and will then get a discounted rate of 95 per cent under a climate change deal struck with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Ms Ardern announced the “historic consensus” on Thursday morning in Wellington, gathering with primary sector groups to reveal the deal. However environmentalists shunned the meeting, panning the agreement as too slow, and a climate sell-out.

Ms Ardern said the ‘He Waka Eke Noa’ deal was about creating change that “will stick”.

“For too long politicians have passed the buck and caused uncertainty for everyone while the need for climate action was clear,” Ms Ardern said. “I’m proud that we have a world-first agreement … and we’ve done that by reaching a historic consensus with our primary sector.”

Dairy farmers and primary industries have been granted other major concessions by Ms Ardern’s coalition government as it ramps up action to combat climate change and equip its economy to adapt to change.

The agricultural sector contributes roughly half of New Zealand’s emissions, making it a major part of any climate policy negotiations.

Individual farms will be asked to report emissions from 2023, required to report them in 2024, and start paying for them in 2025. However in a win trumpeted by the farmers, they’ll receive a 95 per cent discount rate when slotted into the ETS, a concession championed by minority coalition partners NZ First.

The deal had origins in an industry proposal put by several peak bodies, including Dairy NZ. “We are grateful you have engaged with us and listened to us,” Dairy NZ chief executive Tim Mackle said.

Environmental group Forest and Bird said the move was a step in the right direction “but the change is far too slow”. “We need all industries to do everything they can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions right away,” chief executive Kevin Hague said.

Greenpeace went further, saying Ms Ardern’s government had rolled over for the primary sector and “sold out” Kiwis. “The government has buckled to lobbying pressure from the diary industry and big agri-business,” campaigner Gen Toop said.

“Agriculture is our biggest climate polluter. An emissions trading scheme without the sector in it is a joke and won’t be able to combat the climate emergency — the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.”

In a speech to the United Nations last month, Ms Ardern pledged to make New Zealand the world’s most sustainable food producers. “We’ve been asked to try and create change that will last. We have been having the debate for 15 years. The debate has to end. The action has to start,” she said. “That’s what this is about today. This will stick.

“For those that say that we’re not doing enough, well, this is a world first. No one is pricing agriculture. No one is doing this work, farm by farm. I’m incredibly proud of what we’re doing here today on behalf of New Zealand.”

SOURCE

Washington Subsidies Not Helping the Wind Industry

Last week, the lobbying arm of the wind energy industry made an unsurprising, though somewhat embarrassing, announcement. It wants a longer lifeline with federal subsidies. So much for wind being the low-cost energy source of the future.

Less than a year ago, the American Wind Energy Association with great fanfare issued a press statement that, as Bloomberg reported: “America’s wind farms are ready to go it alone.” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has strongly supported the wind industry since the days of federal support began in 1992, boasted that the wind industry had finally “matured” and wind farms were “ready to compete.”

Never mind.

Big Wind’s change of heart was predictable. When this tax giveaway — which basically requires taxpayers to underwrite 30% of the cost of wind energy production — was first enacted, the renewable energy lobby promised it would lift itself out of the federal wheelchair and walk on its own within five years. But like clockwork, every five years, they have come back to Congress pleading for an extension — much like Oliver with his porridge bowl asking, “Please, sir, could I have some more?”

What’s especially interesting is why Big Wind thinks it’s deserving of “more.” The industry execs mentioned the tough competition from natural gas — which isn’t going away. Today, natural gas is by far the most cost-efficient source of electric power generation in most markets. Thanks to the shale revolution, natural gas prices have fallen by about two-thirds. Only with very generous taxpayer assistance on top of local mandates requiring local utilities to buy wind and solar power can green energy compete.

Big Wind said it will lobby for a continued subsidy so wind power will “have parity” with the solar industry subsidies. The solar industry sun gods get even higher subsidies than wind producers. They are actually right. Per unit of electricity, solar gets five times as much as wind power. And wind gets some five times more than coal and natural gas. So now we have a subsidy arms race.

Over the last 30 or so years, the renewable energy industry has received well over $100 billion in federal, state and local handouts. Yet these are still fairly trivial contributors to America’s overall energy production — supplying somewhere between 5% and 10% of the nation’s total. The rational solution would, of course, be to eliminate all federal energy subsidies and simply create a level playing field among coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar and wind. But given the current anti-fossil fuel hysteria and the movement to promote green energy at any cost, the idea of creating an economically efficient market for energy is about as likely as hell freezing over — which isn’t going to happen anytime soon because of global warming.

Given the powerful green movement’s lobby on Capitol Hill, don’t be surprised if the federal aid keeps pouring in. But here again we see the central contradiction of the green energy fad. On the one hand, we here rave reviews of how enormously cost-effective green energy has become in the 21st century. We are told we can require 50%, 60%, even 100% renewable energy over the next decade at no cost to consumers or businesses.

If so, why must the subsidies continue ad infinitum? If $100 billion of taxpayer handouts hasn’t worked, what will?

My hunch is that the lifelines Washington keeps tossing to the wind and solar industries have been more curse than blessing. Subsidies can be as addictive as heroin. A cold-turkey cutoff of taxpayer aid would force the renewable industry to adopt strategies and innovations that would make them viable competitors in energy markets.

Necessity really is the mother of invention.

SOURCE

UK: Extinction Rebellion protests cost police £37 million and led to other investigations being shut

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said on Tuesday that the cost of the two-week protest action this month had cost £21million, a bill set to rise by several million pounds.

This included £3.5million for overtime, just under £6million for officers who were drafted in from 38 other forces in England and Wales, and £11.8million staffing costs.

Protest action by Extinction Rebellion (XR) in April cost the Met £16million, meaning the bill so far this year is £37million - more than twice the annual budget of its Violent Crime Taskforce. The annual budget for its Violent Crime Taskforce is £15million.

Scotland Yard's figures suggest that so far this year there have been 115 homicides in London, compared with 112 at the same point in 2018. This includes 77 stabbings and nine shootings.

Dame Cressida said the policing of the climate change group had put a "horrendous strain" on the force, and as a result some of its other investigations were either being done slowly or in the worst-case scenario - not at all.

She said: "We are certainly at the point where I would say to Extinction Rebellion this is placing a horrendous strain on London, and on the Met.

"From the Met's point of view (a) big cost to us and the people who pay for us. Huge drain on our people's resources and energy, causing their families to have to make massive changes in their personal arrangements.

"Frankly, a less good service to the rest of London. Partly because people get tired and partly because we just had to slow down certain types of inquiries, certain types of investigations would just be done more slowly and some things won't ever be done at all."

Met bosses will apply to the Home Office to cover the cost of the protest action.

Nearly 8,000 Metropolitan Police officers were deployed during the October action by Extinction Rebellion, with 21,000 asked to work 12-hour shifts for part of the fortnight.

The Commissioner said officers were taken off local patrol duties and some were moved out of schools while the protests took place.

Detectives were also called in to cover some frontline duties while uniformed colleagues were drafted in to central London.

A total of 1,828 protesters were arrested, of whom 164 have so far been charged.

In April 1,148 activists were held, of whom more than 900 were charged, mostly receiving a conditional discharge.

Police recovered 80 tonnes of equipment, including tents and toilets, that will go to landfill.

Senior officers have been in talks with ministers about potential changes to public order legislation since the action in April.

These could include banning orders to stop activists who repeatedly protest unlawfully, and a new criminal offence of attaching items to the road.

SOURCE

Australia: Renewable energy cutting emissions at a big cost to users

Extinction rebels and others whingeing that Australia is not doing its fair share to cut greenhouse gas emissions need a reality check. New research from the Australian National University shows emissions could fall from next year following a boom in renewable power investment. Australia is on track, between last year and next year, to invest in wind and solar power three times faster per capita than Germany, four to five times faster than China, the EU, Japan and the US, and 10 times faster than the global average. The researchers expect emissions to fall by 3 to 4 per cent from next year to 2022.

Environmentalists should be cautious, however, before proclaiming the imminent demise of fossil fuels. Sustaining the fall in emissions would require billions of dollars more to be spent on behalf of taxpayers on energy storage and transmission, Graham Lloyd writes on Thursday. The additional costs would add about $5 a megawatt hour to the cost of power in the national market when there was 50 per cent renewable energy in the system. That would soar to an additional $25/MWh at 100 per cent renewables — on top of at least $50/MWh for generating renewable power, which is heavily subsidised. Conversion of the entire system to renewables would reduce emissions by 33 per cent, the ANU researchers calculated. But without more government spending on storage and transmission, they warn, investment in renewables may slow down, causing emissions to start rising.

While admitting the transition to renewables would not be “without headaches’’, the ANU’s work, which envisages “straightforward solutions to the teething problems of technical change in the energy industry”, is a potential road map towards a long-term transition that could provide reliable, affordable renewable power to domestic and commercial users.

The size of the challenge may have been underestimated by the ANU researchers, however. Other reports have made clear that making the switch becomes progressively more difficult as the percentage of renewable energy in the system increases. Large-scale storage has yet to show that it is both achievable and economically feasible.

While the Morrison government is committed to meeting Australia’s Paris target — to cut greenhouse emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 — affordable, reliable power must remain its main energy policy goal. Some states and the opposition are also starting to show a welcome pragmatism. Anthony Albanese and opposition climate spokesman Mark Butler have not ruled out scrapping Bill Shorten’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target, although Mr Butler has rejected frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon’s call to adopt the government’s target, also favoured by the Australian Workers Union.

NSW is legislating to stop international emissions being used as a reason to block new mines being approved. That sensible move follows the NSW Land and Environment Court’s rejection of the Rocky Hill coking coal mine, citing “dire consequences” on global pollution. And while Queensland is still refusing to release consultants’ reports on “overseas scope 3 emissions” levels being linked to approvals of resource projects, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says such legislation is not being considered. Nor should it be. Australians’ jobs and quality of life depend on rational energy policies that provide affordable, reliable power, regardless of the source.

SOURCE

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

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24 October, 2019

UK: Eco-friendly car drivers could get traffic perks with new green number plates

Green number plates could be fitted to energy-saving cars in the biggest shake up of vehicle registration rules in nearly 50 years, the Department for Transport has announced.

The plates, which will eventually give electric car drivers privileges such as using bus lanes and cheaper parking, have been unveiled as part of a drive to increase take up of greener vehicles.

Images of three proposed designs for the new plate have been released by the DfT as part of a consultation on the new scheme.

The last time number plates changed colour was in 1973, when rear registrations were changed to yellow.

The public is being asked to choose between a completely green plate, or one with a green flash or a green dot.

The Government is also consulting on which electric and low-emission vehicles should qualify for the new plate, which could be introduced as soon as late 2021.

The scheme is part of a general push by the Government to reach its net zero emissions target by 2050.

In a comment piece for the Telegraph, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “Fully green number plates, or plates with a green design element, would allow people all over the UK to spot vehicles based on their environmental impact.

“This government is making it more convenient than ever before for drivers to switch to a clean, zero-emission car. We want these cars to become the new normal – and to be as easy to charge as a smartphone.”

Following the 12-week consultation, the Government said it will lay out the legislative steps needed to implement the scheme, which will hinge on how drastic the final changes are to the current number plates.

Other issues being consulted on are whether the new plates will only be available to new vehicles or whether drivers will be allowed to apply for them for their current vehicles and whether the plates should be mandatory for cars that qualify.

Once the plates start appearing on UK roads, councils will be encouraged to grant new incentives for holders such as parking discounts.

Nottingham City Council already runs a scheme were electric vehicles receive a green sticker that allows them to use a bus lane in congested part of the city.

Mr Shapps continued: “Several local authorities have already indicated plates with a green element would enable clearer visual recognition of vehicles eligible for local incentives, such as access to bus lanes, ultra-low or zero emission zones and cheaper parking.

“We are on the cusp of a quiet revolution in transport, which the UK is committed to lead – one green number plate at a time. I think that’s something to shout about.”

Other countries are already operating similar incentive schemes, such as Canada, where drivers who qualify for a green licence plate have certain toll road charges.

The consultation comes after Mr Shapps announced other new measures aimed at encouraging more people to switch over to electric cars.

Last month he pledged £70 million to improve the UK's charging network by building 3,000 new rapid electric vehicle chargers across the country.

The Government is also currently consulting on requiring charge points to be built into all new homes with a parking space.

Latest figures from the Department for Transport show that there are now over 220,000 registered electric and hybrid cars on the UKs roads as of June.

Elisabeth Costa, Senior Director at the Behavioural Insights Team, said: “The number of clean vehicles on our roads is increasing but we don’t notice as it’s difficult to tell clean vehicles apart from more polluting ones.

“Green number plates make these vehicles, and our decision to drive in a more environmentally-friendly way, more visible on roads. We think making the changing social norm noticeable will help encourage more of us to swap our cars for cleaner options.”

SOURCE

Hole in the ozone is now the SMALLEST it has been on record since it was discovered in 1982

Ho hum! It was also the LARGEST in 2015. There is no trend there

The hole in the ozone layer has shrunk to its smallest size since scientists began monitoring it in 1982 because of unusual weather patterns in the upper atmosphere over Antarctica, according to NASA.

The hole fluctuates in size annually and is usually largest during the coldest months in the southern hemisphere, from late September to early October.

The latest observations from space have shown the hole now covers less than 3.9million square miles – a record low and almost half as small as it was during its peak at 6.3million on September 8 only six weeks ago. Experts say the hole is usually around 8 million square miles during this time of year.

Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said it is 'great news for ozone in the Southern Hemisphere'.

But he warned: 'It's important to recognize that what we're seeing this year is due to warmer stratospheric temperatures. It's not a sign that atmospheric ozone is suddenly on a fast track to recovery.'

According to NASA, the 'main ingredient' in the ozone-destroying process is are so-called polar stratospheric clouds.

These relatively rare bodies occur high in the stratosphere at altitudes between 49,000–82,000 feet (15,000–25,000 metres) above the surface.

These clouds provide a surface on which chemical reactions can occur — releasing waste products called 'free radicals' which go on to destroy ozone particles around them.

Fewer polar stratospheric clouds form in warmer weather, however, and they also last for shorter periods of time in such conditions.

This year's warmer global temperatures — aided by unusual weather patterns — have therefore helped to limit the development of these clouds and also given those did form less time to damage the ozone layer.

In turn, this has led to a much smaller ozone hole this year than we have previously seen.

On the surface, the strengthening of the ozone layer would seem to be a promising development — as such serves to better protect the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.

However, the news that the hole is shrinking is not necessarily a good sign — as the process that is closing the hole is a clear product of rising global temperatures.

In years with more typical weather, the hole usually reaches a maximum size of about 8million square miles by late September or early October — before shrinking back down again.

The highly reactive ozone molecule — also known as trioxygen — comprises three oxygen atoms and is a pale blue gas with a pungent smell.

It can be found 25 miles above the Earth's surface, in the stratosphere.

By reacting with high-energy, ultraviolet rays the ozone acts like a layer of sun screen — absorbing the harmful rays in the stratosphere before they reach Earth's surface.

Ozone is created primarily by ultraviolet radiation, when high-energy ultraviolet rays strike ordinary oxygen molecules (O2).

This splits the molecule into two single oxygen atoms — dubbed 'atomic oxygen' — with the freed oxygen atoms going on to combine with regular oxygen molecules to form ozone (O3).

This reaction helps shield the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer, cataracts, suppress immune systems and also damage plants.

As of October 16, the ozone hole above Antarctica remained small but stable and is expected to gradually dissipate in the coming weeks.

SOURCE

Self-righteous, false climate alarms disturbingly flawed

Climate doom prophets and profiteers assert that their “science is settled,” that the crisis is immediate and dire. They just can’t seem to agree over time regarding whether Earth is going into a deep freeze or is about to boil over.

On Oct. 7, 1912, for example, the Los Angeles Times alerted readers, “Fifth Ice Age Is on the Way: Human Race Will Have to fight for Existence in Cold.”

By Aug. 9, 1923, the situation had already become desperate, causing the Chicago Tribune to declare on its front page, “Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.”

A complementary story posted that huge parts of Asia and Europe were also threatened.

The world soon appeared to be warming again by the 1930s, however, causing some scientists and news reporters to suggest that CO2 might be the cause.

But by the 1940s, it had become apparent that global mean temperatures had begun to fall again – which by the 1970s — and despite enormous releases of CO2 into the atmosphere by World War II-led to concerns that the Earth was once more heading toward a new Ice Age.

In 1973, Science Digest concluded, “At this point we do not have the comfortable distance of thousands of years to prepare for the next Ice Age, and that how carefully we monitor our atmospheric pollution would have direct bearing on the arrival of this weather crisis.”

Consequently, the scientists warned, “Once the freeze starts, it will be too late.”

The March 1, 1975 cover of the respected Science News magazine depicted the City of New York being swallowed by an approaching glacier, and announced, “The Ice Age Cometh.”

The threat was clear and urgent, “Again, this transition would induce only a small change in global temperature — two or three degrees — but the impact on civilization would be catastrophic.”

The prestigious National Academy of Sciences agreed.

In 1975, it issued a warning that there was a “finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years.”

That grim deep freeze prospect then again took a reverse turn a mere decade later during then-Senator Al Gore’s 1988 Committee on Science, Technology and Space hearings.

The star witness, NASA’s James Hansen, claimed 99 percent certainty that global temperatures had increased with some greenhouse influence, although he made no direct connection between the two.

The scheduling and staging of then-Sen. Al Gore’s hearings were carefully orchestrated for theater. As later recounted by his co-planner, then-Senator Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., in an interview with PBS’s “Frontline”:

“We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer . . . so we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day in Washington, or close to it . . . we went in at the night before and opened all the windows so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room.”

The rest, as they say, became contemporary history.

Al Gore scored a Nobel Prize for climate science, along with an Oscar for producing a science fiction horror movie on the same subject.

“The Goricle” also became enormously wealthy.

James Hansen went on to gain public notoriety as head of NASA’s Godard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), a tiny climate modeling shop located above a restaurant in a midtown Manhattan office building. Hansen and GISS became “go-to” media sources of virtually all alarmist “NASA reports warmest year, month, day in history” headline fodder.

Disgracefully for NASA’s rich scientific legacy, Hansen continued to retain his politically-protected government position throughout four handcuffed arrests for noncompliance with police orders during anti-fossil energy demonstrations.

Former Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider, author of an alarmist 1976 global cooling book, “The Genesis Strategy,” later became a lead author of multiple U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports trumpeting an opposite global warming crisis.

Interviewed in 1989 by Discovery magazine, Schneider candidly defended the weaponized use of unsupportable climate alarm tactics in order to achieve individually — determined virtuous outcomes:

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change.

“To do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. Or we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have.”

In other words, trust not what they tell you, but believe that they have your best interests in mind because their personal intentions are ethical.

Remember that when they are found to exaggerate the truth in order to get your attention, they did so for a righteous cause.

Or then again, maybe not.

SOURCE

Study Finds No Link Between Sea-Ice Loss And Cold Waves

Background: A good six years ago, Potsdam climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf was outraged by the German Weather Service (DWD) at his at Klimalounge site. The DWD had the audacity to contradict Mr. Rahmstorf.

Specifically, it was about the presumed connection between the expansion of Arctic sea ice and cold winter weather.

Rahmstorf’s simple model: Less Arctic sea ice causes cold European winters. At the time, he led a conglomeration of studies and claimed:

"In my view, the above studies provide clear evidence of a link between Arctic ice loss due to global warming, and more frequent winter high pressures, particularly over the Atlantic-European part of the Arctic, and the associated influx of cold air into Europe. As we have often experienced it in recent winters – for example spectacularly in the first half of February 2012.”

In the process, Rahmstorf became verbally wild and didn’t hold back dishing it out: The DWD was embarrassing, incompetent in questions of climate change, that it could not even read scientific papers, their arguments were flat.

It was an unusually aggressive style of discussion that is seldom encountered in science. Rahmstorf’s original:

"However, the Taz quoted [German paper] yesterday the spokesman of the German Weather Service [DWD in German] as saying that if there was a direct relationship with the sea ice cover, the entire winter would have to be very cold in Germany.

I think this trivial argument with which he would like to wipe from the table the climate research results shown above is pretty embarrassing for the DWD. Of course, open water in the Arctic does not prevent stochastic weather variability.

There will always be warm and cold periods. In all these studies it comes down to changing probabilities in the prevailing weather patterns: Petoukhov and Semenov estimate that the probability of cold winter extremes could triple, that is even in the Abstract.

One wonders whether the DWD representative has read the relevant studies at all – and if not, why he feels the urge to comment on them in the media.

Unfortunately, it has a certain tradition that meteorologists dealing with weather, are not familiar with climate science.”

More than half a decade has passed since Rahmstorf’s rumblings.

In the meantime, research has taken up the topic professionally and now has certainty: Rahmstorf was completely off the mark. Sea ice does not play a major role in the cold waves. Press release of the University of Exeter from August 12, 2019:

"Arctic sea-ice loss has “minimal influence” on severe cold winter weather, research shows

The dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice through climate change has only a ‘minimal influence’ on severe cold winter weather across Asia and North America, new research has shown.

The possible connection between Arctic sea-ice loss and extreme cold weather – such as the deep freezes that can grip the USA in the winter months – has long been studied by scientists.

Observations show that when the regional sea-ice cover is reduced, swathes of Asia and North America often experience unusually cold and hazardous winter conditions. However, previous climate modeling studies have suggested that reduced sea ice cannot fully explain the cold winters.

Now, a new study by experts from the University of Exeter, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute in Groningen, has shed new light on the link between sea-ice loss and cold winters.

For the research, the international team combined observations over the past 40 years with results from sophisticated climate modeling experiments. They found that the observations and models agreed that reduced regional sea ice and cold winters often coincide which each other.

They found that the correlation between reduced sea ice and extreme winters across the mid-latitude occurs because both are simultaneously driven by the same, large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.

Crucially, it shows that reduced sea ice only has a minimal influence on whether a harsh and severe winter will occur. The study is published in a leading science journal, Nature Climate Change.

Dr. Russell Blackport, a Mathematics Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and lead author of the paper said:

‘The correlation between reduced sea ice and cold winters does not mean one is causing the other. We show that the real cause is a change in atmospheric circulation which moves warm air into the Arctic and cold air into the mid-latitudes.’

Over recent decades, the Arctic region has experienced warming temperatures through climate change, which has led to a large decline in sea-ice cover.

This reduction in sea-ice cover means that areas of open water increase, which in turn allows the ocean to lose more heat to the atmosphere in winter – this can potentially alter the weather and climate, even well outside the Arctic.

Recent studies have suggested that the reduced sea ice or Arctic warming has contributed to recent cold winters experienced in the mid-latitude region – and that as the sea-ice reduces further through climate change, cold winters will become more frequent and severe.

Now, this new study suggests that reduced sea ice is not the main cause of cold winters. Instead, the cold winters are likely caused by random fluctuations in the atmospheric circulation.

Professor James Screen, an Associate Professor in Climate Science at the University of Exeter said:

‘The are many reasons to be concerned about the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, but an increased risk of severe winters in North America and Asia is not one of them.’

Dr. John Fyfe, a Research Scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, who was not involved in the research, writes in Nature Climate Change:

‘Blackport and colleagues put to rest the notion that Arctic sea-ice loss caused the cold mid-latitude winters, showing instead that atmospheric circulation changes preceded, and then simultaneously drove sea-ice loss and mid-latitude cooling.’

Minimal influence of reduced Arctic sea ice on coincident cold winters in mid-latitudes by Russell Blackport, James Screen, Karin van der Wiel, and Richard Bintanja is published in Nature Climate Change. It was funded through a grant by the Natural Environment Research Council."

SOURCE

Australia: Appeals court declares ex-judge ‘irrational’ in anti-coal ruling

A Land Court judge deemed to be “irrational” by Queensland’s highest appeals court has quietly retired, raising searching questions about the performance and accountability of the state’s judiciary.

Paul Anthony Smith left his $412,956-a-year post as a presiding member of the Land Court of Queensland ahead of the ruling by Court of Appeal president Walter Sofronoff that he had formed an “extreme and irrational animus” towards a coalmine developer during high-stakes court proceedings.

Justice Sofronoff upheld an earlier Supreme Court finding that Mr Smith displayed apprehended bias against the New Hope Group, which wants to expand its Acland mine, west of Brisbane, with an open-cut operation three times the size of Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal project in the state’s central west.

Justice Sofronoff warned that bias by judges undermined the justice system. “Allegations of bias, whether actual or ostensible, constitute a challenge to the very validity of a judicial decision,” he said. “Such allegations involve an assertion that the administration of justice has failed.”

State Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath is under pressure to appeal against the sentence from federal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton

Her office confirmed that Mr Smith retired from the Land Court on May 31, but would not be drawn on whether he had faced sanction over his handling of the Acland case.

Ms D’Ath’s spokesman said: “The Attorney-General doesn’t comment on individual judges, past or present, but she would like to acknowledge the improvements at the Land Court over the last 12 months, which include dramatic reductions in the time taken to deliver judgments.”

A finding of apprehended bias against a judge is rare, but the blunt language of Justice Sofronoff, a highly regarded former Queensland solicitor-general, catapults the judgment into the realm of the extraordinary.

It came after Mr Smith recommended that the state government reject applications by New Hope subsidiary New Acland Coal to ramp up production by an estimated seven million tonnes a year through the planned pit.

Formerly a high-flyer in the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Mr Smith was appointed to the Land Court in 2004 by Peter Beattie’s Labor government.

In May last year, on appeal by the company, Queensland Supreme Court judge Helen Bowskill set aside Mr Smith’s orders, finding that his reasons were inadequate and there were reasonable grounds to apprehend bias on his part.

Protest group Oakey Coal Action Alliance took the case to the Court of Appeal

Justice Sofronoff found the reasons Mr Smith cited for his orders against the company contained errors of fact and “unnecessary, unsupportable and irrational criticisms” of New Acland’s commercial and litigious behaviour. “In such circumstances, a reasonable lay observer might well conclude that the member was, at that point of the proceedings, animated by an extreme and irrational animus against Acland,” the judge said.

He found Mr Smith had directed sarcasm at the company and was combative and argumentative. Although New Acland’s lawyers had conducted themselves in an orthodox and proper manner, he wrongly accused them of playing games, “wormings and turnings” and departing from every tenet of “common-law justice in this world”, Justice Sofronoff said.

Further, Mr Smith’s appropriation of cult movie The Castle to frame the dispute had been “wholly inappropriate”. One of the principal objectors to the mine expansion, Glenn Beutel, a local refusing to sell his home in the ghost town of Acland, had been likened by Mr Smith to the hero of The Castle, which the Land Court judge lauded as being a film about a “little person trying to protect his property from a corporate giant”.

Justice Sofronoff said: “It is notorious that in The Castle it was the ‘little person’ who ultimately won the litigation and that the ‘corporate giant’ had behaved unethically and had lost. Whatever might be the respective financial power of the litigants, it is the duty of a court to afford them equal justice and to favour neither of them, where rich or poor, for irrelevant reasons. The member’s use of this simile was wholly inappropriate and conveyed partiality by reason of sympathy.”

New Hope declined to comment, pending further orders from the Court of Appeal. With a projected yield of 7.5 million tonnes of coal annually, New Hope claims the new pit would deliver economic benefits to the state of $8bn over 12 years. Critics of the development, including Sydney radio broadcaster Alan Jones, who grew up in the area 50km west of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs, insist it would destroy some of the best farmland in the country.

Land Court judges in Queensland are paid the same as those of the District Court, earning $382,108 in yearly salary, lifted to $412,956 by benefits.

SOURCE

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

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

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23 October, 2019

NHS boss announces air pollution 'emergency' as major study shows our dirty air is killing us

For years Greenies and some medical researchers have been trying to prove that air pollution is bad for you. You would think that that would be a slam dunk -- and at some level air pollution probably is bad for you -- but is it dangerous at the levels we encounter in the worst areas of Western cities?

It isn't. There are normally one or two studies every year that claim to prove a relatioship between pollution and health and I regularly review them. See here. Without fail, the studies are full of holes. They do not show what they purport to show. They omit major methodological precautions that would have protected them from false conclusions and as a result leave their reported effects attributable to other things than pollution.

I find this bemusing. Is there no researcher out there who is capable of doing a defensible study of the topic? I suspect that there is and that there have been. What presumably happens when a good study is done is that the desired effect is not found. Pollution is found not to be dangerous. To avoid antagonizing their colleagues, however, those studies are never submitted for publication. The old bias agist "negative results" comes into play. Only those studies which purport to show the desired correlation are submitted for publication. But they are --demonstrably -- the poorly done ones.

So I was initially rather impressed by the report below: a study of real people in a real setting: no artificial laboratory rubbish or dubious sampling.

I was soon disappointed. The pollution statistics looked sound but what about disease incidence? Where did the statistics on that come from? Rather hilariously, they had no direct figures for that at all. We read:

"To match higher pollution days with their impact on public health, the researchers used previous studies which have already highlighted this link, such as expert Committees reports"

We do not yet have details of what those previous reports were but in the light of chronic failures in previous studies already noted one is hardly brimming with confidence that their findings were sound. Once again, the authors have built their castle on sand

So what the heck is going on? Why is it so hard to prove the obvious?

My academic background is in psychology but I twice taught in university departments that also included sociology and anthropology. And I have always taken an interest in anthropology anyhow. And I think we now have to turn to anthropology to understand what is going on.

And it's rather simple. From our evolutionry past to poor societies in the world today, people have relied heavily on wood fires for heating and cooking.   Even in London today they still do. A London example below:

But most woodburners are more like this;

And as you soon find out if you regress to the past that Greenies want for all of us, those fires put out SOOT, which is the very stuff that Greenies also say is bad for us

To stop beating around the bush: Humankind has spent maybe a million years huddled around open fires so has evolved to tolerate heavy levels of particulate pollution -- far higher levels than one would normally encounter in modern Western society. If we do get a load of particulate pollution, we just cough it up. Fine-particle air pollution is NOT bad for us

So a whole tradition of research exists only because of heavily compartmentalized thinking.

The boss of the NHS has declared an air pollution "emergency" as a major study today shows it causes hundreds of heart attacks and strokes every year.

Simon Stevens says we must act now to avoid so many "avoidable deaths" after figures reveal days of high air pollution trigger an extra 124 cardiac arrests, 231 stroke admissions and 193 hospitalisations for asthma across nine major UK cities each year.

Health charities today warn the figures could be just the “tip of the iceberg”, as often those suffering asthma attacks do not go to hospital.

The research by King’s College London, which is due to be published next month, is believed to be the first of its kind to analyse the impact of air pollution on health across different UK regions in this way.

In response to the findings Mr Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “As these new figures show, air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency.

“Since these avoidable deaths are happening now - not in 2025 or 2050 - together we need to act now. For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.

“So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.”

The new figures, released in partnership with UK100 a network of local government leaders, show the immediate, short-term impact of air pollution on the public.

Previous estimates have shown the long-term impact of air pollution cause up to 36,000 deaths every year.

Days where air pollution is more prominent typically occurs on hot, sunny days with little wind, because air pollution stays concentrated and closer to the ground

The nine cities analysed were London, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford and Southampton.

The risk of having a cardiac arrest on the street or in your home is 2.2 percent higher in London on high air pollution days, than lower air pollution days.

This equates to 87 more people on average suffering cardiac arrest each year, while 74 children are admitted to hospital for asthma, and 144 adults are admitted for strokes.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, said: “London’s lethal air is a public health crisis - it leads to thousands of premature deaths in the capital every year, as well as stunting the development of young lungs and increasing cases of respiratory illness."

In Birmingham, the risk of cardiac arrest is 2.3 percent higher on high pollution days, equating to an extra 12 people per year on average. In Manchester, the risk of cardiac arrest is 2.4 percent higher on high pollution days.

Dr Samantha Walker, director of research and policy at Asthma UK, said: "Toxic air is a scourge on the nation's health and this study shines a light on the devastating effects it can have on people with asthma, causing hundreds to be seriously ill and need hospital treatment.

“These figures may be just the tip of the iceberg as many people with asthma don't go to hospital when they have an asthma attack and try to manage it themselves and this research only focuses on people in major cities in England.

"We urgently need the Government to commit to a stronger Environment Bill with legally binding enforceable targets for clean air, based on World Health Organisation recommendations.”

To measure air pollution levels the researchers used data from the UK monitoring body, the Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN), which is published by Defra.

Data from Airbase, the European air quality database maintained by the EEA, was also used in the report.

They classed higher pollution days as those which fell in the top quarter of the annual average range.

To match higher pollution days with their impact on public health, the researchers used previous studies which have already highlighted this link, such as expert Committees reports, NHS statistics and studies from the World Health Organisation.

The number of additional patients suffering health impacts in each of the nine cities was calculated by mapping the rates of health impacts from previous studies onto the population size of the cities, and then quantifying this impact rate with the number of high pollution days.

Dr Heather Walton, from King’s College, said: “This wider range of impacts on our health provides additional evidence of the important need for further action to reduce air pollution.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “We are taking urgent action to improve air quality and tackle pollution so people can live longer healthier lives.

“Our landmark Environment Bill will set ambitious, legally-binding targets to reduce fine particulate matter and increase local powers to address key sources of air pollution.

“We are already working hard to reduce transport emissions and are investing £3.5 billion to clean up our air, while our Clean Air Strategy has been praised by the WHO as an ‘example for the rest of the world to follow.”

SOURCE

Another dissenter purged

This is like the old Soviet Union. Whether Dr Crockford is correct in her assessment of polar bears is beside the point. Academics are allowed to have different opinions from their peers. I am particularly concerned about the anonymous admission half way down about getting "deniers" sacked.

Global warming campaigners have done an effective job at convincing the media and much of the world that polar bears are dying out.

It’s not true.

In fact, thanks to a hunting ban, polar bears are a major conservation success story. Their population ballooned from around 5,000 in the 1960s to (depending on whose estimate) from 22,000 to over 30,000 today. Today the North is loaded with fat, happy, fecund bears (sorry seals).

It appears that telling the truth about polar bears made Dr. Susan Crockford, a respected, published Canadian zoologist, the victim of an Polar bear expert purged 2ideological purge. First she was removed from the University of Victoria’s speakers bureau, and then not renewed to her position as an adjunct professor.

“The loss of adjunct status,” Crockford wrote, “will primarily prevent me from continuing scientific research on speciation and domestication mechanisms in evolution: without an academic affiliation I will be unable to secure research funds or academic collaborations.”

But this woman of science is fearless.

“What a lack of academic affiliation has not done, and cannot do,” Crockford continued, “is stop me from investigating and commenting on the failures and inconsistencies of science that I see in published polar bear research papers and reflected in public statements made by polar bear specialists. I am still a former adjunct professor and I will not be silenced.”

Free speech is anathema to the Left.

They don’t fear false or misleading information, that’s their stock in trade. They fear the facts that prove them wrong. They are prepared to wreak great harm on any who dare utter them. They know they can’t silence Susan Crockford, but know also that harming her creates an atmosphere of fear that most others lack the courage to confront.

Warming campaigners are actively hunting scalps. Take a look at this shocking anonymous admission from one of them that CFACT’s friend Russell Cook found, on of all places, CFACT’s own coPolar bear expert purged 1mment forum!

“You will be pleased to know that in the past two years I successfully had two deniers fired (forced resignations) from their university positions. One was a prolific WUWT contributor. I discovered a nice twist to the freedom of speech tale. You can say almost anything except yell fire in a crowded room and are free to make a fool of oneself but can’t invoke one’s pedigree to do so i.e. you can state your doctorate or disciplines, but not your college, professional body memberships and imply they agree. So that’s how I’ve been knocking them off by going to their employer, professional registration, professional memberships or their alma mater. I have three scalps lined up now — infant stage But they will collapse like dominoes.”

Think of the malice and lack of respect and concern for others these people exhibit! Academic freedom and the ability of all of us to participate in public discussion is truly under assault.

What would happen if our nasty commenters methods were applied equally to everyone? How often do you read misleading and outright false pronouncements from climate campaigners in the press? Do they not cite their academic and professional affiliations in their bios?

Donna Laframboise covered Dr. Crockford’s situation at Financial Post:

“Jeffrey Foss, a former chair of UVic’s philosophy department, says Crockford has been punished for speaking her own mind about matters of fact, which means she has been denied academic freedom and free speech. ‘I’m beginning to lose faith and hope in the university system,’ he says.”

Dr. Crockford said:

“It appears certain to me that the Anthropology Department bowed to pressure from the administration, who themselves bowed to pressure from outside the university community, in an attempt to stifle my legitimate scientific criticisms of polar bear conservation issues. This kind of bullying has been happening far too often at universities, even in Canada.”

The idea that climate pressure groups can demand unprecedented control over our economies, freedoms and personal lives, and obtain this without open public debate is monstrous.

Governments, universities, professional associations, the media and all institutions must be made aware of the dirty, destructive trick being played in the name of global warming.

We must insist on unfettered scientific discussion and the right of researchers like Dr. Susan Crockford, and each and every one of us, to speak without fear.

SOURCE

Swing Voters Hold a More Reasonable View on Climate Change Than the Debate Would Lead You to Believe

We’ve been conditioned to see the debate over climate change as a battle over extremes. On one hand, there are those who dismiss the notion of climate change outright. These people believe that it’s junk science or a hoax. On the other side of the argument are the climate activists who tell us the sky is falling and that we must act now to reverse the damage – actions that usually include draconian governmental policy.

Here’s the thing: both sides of this debate can’t rightly claim majority status. In an era of heated rhetoric, many people see climate change as an important but not urgent issue or at least don’t buy into the vitriol and hyperbole from either side.

(Full disclosure: I see differences in the climate, but I’m skeptical that manmade climate change is such a drastic issue or that we can really do that much about it. At the same time, I believe we should pursue free-market innovations that help us take care of the environment.)

It turns out that swing voters occupy a middle ground between the climate hoaxers and the environmental alarmists. Axios has detailed a series of focus groups that reveal how swing voters view the climate change debate. Amy Harder reports about the findings:

The participants were asked the following fill-in-the-blank exercise: Climate change is a ____. Of the more than 2 dozen responses, most (14) chose words that somehow described climate change as a problem, with “concern” being the most common word.

* Just 4 people chose words that made it clear they roundly dismissed climate change as a problem at all (like Trump), with one Obama-Trump voter calling it a joke and another saying it was “scientifically unproven.”

* Nobody described climate change as an emergency.

* Other words mentioned: “big issue,” “addressable issue” and “something scary.”

Harder draws these conclusions:

* Scientists are increasingly sounding the alarm about the mostly negative, and at times catastrophic, impacts that climate change is already having and is likely to have in the decades to come.

* But to people who are worried about paying big health care bills or losing their jobs in a matter of months due to a slowing economy, any problem playing out over decades will inevitably not rise to the top. Or, if it does make it to the top, it doesn’t stay there long.

At the end of the day, while the rhetoric over climate change has heated up to the extreme on both sides of the debate, swing voters – and arguably plenty of others among us – hold a more reasonable view on the issue.

It may behoove politicians of all stripes to remember that not everyone sees climate change either as a hoax or a hair-on-fire emergency. And politicians could benefit from remembering that, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, government isn’t the solution to solving environmental issues.

SOURCE

Desperation Grows: ’Exxon Knew’ Activists Publish ‘Report’ Ahead Of NY Trial

Exxon Knew protestersA group of activist researchers, known for their biased studies and their collusion with attorneys general and municipality leaders to target energy companies, released a new study that rehashes an old and debunked argument: that fossil fuel companies knowingly misled Americans about climate change.

The timing of the report comes as a desperate attempt to gain attention during the NY AG’s trial against ExxonMobil, a case that now deals with accounting practices and stands as wholly separate from the “Exxon Knew” campaign.

Potentially in recognition of the trial’s diminished prospects for their radical anti-energy campaign, researchers Naomi Oreskes, Geoffrey Supran and Ed Maibach are nevertheless using the trial as an opportunity to dust off their threadbare and false arguments.

New Name, Same Debunked Argument

The newly released report, “America Misled,” provides little new information and builds on a study from Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran in which the authors, making continuous references to their own prior work, analyzed a small, cherry-picked sampling of advertorials published by Mobil and later ExxonMobil in an attempt to conclude that ExxonMobil promoted a public position on climate change contradictory to its own internal documents.

In “America Misled,” the authors write that “Science denial continues unabated—in the last decade, content analysis of online misinformation has found the prevalence of science denial has been on the increase.”

Despite this claim, the authors only examine four internal company documents from 1977-1998 and a single ExxonMobil advertorial from 2000.

The paper does not mention that it is extrapolating ExxonMobil positions from separate Exxon internal documents (Exxon and Mobil did not merge until 1998).

What follows this “content analysis” are charts that use strawman arguments to present the side of “climate deniers,” attempting to connect these arguments with the single ExxonMobil advertorial presented.

It’s a cute exercise, cleverly designed to boil their debunked arguments down to simple, easily digested chunks of text with accompanying, colorful graphics. Left undisclosed is who funded and produced the slick paper.

Biased Scholars Seek Attention
Although the authors of the report claim to “offer insights of more than a decade of peer-reviewed research,” their past scholarly work as well as their advocacy and direct coordination with politicians, including the New York attorney general, raises questions about the credibility of their work as well as their ability to produce unbiased scholarship.

Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran have worked with each other in the past to produce biased scholarship which they claimed proved that ExxonMobil misled the public about climate change.

In fact, their research was biased, did not follow the best research practices and received criticism from other academics.

It’s unsurprising that this report, published in 2017, was not objective—Oreskes and Supran received partial funding from the Rockefeller Family Fund, a philanthropy that has repeatedly financed media outlets, other non-profits and activists who advocate for climate liability litigation.

Yet issues with the report went further than the bias of the funding source.

The report, which claimed to use ExxonMobil advertorials to demonstrate that the company held different internal views on climate change than it publicized, concluded that ExxonMobil’s internal documents and research “published from 1977 to 2014, were in line with the scientific thinking of the time,” yet the company’s public communications tended to sow doubt about the existence of climate change 80 percent of the time.

Yet, as EID reported at the time of the report’s publication, their sample size was not only small—comprised of only 36 “advertorials” published in the New York Times between 1989 and 2004, they also were not accounting for the fact that Exxon and Mobil were two separate companies that didn’t merge until 1999—a full decade into the years that comprised their puny sample size.

When broken down, only 11 of the advertorials examined by the researchers were published by ExxonMobil. Mobil—an entirely different company—had published the rest. But wait, there’s more:

“If Mobil and ExxonMobil were publishing these advertorials every Thursday for 15 years, why did the researchers only look at 36 of them? The authors claim that’s the number of advertorials published during the time frame that discuss global warming or climate change. But they didn’t pull these documents by themselves—they relied on a Greenpeace-run website called PolluterWatch to do that for them.”

Oreskes and Supran’s bias was inherent in the structure of their survey—they used a paltry sample size, selected by a biased third-party, to conduct academic research.

But their study’s methodology was also poorly constructed and received criticism from other academics.

Kimberly Neuendorf, a professor of communication at Cleveland State University with more than 40 years of experience with quantitative content analysis research, reviewed the Supran/Oreskes study.

Her published rebuttal found serious flaws and called the data analysis “unreliable, invalid, biased, not generalizable, and not replicable.”

Neuendorf was also critical about the study’s application of a method called “consensus measurement,” which she said was only used by a small group of researchers and was “not a standard, time-honored research technique.”

She wrote that because “the investigators using consensus measurement seem to be a relatively small group, with inter-citation and self-citation notable … [consensus measurement] has the potential to create an ‘echo chamber’ of reinforcing ideas, without critique and correction.”

The newly released report makes a similar error, with the authors self-citing more than a third of the time.

SOURCE

Great Barrier Reef has 'vibrant future', authority agrees

They are walking back their Greenie gloom

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has supported Environment Minister Sussan Ley's appraisal that the reef is "good" and has "a vibrant future". A Senate estimates committee hearing on Monday heard a downgrading of the reef condition from poor to very poor was a long-term forecast based on no action being taken on climate change.

GBRMPA chief executive Joshua Thomas said the out-look report was an assessment of the likely condition of the reef if a series of issues were not addressed. These included reducing global greenhouse gas emissions along with improving reef water quality, better marine park compliance, controlling crown of thorns starfish and reducing marine debris.

"The reef is a vast estate and many areas remain vibrant and ecologically robust," he said. "It continuo to be an extraordinary experience for visitors to the region, supporting beautiful corals and abundant marine life."

After her first visit to the reef as minister, Ms Ley said: "It gives me great heart and hope that the future of this magnificent part of the world is a good one." She said at the time the reef
was not dead, was not dying and not even on life support.

"Today we saw coral that was struggling but we also saw coral that was coming back, that was growing, that was vibrant"

Mr Thomas said Ms Ley had been "referring to the fact there are many areas, of the reef that remain vibrant and worth visiting and we support that statement". "It is also true that the reef over the past five years has been subjected to unprecedented changes, including those bleaching events in 2016-177 he added.

The authority's chief scientist, David Wachenfeld, told Senate estimates the outlook report was evidence-based. He said the downgrade from poor to very poor was the long-term outlook for the reef that was largely a consideration of the impacts of climate change on current green-house gas emissions trajectories.

From "the Australian" of 22 Oct., 2019

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

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

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22 October, 2019

That wicked polystyrene is biodegradable after all

Sunlight Converts Polystyrene to Carbon Dioxide and Dissolved
Organic Carbon

Collin P. Ward et al.

ABSTRACT:

Numerous international governmental agencies that steer policy assume that polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia. Here, we show that polystyrene is completely photochemically oxidized to carbon dioxide and partially photochemically oxidized to dissolved organic carbon. Lifetimes of complete and partial photochemical oxidation are estimated to occur on centennial and decadal time scales, respectively. These lifetimes are orders of magnitude faster than biological respiration of polystyrene and thus challenge the prevailing assumption that polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia. Additives disproportionately altered the relative susceptibility to complete and partial photochemical oxidation of polystyrene and accelerated breakdown by shifting light absorbance and reactivity to longer wavelengths. Polystyrene photochemical oxidation increased approximately 25% with a 10 °C increase in temperature, indicating that temperature is unlikely to be a primary driver of photochemical oxidation rates. Collectively, sunlight exposure appears to be a governing control of the environmental persistence of polystyrene, and thus, photochemical loss terms need to be included in mass balance studies on the environmental fate of polystyrene. The experimental framework presented herein should be applied to a diverse array of polymers and formulations to establish how general these results are for other plastics in the environment.

SOURCE

Can this world survive without fossil fuels?

“God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the Courage to change the things I can change; and the Wisdom to know the difference.”

The afore-quoted Serenity Prayer came to mind while I was writing this because it seems applicable to the world’s citizens who are trying to attain the leadership roles in the save the environment movement before understanding the complexities of the energy picture depicted Energy Made Easyin the book Energy Made Easy and the advantages energy as a whole has provided humanity for the last couple of centuries.

Because developed countries have accomplished much in the last few centuries, they have a responsibility as caretakers for the only planet we live on right now. Understandably, it’s hard to imagine the billions of people in underdeveloped countries who have yet to experience anything like the industrial revolution and who are surviving without any of the advantage’s fossil fuels are providing to the lifestyles of those in developed countries.

Yes, there are billions of people in undeveloped countries who are currently living in the low economy horse and buggy days that developed countries left behind a century ago after the assimilation in the early 1900s of the automobile and airplane into regular societal structure. They have yet to join the industrial revolution, and without oil and natural gas, they may never get that opportunity.

It’s almost impossible to understand that almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Today, across southern Asia, portions of Europe and parts of Africa and Australia, there are families attempting to live on virtually nothing. As hard as it is to believe it is a truism.

Can anyone comprehend that the homeless in America may be living a better life than 80% of humanity?

Imagine families living in dirt huts with no access to emergency medical care because there is no EMC. Their daily lives are bleak and hopeless. They watch their children, friends and relatives suffer and die early deaths from diseases/conditions that are curable using medicines and treatments brought about by developments using fossil fuel by-products.

With fossil fuels, the few of us in the developed countries can now survive in environments all over the world, even harsh ones like Antarctica. Every year, we fell forests and destroy other natural areas, driving species into smaller areas or into endangerment and some even to extinction, because of our need to build more housing to contain our growing population.

Today, the current world population of 7.7 billion is projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. How many more trees will fall as unnatural selection takes its toll on the planet? Currently, underdeveloped countries, mostly from energy starved countries, are experiencing 11 million child deaths every year, and mainly from preventable causes.

Imagine the future atrocities to humanity for those trying to live in abject poverty if we deny the growing poor the benefits of medicines, heating and countless other developments made possible by fossil fuels, to ever achieve the lifestyle benefits afforded the few in developed countries from all those products we get from fossil fuels.

The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years. While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in earnest only in the 1800s.

For nomadic tribes that ruled over thousands of years, their governmental powers were driven by horses, mules, and camels from the animal kingdom – true horse and buggy economies.

From those horse and buggy days a few centuries ago, those personal and commercial vehicles that did not exist before 1900 are currently estimated at 1.2 billion vehicles on the world’s roads with projections of 2 billion by 2035. By some estimates, the total number of vehicles worldwide could double to 2.5 billion by 2050.

Another thing we take for granted is air flight. My hat’s off to Wilbur and his not so congenial brother Orville. Imagine not being able to fly anywhere in the world today? The airlines that did not exist before 1900, transported more than 4.1 billion passengers in 2017 around the world and projections are 7.8 billion airline passengers by 2036.

In just the last few centuries every developed nation now has a military that consists of planes, ships, tanks, and troops with support structures that need constant transporting around the globe, as well as a multitude of infrastructures and products that provide for a comfortable lifestyle in their homelands.

Developed countries that are wealthier and healthier than underdeveloped countries have become dependent on the more than 6,000 products that are manufactured from petroleum and that includes fuel oils for heating and electricity generation, asphalt and road oil, fertilizers that help agriculture feed billions, and feedstocks for making the chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials that are in nearly everything we use today.

Interestingly, the primary economic reasons that oil refineries even exist are NOT to manufacture the aviation, diesel, and gasoline fuels for today’s military and transportation industries. From one 42-gallon barrel of oil only about half is for fuels while the rest is used to manufacture the chemicals and by-products that are part of our daily lifestyles. Those billions in underdeveloped countries may not need transportation fuels, but they do need the other ½ of the barrel of oil for the thousands of products that have enhanced the lifestyle of those in developed countries.

As headstrong as the leaders of the new environmental movements are they are equaly ignorant of what “energy” means and the real reason fossil fuels are integral to the success of developed nations and the necessity of those fuels being made available to up and coming nations who want to enjoy the fruits and comforts of modern society.

SOURCE

More on global warming as a false religion

The problem of global warming, with it's coming "end of the world" narrative, has been grossly overestimated. In fact, David Webb, host of Fox Nation's "Reality Check," got it right when he referred to it as the "religion of the Left." Dr. Michael Brown also called it "the new religion of manmade global warming."

Brown said:

"It has its unique gods (like Mother Earth). It defies the created world (with seminarians confessing to plants in a chapel service). It has its high priests and religious leaders (the climate change gurus and radical environmentalists). It has its patron saints (like Sweden's Greta Thunberg). And it has its own doomsday scenario: The end of the world is near. Very near."

Webb also said, "After all it's the big New Green Deal [which is about climate change], which isn't the real deal, and America the prosperous is the Satan. Hey, every religion needs a Satan." So the religion of climate change even has a Devil.

Regardless of claims to the contrary, every attempt to prove a scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are causing global warming and precipitating an impending climate disaster has failed.

One thing about science is exact: its analysis of data is always changing. This is particularly true regarding predictions of future environmental disasters.

Myron Ebell and Steven J. Milloy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute have recently provided an impressive list of apocalyptic predictions made through the decades from notable people in government and science that have miserably failed.

"Such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines," say the authors, but "the failures are not typically revisited."

Indeed, the claims of science, the assertions of the experts, are ever being amended, but the Word of God stands forever. And the teachings of the Bible are at cross-purposes with the declarations of climate change advocates.

God made the world so delicate that if man's use of any fossil fuels raises carbon dioxide levels from 27 to 54 thousandths of one percent of the atmosphere, it will cause worldwide destruction? The contention is absurd. God made a better world, one that's able to adapt, and self-regulate to serve his eternal purposes for humankind.

There's one other factor that's not spiritual but political, which should be considered. Other nations from around the world, who by the way care nothing about religious liberty, are envious of America's prosperity. Climate policy, as dictated by the United Nations, would require America to give up its sovereignty and redistribute its wealth.

As John Edison, a free-lance writer from Atlanta, eloquently argues: "[T]axes would be used, not for environmental healing, but to fund the most massive redistribution of wealth in history, literally trillions of dollars extracted under false pretenses from hardworking U.S. taxpayers and given to corrupt governments of every underdeveloped nation on Earth, all in the guise of 'climate aid.'"

President Trump seems to have a keen sense of discerning a ruse when he sees one and recognizing a real problem, such as the lack of religious liberty around the world.

The President hasn't bowed the knee to the idolatrous image of global warming. As he said at the religious freedom meeting, our rights come from God. He's correct. And those inalienable rights would indeed be threatened by some stealth agenda behind climate hysteria, which pressures this nation to surrender to a form of global governance.

SOURCE

Monbiot’s Martyrdom

Monbiot is probably Britain's best known climate alarmist. It gives him something to say -- and a sense of mission

Two days ago George Monbiot’s dearest wish was granted when he was arrested at an Extinction Rebellion event. The joy on his face as he is dragged along the ground is a sight to behold.

After the arrest, and after the cheers of the crowd have died down, he announces to the camera which has faithfully recorded the historical event:

So this just feels like the right place to be, the right thing to do, strange as that may sound. I just feel we’ve got to make as much of a stand as we possibly can to prevent ecocide. Politics as usual, that is ecocide, the destruction of the conditions that make life possible on this earth. And I’m standing up against that and I’m proud to be arrested for that cause.

In the accompanying article “Today, I aim to get arrested. It is the only real power climate protesters have” he describes how:

“By putting our bodies on the line and risking our liberty, we make this great neglected issue impossible to ignore.”

This “great neglected issue” is the one mentioned under the on-line article, indeed, under every single on-line article at the Guardian, which describes it thus:

"We will not stay quiet on the escalating climate crisis. This is the Guardian’s pledge: we will continue to give global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution the urgent attention and prominence they demand. The Guardian recognises the climate emergency as the defining issue of our times… We will inform our readers about threats to the environment based on scientific facts… the language we use accurately reflects the environmental catastrophe. The Guardian believes that the problems we face on the climate crisis are systemic and that fundamental societal change is needed. We will keep reporting on the efforts of individuals and communities around the world who are fearlessly taking a stand for future generations and the preservation of human life on earth."

The article, as you might expect from the title and video, is all about George and his new version of the White Man’s Burden; being condemned by fate to be not only white, but also educated and middle class, and silenced by an oppressive political system which limits his freedom of expression to one chance per week to address the five million plus readership of the world’s oldest and most prestigious left-of-centre news medium.

There are a couple of times when he refers to the world outside his head. First, in the only concrete reference to what he’s protesting about, he claims that:

“we know that, even with just 1C of global heating, climate chaos is already a bigger cause of forced migration than either poverty or political oppression.”

The link is to a paper (paywalled) whose publicity blurb claims that “Climate change is a more important driver than income and political freedom at origin together.”

Though we can’t read the source of this claim without forking out 39 dollars, there is another article by the same lead author on the same subject freely available whose abstract reads:

"This paper provides an overview of research into the phenomenon of whether climatic factors, such as temperature and weather?related disasters, affect the decision to migrate. As an example, we examine migration flows from 198 countries to Australia for the time span from 1980 to 2015. Our results show that temperature does not have a robust, significant effect on migration flows, while weather?related disasters do significantly affect flows to Australia."

Note that temperature change is NOT a factor, but weather-related disasters are. No mention of whether said disasters are getting more frequent, or whether they’re related to climate change. When a hurricane strikes, people tend to go somewhere else. But I think we knew that already.

Apart from this brief excursion into peer reviewed science, George sticks closely to the same script he’s been reciting for the past twenty years:

"…the big fossil fuel companies have used political funding, intense lobbying and gross deceptions of the public to overwhelm environmental protections and keep harvesting their massive profits. Those who confront them have no such power. We cannot buy television channels and newspapers, pour billions into political lobbying…"

Oh, can’t we? George also links to Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam’s Dummies’ Guide to Saving the Planet, which is well worth a read. I particularly enjoyed the Foreword by “Anonymous Climate Activist” which begins:

"I was there. For the past 20 years. Climate activism. It didn’t work. We protested in our hundreds of millions – it didn’t work. We raised billions to reach people and politicians – it didn’t work. […] I was wasting my time. I had a clue back in 2007 that there might be a fundamental flaw in the reformist approach. The problem of the political influence of the industrial billionaires like the Koch Brothers and other fossil fuel bosses."

Raised billions? Really? And all the time our anonymous activist was wasting her time? Has anyone told George? Does he realise that the movement he so happily sacrificed his freedom for – getting dragged along the pavement by the oppressive forces of the state – has wasted billions, to no avail?

Billions wasted over twenty years, when everything could have been solved with a bit of glue and an inflatable pink octopus. That’s something to meditate on as he nurses his bruised bottom.

SOURCE

The culprit behind East Australia's big dry

It's not global warming after all. It's the "Indian Ocean Dipole"

When leading climate scientist Matthew England began work at a lab in Hobart in the mid-1980s, visitors were greeted by a huge graphic depicting a tight correlation between El Ninos and Australia's farm yields.

Any government minister would leave understanding that "we’ve got a tremendous amount of economic wealth" dependent on Pacific climate influences, making El Nino research "iconic", England says.

It turns out more attention should have been paid to the Indian Ocean.

As we have seen this year, conditions that drive El Ninos - relative sea-surface temperature differences between the western and eastern Pacific - have been neutral. But the counterpart ratio in the Indian Ocean has gone haywire. Known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the gauge last week hit record levels.

In its so-called positive phase, tropical waters off Australia's north-west are relatively cool - compared with those near Africa - strengthening easterly winds and reducing the potential convection that typically supplies much of south-eastern Australia's critical winter and spring rains. A negative IOD has the opposite effect.

“They used to think the Indian Ocean was a slave to the Pacific," says Cai Wenju, a senior climate researcher at the CSIRO, adding this year's IOD figures are "gigantic".

“The biggest clue" that the Indian Ocean could influence Australia independently came in 2007 and 2008 when the Pacific was in its La Nina phase, which should have raised the odds for good rains, Dr Cai said. Instead, the Millenium Drought was still playing out, and there were positive-phase IODs three years in a row.

"Sometimes, the El-Nino Southern Oscillation has copped a bad rap when it should have been the IOD," Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasting at the Bureau of Meteorology, says.

Australian researchers from the 1980s had started examining how relative warm or cool waters off Western Australia could affect rainfall over the continent. However, it took two papers published in Nature in 1999 by Japanese and North American scientists - including Australian Peter Webster - to tease out the potential of an independent IOD.

Scientists including England and Cai will gather in China next month to mark that 20th anniversary, with the IOD now a key component of Australia's and global weather and climate predictions.

Scientists caution that reliable observation data only goes back a couple of decades but it is clear this year's positive-IOD is already one of the strongest of record. So-called "reanalysis" using a combination of observations and modelling suggests the event is also notable over the past 150 years.

Nerilie Abram, an associate professor at the Australian National University, published work in 2009 that used coral cores among other data to push IOD estimates back to the mid-1800s. Research awaiting publication will look back 1000 years. While the current event is significant, her study suggests “perhaps the instrumental record doesn’t tell us the full range what’s actually possible in the Indian Ocean”.

The magnitude of an IOD appears to matter more for rainfall over south-eastern Australia than the El Nino-La Nina flux, the Bureau of Meteorology's Watkins said: "The stronger the IOD, the stronger the impacts ... for Australia, and maybe for Africa."

Another difference is that Indian Ocean conditions are more regulated by the seasonal cycle than the Pacific. Positive or negative IODs typically take form by May or June, peak around September and October, and break down in November to December as the monsoon shifts south, disrupting the easterly winds.

Poor winter and spring rains from positive IODs are not just bad for farmers. Those rains also supply much of the run-off that let our rivers run and fill the dams. Heatwaves are more severe and prolonged as soils dry out, removing the cooling function from evaporation, and setting up a busy bushfire season.

England says that while IODs can act independently of the Pacific, the connections remain important. For instance, the so-called Indonesian Throughflow - where warm water from the Pacific funnels its way to the Indian Ocean - could change.

"The predictions are for that to weaken," he says. "If it does, that would be a double whammy of more El Ninos plus more positive-IODs."

SOURCE

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

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

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

21 October, 2019

The climate theory casting new light on the history of Chinese civilisation -- with COOLING being the big threat

Scientists say they have found evidence beneath a lake in northeastern China that ties climate change and 500-year sun cycles to ups and downs in the 8,000 years of Chinese civilisation.

According to the study by a team at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing published in the science journal Nature Communications this month, whenever the climate warmed, Chinese civilisation prospered and when it cooled, it declined.

While historians have used various social and economic factors to explain changes over the millennia, Dr Xu Deke, lead author of the paper, and his colleagues said that while people played their part, their study indicated that cycles in solar activity influenced human activity.

“We just point out there is a natural constraint on human efforts,” Xu said. We are in a much more capable position than our ancestors with the help of technology and machines in face of global cooling, but preparation must start now

Previous research linking Chinese history to climate relied on written records, but ancient texts contained only subjective descriptions of weather and social development. The records also go back only so far – writing in China was not invented until 3,600 years ago.

For this latest study, the team and its leader, Chinese Academy of Sciences professor Lu Houyuan, took plant and lake bed sediment samples to track climate change over the centuries and compared them with written records.

They visited Lake Xiaolongwan in the Changbai Mountains in Jilin province and studied the spread of plant life such as oak trees to map the transitions between warm and cold climate phases in northern China.

By comparing the records and their research, the scientists found that the warmer the climate, the more prosperous the civilisation in terms of grain cultivation, animal domestication and human settlement.

Over the decades, researchers have established more than 4,000 carbon dating databases for archaeological finds in northern China. From these, the team obtained a benchmark for the intensity of human activity in different periods. Their study also found that 500-year cycles often ended with rapid climate cooling.

Whenever that happened, societies started to collapse and neither culture nor political systems could sustain them. This, Xu said, was a lesson for modern China. “The most effective countermeasure is science and technology,” he said. “We are in a much more capable position than our ancestors with the help of technology and machines in face of global cooling, but preparation must start now.”

Citing this and earlier studies, Xu said that over the next few decades the Earth would enter 25 years of cooling, although greenhouse gases could slow the temperature drop.

Cooling would increase the size of polar ice caps and lower sea levels. Areas such as southern China could benefit as land would be reclaimed from the sea. But overall, a cooling climate would continue to have a more negative effect on civilisation than warming, Xu said.

Dr Liu Yonggang, a Peking University scientist who studies ancient climate, said the researchers had provided important new information and perspectives.

Human societies have gone through temperature cycles such as the Medieval Warm Period (900- 1300) and Little Ice Age (1300-1870) Liu said, but most of that data came from Europe, not China.
The study left one big question. “Why do the sun’s activities vary every 500 years? Nobody can explain,” he said. “We need to know more about the inner working mechanism of the sun, otherwise the future remains unpredictable.”

SOURCE

London Tube Climate Protesters Dragged And Beaten

Angry commuters dragged climate change protesters from the roof of a London Underground train.

Extinction Rebellion activists climbed on to trains at Stratford, Canning Town and Shadwell in Thursday’s rush hour. Eight protesters have been arrested, British Transport Police (BTP) said.

The Jubilee Line and Docklands Light Railway were temporarily suspended.

Extinction Rebellion later said it would “take stock” of the reaction to the latest action for future protests. Spokesman Howard Rees said: “Was it the right thing to do? I am not sure. “I think we will have to have a period of reflection. It is too early to say.”

Extinction Rebellion previously said the disruption was “necessary to highlight the emergency”.

Hayden Green, a commuter at Canning Town, said he saw the protester “dragged to the floor and kicked repeatedly”. “Police have struggled to deal with the protest in London so the public stepped in and in the heat of the moment it was taken too far,” he told the BBC.

“I support their cause but I think how the protests have been carried out has led to more divisions.”

In footage shared on social media, a passenger waiting for a train is seen climbing on the carriage to get to one of the protesters.

The activist is grabbed by the knees and dragged down, falling to the platform where he appears to then be kicked and hit by angry commuters on the platform.

Others can be heard shouting and swearing at the protesters. One shouts: “I have to get to work too – I have to feed my kids.”

A second protester was chased along the top of the train carriage by a commuter before being dragged off.

A third Extinction Rebellion activist, who was broadcasting the protest on the group’s social media accounts, said he was also attacked and “kicked in the head”.

BTP said it was investigating what happened at Canning Town station, adding it was “concerning to see that a number of commuters took matters into their own hands, displaying violent behaviour to detain a protester”.

Assistant Chief Constable Sean O’Callaghan said: “It is important that commuters and other rail users allow the police, who are specially trained, to manage these incidents.

“Unfortunately, there is still a risk that Extinction Rebellion will target the rail network during this evening’s peak. We will continue to have extra officers on patrol and will work to disrupt any potential criminal action before it happens.”

SOURCE

Greta Thunberg's climate change rally is crashed by counter-protest led by truck convoy of oil and gas workers in Canada

Greta Thunberg joined thousands of protesters marching in Canada's energy heartland Alberta yesterday as a smaller counter-rally led by a truck convoy of oil and gas workers also converged on the provincial capital Edmonton.

A crowd of several thousand led by indigenous drummers with students, young people and families marched slowly from a downtown intersection towards the Alberta legislature building.

Many held banners and signs with slogans including 'be a better ancestor'. Police rode on bicycles at the front and back of the throng.

'We cannot allow this crisis to continue to be a partisan, political question,' Thunberg said in a speech before thousands of people on the steps of the provincial legislature.

'The climate and ecological crisis is far beyond party politics and the main enemy right now should not be any political opponents, because our main enemy is physics.'

'We are doing this because our future is at stake,' Thunberg told the crowd. 'We will not be bystanders. We are doing this because we want the people in power to unite behind science.

But a counter-protester said: 'We care for the environment, of course we do. What they need to understand is that we're hurting and we also need to care about Alberta jobs.'

The honking horns of big rig trucks blared from a nearby thoroughfare, where vehicles emblazoned with 'We love Canada energy' signs were driving up and down.

'When they charged their iPhones last night, that power came from this plant,' he said, pointing to the former coal-fired Keephills power plant near Edmonton that was being converted to natural gas.

'Albertans and Canadians are practical people,' he said. 'They like real world solutions. Calling for the end of the modern industrial economy, advocating to put millions of people out of work... is not a real world solution.'

But climate protester Bridget Gutteridge-Hingston, 13, who marched with her father, said: 'I came out to show support for Greta and everyone fighting against the climate crisis. 'It's something I'm definitely scared of,' she said.

The truck convoy organised by pro-oil group United We Roll drove from the city of Red Deer to Edmonton on Friday morning to protest against what the group called foreign activists campaigning against Canada's oil and gas industry.

'Richer countries such as Canada and Sweden need to get down to zero emissions much faster so people in poorer countries can heighten their standard of living by building the infrastructure we have already built,' Thunberg told a cheering crowd, which organizers estimated was 10,000-strong, from the steps of the Alberta legislature building.

'We're not doing this because it's fun or because we have a special interest in the climate or because we want to become politicians when we grow up. We're doing this because our future is at stake,' the Swedish activist said.

The truck horns sounded in the distance throughout Thunberg's speech and there were around 150 counter-protesters in the crowd.

After she left the stage shouting broke out between pro-energy demonstrators, armed with a noisy bull horn and yelling 'We need oil and gas', and climate marchers.

Alberta is home to Canada's vast oil sands and holds the world's third-largest crude reserves, but has struggled to recover from the 2014-15 global oil price crash because of delays building new export pipelines as a result of environmental opposition and regulatory hold-ups.

Many energy sector workers and the Alberta government feel the oil sands, scorned by environmentalists for their high carbon emissions intensity, have been unfairly targeted and say the sector is making progress cutting greenhouse gas output.

A 2018 study by Stanford University researchers ranked the Canadian oil industry's upstream emissions as the fourth most carbon-heavy in the world.

The energy sector provides 150,000 direct jobs in Alberta and contributes more than C$71 billion ($54.1 billion) annually to the gross domestic product of Canada, the world's fourth-largest oil and gas producer.

Thunberg has mobilised a global youth movement against climate change. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said he hoped she would take a 'fair and objective look' at Alberta's energy sector.

Friday's march, organized by indigenous and environmental groups, came as Canada prepares for a tight federal election Monday in which climate change and the future of the oil and gas sector are hot topics.

Last month, Thunberg met privately with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau following a massive rally in Montreal.

SOURCE

Why the oil giants say it’s got to be gas

What do the former Redcar steelworks on Teesside, a university in the Midlands and forests in the Scottish Highlands have in common? Answer: Big Oil is praying they hold the key to its future.

Strikes by schoolchildren, the rise of “flight-shaming” and an exodus of investors have left the energy industry reeling. Oil giants’ multi-billion bet — that gas will power the global economy into a low-carbon future — now looks risky.

As the mood changes, Big Oil is making increasingly ambitious — and desperate — attempts to clean itself up and reduce or trap carbon emissions. For giants including Shell, Total and BP, that means carbon capture and storage (CCS) at Redcar, promoting hydrogen as an alternative fuel, such as a pilot at Keele University — and even planting forests in Scotland.

The oil majors have staked huge sums on the dash for gas, hoping lower carbon emissions from burning natural gas instead of coal would make it the fuel for a lower-carbon future. Their argument was that using abundant reserves of gas — which emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal — would allow for a gradual shift to renewables.

Weaning the world off fossil fuels is a mammoth challenge. Shale gas allowed America to switch away from coal, but oil, coal and gas still make up about 80 per cent of global consumption, with renewables, nuclear and hydro-electricity comprising the balance. Energy demand and carbon emissions continue to grow, up 2.9 per cent and 2 per cent respectively last year, driven by the surging economies of America and Asia. China accounted for about 28 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, versus 15 per cent from America and 1.2 per cent from the UK.

Royal Dutch Shell bet its future on gas in 2015 with its $89bn takeover of troubled rival BG, the rump of privatised British Gas. Shell lifer Ben van Beurden’s deal turned the Anglo-Dutch giant into the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) company. BP has been investing in LNG terminals and gas fields from Egypt to west Africa — and last year spent $15bn on BHP Billiton’s US shale gas portfolio. The French giant Total aims for natural gas to make up at least 60 per cent of its hydrocarbon portfolio by 2035.

However, this transition is nowhere near fast enough for the Extinction Rebellion movement — or politicians of various shades. Earlier this year, then chancellor Philip Hammond demanded that no new home be built with a gas boiler from 2025. Labour’s party conference called for the UK to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030 — bringing forward the Conservatives’ target by two decades.

Suddenly, those huge gas bets are starting to look precarious. Earlier this month, Bob Dudley, the outgoing boss of BP, gave a stark warning: “Gas is being increasingly marginalised — even vilified and demonised,” he said. “Gas has a vital role to play in the energy transition … To exclude gas — when so much is at stake — is to take a huge and unnecessary risk.”

Dudley added that without gas, the industry was being forced into trying “to achieve the energy transition with one hand tied behind our back”.

Fear among investors is evident in the oil giants’ share prices. BP and Shell are both trading on dividend yields of more than 6 per cent, versus about 3 per cent at the turn of the century, showing that the market has doubts over their long-term valuations and ability to maintain shareholder payouts. Shell’s promise of huge buybacks and dividends has not been enough to reignite its share price. Some institutions are turning their backs indiscriminately on the big oil companies, despite the diverging strategies between Europe’s majors and those in America, where climate change appears to sit far lower down the agenda.

Last week, the European Investment Bank came close to banning support for natural gas projects, but delayed its decision at the last minute.

Solving the carbon dilemma is hideously complex. While oil companies have been investing in renewable technologies — BP, for example, is pumping millions of dollars into solar company Lightsource — it remains a tiny fraction of their spending. Less than 5 per cent of BP’s annual capital expenditure goes on renewables. Shell, meanwhile, is adopting what it calls “nature-based solutions” — planting about 1m trees in Scotland to generate carbon credits that offset its emissions.

But cleaning up gas is their most pressing concern — and arguably one of the most problematic. Carbon capture and storage is nothing new as a concept. It involves trapping carbon dioxide at the point of combustion in sites such as steelworks and power stations, then piping it deep underground. Depleted gas and salt caverns in the North Sea are seen as ideal.

Making the process commercially viable is another matter. While there are successful international CCS projects, there have been numerous abortive schemes in the UK. The government’s spending watchdog found in 2017 that ministers had spent $317 million on two failed CCS trials over the past two decades.

CCS is laden with risk. A sceptical public need to be convinced that the carbon dioxide will remain trapped underground. Critics worry that storing gas at high pressure could fracture rock layers, creating huge potential liabilities.

Despite these worries, the niche technology is being embraced with fervour. BP and Shell are among a group of oil giants wanting to build a gas power station at the Redcar site on Teesside, trapping the carbon beneath the North Sea. Sinead Lynch, Shell’s UK chairwoman, said: “Carbon capture and storage is a necessity, not an option. The UK’s net-zero legislation brings it into sharp focus.”

Hydrogen’s sudden rise to prominence is no coincidence either. Oil companies want to inject it into the gas network, mixing it with natural gas in concentrations of up to 20 per cent as a fuel for boilers and cookers. In a project sponsored by gas pipeline giant Cadent, Keele University in the Midlands is using hydrogen and natural gas to heat the campus.

The allure is easy to understand. Hydrogen is the ultimate clean fuel: the only residue from burning it is water. It is produced either by cooking natural gas in steam, or by electrolysis. Getting hydrogen that is produced from natural gas into millions of homes could provide oil companies with a stable model for decades to come. But, again, the challenges are myriad.

Hydrogen can make metal brittle, which could force the wholesale replacement of gas pipes. Using it might require different domestic boilers — plus producing it is very expensive, and not without its own carbon emissions.

The cost of paying for carbon capture and hydrogen could land, at least partially, in taxpayers’ laps. Ministers are consulting on a law change that would see households pay upfront for CCS projects, before they have been built.

Simon Virley, UK head of energy and natural resources at consultancy KPMG, said neither CCS nor hydrogen were currently “cost competitive”. “The oil majors have to invest in CCS and hydrogen if they are to demonstrate an enduring role for gas in a low-carbon energy mix,” he said. “So governments will need to intervene through a mix of subsidy, carbon pricing and regulation.”

A hefty bill for taxpayers could make the challenge of convincing protesters and politicians even harder. “Demonising gas is going to cost the world the obvious solution for reducing pollution quickly and keeping the world’s economy going,” said an energy adviser.

“There is a solution. It’s not perfect. But in the medical profession, if you have a pill that works pretty well and you refuse to use it, you would be struck off. [In the energy industry] that pill is gas.”

As the Extinction Rebellion clamour grows, the oil giants face an almighty battle to prove that gas is the answer.

SOURCE

Can wind turbines blow away Tri-State weather warnings?

When clouds turn dark and storm sirens blare, Doppler radar keeps spinning. It tells meteorologists what’s happening in the center of severe storms.

Everyone in the Tri-State, including the Eyewitness News weather team, relies on Doppler to look ahead and issue warnings. But what if there was something blocking the eye in the sky?

When it comes to turbines, there is never enough wind. But there is some worry about a proposed E.ON Energy wind farm in Posey and Gibson counties. There is fear it could blow away early weather warnings.

If the farm is built, USI Physics Professor, Dr. Kent Scheller believes it could get tougher to see through the noise to deliver lifesaving information. “It can mask existing weather systems including tornadoes,” he said.

As far doppler is concerned, turbines are just another large moving object with fast-moving air, so it often shows up as a small severe storm even when nothing is there.

The local Doppler radar which serves the Tri-State stands in a field in Owensville, Ind. It gives low-level coverage other radars in Louisville and Paducah can’t see.

The National Weather Service recommends wind farms be built outside a 30-mile radius of its radars. Most of the proposed E.ON farm is within 10 miles of the Doppler in Owensville.

Scheller thinks it could potentially compromise radar signal to Henderson, Newburgh, Boonville, and Fairfield. Most meteorologists understand false returns, but Scheller believes it could cause a gaping hole in the radar coverage.

“Because we don’t believe our signal, well that’s a problem,” Scheller said. “That’s a problem when a scientist doesn’t have the data that they’re supposed to have.”

There is no technology available to filter out noise from turbines.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a FAQ page about the effects of turbines on radar.

Officials with E.ON say they work with the National Weather Service. The company is aware of concerns, but they don’t yet have a plan.

“We understand the proximity to and concern over radar interference and will consult and coordinate with the appropriate weather agencies as part of our development process to properly site, design and operate the project so as to avoid or minimize any potential interference to Radar operations. E.ON is committed to protecting the communities which host our projects and where our employees live and work. We work closely with NOAA, NWS, and other government agencies to ensure our projects present as little impact as possible on their operations.”

Scheller says turbines inside 10 miles of a Doppler can send mixed signals more than 25 miles out.

“You put it far away, it hardly sees it. But you bring it in within 10 miles, now it’s going to cut out a cone,” he added. “The closer that wind farm is to the Doppler radar, the wider that cone is. That’s the problem.”

Eyewitness News has its own Doppler radar at the station in Henderson, Ky. If the wind farm is built, there would be no effect on 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 or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

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

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

20 October, 2019

Honey Dew, Dunkin’ toss out Styrofoam cups, but is it enough to save the planet?

I have still yet to hear what is wrong with tossing everything into landfills -- it's cheap and we did it for generations. A lot of Australia's sportsgrounds and public parks were once landfills. Once the dump is full, you level it off, add rocks and soil and call in the gardeners.

And most landfills were unsupervised dumps. It was great fun to go to the dump with your rubbish and come back with things other people had tossed out. That was REAL recycling. I remember it well. Many wives complained that their husbands came back with as much as they threw out

Honey Dew Donuts founder and CEO Dick Bowen never liked Styrofoam cups. They just seemed chintzy, the kind of thing you’d find at a backyard barbecue or in a church basement. “Our coffee was too good for foam,” said Bowen, whose company made the switch from paper to foam two decades ago. “I literally always had a bad taste in my mouth to go to foam. It didn’t feel right.”

Now foam is getting the heave-ho, as Honey Dew strives to be more environmentally friendly. But as Kermit the Frog might say, it’s not easy going green.

Like its giant competitor, Dunkin’, Honey Dew used Styrofoam cups to accommodate customers’ ever-growing demand for bigger portions, and Styrofoam could keep big cups of coffee hot without burning hands. When Bowen opened his first shop in 1973, the biggest size was 10 ounces; today it is 24 ounces. And the Plainville-based chain runs through about 12 million Styrofoam cups a year.

This month, Bowen will say goodbye to the foam cup, as new double-walled paper cups arrive across Honey Dew’s 147 stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. You can’t miss the new cups; not only are they more environmentally friendly, but the beige branding is replaced with a bold new red design.

Corporate America is embracing sustainability. So are millennial customers and municipalities. That means the coffee industry has to deliver a greener product.

Dunkin’ is also on track to eliminate foam cups in New England locations by year’s end, and all of its stores nationwide in early 2020. The change will remove 1 billion foam cups — which are hard to recycle — from the waste stream annually. For customers nervous about change, Dunkin’ assures that its double-walled paper cup “has heat retention properties that are equal to our foam cup.”

Honey Dew’s cups are made from 88 percent renewable resources; the double walls keep the coffee hot and eliminate the need for a sleeve. But are these new paper coffee cups recyclable?

That’s debatable. Coffee companies say yes; environmentalists say not so fast. The new paper coffee cups are lined with plastic and would need to be sorted separately from paper and plastic collections. And few facilities have the right equipment to recycle something made out of mixed materials.

So it’s possible to recycle the new Honey Dew cups — but practically speaking, it’s not going to happen.

That explains the muted reaction from environmentalists. Styrofoam is among the most toxic of plastics, so eliminating it from landfills is a good thing, but they don’t think new paper cups are the best solution.

“None of the systems in Massachusetts accept or collect coffee cups,” said Kirstie Pecci, director of the Zero Waste Project at the Conservation Law Foundation, referring to Styrofoam and the new cups. “Do not put coffee cups in your bin.”

For Pecci, and from the perspective of state environmental officials, the gold standard is to break the habit of using a disposable cup.

“Eliminating Styrofoam in favor of paper cups is, from a public health and environmental perspective, the right thing to do,” Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement. “However, bringing in your own cup beats all.”

Bowen understands the dilemma, but he says Honey Dew is doing its part to help the environment. “It’s in their corner to make this work,” he said of municipal waste facilities.

So how hard can it be to make an easily recyclable coffee cup?

We may have sent a man to the moon, but a truly sustainable disposable cup has been elusive even for coffee kahuna Starbucks. For three decades, the Seattle chain has been working on this issue, even hosting three “cup summits,” two of them at MIT.

Starbucks will tell you their paper coffee cups are recyclable in communities that have the infrastructure. But Starbucks realizes that’s not good enough, and in 2018 committed $10 million to help launch the NextGen Cup Challenge to create an industry consortium to develop a greener cup.

In February, the consortium unveiled 12 winners of the challenge, whose ideas ranged from innovative cup liners to reusable cup services; some of those winners will move onto a next phase of piloting their ideas through an accelerator program.

The biggest takeaway for Peter Senge, an MIT senior lecturer who participated in a cup summit, is that it will take a village: retailers, recyclers, and government. “We all have a stake in nurturing the ‘underground economy’ that can make it economically viable to harvest our waste,” Senge wrote in an e-mail.

Honey Dew began its hunt for the proper paper cup over six years ago. (It has long used paper cups for its smallest size.) Manufacturers were making alternatives to foam, including the double-walled paper cups, but they were too expensive.

Honey Dew also didn’t want to give up its lid design. For some customers, it’s all about the lid. What good is a cup when you can’t sip without spilling? (Eighty-percent of Honey Dew’s business is takeout.)

By the fall of 2018, Honey Dew settled on a cup made by Dart Container Corp. that worked well with the plastic lid design the chain was already using. The new cups began arriving at Honey Dew stores in September. All the foam will be gone by the end of the month. Paper is more expensive, and some franchisees may pass the cost on to the customer. A 16-ounce paper cup, for example, costs 11 cents, while the foam version costs 7 cents.

But the work to reduce plastic waste is not done at Honey Dew. Don Leavitt, the executive who led the paper cup chase, is now onto his next project. “Now that I have the cups under control,” he said, “I’m working on the straws.”

SOURCE

The ‘climate emergency’ no one is talking about

Tens of thousands will die and crop yields will fall dramatically.

While Extinction Rebellion activists glue themselves to the buildings and roads of London, and the great and the good hang on Greta Thunberg’s every syllable, there is a climate event coming that will affect us much, much sooner than the ‘climate emergency’ that is the focus of so much attention.

Just look at the impact it will have on the UK. Tens of thousands of people will die. Infectious disease will skyrocket, sometimes with lethal consequences. The sun will disappear from the sky for large chunks of the day – some northern parts of the UK will soon have less than six hours of daylight per day. Crop production will fall dramatically. Travel will at times be difficult, even impossible. People will flock to shops to purchase protective clothing. We will need to produce and use copious amounts of additional energy, meaning household energy bills will shoot up.

But the UK is lucky – we will not face the worst of it. In many other countries, conditions will be far more extreme. Moreover, top scientists have confirmed that this dangerous climate event will happen every year from now on. Parts of the southern hemisphere will experience similar problems approximately six months later than the northern hemisphere.

This climate event is, of course, winter. It seems ludicrous to describe winter in the terms above, even though everything I have written is true (apart from the need for ‘top scientists’ to confirm its arrival). The temperature drop from summer to winter is enormous, even in a temperate country like the UK. According to the UK Met Office, average daily maximum temperatures in London’s Greenwich Park vary from 23.4 degrees Celsius in July to 8.1 degrees Celsius in January – a drop of over 15 degrees. The difference between the highest temperature in a particular year and the lowest would be even greater than that.

Excess winter deaths do run into the tens of thousands. Colds proliferate, as does influenza, killing a small proportion of the millions who suffer from it. Hypothermia does still, tragically, kill many people. Indeed, cold weather kills far more people than heatwaves. Some winter crops are produced, but, for the most part, we live off stores and imports. No wonder that Game of Thrones meme, ‘Winter is coming’, strikes such a chord.

But the reason most people have no reason to fear winter is down to economic development and human adaptation. Of course, that process is not new. Any society experiencing cold winters would have developed the means to cope or would have disappeared. But the line between survival and destruction must have been a thin one at many times in the past.

Now we live in solidly built homes with plenty of energy to heat them. We also have easy transport and good communications networks. There are always plentiful food supplies, unless a strong bout of snow leaves the local supermarket out of bread, milk and fresh veg for a day or two. We can treat the sick and infirm. Thanks to the advent of cheap electric lighting, the long nights are of little concern.

Clearly, given there are still plenty of excess deaths in winter, there is far more we could do. But we have adapted to winter pretty well. In fact, many people look forward to it, whether it is the prospect of Christmas festivities or paying a small fortune to get chair-lifted up a mountain to slide back down it on skis.

Adaptation and development is how we have always overcome the harshness of nature. And this is worth thinking about in the context of the panic about climate change. Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam warns of ‘the slow and agonising suffering and death of billions of people’ that will apparently result from climate change. But global deaths from natural disasters have plummeted over the past century. And global population is booming, despite declining fertility rates, because almost everyone is living longer than before. There is no reason to expect these trends to go into reverse.

Meanwhile, the policies espoused by the eco-activists would cause far more suffering than the climate change they fear. The government’s Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) for 2018 makes clear how much we still rely on fossil fuels, despite the subsidies lavished on low-carbon energy: ‘Fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy supply, but now accounts for 80.1 per cent, a record low level. Supply from renewables has increased, with their contribution accounting for 10.2 per cent of final consumption.’ Yet Extinction Rebellion believes we can reach ‘Net Zero’ emissions – that is, get rid of fossil fuels entirely – by 2025, in just six years. If the eco-worriers got their way, we would face incredible hardship, particularly in winter.

Let’s take a step back and appreciate an incredible human achievement – that winter is no longer anything to fear. And let’s put the panic about the climate into some perspective.

SOURCE

Veganism won’t save the planet

This is a cult of self-righteousness, not a sensible eco-diet.

Three trends this year have proven that the new religion of Gaia has arrived in earnest: environmental catastrophism, the cult of veganism, and the acceptance of outright hypocrisy.

The first is seen in the emergence of Extinction Rebellion / Cult of Greta, with its heady combination of juvenile sanctimony and rampant exaggeration. The growth of the cult of veganism can be seen in thousands switching to the diet and ‘free-from’ foods; Quorn expanding into the vegan market; the current television advert for Tesco; and in Lewis Hamilton, a hugely rich, one-man gas-guzzler, insisting that veganism is the only way to save the planet.

The third manifestation can be seen in Madonna, Emma Thompson and Harry, Duke of Sussex, all lecturing us on the need to cut our carbon footprint, while stamping it heavily with their penchant for flying a lot. It also takes us neatly back to Lewis Hamilton.

Veganism is routinely championed as the principal remedy to climate change. After all, it is something we can all do on a personal level. Except that, as remedies go, it is snake oil. Sure, livestock disproportionately take up valuable farmland, eat food we could be eating ourselves, and emit much methane that exacerbates the greenhouse effect.

But many popular vegan foods eaten by Westerners often have a huge carbon footprint. Unlike milk, cheese and eggs, staples for the more sensible and sustainable vegetarian diet, which can basically be sourced anywhere where humans live, voguish vegan food – and let’s keep in mind that veganism is mostly a voguish, middle-class diet – is rarely local food.

People in Britain who adopt a vegan diet should be eating potatoes, bread, legumes and domestic vegetables. Yet instead, it is often the case that they opt for foreign foods, such as pomegranates and mangos, which are flown in from India; and also lentils from Canada, beans from Brazil, blueberries from the US, and goji berries from China. The demand for even more fashionable foods, such as avocados and quinoa, which come from South America, has pushed up prices to such a degree that people in their country of origin can no longer afford to eat them.

Instead of flaunting your virtuous credentials, or indulging in medieval public displays of self-flagellation and piety, there are other, more practical means of reducing one’s carbon footprint — ones that don’t involve drastically changing our lifestyles and keeping the world’s poor trapped in poverty. These involve furthering electric-car technology, which has in this decade at last increasingly become a viable alternative to petrol and diesel; burying carbon underground; advancing laboratory-produced meat, which will free up millions of hectares of farmland for the growth of crops; refraining from using the internet when you don’t need to (the internet is responsible for roughly one billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, or around two per cent of world emissions); wearing more clothes instead of turning up the heating; and even drinking Carlsberg beer that now comes in paper bottles.

None of this will please the purists, however, who are fundamentally waging a war against modernity, and who seek to banish anything that ‘doesn’t really address the problem’. Rather, veganism will remain popular because it is a handy means for whining, complaining and shrieking. It is passive-aggressive showing-off.

SOURCE

Cough up the 'secret science,' climate propagandists!

Dear reader, fellow citizen: I hope you remember a column recently in this space in which I let you know about a monumental development in this whole "global warming" panic. I shared with you the results of a little-reported court trial that detailed the embarrassing exposure of the most quoted "climate expert" as a total fraud!

My purpose is to free us all from this ridiculous "Sky is Falling" scam and its primary "Chicken Little."

Now for a follow up, a Chapter 2 in that story.

I hope you know, as I do, that to bear false witness is to invite a terrible wrath. A case in point, my previous column, "'Trial of the century' just poured cold water on 'hockey stick' legend."

We saw how the vainglorious alarmist climate scientist Michael E. Mann was rendered a humiliating defeat by a fellow scientist, the skeptical Tim Ball. Dr Ball stood for truth and exposed a false witness. As we are taught: "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish." (Proverbs 19:9)

Dr. Mann is now in a deep hole. His expensive eight-year libel action against Dr. Ball was dismissed "with prejudice," plus the award of substantial legal costs in Ball's favor.

Those who seek to profit from deceit face grave consequences. The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ordered Mann to pay Ball what may be a sum close to $1 million.

But a fool doesn't learn easily from his mistakes.

A belligerent Mann is not only hinting he won't honor the court order to reimburse Ball's legal fees, but he's continuing to mislead his followers and the public into believing his iconic "hockey stick" warming graph remains untainted.

This is not a good place to be. A wise Mann would heed Proverbs 20:17 and know that, "Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel."

Let no one be under any illusions here about what remains at stake. Quite simply, for the past two decades, Mann's "hockey stick" graph served as the cornerstone of misguided multi-trillion-dollar government policies for "action" on climate change, action that burdens our economy and our freedom.

Many scientists argue that these policies are meritless because climate always changes – and will continue to change – without or without human help. More CO2 is Nature's blessing to life, not a curse, and temperatures today are entirely within natural variation. They are totally the result of changes received from the sun, the source of all energy on Earth.

Now Mann's vanity in seeking to determine scientific matters by resorting to bullying opponents in the courts has backfired spectacularly.

For too long the climate zealots had touted Mann's work as the smoking gun for dangerous human emissions of carbon dioxide, a trace gas known to be beneficial – yes, necessary – to plant growth.

Thankfully, Dr. Ball's triumph is stirring renewed doubt in high places about the science. So, how should we now weigh the credibility of hysterical claims that modern global temperatures are "unprecedented"?

Dr. Mann, a champion for advocates of one-world socialist government, gleefully basked in fame and fortune for 20 years. Touted as a "world-leading climate scientist" his unethical (possibly criminal) actions will bring grave consequences.

Should we now not legally compel Mann – who still says our planet is imminently imperiled – to come clean and reveal the proof Ball demanded from him?

Indeed, Mann will not budge easily from his lofty pedestal and is always quick to claim that other researchers have validated his graph built from "secret science." But the very detailed U.S. Congress Wegman Report cast grave doubts on those "replications'"when it reported:

"… [W]e found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of co-authored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus 'independent studies' may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface." [3/91) [2]

On the key issue of Mann refusing to show his secret science calculations, Wegman lamented:

"We were especially struck by Dr. Mann's insistence that the code he developed was his intellectual property and that he could legally hold it personally without disclosing it to peers."

Hold it secret? Is that how governments do science? Hiding in the dark is not what any honest Mann would do.

The astute and victorious skeptic, Dr. Ball has devoted decades of his life to outing this gigantic scientific swindle. He is now vindicated in his claims that Mann would never permit any light to shine on his graph's "secret code" – those hidden r-squared numbers Mann promised, but delayed, and has still failed to release to the court.

Better scientists say those still-hidden numbers that shaped the crooked "hockey stick" graph constitute the root evidence of his crime. In legal parlance the hidden code is the mens rea – or "guilty mind" component proving Dr Mann's intent to defraud.

Even a non-scientist can understand that the closer we look at the claims of these "scientists" the more we see reasons to doubt them. We can see Mann resorted to delay tactics, prolonging the case and finally letting Ball win big and emphatically without having to disclose his graph's "dirty laundry."

We all owe a debt to Dr. Ball for his sacrifice in serving us all as a sentinel for truth against secret and unverifiable government science.

As Matthew 7:15-16 tells us: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?"

So, where does this all stand now?

His refusal to obey the court and reveal his "outworking" charts has bought Mann a little more time. I support Ball's noble call for a renewed public campaign to shine more light on this grave matter.

Like you, I'm not a scientist, just a citizen. But I can read, and think, and weigh credible evidence. Like you. This debate and the subsequent global, international decisions potentially will change life in unacceptable ways for all of us, our children and our country. We've got to be involved and know the facts!

United in this just cause, we can succeed in bringing evil out into the light and rejoice when the agents of darkness are undone.

SOURCE

Australian miner holds out against activist push

BHP chief Andrew Mackenzie has held firm over the mining giant's membership of mining industry associations in the face of pressure from activist share-holders to quit groups seen as opposing action on climate change. Speaking at of BHP's annual shareholder meeting in London on Thursday night, Mr Mackenzie defended BHP's membership of groups such as the Minerals Council of Australia as the BHP board faced down shareholder resolutions aimed at pressuring the company to quit the group and associated bodies such as Australia's Coal21.

In early October the share-holder push — lead by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility and backed by the Church of England Pensions Board — attracted the support of one of BHP's biggest share-holders, Aberdeen Standard Investments. Aberdeen holds about 32 per cent of BHP stock and took the unusual step of speaking out ahead of London shareholder meeting on a resolution calling on BHP to withdraw from groups that lobby for policies inconsistent with global climate change limitation goals — a resolution opposed by the BHP board — saying its research suggested industry lobby groups were a major obstacle to political action on climate change.

But Mr Mackenzie used his address to shareholders to defend BHP's membership of industry groups, saying the company's participation helps it "contribute to the more global solutions also required for a more progressive world".

"For example, I lead a task force across the mining industry, and its supply chains, to make our vehicles greener and safer. "This typifies the vast bulk of the work of all the trade associations we join and we work tirelessly to make sure this kind of work is their major and predominant role," he said

"Mining trade associations, especially, deserve our full engagement "The move to renewables demands a multi-fold increase in the prduction of metals in the dcades ahead, which makes mining one of the most vital components of our low-carbon future."

BHP has said it is again reviewing its membership of industry associations, and has made it clear that its membership of Coal 21— a group originally set up to back research into carbon capture technology but which bankrolled pro-coal advertising campaigns — would end if the body does not focus on its original remit.

The comments come as BHP board set a deadline for the approval of its giant Canadian potash project, a key growth project, as the mining giant's operations had a soft start to the financial year.

BHP said on Thursday its board would make a decision on the $US5.7bn Jansen potash project by February 2021, authorising another $US344m in development capital to prepare the deep underground mine ahead of a final investment decision.

While BHP boss Andrew Mackenzie has consistently pointed to the giant fertiliser mine as a key growth plank for the mining giant, positioning the company to counter slowing growth in its other commodities, the value of the project has divided analysts and investors over its cost and whether BHP risks building the massive mine into an oversupplied market.

BHP declared the decision date as its existing operations put in a slightly softer quarter's performance in the September period, which the company attributed largely to planned maintenance across its major operations.

The comments came as new production figures showed total output from BHP's Pilbara iron ore operations fell 3 per cent from the June quarter to 69 million tonnes as it carried out maintenance at its Port Hedland port operations.

Queensland metallurgical coal output fell dramatically compared to the June quarter, down 21 per cent to 16 million tonnes, due to planned major plant shut-downs at its Goonyella, Peak Downs and Caval Ridge — operated in a joint venture with Japan's Mitsubishi.

Thermal coal output also fell as BHP high-grades its Mt Arthur mine in NSW, down 34 per cent quarter-on-quarter to 4 million tonnes. On a quarter-on-quarter basis only BHP's Escondida copper mine and Caton thermal coal mine lifted production for the period, with total production down 3 per cent for the period on a copper-equivalent basis.

BHP shares closed Wednesday at $36.04. Meanwhile Mr Mackenzie said the global economy was being pressured by trade tensions which were "weighing on consumer confidence and have the potential to impact demand" for BHP's key commodities.

"Longer term our view remains positive. Industrialisation and urbanisation, along with decarbonisation and electrification, will generate demand for energy, metals, and fertilisers for decades to come," Mr Mackenzie said.

From "The Australian" 18/10/2019

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

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18 October, 2019

Air pollution is linked to miscarriages in China, study finds

But the odds ratios are very small, too small to base policy on. There is also some doubt about whether the pollution extremes of China tell us anything about less polluted places. There is little doubt that Beijing air contains an exotic cocktail of chemicals that would not be mirrored in the West.

The study is also one where exposure is taken from contrasting neighborhood levels rather than actual levels in the person, an intrinsically shaky criterion

BEIJING — Researchers in China have found a significant link between air pollution and the risk of miscarriage, according to a new scientific paper released Monday.

While air pollution is connected to a greater risk of respiratory diseases, strokes, and heart attacks, the new findings could add more urgency to Beijing’s efforts to curb the problem, which has long plagued Chinese cities. Faced with a rapidly aging population, the government has been trying to increase the national birthrate, which dropped last year to the lowest level since 1949.

In a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability, scientists from five Chinese universities examined the rate of “missed abortions” in the first trimester, which can occur in up to 15 percent of pregnancies. Also known as silent or missed miscarriages, they happen when the fetus has died but there are no physical signs of miscarriage, leading the parents to mistakenly think the pregnancy is progressing normally.

Zhang Liqiang, a researcher at Beijing Normal University and lead author of the study, said such miscarriages can be “especially traumatic” for expecting parents, who often only find out about them days or weeks later. He also added that they weren’t well studied, part of the reason for the researchers’ focus.

Using the clinical records of 255,668 pregnant women from 2009 to 2017 in Beijing, the study assessed their exposure at home and at work to air pollution that comes from industries, households, cars, and trucks. The researchers looked at four types of air pollutants: a deadly fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and carbon monoxide. The levels were calculated based on historic data gathered by the network of air monitoring systems around the Chinese capital, which is notorious for its gray, soupy skies.

Among the women included in the study, 17,497, or 6.8 percent, experienced silent miscarriages in their first trimester. Taking into consideration different ages, occupations, and air temperature, the researchers found that “in all groups, maternal exposure to each air pollutant was associated with the risk.”

Zhang said that more research was needed to ascertain the exact link between the different pollutants and the risk of missed miscarriages. In the paper, the authors of the study, which was supported by grants from three Chinese government-backed research foundations, also acknowledged that data limitations made it difficult to account for other possible contributing factors, like levels of indoor air pollution from stoves, construction materials, and tobacco smoke.

Nevertheless, outside specialists agreed that the findings add to the growing body of evidence about the negative effect of air pollution on the health of pregnant women and their fetuses.

In the Nature Sustainability paper, the researchers said that since 2013, the risk of missed miscarriages in the first trimester had declined along with the decrease in air pollutant concentration — further evidence, they said, of the link between the two.

SOURCE

Air pollution-induced missed abortion risk for pregnancies

Liqiang Zhang et al.

Abstract

Fetus death risk reduction is included in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, little is known about how missed abortion in the first trimester (MAFT) is related to maternal air pollution exposure. We quantify the link between air pollution exposure and MAFT in Beijing, China, a region with severe MAFT and air quality problems. We analyse the records of 255,668 pregnant women from 2009 to 2017 and contrast them with maternal exposure to air pollutants (particulate matter PM2.5, SO2, O3 and CO).

We adjust for confounding factors such as sociodemographic characteristics, spatial autocorrelation and ambient temperature.

We find that, for all four pollutants, an increased risk of MAFT is associated with rises in pollutant concentrations and the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) of these associations increase with higher concentrations.

For example, the adjusted OR of MAFT risk for a 10.0??g?m?3 increase in SO2 exposure is between 1.29 and 1.41 at concentrations of 7.1–19.5??g?m?3; it drops to 1.17 below this range and rises to 1.52 above it at higher SO2 concentrations. This means that the risk increase is not linear but becomes more severe the higher the pollutant concentration. The findings provide evidence linking fetus disease burden and maternal air pollution exposure.

SOURCE

Carbon Taxes Will Never Be Enough

There’s a pervasive myth among “eco-cons”—conservatives who accept the theory of global warming—that we can tax our way out of a climate crisis. The myth goes like this: the Earth is getting dangerously warm and humanity is to blame, so it falls to government to fix it.

What separates these “climate change conservatives” from liberal environmentalist activists is that the latter will do whatever it takes to halt climate change. Eco-cons will not.

There’s a good reason why. Once you accept the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming you also accept the moral burden to avoid its coming environmental apocalypse—by any means necessary. Anything less is defeatist or suicidal.

The eco-con’s weapon of choice, a tax on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, is a supposedly market-friendly “solution” to global warming that’s neither market-friendly nor effective—not if the goal is control over the Earth’s ever-changing climate.

And liberal environmentalist activists know this, which is why they have discarded such “moderate” policies in favor of radical, all-encompassing plans like the Green New Deal, which would force the U.S. transition to 100 percent renewable energy production in the next decade (never mind that less than 14 percent of America’s energy comes from wind and solar).

Just listen to liberals like Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, who wrote in September that a carbon tax is “a good thing” for global warming but is “not enough.” Then there’s David Wallace-Wells who argued in New York Magazine last year that a carbon tax can’t “solve climate change.”

The environmental activist group Friends of the Earth has called a carbon tax a “half-solution . . . lacking the vision of what real action on climate change looks like.” And there’s the Green New Deal itself, whose authors—in their haste to mandate electric airplanes, socialized medicine, and guaranteed federal jobs for everyone—did not even include a carbon tax.

The Week was most succinct: a “carbon tax needs the Green New Deal much more than the Green New Deal needs [a] carbon tax.”

Like all climate schemes, a carbon tax would massively raise household energy prices by taxing emissions from oil, coal, and natural gas, commodities which power the U.S. economy. It would artificially hike gas prices at a time when America has become the largest producer and soon will be the biggest exporter of oil in the world.

But carbon taxes drawn up by conservatives are often presented as pro-free market, revenue-neutral, or even taxpayer-friendly. That’s certainly true of the latest Republican carbon tax bill (the deceptively named MARKET CHOICE Act) proposed by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) and Francis Rooney (FL) alongside Democratic Reps. Salud Carbajal (CA) and Scott Peters (CA).

The bill purports to “combat climate change through the elimination of the gas tax” and creation of a tax of $35 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions, beginning in 2021 and rising thereafter. It also touts the supposedly widespread “bipartisan” appeal for a carbon tax.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because liberal Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL) floated a version of the bill last year under the same name (Rooney and Fitzpatrick co-sponsored it, too.) Recall that Curbelo—who hunted for support for his carbon tax among Congressional Democrats—lost his reelection bid to Democrat Debbie Murcasel-Powell in the 2018 midterms, a candidate endorsed by the Sierra Club, which supports a carbon tax policy.

Conservatives should be wary of the praise the Fitzpatrick carbon tax has earned from environmental activist groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, Climate Leadership Council, and the libertarian-turned-liberal Niskanen Center.

But they should also learn from the past failures of carbon tax advocates to win liberal support, particularly in the era of the totalitarian Green New Deal. Environmental activists have one overriding goal: the complete transformation of America to a “green” socialist state. Nothing less will do.

SOURCE

British Department store reveals spike in sales of eco-friendly cutlery, straws and water bottles

Middle class consumers are heeding warnings over plastic pollution with a significant spike in sales of eco-friendly reusable cutlery, straws and water bottles, John Lewis has revealed.

Portable, travel cutlery sets have become increasingly popular as environmentally conscious customers eschew throwaway plastic varieties, with sales rising 176 per cent last year.

The sale of eco-friendly, stainless steel reusable straws has also increased by a staggering 1,573 per cent, according to the company's annual retail report, published today.

Within the last year, John Lewis has launched collapsible coffee cups, reusable travel cutlery and reusable beeswax sandwich wrappers.

A spokeswoman said that the portable cutlery sets, which come in a compact case, were in part due to a rise in people taking their own lunch to work.

Elaine Hooper, cookshop buyer, said: "We've seen a huge rise in the modern day lunchbox as our customers are becoming increasingly aware of food wastage and are making a conscious effort to use up any leftovers.

“Reusable water bottles aren't showing any sign of slowing down and some of customers have as many as five different types of water bottles, one for the gym, one for the office and even ones for different sized bags so they're always prepared."

Stephen Cawley, head of sustainability and responsible sourcing, said the change in buying patterns showed “a growing shift” in the approach to sustainability and how we are impacting the environment.

“Our customers are becoming increasingly aware of the products they are purchasing and where these products come from,” he said.

The sale of reusable water bottles jumped by 15 per cent in the week preceding the Glastonbury festival, which banned single use plastic.

Simon Coble, trading director at John Lewis & Partners, said: "As a destination for customers during key life moments and big decisions, understanding how the nation shops, lives and looks remains at the top of our agenda."

SOURCE

The painful realities of carbon tax-and-dividend schemes

Late last month, Climate Leadership Council President Ted Halstead and Exelon CEO Christopher Crane touted their carbon tax-dividend scheme, under which they promise “the vast majority of Americans will be economic winners.” The plan sounds too good to be true — ever-higher carbon taxes providing ever-greater economic benefits — because it is. In reality, such a tax would cripple the economy and set off trade wars with the rest of the world that would dwarf our current dispute with China. And to top it off, the proposal would have no measurable impact on global climate.

The CLC proposal starts with a $40 per ton tax on carbon dioxide emissions, increasing at least 5% above the rate of inflation annually. At current CO2 emissions levels, that’s about $200 billion per year. If inflation averaged just 2% per year, by 2025 the tax would increase to $56/ton. For gasoline, that would mean a tax of $0.55/gallon.

Except the tax would increase inflation rates because energy is used to produce virtually all goods and services. For example, the OPEC oil embargoes in the 1970s were a key contributor to the high inflation rates of that decade. Hence, the carbon tax would increase far faster than advertised, increasing the economic harm.

The plan sounds simple. But the Climate Action Rebate Act, which proposes this same tax-and-dividend scheme, illustrates the messy realities of such climate sausage-making.

Under CARA, 70% of the money raised would be returned to families making less than $130,000 per year. Those dividends would be treated as taxable income, so the benefits to families would be much less than advertised. The remaining 30% — around $60 billion based on a $40/ton tax — would be doled out to politically-favored constituents and used by the government to pay for administering the tax.

Businesses would not be eligible to receive any rebates. Their costs would rise and be passed on to consumers. This would damage American businesses’ global competitiveness by increasing the costs of exports.

To combat that damage to competitiveness, both CARA and the Climate Leadership Council promise a system of “border adjustments” for the carbon content of imports and exports. In other words, CARA would levy tariffs on imports and subsidize exports of “carbon-intensive” products. They argue these tariffs and subsidies would “enhance the competitiveness of American firms that are more energy efficient than their foreign competitors … and encourage other top emitters — such as China and India — to adopt carbon pricing of their own.

This is wishful thinking.

First, determining the carbon content of imported goods will be complex and controversial. For example, what is the carbon content of your smartphone? Most smartphones are manufactured overseas, but use components sourced from many different countries. Similarly, cars and trucks assembled here rely on thousands of parts from overseas. And many goods are shipped from one foreign country to another before being imported into the United States.

Keeping track of these transactions and assigning an accurate carbon value to every single component will be impossible, not least because the mix of energy resources used can change from day-to-day. For example, the electricity used to manufacture steel today may have a very different mix than the electricity used yesterday.

Third, although proponents argue that a border-adjustment complies with World Trade Organization rules, the WTO itself is less sanguine.

It is almost certain that the inherently arbitrary nature of the resulting carbon tariffs on imports and subsidies on exports would lead to trade disputes between the U.S. and other countries, imposing further economic damage on American consumers. The most likely outcome will be retaliatory tariffs on American exports — further damaging our businesses and consumers. China and India aren’t going to deny their citizens the benefits of economic growth by imposing huge carbon taxes on themselves.

The winners of the tax-and-dividend scheme — setting aside virtually every foreign power with which we compete economically — will be those who don’t use much energy, such as individuals living in large cities, and those with the financial means to take advantage of the myriad subsidies offered for electric vehicles, solar panels, and so on. The biggest losers will be everyone else, especially the millions of rural Americans in “flyover country,” – the same individuals who produce most of the energy we use, grow the food we eat, and manufacture many of the goods we purchase.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the single largest winner of the proposed carbon tax is likely to be Exelon Corporation itself. The company is the largest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, with about 19,000 megawatts of capacity, that generate around 150 million megawatt-hours of electricity each year.

With the carbon tax at its proposed starting value of $40/ton, even the most efficient natural gas generators would incur a tax of about $15 per megawatt-hour. By comparison, the average wholesale energy price in PJM, which operates the nation’s largest wholesale market, covering 14 states and the District of Columbia, for all of 2018 was about $38/MWh. The carbon tax on coal-fired plants, which still provide over one-fourth of U.S. electricity, would be much higher, over $45/MWh for a typical plant.

Because wholesale electricity market prices are set by the highest-cost generator needed to meet demand, electricity prices would skyrocket during periods of high demand, costing consumers and businesses hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Those higher prices will benefit Exelon’s bottom line. If the average wholesale price of electricity increased by only $20/MWh, Exelon’s profits would increase by around $3 billion per year. By comparison in 2018, Exelon’s total profits were $2.8 billion.

Finally, without comprehensive action by all countries, a carbon tax won’t have any measurable change on global climate. Without coordinated worldwide agreements to reduce carbon emissions, our efforts will be meaningless. By all means, let’s support and grow nuclear power in this country, which is highly reliable and emissions-free. But that can be done without wrecking the economy on the altar of climate change.

SOURCE

Why is Australia the target of climate eco-cult?

If you are confused about Extinction Rebellion, fret not. The green dreamers take orders from a higher authority. It is hard for we mere earthlings to understand the transcendent thinking that comes from a direct line to the divine. By divine, I mean the universal consciousness of folk so fried by psychedelic drugs they’re convinced flower power reigns and we’re all going to die if carbon emissions aren’t net zero by 2025.

Birkenstocks and bare feet, white-boy dreadlocks and riverside raves — Extinction Rebellion is protesting like it’s 1999. They’re high on the illusion of their own importance (among other things), but XR is just the latest in a wave of protests with a short shelf life. The movement is limited by its members’ refusal to reckon with reality. Speaking to the BBC, XR co-founder Gail Bradbrook explained how it all began while she was using psychedelic drugs. She took time off after a series of failed protests and got high. Or, as Bradbrook puts it: “I went on a retreat and prayed in a deep way with some psychedelic medicines.”

The last time psychedelic drugs were this political, it was the 1960s. Timothy Leary’s tribe of hippies took advice to “Turn on, tune in and drop out” by staging bed-ins and love-ins. They tried to elevate a fondness for getting high, having sex and napping into a movement. Only the children of the wealthy and the welfare state can get away with such a thin excuse for sloth. When the welfare money ran out, the movement ran aground.

Like drug-addled hippies, XR-ers believe in fantasies of collective consciousness, pacifism and a pre-political state where mother nature is pregnant with an eternal harvest. It’s like a David Attenborough documentary without the kill scene. Set against this utopia is an equally illusory but sinister version of reality where evil white men are killing the Earth with CO2. XR believes it is engaged in a battle between life and death.

Climate activists have spent the past week protesting in low-emission nations of the West while ignoring the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Australia’s XR fanboys are yet to explain why they are protesting here when our nation contributes only 1.3 per cent of global emissions. Why don’t they protest against China for producing 27.2 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions? Perhaps they could try locking themselves to the nearest United Nations office for refusing to hold China to account.

XR wants action on climate change and climbing on planes, stopping trains and lying under cars is the road to redemption, apparently. The green-left media is lionising XR activists and partial truth is indispensable to the act. Consider the global headlines about the man who mounted a plane in Britain to protest climate change. He was commonly described as a Paralympian — a hero of sorts. The fuller truth is that XR’s heroic Paralympian was banned for a doping violation in 2016.

Like all doomsday cults, XR believers frame martyrdom as a high calling. Speaking to The Australian, Melbourne Extinction Rebellion spokesman Kegan Daly predicted arrests would “100 per cent” rise during the week of protests. While not being pleased about the prospect, Daly praised those “willing to sacrifice their freedom for this cause”.

The development of a will to martyrdom is rarely a good sign, but it is especially problematic among members of groups who share the belief in a doomsday scenario. If XR activists think the world will enter a death spiral after 2025, they have nothing to lose. Already, some appear to be suffering the effects of mass hysteria. Footage from protests has shown activists breaking down, weeping and wailing after chaining or gluing themselves to things. Others have spoken about their despair and despondency about the world coming to an end. As the collective’s emotional state deteriorates, its members seem less willing to consider counterintuitive facts. NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance elucidated the problem by questioning why climate activists planned to target the state’s transport system if the rail network is 100 per cent offset.

The widening gulf between XR theory and reality is a reason the public has begun to turn against the group. Despite professing regret for political stunts that hold up traffic and drain emergency services, climate activists continue to stage them. They are not truly sorry for blocking streets, occupying parks and holding people hostage to hard-left demands because they cannot get what they want by democratic means.

In successive elections, Australians have voted in favour of the Coalition government’s climate change agenda that balances the need for economic prosperity with climate mitigation strategies. They voted in favour of the Paris climate change commitment to reduce emissions by 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. Voters rejected Labor’s proposal to increase the target to 45 per cent because of the potential hit to GDP, estimated at about $472bn. XR’s target of net zero emissions by 2025 would fail at the ballot box.

Without a democratic mandate or a rational plan for conservation, XR activists can only shout and stamp their feet. They use resistance tactics to bypass democracy because they have no hope of implementing their policies by democratic means. Over time, they are becoming more militant and people are tiring of the soap opera. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk upset some Labor colleagues last week by proposing laws to ensure people can go about their lives without protesters preventing their freedom of movement. She wants to stop the use of locking devices. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash suggested the suspension of welfare payments for the activists.

The green doomsters are not sorry for bypassing democracy to get what they want. They are not sorry for putting themselves first and forcing others to clean up their mess. They are unrepentant because they are determined to remake the world in their own image, whatever the cost to the rest of us.

SOURCE

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

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

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17 October, 2019

Climate change: Fake news or global threat? This is the science

Under the above heading there recently appeared in the London Daily Telegraph a BIIIIG article by Sarah Knapton, their Science Editor.

She discusses in an unbiased way most of the issues in the global warming controversy. She makes it clear that there are big debates among scientists about the truth of the theory. Because the article covers such a wide range of issues I can see no way of usefully excerpting it here. So I will simply mention a few points where Sarah was bulldozed by the warmists.

She rightly points out that the Medieval Warm Period is a severe embarrassment for the Warmists but lets them get away with their usual response to it -- which is that the MWP was a local event in the North Atlantic area only. That has long been known to be a complete crock. The effect is also seen in Argentina, New Zealand and China. Are they all in the North Atlantic?

She also lets them get way with a pretence that the only "hiatus" in the warming effect was in the early 21st century. She does not embarrass them with the long hiatus from 1945 to 1975.

And she lets pass the assertion that CO2 does have a warming effect without raising the crucial question: "How much?" Most skeptics are prepared to say that a warming effect from CO2 does exist but say that the effect is tiny, trivial. And on both theoretical and empirical grounds the temperature changes we have seen in response to rising CO2 levels would indeed appear to have been minuscule -- to the point where they may be below the threshold of detection.

As I said, these are just a few of the crucial issues that were not canvassed in the Knapton article. Their omission leaves the skeptical case very poorly represented -- JR

A New Dark Age: California’s Blackouts Are Self-Inflicted

California, the richest state in the nation—and one that’s often portrayed as the progressive harbinger of the future for the rest of the country—has been hit with its latest Third World-style disaster.

On top of high poverty rates, skyrocketing homelessness, rising crime, and the return of medieval-sounding diseases, the state—specifically, the San Francisco Bay Area—has been hit with a mass blackout.

About 1 million people in one of the most densely populated parts of the country have had their power shut off by the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric.

The local utility, PG&E, initiated the blackout in an effort to limit the potential for mass wildfires, which ravaged the state in 2018 and bankrupted the company. Exposed power lines and infrastructure make the likelihood of sparking fires much greater in places where there is ample dry fuel (more on that later). Still, the fires are back this year.

The blackout, which has hit cities throughout Northern California, is causing chaos: businesses have to shut down, people can’t go to work, and in some blacked-out areas, curfews have been put in place to prevent crime.

It’s a mess.

Much of the blame for the blackout has been hurled at the utility, with some even turning to vandalizing PG&E offices and shooting at its trucks.

Though it’s easy to criticize PG&E, which hardly looks good in this whole mess, there is a lot of blame to go around—and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with “climate change.”

Poor land management has been a major contributing factor to the uptick in massive wildfires in the West and around the country. California is particularly susceptible.

Fires need heat, and they need fuel. At certain times of the year in California, the state is hot as dry winds blow in from Nevada, a combustible environment for fire. That’s hardly a new situation in the Golden State.

Unfortunately, there’s now far more fuel in our forests that has built up over decades because of a change in forest management strategy.

Former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who now lives in Texas, has done a great job of highlighting this issue and explaining how the blackout crisis was largely caused by politicians.

Renewable energy has been prioritized over reliable infrastructure, DeVore recently wrote in The Federalist, while there has been an uptick of vulnerable power lines to connect distant wind farms to urban centers.

PG&E shifted its priority to the overpriced renewables at the behest of politicians, The Wall Street Journal explained in an article aptly titled “California’s Dark Ages.”

For years, the utility skimped on safety upgrades and repairs while pumping billions into green energy and electric-car subsidies to please its overlords in Sacramento. Credit Suisse has estimated that long-term contracts with developers of renewables cost the utility $2.2 billion annually more than current market power rates.

Now, in large parts of California, if you want to keep the lights on during the blackouts, you better have a flashlight or a gas lamp. Twenty-first century green dreams have led to 19th-century realities.

The Dark Ages indeed.

Worse than the misguided green energy push and poor infrastructure, of course, has been the shifting forest management strategy—mostly the result of misguided environmentalist ideology—that turned large swaths of the state into a tinderbox.

“With a decline in the harvest came a decline in the allied efforts to clear brush, build and maintain access roads and firebreaks,” DeVore wrote in The Federalist. “This led inexorably to a decades’ long build-up in the fuel load. Federal funds set aside for increasingly unpopular forest-management efforts were instead shifted to fire-suppression expenses.”

One failure led to another as poor forest management has necessitated vastly increased budgets for putting out the fires, which will undoubtedly continue to be a threat.

Further, DeVore noted, these fires pose more danger to people than ever before as middle-class Californians flee the state’s expensive urban areas to the more affordable, but also more at-risk parts of the state.

So, the current blackouts are ultimately the result of short-term reality and long-term dysfunctional governance.

California is a wealthy state with vast natural advantages and near-limitless potential for growth. It’s why so many Americans have moved there over the past century.

Despite those attributes, California’s future success looks, well, a whole lot darker due to political dysfunction and the inability to address the growing problems facing the state.

Let us all hope that America’s future is a lot brighter than California’s.

SOURCE

It Costs $532,000 to Decommission A Single Wind Turbine

It looks like Minnesota will have a very expensive mess to clean up when the wind turbines currently operating in the state reach the end of their 20 year useful lifetimes.

According to utility documents filed by Xcel Energy for it’s Nobles Wind facility, it will cost approximately $445,000 (in 2009 dollars) per turbine to decommission the wind facility. This means it would cost $532,000 per turbine (in 2019 dollars) for each of the 134 turbines in operation at this facility, bringing the total cost of decommissioning the Nobles project to $71 million. However, Xcel also stated these estimates were conservative, meaning this likely represents the high-end cost of decommissioning.

Other wind turbines have six-figure decommissioning costs, as well. According to utility documents for the Palmer’s Creek Wind facility in Chippewa County, Minnesota, it would cost $7,385,822 to decommission the 18 wind turbines operating at that site, a cost of $410,000 per turbine.

One would think such a price tag would at least result in a thorough decommissioning job, but one would be wrong.

According to the Nobles Wind document, “Restoration activities will include and not be limited to removal of all physical material and equipment related to the project to a depth of 48 inches.”

This means Xcel will only remediate the site to a depth of four feet, leaving most of the massive concrete foundations, which go as deep as 15 feet, used to anchor the wind turbines , in the ground indefinitely.

Furthermore, according to the website Renewable Technology, Nobles Wind facility has an extensive underground collector cable system, laid at a depth of four feet, connecting the turbines to a central substation. Xcel’s documents were not specific enough to determine if they would be removing these cables, but the Palmer’s Wind Farm project explicitly states that cables deeper than 4 feet would not be removed:

Wind turbines and solar panels are often given a free pass when it comes to their impact on the environment even though they can cause substantial environmental degradation. In contrast, liberal politicians and special interest groups have continued to delay the replacement of an aging oil pipeline with a newer, and safer replacement.

This double standard is a disservice to Minnesotans who must pay more for their energy, and also the environment.

SOURCE

Climate Alarmism of the Last 120 Years

What is clear is that the climate has been constantly changing for a very long time.

To error is human. And if science is only as good as the scientist, then, since scientists are human … any reasonable person would be foolish not to hold a healthy amount of skepticism toward any declarations of the science being “settled.” This is especially the case when it comes to the politically charged topic of global warming or climate change or whatever it will be called in the near future. A few years ago, Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That? put together a list of the last 120 years of climate alarmism. Given that the list is still relevant because alarmists never quit issuing new dire predictions, here are a few examples of just how wrong they’ve been over the years:

1895 — Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again —The New York Times

1902 — “Disappearing Glaciers … deteriorating slowly, with a persistency that means their final annihilation … scientific fact … surely disappearing.” —Los Angeles Times

1923 — “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada” —Professor Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, in the Chicago Tribune

1933 — America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise —The New York Times

1954 — Climate — the Heat May Be Off —Fortune Magazine

1969 — “The Arctic pack ice is thinning and … the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two” —The New York Times

1969 — “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000” —Paul Ehrlich (while he now predicts doom from global warming, this quote only gets honorable mention, as he was talking about his crazy fear of overpopulation)

1974 — Global cooling for the past forty years —Time Magazine

1974 — “Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age” —The Washington Post

1974 — “The facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure … mass deaths by starvation, and probably anarchy and violence.” —The New York Times

1975 — “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind” Nigel Calder, editor, New Scientist magazine, in an article in International Wildlife Magazine

1990 — “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” —Senator Timothy Wirth

1998 — No matter if the science [of global warming] is all phony … climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.“ —Christine Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment, Calgary Herald

2006 — "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” —Al Gore, Grist magazine

2014 — Climate change: It’s even worse than we thought. Five years ago, the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a gloomy picture of our planet’s future. As climate scientists gather evidence for the next report, due in 2014, Michael Le Page gives seven reasons why things are looking even grimmer. —New Scientist (undated in 2014)

Again, these are but a few of the climate headlines over the last century. What is telling is how in more recent years the climate alarmism has become increasingly tied to leftist politics, to the detriment of science.

SOURCE

Australia: Things hotting up at Bureau of Meteorology

Why is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology a protected species? How many warnings does the government need before it conducts a parliamentary inquiry and independent audit.

Surely, for $1m a day, taxpayers are at least entitled to reliable data. Yet what we get are homogenised records achieved by mixing, matching and even deleting temperature data, often from unreliable or geographically unrelated sites and almost always with a warming bias.

In 2015 minister for the environment Greg Hunt saw off a golden opportunity when he batted away then prime minister Tony Abbott’s wish to have an audit. Hunt found the bureau’s “hard science, hard data and literally millions of points of information through satellite and local monitoring” convincing.

Hunt’s successor, Josh Frydenberg, similarly refused to have an audit. Both turned a blind eye to the BoM’s unscientific obsession to report record heat.

When satellite data conflicted with its “hottest-ever summer” hype, they ignored it. And they listened to colleagues and BoM supporters who were consumed by climate-change politics.

The bureau’s focus on politics rather than science was revealed a decade ago in the leaked “Climategate” emails which exposed unscientific practices and appalling quality control.

Professor Phil Jones, former director at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, referred to Australians “inventing the December 1995 monthly value” and wanting to see “the section on variability and extreme events beefed up”.

A frustrated CRU climatologist/programmer, Ian (Harry) Harris, wrote: “Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. So many new stations have been introduced, so many false references … so many changes that aren’t documented.”

The bureau’s supervisor of climate analysis, Dr David Jones, dismisses sceptics as “scientifically incompetent. We have a policy of providing any complainer with every single station observation when they question our data (this usually snows them)”.

Former chief executive Rob Vertessy confirms this thinking, saying: “People … running interference on the national weather agency are unproductive and, it’s actually dangerous.”

This patronising fortress mentality does little to dispel concerns about integrity.

The BoM’s casual approach to Celsius conversion with its warming bias sticks in the memory. So too the spectacle of Rutherglen, where a 0.35C cooling became a 1.73C warming. When hot and dry Hillston, 300km away in southern New South Wales, is included in the “homogenisation” process, no wonder.

There’s also the mystery of Goulburn Airport, in NSW southern tablelands, where the lowest ever July temperature was -9.1C, recorded in 1988. In 2017 that was broken when the temperature dropped to -10.4C. The bureau recorded -10C. A similar under-recording occurred at Thredbo Top Station.

After an inquiry from Frydenberg, the BoM responded there were issues with those automatic weather stations but, out of 695 sites, they were the only ones where temperature records had been affected. How reassuring that the ever-alert Dr Jennifer Marohasy, who raised the alarm, had found the offending two.

Respected climate writer Joanne Nova recently reported another example of the bureau’s reluctance to record cooler temperatures. Although Friday, April 19, was the coldest April day in Albany, Western Australia, the bureau somehow “lost” the crucial Albany Airport data set.

So, while temperatures for hundreds of kilometres around registered similar maximums to the airport’s 10.4C, the official airport maximum for April 19 remains blank, while the city of Albany records the day before’s temperature of 25.1C.

The bureau’s warming bias is shameless. It couldn’t wait to announce January 7 last year as the Sydney Basin’s hottest-ever day. But it was required to quickly retract this and acknowledge 1939 was hotter — but not before the captive media had sensationalised the headlines.

Suspicions of BoM neglect and carelessness are being confirmed by diligent volunteer auditors. A number of weather stations have been found on or near asphalt, busy highways, beside galvanised iron fences and metal sheds, atop tin roofs or adjacent airconditioning units. Even when these sites are not included in the official ACORN set, they are still used to adjust temperatures within it.

Now, Nova reveals, volunteers have discovered changes at the Port Hedland site have over the years corrupted its data. It is one of only 112 certified locations and its temperatures are used in the “best practice” official set which forms part of the global record. How many more non-compliant, certified sites are there? And why is it only volunteers can find them?

And why, to quote Nova: “After all the headlines, after it was measured on supposedly modern first-class equipment, even data just 18 months old is being re-fiddled?”

So when satellites suggest 1991 was our hottest summer, and the bureau says 2019, who should we believe?

The BoM is a large and expensive agency, employing almost 1700 people. It requires $400m a year to run. The importance of its database and the reliability of its forecasts go well beyond daily bulletins. Many industries depend on them. Yet, despite the bureau’s boasts of scientific integrity, government cannot ignore the continual release of conflicting evidence nor the BoM’s repeated failure to predict catastrophic weather events such as floods and droughts.

Moreover, despite the bureau’s protests of “best practice”, evidence is being produced which questions the bureau’s compliance with World Meteorological Organisation standards.

The bureau rejects this but then this question may fall into the “unproductive” and “actually dangerous” category.

If the bureau was a public company ASIC would have long since investigated it. What makes government so frightened to act?

SOURCE

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

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

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16 October, 2019

So much for the dangers of radioactivity

People living in close proximity to Chernobyl are living into their '80s! It's only very high doses of radiation that are harmful. Low to medium doses are actually beneficial. The people below are living evidence of that

Chernobyl: For most it's a name which conjures up images of nuclear hazmat signs, fleeing crowds, and deadly radioactive fires, as brought to life by HBO's riveting account of the deadly catastrophe broadcast earlier this year.

For others, Chernobyl simply means home.

Between 150 and 300 people remain in the Exclusion Zone, which covers an area of approximately 1,000 square miles around the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 left a ring of ghost villages as residents fled, fearing radiation poisoning. But some people - around 150-300 - refused to go.

Those living close to Chernobyl - over 100,000 people - were quickly rushed from the scene. A 20-mile exclusion zone was imposed around the damaged reactor. This was later expanded to cover more affected areas.

Over the next few months a further 234,000 people were moved out. Almost all left in a hurry. Some were given just a few hours to pack up all their belongings. Others were told they would only be gone a few days, but were never allowed back. Some simply locked their doors and waited for the fuss to die down.

Over recent years, Canadian photographer Robyn Von Swank adventured into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Initially she expected to photograph a town full of ghosts but was surprised to find that not all have deserted the toxic zone, even though it has been deemed unfit for human habitation. Ignoring safety concerns and the fact it's actually illegal to live in the red zone, dozens of people still go about their daily lives in the shadow of the forsaken reactor.

After Robyn's first trip in 2016, she wanted to return to document those that defied the government and never left. She hired a private guide and he took her into parts of the Exclusion Zone that not many people can go to and she saw many abandoned villages.

Bizarrely, it was not the radiation that posed the biggest threat to the Canadian photographer even though thousands of people have died as a result of the nuclear disaster (estimates vary from 4,000-27,000 dead).

As Robyn was exploring one of the abandoned towns, she noticed footprints behind her and discovered that a pack of wolves were following her.

'Thankfully, the predators have a bounty of prey to eat already, because the Zone continues to grow as a biodiverse forest where animals don't worry about being killed by humans anymore,' she recalled with a smile.

Some residents survived Nazi invasion during WW2, the Chernobyl accident and Soviet rule over Ukraine. Radiation is estimated to have killed between 4,000 and 27,000 people since the disaster blast

Robyn visited the re-settlers who were all over the age of 80, except for two who were in their 50s. The Canadian arrived just in time for Russian New Year and was invited into the local's homes to enjoy a feast of cabbage rolls, pork fat, pickled mushrooms, blinis, potatoes and more Ukrainian cuisine.

'The people were warm and welcoming and spoke openly about their histories. Some sobbed when speaking of the incident, having been affected so personally,' Robyn added.

One of the residents, Maria, is the only living person in her village and is miles away from anyone else - but she will never leave her home. She survived the Nazi invasion in World War 2, the Chernobyl accident and lived under Soviet rule.

Another resident, Baba Olga was an old woman who never had any children so she had few visitors. But she once had a vibrant social life with the other residents. When Robyn left her house, Baba Olga stuffed her pockets full of candy and apples and hugged and kissed her affectionately.

Somewhat paradoxically, the population of the exclusion zone is growing. Several families have relocated to the quiet, overwhelmingly cheap neighbourhoods surrounding Chernobyl in recent years, many fleeing the war that rages between Ukraine and Russia to this day.

SOURCE

British police finally lose patience with Extinction Rebellion as protesters are told to stop action now or be arrested

Police have ordered climate change protesters to stop their action immediately or face arrest, in an effort to put an end to more than a week's disruption in London.

Activists with Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been told to leave Trafalgar Square, where many have congregated lawfully since Monday last week, as police seek to expunge the protesters from the capital.

More than 1,400 people have been arrested during eight days' XR action, with the threat that anyone defying police orders will also be detained.

In a statement on Twitter, the London branch of XR wrote: "Police are clearing peaceful protest in Trafalgar & Vauxhall. They are back-tracking on promises made &, MEPs say, in contravention of UK law, in the national square. "This is an emergency, and an outrage. The police must respect the law. This is a democracy."

Scotland Yard said activists were told to cease their protests by 9pm on Monday or face arrest.

XR later said in a statement that it would "let the Trafalgar Square go tonight" but added that the "International Rebellion continues".

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said: "These conditions have been imposed due to the continued breaches of the section 14 condition previously implemented, and ongoing serious disruption to the community.

"We have made significant progress in managing Extinction Rebellion's activity at sites across central London over this past week. "Officers have begun the process of clearing Trafalgar Square and getting things back to normal.

"Today, protesters targeted areas in the City of London, causing further disruption to people and businesses in London's financial district. Police made more than 90 arrests.

"Since the beginning of this operation officers have been working hard to keep London moving. There have been more than 1,400 arrests, and a number of people have been charged.

"The policing operation continues, and we will continue to take action against anyone engaged in unlawful protests at locations targeted by Extinction Rebellion."

Four people in a so-called peace tent, who had locked themselves together, were cut out of their locks with machinery.

Pam Williams, 71, glued herself to the spot where her tent stood as police arrived to take it. Speaking to the PA news agency, she said: "Everyone on the site, despite being the only area of London that was free of the Section 14, was told at about 8.30pm that they had to leave by 9pm or they would be arrested. I just feel like that's very short notice.

"I feel possibly that they've been approached by people we've upset today, maybe the finance sector or the banking sector.

"I'm refusing to leave and I've glued myself to the ground. My husband has taken away the tent, the police haven't got it. I shall stay here until I'm arrested."

SOURCE

New York Times Former Reporter: Toss ‘Climate Troglodytes’ Like Trump, Inhofe Out of Office

In his days as an environment reporter, Gillis got heaps of feedback from skeptics so he knows he is backing a fraud

The latest New York Times Sunday Review was graced by Justin Gillis, who served as chief environmental reporter for the paper until late 2017 and is now a contributing opinion writer free to spout in even more partisan and hysterical tones about the “troglodytes” and dangerous deniers who don’t see impending climate catastrophe: “Our Climate Future Has Arrived.”

The text box? “We ignored warnings of wildfires, flooding, heat waves and rising oceans.” He also loved teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The online headline deck was a call to vote Democrat: “Fire, Floods and Power Outages: Our Climate Future Has Arrived -- The most urgent imperative now is to turn our fear and frustration into votes.” The tone was confidently alarmist (click "expand"):

Now we suffer the consequences.

In Northern California, power was cut to more than a million people this week. Near Houston, houses that flooded only two years ago just succumbed again. The South endured record-shattering fall heat waves. In Miami, salt water bubbled through street drains yet again as the rising ocean mounted a fresh assault.

All of it was predicted, in general outline, decades ago. We did not listen. Ideologues and paid shills cajoled us to ignore the warnings. Politicians cashed their checks from the fossil fuel lobbyists and slithered away.

Today, we act surprised as the climate emergency descends upon us in all its ferocity.

(....)

As tempting as it is to blame the politicians and the fossil fuel executives for the fix we find ourselves in, that is too easy. At any time in these last three decades, we could have woken up. We could have heeded the warnings of scientists like James E. Hansen of NASA, who told Congress in 1988 that the planet was warming sharply and would continue to do so if we persisted in burning fossil fuels. We could have voted James Inhofe, the climate-denying senator from Oklahoma, out of office. Had we been aroused and angry, we could have wielded our democratic power to bring the fossil fuel companies to heel.

I remember sitting with Dr. Hansen in his NASA office the week he retired, in 2013, wondering along with him when the public revolt over the climate crisis would finally begin.

Now we have our answer. Under the unlikely leadership of a brave 16-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, we are marching in the streets now by the millions. We are making demands. We are angry, and should be, but let’s spare a moment to be angry at ourselves for waiting so long.

People keep asking: Is it too late?

Yes, in some sense it is. What the events in California and Miami and Houston tell us is that we are living through the risks of an altered climate now, not a hundred years from now. Expect the situation to keep getting worse for the rest of your life. The ocean will keep rising for centuries, probably much faster than today. We will lose our great coastal cities.

Gillis pivoted to voting Democrat and was unctuously servile toward "schoolgirl" Greta Thunberg:

The most urgent imperative now is to turn our fear and frustration into votes.

The climate troglodytes must be thrown out of office, starting with Donald J. Trump. We need laws with teeth to propel the clean energy transition: hard targets, bans, taxes, mandates. We cannot stand back for another presidential election in which the Republican Party lies about this issue while the Democratic Party hides from it.

Granted, “Curtail future damage!” is not an inspiring battle cry. “To the Bastille!” it is not. Yet millions of young people have begun to understand the stakes, their fears given voice by that young lady from Sweden, with her moral intelligence and her capacity to wield the truth like a rapier.

Gillis also appeared in the paper in June 2018 to mark the 30th anniversary of NASA scientist and climate scold James Hansen’s jeremiad to Congress on global warming (now “climate change”). The Cato Institute checked up on Hansen’s predictions and came away less than impressed.

SOURCE

Andrew Neil Interviews Extinction Rebellion

Andrew Neil is a BBC TV journalist. He is interviewing a woman named "Zion Lights"

Transcript summary:

Andrew Neil: I’ve seen some of your activists claims on TV that billions of people are going to die in quite short order. One of your founders Roger Hallam said “Our children are going to die in the next ten to twenty years. What’s the scientific basis for these claims?

Extinction Rebellion: So, these claims have been disputed, admittedly. There are some scientists who are agreeing and some who are saying they’re simply not true but the overall issue is that these deaths are going to happen. We don’t know exactly the numbers and it’s a little bit concerning to focus on just how many deaths. There will be deaths and mass suffering and any amount is enough as far as we are concerned.

Andrew Neil: But most scientists don’t agree with this. Climate change scientists, those who know and say there is a problem and it has to be tackled, things have to be done, and more has to be done that is being done. I looked through the IPCC AR5 and SR15 and I see no reference to billions of people are going to die. or children are going to die in under 20 years.

Extinction Rebellion: We don’t claim that what we said was derived from the IPCC AR5 or the SR15
Andrew Neil: Then where does the scientific validity of that claim come from? The billions of people that will die, how will they die?

Extinction Rebellion: Mass migration around the world is already taking place due to prolonged drought in South Asia. There are wildfires in Indonesia, the Amazon rain forest, Siberia, and the Arctic.

Andrew Neil: These are all really important problems and they can cause fatalities but they don’t cause billions of deaths. They don’t imply that our young people will all be dead in 20 years, as your co-founder Roger Hallam claims.

Extinction Rebellion: Perhaps not in 20 years, but I can’t speak to what Roger was meaning with that. He is indeed one of the members of Extinction Rebellion.

Andrew Neil: You talk about weather related disasters, and people die from them but a hundred years ago, weather related disasters killed 500,000 people a year on average. Today that figure is 20,000 a year, a reduction of 96%. These numbers don’t support the Extinction Rebellion claim about the death of billions of people by climate change.

Extinction Rebellion: I think there is a danger of scaring people simply because we’re not taking it seriously enough and people are feeling desperately that we are heard on this and it is unfortunate that this language works which is why we are discussing it right now.

Andrew Neil: It doesn’t work. I have seen school strike young girls on TV crying because they think they are going to die in 5 or 6 years. Crying because they don’t think they will ever see adulthood. And yet there is no scientific basis for the claims your organization is making.

Extinction Rebellion: The young people I have spoken with aren’t crying because they are going to die in a few years; it’s because they don’t see their generation as having a future and they worry about coastal regions going under water, entire countries, island nations going under water, the Maldives going under water, the mass displacement that is happening, the weather extremes, which may be on a downward trajectory but climate scientists ARE telling us that they will be on the increase,

Andrew Neil: As for rising seas, yes, sea levels are rising. The IPCC makes that quite clear. The IPCC says that its median projection is for sea level rise of half a meter by the year 2100 and that will surely create problems from Miami to Bangladesh but half a meter of sea level rise will not result in the apocalyptic predictions your organization claims.

Extinction Rebellion: These are very conservative numbers. I am not criticizing scientists. They do an incredible job. But a lot of their data are using pre-industrial levels of data. They are looking at carbon emissions but nor factoring in feedback loops. Things like that. All climate scientists are saying now that they think it’s a lo worse. James Hansen, ex NASA scientist is saying we are in a planetary emergency. So we’re using that language. We are not trying to use alarmist language. We are listening to what scientists are saying and using language that we feel is appropriate to the situation.

Andrew Neil: You ARE using alarmist language. A person from your organization has said that nearly everybody could be dead within several decades. 97% was the figure she put on it. The IPCC wants emissions to be cut in half by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. But your organization wants net zero emissions by 2025, only six years away. What would that require?

Extinction Rebellion: I am not here to give you solutions and to tell you what we should be doing. That’s not …. (interrupted by Neil)

Andrew Neil: But you went to Westminster to preach and demand climate policy!

Extinction Rebellion: We are saying, listen to the experts. Listen to what their ideas are, what they are saying, and at the moment we are not putting those plans in place, we are not creating policies that reflect what these scientists are saying. This is why we are protesting.

Andrew Neil: The experts have consensus on getting to net zero emissions by 2050. But you’re saying 2025.

Extinction Rebellion: There has been some interesting research into the IPCC reports that is more recent. This research was carried out by Professor Michael Mann who looked at where they come up with the 2050 figure and actually they are relying on carbon capture by gas energy storage. There is a problem with that. It is an untested technology and by relying on that there is a 50-50 chance that we will fail with the 50-50 target.

Andrew Neil: So you are relying on an individual against the main body of climate science represented by the IPCC. In any case, one scenario of your 2025 plan is that it will require the confiscation of all petrol cars, state rationing of meat, and limiting families to one flight every 5 years. Do you agree with that?

Extinction Rebellion: I agree that we need to do whatever it takes to bring emissions down, to allow young people to have a future, to be able to have some hope for the future. I am not saying that because we are alarmists. I am listening to what they are saying. They are learning about the consequences of climate change at school and they are worrying about …. (interrupted by Neil).

Andrew Neil: I am not arguing about the consequences of climate change at all. But to reach your target you would have to stop all flights. Aviation will come to an end.

Extinction Rebellion: Possibly. This is something we need to look at. We need to look at the aviation industry. We need to do an analysis of what needs to happen. In all industries; agriculture, energy, everything. I don’t claim to be an expert in these areas.

Andrew Neil: If we stopped all flights it would global temperature by 0.03C. And you would stop all flights for that?

Extinction Rebellion: But what you just said was the IPCC report we both are in agreement we listen to that 99% consensus science. That’s great. We agree with that. That report is saying that if we don’t bring emissions down …. (interrupted by Neil)

Andrew Neil: Most homes are heated by gas. Most people cook with gas. All of that would have to go in 6 years for a 2025 target.

Extinction Rebellion: We put a man on the moon before we had the internet and mobile phones. We made and international space station. Sixteen countries worked together to make it happen, and send the parts into space independently using math and assemble it in space. With Dr. James Hansen, an ex NASA scientist, calling it a planetary emergency, if we really want to tackle this emergency, we can do it just like we could put a man on the moon and build the space station. We had 30 years to tackle this emergency and we didn’t do it. We are now out of time. We no longer have time to do this the comfortable way. We must do it the hard way.

SOURCE

Vancouver has ‘coldest Oct. 10 in 123 years’ as temperatures tumble across B.C.

If high temperatures in Sydney are news why are low temperatures in Vancouver not news?

Environment Canada says the temperature at Vancouver International Airport dipped to 0.7 C Monday morning. “That’s the coldest Oct. 10 in 123 years, so this is pretty significant,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Matt MacDonald.

It was the second record in two days for Vancouver, which saw thermometers dip to 0.8 C Wednesday, wiping out the old record of 2.8, which had stood since 1960.

Vancouver has coldest Oct. 9 in nearly 60 years
The weather office says clear skies and a cold front helped set several other winter-like records across B.C.

“We’ve broken a total of 41 temperature records across B.C. in the last 2 days,” said MacDonald.

Those include a mark of -10.3 C in Clinton on Wednesday, breaking a 2009 record, and -8.2 C in Smithers, smashing the old record set in 1959.

The average historical low for Vancouver in the second week of October is 7 C.

SOURCE

Australia: Disabled man said he was heckled and abused by Extinction Rebellion protesters

A revealing testimony to the low character of Warmists. You can see how "caring" they really are

A disabled man claims he was heckled and abused by Extinction Rebellion protesters who blocked his way as he was trying to cross the street.

Matthew Zammit said he was disrupted by the protests while in Melbourne and tried to raise his concerns with activists, but was met with abuse and was called offensive names.

Climate change protesters descended on major cities across Australia last week with a week of demonstrations around the country.

Dozens showed up in Melbourne to occupy the steps of Parliament while hundreds more marched through the CBD while others camped in Melbourne's Carlton Gardens.

In a question submitted to the ABC program Q&A, Mr Zammit said it was particularly difficult for him to go about his day in Melbourne due to his disability.

'I've been heavily disrupted by the protests last week. Many people have. But as somebody with a few disabilities it hits people like me harder,' he said.

He said he tried to raise his concerns with protesters when his bus was blocked as there were people chained to the tram tracks.

'I already had to walk with my crutch much more than usual that morning, when I attempted to speak with them on one side of the street I was jeered at and called offensive names,' Mr Zammit said. 'I struggled to the other side of the street and had fruitless arguments with protesters there.'

While Mr Zammit acknowledged that climate change was a serious issue, he asked the panel about the balance between the rights of people with disabilities and the right to protest.

Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson said Mr Zammit had also contacted him about his experience with the protesters. 'He's been deliberately instructed and put in extreme hardship as a consequence of their behaviour and they completely disregarded that,' Mr Wilson said in regards to the protesters.

Mr Wilson said that the protesters go about their own detriment which frustrates people trying to live their life. 'They have a right to have their voice heard and express their opinion and a right to associate and come together and protest that but if they have a right to shut down everybody's life in the process is going too far,' he said.

Labor MP Tim Watts said protesters should be listening to Mr Zammit's concerns and believes they need to accommodate for people with disabilities.

SOURCE

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

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

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15 October, 2019

Serious Errors In IPCC Ocean Report Revealed

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has called on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to correct serious errors in its recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

In a letter to the IPCC, Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, has highlighted a number of errors and misinterpretations in the IPCC’s report which are based, to a significant degree, on a flawed study which was recently retracted.

In his letter, Dr Peiser points out that the IPCC’s overall conclusion on ocean heat uptake

“is based to a significant degree on a paper by Cheng et al. (2019) which itself relies on a flawed estimate by Resplandy et al. (2018). An authors’ correction of this paper and its ocean heat uptake estimate was under review for nearly a year, but in the end Nature requested that the paper be retracted (Retraction Note, 2019).

“While the [IPCC’s] conclusion that the rate of ocean heat uptake has increased in recent years may probably be right, the evidence you cite for there being ‘high confidence’ and ‘high agreement’ is rather doubtful due to your inclusion of flawed evidence of the retracted paper by Resplandy et al. (2018).”

What is more, there is also doubt about the IPCC’s conclusion that ocean heat uptake has been accelerating in recent years. According to its own report the overall ocean heat uptake between 0-2000 m was nearly 10% higher over 1993-2017 than over the second half of that period, 2005-2017, suggesting that OHU may have been declining slightly rather than accelerating over the last 25 years.

In light of these flaws, the GWPF is calling on the IPCC to correct the evident errors and reduce its confidence rating accordingly.

SOURCE

The unsaid reality

The biomass scam: Should Africans truly burn more trees?

Why are the World Bank and other international institutions promoting widespread use of charcoal for heating and cooking in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)?

During the recent 2019 “climate week,” the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change touted increased reliance on biomass as a tool in fighting climate change.

The Dogwood Alliance objected to the IPCC report, claiming that biomass (largely charcoal) contributes to deforestation.

Dogwood’s arguments reflect the views of Norimitsu Onishi, whose 2016 article in The New York Times pointed out that burning charcoal not only poses human health concerns, it also constitutes a massive threat to the environment.

The UN Environment Programme predicts that Africa’s demand for charcoal – currently 23 million tons a year — is likely to double or triple by 2050. Africa’s charcoal production doubled in the past two decades and now accounts for more than 60 percent of the world’s total, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Rapid urbanization increased demand for charcoal – the preferred way to cook in SSA cities.

Onishi acknowledged that charcoal is cleaner and easier to us than firewood, and cheaper and more readily available in much of Africa than gas or electricity. As a result, 80 percent of SSA families use charcoal as their primary energy source.

The World Health Organization reports that over 4.3 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution resulting from burning charcoal and other solid fuels in open fires and leaky stoves – more than from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

The WHO further stated that lack of access to electricity for at least 1.2 billion people exposes households to very high levels of fine particulate matter. Lack of electricity also results in other health risks (burns, injuries, and poisonings) and constrains other opportunities for health and development – such as studying or engaging in small crafts and trades.

Electrifying Africa

Why, over a century after affordable electricity began to transform Western society, is over half of Africa still not connected to any electric grid?

The World Bank notes that SSA’s household electrification rate averaged 42 percent in 2016 – with Rwanda at 80 percent and Guinea-Bissau at 30 percent.

Three factors hinder demand for electric power in much of Africa, according to ZimbabweSituation.com. Many firms and households already connected to the grid in SSA face regular blackouts. Poor grid reliability typically means continued reliance on charcoal, forcing connected households to pay for two energy sources.

Next, where electricity bills take up a large share of household income, access to electricity is significantly low. Countries with poor grid penetration typically use higher tariffs to finance infrastructure to improve their electric grids. But high tariffs translate into high energy bills that deter consumers.

The cost and complexity of the connection process also hampers electrification. Where generation capacity is insufficient, utilities may delay new connections until infrastructure investments catch up with consumer demand. But the Catch-22 is that these administrative barriers, red tape, and connection costs drive down demand.

In most places, according to Patrick Conners, the Energy Guy, wood competes dollar for dollar with natural gas but pollutes much more and requires far more work: hauling and stacking the wood, stoking and tending the fire, and cleaning out all the ashes afterward. A furnace gives much more uniform heat without the smoke and draft issues.

African electricity costs and reliability will only come with modernization and expansion of the electric grid. The late Steven Lyazi, who worked with the Congress of Racial Equality in Uganda, acknowledged that the availability of solar energy is good news to millions of Africans who rely on firewood, dung, and charcoal for cooking. But, he added, solar and wind are, at best, stopgap solutions on the way to energy security.

“Many people,” said Lyazi, “don’t know that Africa has some big dreams.” Just one — the proposed 466-mile Trans East Africa electric railway would require much more energy that wind and solar can now provide. Africa, Lyazi explained, has great potential for nuclear energy, coal, oil, and natural gas – but powerful (largely European) environmentalists (including the World Bank) have opposed funding such projects.

Lyazi, who died in a bus accident in 2017, urged Africans to being using their abundant natural resources (defying European environmentalists who have stymied fossil fuel, hydroelectric, and nuclear power projects in Africa) to build natural gas pipelines from oilfields (that today is mostly burned and wasted, while the oil is mostly exported) to generate affordable electricity for millions? Why not build nuclear and coal plants and hydroelectric projects?

Why not indeed?

SOURCE

Leading Journal Calls Climate Science Dissent A Mental Disorder

Germany may be reintroducing a dark period where political opponents are simply declared mentally ill by the state and forcibly hospitalized for “treatment.”

A case for psychotherapy

In a recent paper dubbed “The Denial of the Apocalypse – Dealing with the Climate Crisis from the Perspective of Existential Psychotherapy” appearing in the German Das Psychotherapeutenjournal (The Psychotherapist Journal), author Fabian Chmielewski explains which “denial processes are effective and what the psychotherapists could and should concretely do about it.”

Panic over climate change is normal

According to Chmielewski, a psychologist with a practice in Hattingen, being in a panic about the rapidly approaching climate apocalypse is, in fact, rational behavior, while having doubts and remaining calm about it is abnormal and thus needs to be addressed.

The journal’s editorial, written by Hans Schindler, comments that although Chmielewski’s paper is contentious, it is “a suitable impetus for the necessary debate about the sociopolitical responsibility of our professional group and for the discussion about the possibilities – and limits – of engagement in our roles as psychotherapists and citizens.”

Leading journal in Germany

Das Psychotherapeutenjournal is not just some crackpot publication that gets little attention in Germany, rather it is indeed the organ of the Bavarian State Chamber of Psychological Psychotherapists.

The abstract of Fabian Chmielewski paper:

"A broad consensus of serious research warns of the scenario of a soon inevitable spiral of man-made climate change. Nevertheless, both large sections of the population and decision-makers do not seem to be adequately interested in the impending destruction of the world as we know it.

The gloomy prophecies of climate scientists are played down or even denied, the necessary climate policy steps are not taken.

The article looks at these phenomena from the perspective of existential psychotherapy and tries to point out possible causes and mechanisms of this repression as well as to derive concrete psychotherapeutic ‘interventions.’

It also argues for the active participation of psychotherapists in health campaigns against this widespread “existential neurosis”.

Chmielewski claims that the “Fridays for Future” strikes and demonstrations are the clearest and most media-effective indication of the impending doomsday scenario, and calls for the implementation of the drastic climate policy measures demanded by science and that both doctors and psychologists warn of the health consequences of climate change and giving it top priority.

Here, he suggests, panic is the psychologically appropriate response.

Chmielewski notes that at its annual general meeting, the Marburger Bund(association of physicians) demands:

“Stopping climate change caused by humans and its consequences for human health must also be given absolute priority in health policy action”.

In the paper, Chmielewski writes that in recent times, various psychologists and psychotherapists have marked climate change as an “existential threat” (Psychologists for Future, 2019).

And when it comes to scientific dissent with regards to the upcoming climate doomsday, auditor Chmielewski writes that despite the scientific certainty of climate doomsday:

Nevertheless, important decision-makers are either completely denying man-made climate change or trivializing it and the urgency of the pressure to act. […]

Also commenting on Chmielewski’s paper at the critical German achgut.com here, Air Tuerkis notes that generally, therapists are rightly afraid to impose a certain point of view on people.

But according to Chmielewski: “Exceptions are to be made, however, if an acute own or foreign endangerment is present”.

The concept of an ‘acute danger to oneself or others‘ is quite explosive here. It releases the therapist, for example, from the duty of confidentiality.

The term normally aims at impending criminal offenses that pose a danger to life and limb and above all the danger of suicide. In Bavaria, the legislator speaks of a danger to public safety to a considerable extent.”

In other words, back to the dark days of Soviet-style punitive political psychiatry. Dissenters should be medicated into changing their views.

SOURCE

Australian climate protesters have set taxpayers back MILLIONS - and businesses have lost even more money

Climate change protesters have cost Australia's police forces millions of dollars and staff had to be diverted from road safety and domestic violence complaints to patrol last week's chaos.

Victoria Police Commander Tim Hansen said 16,000 patrol hours had been spent policing the Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked traffic in Melbourne's CBD causing widespread disruption.

'It's had a huge impact on our resourcing out in the regions and out in the suburbs,' Commander Hansen told reporters on Sunday.

The cost is thought to be at least $3million, the Herald Sun reported, although Victoria Police say the exact cost is still being determined.

'What I can say is the overtime budget is in the hundreds of thousands already,' Commander Hansen said.

Victoria Police will not try to make protesters pay for the cost of policing, however, as Commander Hansen said it was a community protest in a public space.

'The first gateway in considering whether user pays is applicable is there needs to be a level of commerciality,' he said.

Police had to be re-tasked from suburban patrol duties and from specialist units to cope with the mass disruption during which 111 people were arrested.

'Because of the need to resource this protest, we've had to take some resources away from those programs,' Commander Hansen said.

'Sustained and unplanned protest activity has seen a dilution of these policing programs.'

Queensland police said on Friday that more than 150 officers had to be deployed each day, arresting a total of 125 protesters during the week including several who glued themselves to the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane's CBD on Friday.

'More than 150 general and specialist police have worked each day this week to deal with the unlawful behaviour undertaken by Extinction Rebellion protesters,' Acting Chief Superintendent Fleming said in a release on Friday.

Daily Mail Australia understands this figure does not include police at the watch house, or the cost of administrative staff needed to process those arrested.

The disruptions also cost Queensland businesses thousands in lost productivity the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland said.

'On any given day, data from Tom Toms shows that $2.4 million is lost in productivity due to traffic and congestion – with protests of this magnitude, it swells to a loss of $3.5 million,' spokesman Dan Petrie told the Courier Mail.

Extinction Rebellion Southeast Queensland responded by saying the large police presence was not necessary because their protests were non-violent.

'We are seeing unprecedented bushfires and droughts due to climate change,' an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia via email. 'These disasters are already destroying businesses. Disruption is necessary to demand urgent climate action. XR is a non-violent movement, and the large police presence was unnecessary.'

SOURCE

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

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

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14 October, 2019

On Cape Cod, climate change is terrifyingly real

The illogicality of Warmists knows no bounds. They admit that some climate episode they want to exploit is local and then talk as if it was a global effect. They say that in the Cape Cod climate "warming is faster than nearly any in the world". So it is local data about a local effect and has no evidentiary value about global anything, including global warming. So the attributions below are mere opinion.

So what is warming Cape Cod? Nobody knows but local eddies in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation -- known to you as the Gulf Stream -- would be a likely area of enquiry

The Cape Cod we love is at risk. It is perched on a stretch of ocean warming faster than nearly any in the world. And as much as we might wish it away, as hard as we try to ignore it, the effects of climate change here are already visible, tangible, measurable, disturbing.

Perfect summers have grown hotter and muggier. Storms arrive violently, and more often.

People here like to say that the only thing constant about the Cape is change, but what human-caused climate change has already wrought here is not the same old uncertainty. It is loss.

And so we have criss-crossed the Cape in search of what is slipping away.

The Cape is fundamentally a peaceful place. For generations, we have talked about joy and family and the restorative power of open ocean and unspoiled sand.

But talk to the people who live and work here, who study emerging threats to the place they’ve always known, and you will hear them use different words: Higher ground. Breach. Retreat.

SOURCE

Stop Scaring the Kids. The Planet Is Fine

The kids are out of their minds. They're out in the streets, blocking traffic and dancing around like maniacs because they think the sky is falling. This is entirely the fault of the adults who refuse to tell them the truth about the weather. For decades now the young have been bombarded with climate apocalypse tales of destruction. Meanwhile, not even the climate-change kooks can get their facts straight.

A few years ago NASA reported that Antarctic sea ice was at an all-time high. "Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s." But this kind of news never changes the minds of the climate high priests. “The Antarctic sea ice is one of those areas where things have not gone entirely as expected. So it’s natural for scientists to ask, ‘OK, this isn’t what we expected, now how can we explain it?'" Of course, they can't explain it, because scientists don't know half of what they want everyone to think they know especially when it comes to our planet.

"There hasn’t been one explanation yet that I’d say has become a consensus, where people say, ‘We’ve nailed it, this is why it’s happening,’” said Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Cente. “Our models are improving, but they’re far from perfect. One by one, scientists are figuring out that particular variables are more important than we thought years ago, and one by one those variables are getting incorporated into the models.”

A few years later, warm water is "attacking" Antarctic ice and the answer, again, is climate change. No matter the question, the answer is "global warming and/or climate change." Record snowstorms? Climate change. Record heatwave? Global warming. It's the same song and dance every single time we have any weather event. They can't accurately predict the weather for the weekend but expect us to believe that they know what the planet will be like in a decade from now.

Scientists who push this fear-mongering garbage have a lot of responsibility for the hysteria they are creating among young people. The major problem with the climate activists, who are clogging streets with "performance art" currently, is that they simply haven't lived long enough to see the truth of things. Their brains are not fully developed and they have very little life experience that didn't involve Sponge Bob Square Pants and study hall.

When I was their age, my teachers and popular magazines told my generation that we would be living under sheets of ice by now. They literally said this, every day, for most of the '80s. I don't remember when global warming really kicked in, but I think I was out of high school by then and not susceptible to the brainwashing. The ice age thing did freak me out, although I remember my dad saying something like "hippie hogwash" when I brought it up. And so it was. Because here we are, almost in the 2020s, when the ice age was supposed to be in full swing, and everything is pretty much exactly the way it was in the '80s. Time is what is needed for perspective.

Some of the older kids in this movement should remember that Al Gore predicted the earth would be on fire by 2006. They were in high school watching An Inconvenient Truth because their teachers forced it on them. (And I know this because at the time, one of my friends was one of those teachers and I used to give him all sorts of hell for bringing that propaganda into the classroom.) The world has not exploded into tidal waves and mass extinction events like Al Gore said it would. Those kids who were in high school back then should notice this.

When Alexandria Ocassional-Cortex pipes in with more dire predictions and tells us that we only have ten years left, everyone should be laughing, not rolling around in the streets making fools of themselves. What is wrong with them? Can't they pick up a history book or at least search Google for the last apocalypse prediction that didn't come true? I'm starting to think the youth of today really has been ruined by fluoride and video games. Why don't their brains work? Instead of kicking and screaming and demanding politicians do something about the weather that no one can control, why don't they come up with ideas to make the world a better place?

SOURCE

The madness of Extinction Rebellion

This is an upper-middle-class death cult and we should ridicule it out of existence

Yesterday, in London, I witnessed an eerie, chilling sight: I saw a death cult holding a ceremony in public. The men and women gathered outside King’s Cross station and formed a circle. They swayed and chanted. They preached about End Times. ‘What will you do when the world gets hot, what, what?’, they intoned, conjuring up images of the hellfire they believe will shortly consume mankind. They sang hymns to their god – science. ‘We’ve got all the science / All that we need / To change the world / Hallelujah’, they sang, rocking side to side as they did so.

They demanded repentance. ‘Buy less, fly less, fry less’, said one placard. Catholics only demand the non-consumption of meat on Fridays, as an act of penance to mark the day of Christ’s death. This new religion demands an end to meat-consumption entirely, as penance for mankind’s sins of growth and progress.

And like all death cultists, they handed out leaflets that contained within them ‘THE TRUTH’. The leaflets foretell floods and fire: ‘We are in trouble. Sea levels are rising… Africa and the Amazon are on fire.’ The only word that was missing was locusts. They can’t be far behind these other ghastly visitations to sinful mankind.

And if you question their TRUTH? Then, like those heretics who were hauled before The Inquisition 500 years ago, you will be denounced as a denier. A denier of their revelations, a denier of their visions. ‘Denial is not a policy’, their placards decreed. Spotting me filming their spooky, apocalyptic ceremony, one of the attendees waved that placard in my face. A warning from the cult to a corrupted outsider.

This was, of course, Extinction Rebellion. Let us no longer beat around the bush about these people. This is an upper-middle-class death cult.

This is a millenarian movement that might speak of science, but which is driven by sheer irrationalism. By fear, moral exhaustion and misanthropy. This is the deflated, self-loathing bourgeoisie coming together to project their own psycho-social hang-ups on to society at large. They must be criticised and ridiculed out of existence.

Yesterday’s gathering, like so many other Extinction Rebellion gatherings, was middle-aged and middle-class. The commuters heading in and out of King’s Cross looked upon them with bemusement. ‘Oh, it’s those Extinction freaks’, I heard one young man say. It had the feel of Hampstead and the Home Counties descending on a busy London spot to proselytise the cult of eco-alarmism to the brainwashed, commuting plebs.

It was a gathering to mark Extinction Rebellion’s week of disruption. The group is asking people in London and other cities around the world to ‘take two weeks off work’ and join the revolt against the ‘climate and ecological crisis’. You can tell who they’re trying to appeal to. Working-class people and the poor of New Delhi, Mumbai and Cape Town – some of the cities in which Extinction Rebellion will be causing disruption – of course cannot afford to take two weeks off work. But then, these protests aren’t for those people. In fact, they’re against those people.

Extinction Rebellion is a reactionary, regressive and elitist movement whose aim is to impose the most disturbing form of austerity imaginable on people across the world. One of the great ironies of ‘progressive’ politics today is that people of a leftist persuasion will say it is borderline fascism if the Tory government closes down a library in Wolverhampton, but then they will cheer this eco-death cult when it demands a virtual halt to economic growth with not a single thought for the devastating, immiserating and outright lethal impact such a course of action would have on the working and struggling peoples of the world.

Extinction Rebellion says mankind is doomed if we do not cut carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2025. That’s six years’ time. Think about it: they want us to halt a vast array of human activity that produces carbon. All that Australian digging for coal; all those Chinese factories employing millions of people and producing billions of things used by people around the world; all those jobs in the UK in the fossil-fuel industries; all those coal-fired power stations; all that flying; all that driving… cut it all back, rein it in, stop it. And the people who rely on these things for their work and their food and their warmth? Screw them. They’re only humans. Horrible, destructive, stupid humans.

Progressive movements, as the name suggests, used to be about pursuing progress, pushing mankind forwards, creating a better, wealthier world for all. Extinction Rebellion wants the precise opposite. It wants to propel us backwards, to the Stone Age. It wants to reverse the most important moment in human history – the Industrial Revolution. It wants to undo that revolution’s liberation of mankind from the brutishness and ignorance of life on the land and recreate that old, unforgiving world in which we all ‘ate locally’, never travelled, danced around maypoles for fun, and died of cholera when we were 38.

The sheer backwardness of Extinction Rebellion was captured when two of its members appeared on Sky News yesterday morning. They complained, hysterically, about modernity. One of them bemoaned all the electricity that is used in a city like London. So the very lighting up and warming of cities, the electricity that powers homes and workplaces and transport systems and life-support machines, is offensive to these hair-shirted, self-flagellating loathers of arrogant humankind. ‘Switch it all off’, is their alarmingly immoral cry.

What is most astonishing about the Extinction Rebellion phenomenon is what an easy ride these people get in the media and from political types. They are treated as wise and radical defenders of reason and the future. Please. These people are a menace to good sense, rationality, truth and progress. Their predictions of hellfire if we don’t cut carbon emissions by 2025 are pure bunkum. They lie and spread fear and disrupt hard-working people’s lives. If you see this cult promoting its deathly propaganda on the streets of your city this week, give them a piece of your mind.

SOURCE

Dyson Becomes Latest Sign That Electric-Car Bubble Is Bursting

Dyson Ltd.’s sudden decision to scrap its $2.5 billion electric-vehicle ambitions is the latest reality check creeping into the once soaring EV industry.

The famed maker of vacuum cleaners and hair dryers couldn’t find a way of making the project commercially viable, billionaire James Dyson said in a letter to staff Thursday. The announcement came about two years after the company first disclosed its plans to jump into car manufacturing.

Dyson represents one of the most high-profile players to pull out of a sector that’s attracted hundreds of start-ups in recent years seeking to become the next Tesla Inc. But there are mounting signs that the bubble is bursting as China scales back handouts in the sector and competition heats up. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates that global EV sales fell for the first time ever in July and dropped by a record 23% in August.

“Tesla’s future remains uncertain. Almost all the EV start-ups trying to follow look challenged,” Bernstein analysts, including Max Warburton and Robin Zhu, said in a report that cited the Dyson decision as a worrisome development in the industry. “Most of these start-ups will likely fold. The truth is barriers to entry in autos remain high. Making cars is hard. The move to EVs will be expensive.”

Take the case of China’s NIO Inc., one of the most prominent electric-car makers in a country that makes about half of the world’s EVs. Last month it reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss, leading the stock to tumble to a record low and prompting analysts to openly question the company’s viability. The shares jumped on Tuesday after NIO reported third-quarter deliveries exceeded the company’s forecast, but the stock has since erased all those gains.

Elsewhere in China, Lifan Industry Group Co. and Zotye Automobile Co. have had to issue statements denying speculation that they’re planning to file for bankruptcy, though the former conceded it’s under liquidity pressure.

The competition is also getting tougher. Besides Tesla, traditional automakers such as General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG are throwing massive resources into electrification. VW has vowed a $33 billion push to bring battery-powered autos to the masses. Apple Inc. has had an automotive project since about 2016, although it is said to have scaled back its ambitions.

There are growing concerns that the ample supply of cheap funding for new-age carmakers is about to dry up, according to Bernstein.

As to Dyson, the company said it plans to continue its 2.5 billion-pound ($3.1 billion) investment program into new technology, and will concentrate on manufacturing solid-state batteries and other technologies including machine learning and robotics.

“Singapore will play an important role in Dyson’s growth plans,” Tan Kong Hwee, assistant managing director at Singapore’s Economic Development Board, said in an emailed statement Friday. Despite Dyson’s decision, Singapore “remains interested in advanced manufacturing activities, including for EVs,” he said.

Experts had questioned the company’s costly plans to build an electric car plant in Singapore, where average salaries are among the highest in the world. Ford Motor Co. closed its factory in the city-state about 40 years ago, effectively ending car production on the island.

“If everybody else is building a plant in China at a fraction of the cost in terms of labor, it didn’t make a lot of sense for anybody to build that size of a manufacturing facility over there,” said Steve Man, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Hong Kong. “I hope Singapore wasn’t expecting much from this.”

Still, Singapore has much riding on Dyson in its efforts to attract start-ups and advanced technology companies. Dyson became one of the biggest global industry names to ever relocate there.

SOURCE

Australia and US looking to challenge China's hold on the rare earths market

Because China could undercut any supplier at any time, a government guaranteed price may be needed to get the go-ahead for new mines

Australia and the US have been in discussions to form a rare earths joint action plan to open up what has become a concentrated market that's dominated by China.

Rare earths are metals and alloys that are used in many modern-day devices such as rechargeable batteries, mobile phones and catalytic converters.

Australian Resources Minister Matt Canavan says there is no doubt Chinese producers are seeking to protect their market position "as dominant suppliers do from time to time".

He told Sky News on Sunday that China has also in the past couple of years made various statements that would potentially restrict the supply of rare earths.

Australia has 14 of the 35 rare earths deemed critical to the US. "We are very lucky in Australia to have a great mineral industry, so we will do our best to establish these markets," Senator Canavan said. "These are very important to the modern economy."

However, the concentration of these markets do make it very difficult for the private sector to develop rare earths and there are concerns commercial operators could struggle to maintain their position over time.

"The concentration of all these markets could cause a risk to the security and affordability of the the supply of these critical minerals," he said.

The government has supported projects in the past through the likes of the Export Finance Insurance Corporation, providing concessional finance, he said.

The senator said he has also spoken to Australia's counterparts in Japan and Korea on the issue. "I think there is a good case for worldwide co-operation here to diversify the supply of these minerals," he said.

SOURCE

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

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

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13 October, 2019

Climate Alarmists Aren't Telling Kids The Truth

Instead of anti-science doomsday predictions, this is what children should know about the environment.

Battery Derangement

Electric vehicles won’t save the planet and won’t survive without subsidies.

Electric vehicles stand at the center of every “green energy” initiative. Multiple jurisdictions mandate and subsidize the inevitable transition to “clean” transportation. Some policymakers have gone further, setting deadlines for outright bans on the internal-combustion engine (ICE), and Green pundits regularly issue forecasts promising the imminent dominance of electric vehicles (EVs).

The EV is central to the notion that we’re on the cusp of a grand shift to a “new-energy economy.” In addition to its putative environmental benefits, the EV, we’re told, is a better machine than an ICE. It’s easier to manufacture, uses less labor, and will—eventually—cost less. Since consumers will soon demand an all-EV future, we should embrace policies to accelerate the transition.

Rarely have so many claims about a product been so wrong. The only unequivocal fact in the EV narrative is that more EVs exist today—approximately 4 million—than ever before. Lithium-battery chemistry—the inventors of which received the 2019 chemistry Nobel Prize—along with advances in power electronics, has made it possible to build practical, if expensive, electric cars. But everything else in the popularized EV storyline is deeply misguided. Advocates claim that EVs are far simpler machines than combustion engines. But the essential “engine” for both is similarly complicated. While the EV’s electric motor is simple, its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit as complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drivetrain that it replaces.

Manufacturing automotive batteries is surprisingly labor intensive. Tesla’s gargantuan battery factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries per year per 12 workers. Meantime, a modern engine and transmission factory produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per four workers. EVs don’t reduce total labor requirements; they simply outsource American labor. Since most automakers aren’t capable of fabricating batteries, EV-battery jobs reside mostly in Asia. China alone produces 60 percent of the world’s lithium batteries. There’s no prospect of creating a domestic EV supply chain anytime soon, regardless of incentives.

To EV enthusiasts, U.S. job losses are beside the point because ending our reliance on fossil fuels and saving the planet takes precedence. But it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate one battery capable of storing the energy contained in a single barrel of oil. Importing batteries manufactured on Asia’s coal-heavy grid means that consumers are just exporting carbon-dioxide emissions, along with jobs. It takes years to offset those emissions when the EV is plugged into our real-world power grid, where coal and natural gas still account for 70 percent of electricity generation.

Then there’s the array of primary minerals—lithium, cobalt, manganese, carbon, nickel, copper, aluminum—needed to produce a 1,000-pound automotive battery. Accessing the necessary minerals for that one battery entails mining, moving, and processing some 500,000 pounds of raw materials. Embracing batteries at automotive scales would lead to an unprecedented global expansion in mining, with all the accompanying negative environmental effects that tend not to be palliated in developing countries.

None of this seems to concern China, which boasts 60 percent of global EV sales. There, the EV supply chain’s labor intensity is a feature, not a bug. After all, Western nations have largely given up on the related manufacturing, as well as materials-mining and chemical-refining industries. China has spent $60 billion cumulatively in domestic subsidies in order to become the dominant global player, but it ended the EV gravy train this year, cutting subsidies by 65 percent, with plans to eliminate them entirely next year. The result? China’s vaunted EV sales growth went negative. Having abandoned direct subsidies, China will now simply require that EVs make up 3 to 4 percent of all domestic car production. Policymakers in democracies and autocracies find mandates appealing because they are a de facto hidden tax wherein industries, rather than government, get blamed for resulting higher costs.

Mandates and bans can enhance EV sales for as long as markets and consumers tolerate them. But that approach makes a lie of claims that “EV sales are accelerating.” Capitulating to a mandate, much less one set to a mere 4 percent, means that we’re miles away from seeing a new-energy transportation system. Sales data show what consumers actually want. Light trucks—SUVs and pickups—make up 70 percent of all vehicle sales in America. This trend accelerated after the Great Recession, during a period of supposedly rising “climate awareness” and the emergence of the millennial car buyer. There isn’t a battery option for SUVs at a price that consumers, rather than governments, will pay. The few successful EV-SUVs are strictly for the 1 percent crowd.

In reality, 96 percent of America’s consumer vehicles are gasoline-fueled ICEs, and 3 percent have the diesel option, the latter outselling electrics. The ratios are similar globally. Odds are the EV option will eventually do far better than the venerable diesel, but the jury is out on how much better. And arithmetic reveals that even a 100-fold growth in EVs wouldn’t displace 10 percent of world oil.

In one of history’s ironies, the Tesla Model S was introduced in 2012, exactly 100 years after Studebaker ended production of its lineup of electric cars. Back then, EVs had dominated car sales for nearly 25 years. It’s taken one century since then to invent a useful battery. But an EV is still a car with the same features consumers focus on when making buying decisions: body style, paint, seats, cup-holders, cool touchscreens, and so on. Changing a car’s fuel source is about as revolutionary as changing the feed for a horse.

Choosing a battery over an ICE isn’t a revolution. It’s an option—an expensive one—that reduces neither total labor nor environmental impacts.

SOURCE

Electric-Car Owners Shocked by California Blackouts

Everybody knows that electric cars are going to save the planet from climate change or something. Unlike regular cars, which run on gasoline and make all the polar bears cry as they sink into the sea, electric cars are powered by... um... magic? Mjölnir, the hammer of Thor? That must be how it works, or else owning an electric car would impose some sort of cost to the environment. And that can't be, or those guys wouldn't be so insufferably smug.

You know those intentional blackouts they're having in California to reduce the risk of wildfires? Well, guess what happens now?

John Pearley Huffman, Car and Driver:

Weeks can be a long wait if you’re looking at a Model 3 in your garage with a drained battery, no electrical power to charge it, and the closest grocery store with power 80 miles away. But such is life in the Golden State, where forests and chaparral are all on hair triggers ready to ignite with slightest transformer malfunction or transmission line break.

And the political environment demands minimal risk after the 2018 fire season produced 8527 conflagrations burning an astonishing 1,893,913 acres of wild lands and more than 18,000 structures...
California is experimenting with its power-generation future. And right now, that experiment is hurting. Particularly those electric-car owners with dead batteries.

So if you're a Californian who bought an electric car to save the environment, now you can't drive it because of the risk to the environment. If you really cared about the planet, you wouldn't go anywhere or do anything or participate in 21st-century life at all.

Whatever happened to those algae-powered cars we were supposed to have by now? Remember Obama talking about those? Imagine driving around smelling like a dirty fish tank. Smirking at all those planet-killing dummies in their outdated electric cars. That's the thing about being woke. There's always somebody woker.

SOURCE

Piers Morgan rips into 'hypocritical' climate activist and her 'own carbon footprint' issues: 'Why don't you practice what you preach?

British television host Piers Morgan earlier this week blasted a climate activism leader as a hypocrite for not reducing her "own carbon footprint" while telling others to do so.

The "Good Morning Britain" host targeted Skeena Rathor, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion — a radical, left-wing outfit that's been staging demonstrations in the U.K. to force attention on climate change.

What was said during the segment?

Morgan began by asking Rathor how she got to the studio — to which she replied that the station sent a car to pick her up.

"Do you have a TV at home?" Morgan pressed.

Rathor was clearly taken off guard, speaking with a halting voice while completely sidestepping the question.

Morgan continued to query the activist, who said his question was "not relevant to the planet's emergency."

Here's the meat of Morgan's point:

Do your kids use iPads or computers — yes or no? Can you answer these questions? Do you have air conditioning? Do they have it in their schools? Do you walk your kids to school? ... You see the problem with all this. You go on about "my kids can't get out of bed because they're all so terrified" — I'm not surprised they're terrified 'cause [their] mom's telling them every day that the planet's about to end, and yet I bet your own carbon footprint on all the stuff I've just mentioned is terrible.

So why don't you give your computer, give up your television, give up your air conditioning, walk your kids to school, get a bike to the studio? Why don't you practice what you preach?"
'Really not about individual carbon footprints'

Rathor defended herself and other climate activists by saying "it's really not about individual carbon footprints" but that climate change is a "systems-wide issue," and everyone is stuck in it. She's just trying to "raise the alarm" from within the system, Rathor said — and couldn't do so, after all, if she lived off the grid in the woods.

Morgan still harped on Rathor and others like her who lead "completely hypocritical lives. If you genuinely believe the planet's about to end, start with you're own carbon footprint ... you do one thing, and you say another."

SOURCE

Ocasio-Cortez Says Her ‘Dreams Of Motherhood’ Are ‘Bittersweet’ Because Of Climate Change

Let's hope her dreams are bittersweet enough to prevent her procreating. One of her is enough

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Friday that climate change has made her “dreams of motherhood now taste bittersweet.”

Ocasio-Cortez told attendees at the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen that, “I speak to you as a human being, a woman whose dreams of motherhood now taste bittersweet, because of what I know about our children’s future. And that our actions are responsible for bringing their most dire possibilities into focus.”

“I speak to you as daughter and descendant of colonized peoples who have already begun to suffer. Just two years ago, one of the deadliest disasters in the United States struck in the form of Hurricane Maria. The climate change powered storm killed over 3,000 Puerto Ricans, American citizens. My own grandfather died in the aftermath, all because they were living under colonial rule, which contributed to the dire conditions and lack of recovery,” she added.

Ocasio-Cortez said she made the international trip to the climate conference because federal governments “are failing to act on the climate crisis.” She took a cross-country flight last month to attend a climate rally in Colorado. (Bernie Sanders, Climate Hawk, Spends Nearly $300K On Private Jet Travel In Month)

The congresswoman previously questioned whether it’s morally acceptable to have children.

She claimed in an Instagram livestream in February that the “scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question,” she said, asking: “Is it okay to still have children?”

SOURCE

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

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

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11 October, 2019

"National Review" in legal trouble over global warming

The hard fact is this: We begin National Review’s 2019 Fall webathon against the backdrop of America’s most critical free-speech drama — Mann v. National Review. It’s our battle, yes, but it’s very much yours too, because the consequences of a courtroom defeat will be serious (an understatement if there ever was one) for all Americans. Hence we turn to you again for your financial support, to help us underwrite these critical legal efforts, on our behalf and yours, and also to help NR’s broader task of pouring unrelenting conservative fire on reinvigorated socialism, its full-throated advocates, and the apostles of Alinsky who prowl the world, seeking the ruin of souls and of America as our founders envisioned it.

Right now, the quite liberal District of Columbia Court of Appeals — which has refused to toss the case despite the Supreme Court’s clear and plentiful established rulings about free speech — has ordered this case to go to a jury trial. The seven-year process of reaching this verdict has come with a price tag of well over a million dollars. So far. That may be a down payment on the battle’s possibly enormous final tally.

The slow, meandering legal process (here is our most recent editorial, which provides the case synopsis) has nothing on the matter’s massive, looming impact on a fundamental right possessed no less by NR magazine editors than by every other American. Earlier this year, after all appeal options with the D.C. court had been exhausted, NR turned to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the justices to hear the case and to protect free speech. Our pending cert petition — which SCOTUS will rule on, possibly this week (a yes means it will take the case, a no means the trial proceeds in the D.C. court) — made several important points. Please do read it. But here is the heart of its argument:

Yet, in this case, the D.C. Court of Appeals held that a jury could impose defamation liability on a conservative media outlet for opining that the risks of climate change were being overhyped by misleading statistical analyses. Petitioner National Review, Inc. published a blog post that criticized the so-called “hockey stick” graph created by Respondent Dr. Michael Mann, a scientist who is a leading voice in the climate-change debate. The validity of the graph has itself been the focus of intense argument, with its opponents objecting to its cherry-picking of data and apples-to-oranges comparisons. The blog post at issue decried the graph as “deceptive” and “fraudulent,” calling its creation “wrongdoing” and “misconduct.”

Remarkably, the Court of Appeals concluded that a jury could treat those statements as “provably false” representations of fact and impose liability, without offending the First Amendment. In that court’s view, a reasonable jury “could” construe the statements as conveying not only a subjective and non-falsifiable value judgment about the graph’s legitimacy, but also some (never-specified) objective, verifiable fact about Mann’s conduct or his “integrity.” In view of that supposed possible construction, the court remanded the defamation case for discovery and trial.

If the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling is allowed to stand, it will mean this: If someone doesn’t like what you say — yeah, you — and doesn’t like your opinion, that someone, bogusly aggrieved, can take you to court, one that is specially scouted and selected, and there a jury will be empowered to determine whether your opinion is right or wrong. And on a larger scale, to determine the rightness or wrongness of . . . climate-change policy? Immigration? Tax policy? Trade policy? What’s next: your Second Amendment rights? Your freedom to assemble? To worship? Is it that hard to conceive that a jury in a cherry-picked location might hold, Constitution be damned, a respected creed illegal, an ancient dietary practice verboten, a sacred rite wrong, a venerable charity a hate group? When will habeas be corpsed?

Hyperbolic language, this? Nope. This process puts our rights under threat, our voice behind a gag.

A few weeks back, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn nailed the consequences of this fight NR is waging:

"In some senses the Mann suit may represent the perfect storm for litigation because so many consider climate science beyond question. The opinion of the appellate court, for example, carries the whiff of a religious authority rendering final judgment — the idea being that university faculties and other authorities have spoken so debate must be closed.

There’s also the venue. This lawsuit didn’t go through the federal courts but through D.C.’s equivalent of state courts, where judges and juries probably aren’t the friendliest to conservatives. With so many publications, think tanks and activists keeping offices in the nation’s capital, it isn’t hard to see how Washington could quickly become the venue for similar lawsuits.

The larger point is that while so-called climate deniers might be the first defendants, they are unlikely to be the last. If the D.C. ruling stands, National Review asks in its petition to the high court, what’s to prevent, say, Charles Koch from suing Greenpeace for accusing him of having funded a “junk study . . . loaded with lies and misrepresentations of actual climate change science”? Or Steve Bannon from founding a deep-pocketed organization to sue Trump opponents, and then shopping for a venue where a friendly jury might agree that an over-the-top opinion is a defamatory statement of fact?"

Whether the Supreme Court takes the case or it proceeds to trial in the D.C. court, there will be significant financial costs — above and beyond what our insurers bear — to NR. This being a mutual fight, we ask our readers, and any and all conservatives, and any and all believers in a vigorous First Amendment, to donate to our 2019 Fall webathon.

You can do this with assurance that NR’s combativeness is just as keen outside the courtroom. Look at some recent issues of the magazine: The current issue is an all-out take-down of Elizabeth Warren’s most egregious policy prescriptions; the issue prior to that focused on defending your Second Amendment rights; and earlier in the year we carpet-bombed socialism right after making a full-throated defense of free markets.

This place built and maintained by Bill Buckley — its mandate to defend and expand conservatism, to hound and excoriate leftism, entrusted by Bill to us — remains vital. The fact that it remains is because of the help of many over the years. That need for help remains. There are plentiful reasons right now to come to NR’s aid, to join it in the foxhole and the cockpit, to stand with it on the ramparts and at the deck guns. The enemies of our beliefs — and yes, they are enemies — are plentiful, financed, and determined. We aim to withstand them and defeat them.

Donations towards the huge legal costs can be made here. I have donated.

SOURCE

Californians Stockpile Booze and Ice as PG&E Imposes Catastrophic Power Outages to Prevent Wildfires

All is not well on the West Coast. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), California's main supplier of power, is shutting off the grid for nearly a million Californians. This, they say, is necessary because of the high winds and peak conditions for wildfires over the next few days.

According to USA Today:

Pacific Gas and Electric said power was shut off to 513,000 Northern California homes and businesses early Wednesday. Another 234,000 Pacific Gas and Electric customers will lose power at noon local time, and 42,000 customers in the southernmost areas of the company's reach could also go dark, the state's largest power company said.

The precautionary shutdown is expected to last through most of Thursday, and some areas could be without power longer as the utility ramps back up after the winds abate.

PG&E equipment was blamed for last year's deadly Camp Fire wildfires.

There doesn't seem to be any easy solution to the yearly wildfire season, and California policy has always seemed to work in opposition to fire safety. Environmentalists have, for decades, fought the clearing of underbrush that serves as fuel for these raging fires. Instead of doing basic maintenance, almost one million people will have to live without power. No one is ready for it.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that people are stocking up on liquor and few of them have safety readiness kits. One resident they spoke to said she "knew she was woefully unprepared for days without power. Despite living along an earthquake fault and within a half block of where the 1991 Oakland conflagration destroyed the whole neighborhood, Weld didn’t have a comprehensive emergency kit ready to go."

Californians are also pretty concerned about what the heck they'll do for entertainment. The unprepared woman told the Chronicle, "What did I used to do (before the Internet)? Board games, reading books, writing by hand?” Sounds horrific.

A liquor store worker, Paul Vasconcelos, told the Chronicle, "People are loading up on ice and water and booze. They’re going a little crazy, know what I mean?”

Well, if you don't have a first aid kit in the middle of one of the most volatile places in the United States, then you might as well get drunk as you die in a stupid accident that could have been avoided with some basic safety preparation.

This only solidifies my theory that the worst terror threat or natural disaster that could happen to America is a hit to our power grid. I would bet that 80 to 90 percent of all city-dwellers would die rather quickly. These are mostly people whose only skill is crushing it on Fortnite. Caring for themselves and surviving the brutality of nature without buttons that make things happen is way out of their wheelhouse. That doesn't have much to do with anything except to serve as a public service reminder that every human being should have basic survival skills. Earth is a dangerous place. Maybe instead of teaching fifth-graders every possible conglomeration of sex position in California, they should teach them how to survive a power outage, since this seems to be a thing that the state is going to inflict on unwilling people from now on.

The emergency shut-offs came into being in 2018 after PG&E was blamed for starting wildfires that had devastating consequences. One wonders if the executives at the power company ever thought of the devastating consequences that will happen to almost one million people without power. It isn't just the millennial dolts, who will most likely be okay, that will suffer. What about the elderly or anyone who relies on medical equipment that must be plugged in? What about the businesses that will lose all their inventory?

Wired reported:

A utility like PG&E is mandated to provide power because doing so isn’t just a matter of modern conveniences—it can be a matter of life and death. That’s especially true in the Golden State's mountain towns that are most at risk of catastrophic wildfire, many of which are retirement communities. The elderly may rely more heavily on medical appliances, and be more vulnerable to heatstroke without air conditioning. By preemptively cutting off power, you’re also potentially cutting off communication—if the power goes out and a wildfire starts, and TVs and internet routers don’t work, people could be at risk. Electric water pumps too would go offline, potentially hampering firefighting efforts.
That doesn't sound good.

The green folks are pretty angry about it too. Imagine how upsetting it is to find out that the tens of thousands of dollars you spent on solar panels will not help you one bit. According to the Chronicle, solar systems are also hooked into the grid. The only way anyone with a solar system would have power is if they had an onsite battery that had been storing it and even that wouldn't last very long.

Even experts like Daniel Swain, a scientist at UCLA, aren't sure about PG&E's plan. "Even if you prevent 90 percent of wildfire ignitions, the remaining fires could be just as bad or even worse,” Swain told Wired. “That still leaves us with the problem that the character and intensity of wildfires are changing. Even if we see fewer of them, we’ll still have catastrophic fires.”

In an effort to preempt catastrophic wildfires, PG&E is creating catastrophic power outages. Does anyone else see the problem here?

SOURCE

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Idiotic Environmental Predictions

Walter E. Williams

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.” Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970. This time it’s not about weather. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil.”

There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day, too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous energy claims, in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That’s enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.

Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear’s. The major difference is today’s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free.

SOURCE

Michael Mann, Katherine Hayhoe Erasing The Medieval Warm Period

Climate alarmists Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe have been caught using dubious, revisionist temperature data in their attempt, as one Climategate email author put it, to “deal a mortal blow” to the extensively documented Medieval Warm Period.

Before climate change became a political issue, it was scientifically well-established that a significant global warming event occurred between approximately 900 AD and 1200 AD.

For example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report presented a temperature history and visual graph documenting that the Medieval Warm Period existed and that it brought temperatures at least as warm as today (at pg. 7).

Multiple peer-reviewed studies provided additional confirmation of the Medieval Warm Period.

The warming climate of the Medieval Warm Period spurred abundant crop production, fewer extreme droughts and floods, growing human population, and improving living standards. The Little Ice Age terminated the Medieval Warm Period and brought devastating weather extremes, widespread crop failures, famines, plagues like the Black Death, and a contracting human population.

(For a good summary of the extensive benefits of the Medieval Warm Period and the devastating harms of the Little Ice Age, see the excellent book, “In the Wake of the Plage: The Black Death and the World It Created.”)

The existence of large historical temperature fluctuations, warmer temperatures than today, and many documented benefits of those warmer temperatures presented a powerful obstacle in alarmists’ attempts to brand our current modest warming an unprecedented climate crisis.

One of the many embarrassing emails leaked in the Climategate scandal showed how alarmists deliberately set a goal of eliminating the historical existence of the Medieval Warm Period.

Alarmist climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck wrote in an email to fellow alarmist Keith Briffa, “I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”

Also, scientist David Deming testified to Congress that a prominent figure working in the field of climate change asserted to him, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

We have often been told that the science is settled. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to scientific data and evidence invalidating climate alarmism. Mann last month favorably retweeted an assertion that present temperatures are the warmest they have been for at least the past 5,000 years.

Hayhoe earlier this year gave a presentation in which she presented a graph (without any scientific citation) asserting temperatures steadily and consistently declined for 4,000 years – without any significant variation – prior to the warming of the past 120 years that finally and mercifully brought an end to the Little Ice Age (at 7:41).

As documented above, the existence of substantial historical climate variations such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were scientifically well-documented and not in dispute before climate activism politicized the issue.

Alarmist scientists were on record searching for justifications to eliminate these inconvenient climate variations that blew gaping holes in their alarmist theories. Now, conveniently, alarmists like Mann and Hayhoe claim the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and other well-documented warm and cold periods simply did not exist.

An old sarcastic saying goes, “When the facts doesn’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Mann and Hayhoe provide perfect real-world examples of such perniciousness. Powerful scientific evidence supported near-universal agreement about the existence of the Medieval Warm Period.

Then Mann and Hayhoe, supported by little or no compelling evidence, waved a magic wand and made the Medieval Warm Period conveniently disappear.

Climate realists, however, will stick with the powerful scientific evidence, the long-established scientific “consensus,” the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the findings of the IPCC. Sorry, Mann and Hayhoe, but you have been caught red-handed.

SOURCE

Australia: Climate protesters thumbing noses at taxpayers

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has lashed climate change protesters who brought chaos to cities across the nation this week as anarchists and fringe-dwellers “thumbing their noses” at the taxpayer.

In an interview with 2GB on Thursday, Mr Dutton said the protesters had become a “major issue” and called on Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to tighten laws by introducing minimum mandatory sentencing for protesters.

Mr Dutton said the protesters “didn’t believe in democracy” and would continue to disrupt the community if kept being “given a slap on the wrist or words of encouragement from the magistrate.”

The Home Affairs minister said Queensland police had more important issues to worry about such as domestic violence and encouraged officers to recoup the financial cost they had incurred by trying to keep the protests at bay.

“The police need to take civil action against these individuals, they need to recover the full cost of the police response to these individuals, and they need to enforce this by the courts,” Mr Dutton said.

He said the protesters did not believe in democracy and doubled-down on his calls to scrap their welfare payments.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash opened the door to cancelling government payments after an activist described herself as a “full-time protester”. Senator Cash told 2GB “taxpayers should not be expected to subsidise the protests of others.”

“Protesting is not, and never will be, an exemption from a welfare recipients obligation to look for a job,” Senator Cash said. “If they’re on welfare and they’re choosing to protest, as opposed to attending a job interview, the answer is yes the system can identify them.”

Liberal senator Eric Abetz also weighed in on the protest action telling Sky News Extinction Rebellion should be renamed “Extreme Rebel” as they had behaved in a way that was detrimental to their cause.

“The behavior is in a manner that I think that turns off the vast bulk of Australians, what they are doing is an injustice to their own cause,” Senator Abetz said. “Demonstrate by all means, but do so without inconveniencing your fellow citizens.”

When asked whether there were similarities between the climate protest and that of Israel Folau, as both instances had seen the defence of a cause “disrupt” work places, Senator Abetz defended the rugby star.

“I believe that people ought to have the capacity to have freedom of expression, such as Izzy Folau should have,” he said. “Similarly, those that want to believe in Extinction Rebellion, they similarly can put forward their point of view, but you don’t do that by disallowing people from going about their normal commute”.

SOURCE

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

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

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10 October, 2019

IPCC Lead Author’s Research Uncertain About UN Climate Goal

By ROBERT P. MURPHY

Advocates of aggressive government intervention in the name of fighting climate change have posed as the defenders of “consensus science,” labeling any who dissent from their agenda as “deniers” with all of the baggage that term entails. And yet, as I’ve been pointing out for years, the peer-reviewed economics literature does not support the popular United Nations’ policy goals, of limiting global warming to either 2.0°C or the even more stringent ceiling of 1.5°C. Back in 2014, I used the latest issue of the UN’s own authoritative report—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—to make my case, and last fall I explained that the new Nobel laureate, William Nordhaus, had a career in climate modeling that did not come anywhere close to supporting the aggressive UN goals.

In the present post I’ll make my point with yet another striking example. I will show that one of the lead authors from the UN’s “Special Report” on the 1.5°C target is a co-author of a 2018 paper that admits the goal is difficult to justify. This should be shocking to naïve citizens and those who assumed that “the science” must all support the UN’s temperature goals. Yet as this example demonstrates, the UN’s new goal is so extreme that it’s difficult for even sympathizers to come up with a way to try justifying it using conventional economic analysis.

Rachel Warren’s Credentials
To set the context: Last fall, the United Nation’s IPCC released a Special Report telling policymakers various ways to (attempt to) hit the goal of limiting cumulative global warming to 1.5°C. The third chapter of the report summarized the recent economic research that had been published since the previous IPCC report (the Fifth Assessment Report or AR5). Rachel Warren of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (located at the University of East Anglia in the UK) is one of the lead authors of the chapter. Furthermore, Warren was author or co-author on at least four of the publications cited in the chapter. Here is an excerpt from her bio:

"Rachel Warren is Professor of Global Change and Environmental Biology at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, UK. Her research focuses on the production of policy relevant science related to climate change and sustainability. A particular recent focus has been the quantification of the climate change impacts that can be avoided by timely mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, in particular in relation to risks to biodiversity. She was a coordinating lead author of the 5th (2014) assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and lead author of the 4th assessment which was awarded the Nobel Peace prize on 2007. Presently she is a lead author of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C warming. She has produced over 70 peer reviewed publications and over 40 scientific reports to government departments.

...

Her academic background and training is in physics and the natural sciences at Cambridge University. After completion of her PhD she pursued an interest in atmospheric sciences and rapidly became involved in policy relevant research, a purpose to which she remains committed today. She has assisted in national, European and international policy development relating to combating stratospheric ozone depletion, acid deposition, eutrophication, and (since 2002) climate change. In particular, her former work at the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories provided evidence on the environmental acceptability of CFC substitutes, leading to inclusion of fluorocarbons in the Kyoto Protocol, winning the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratories Outstanding Scientific Paper Award."

As the above description makes clear, we are not dealing with a “denier” or a “stooge for Big Oil” here. Warren is a leader among scientists who are advising governments on various policies through which they can intervene in the market to reduce emissions from businesses.

Given her background, it is extremely revealing to see that Warren (and co-authors) have a 2018 paper entitled, “The Economics of 1.5°C Climate Change.” Now because I know just how ludicrous (given standard modeling assumptions) this latest UN target is, I was curious to see how Warren and her co-authors could possibly try to justify it.

The reader can hopefully appreciate my shock when I read the first two sentences from the Abstract of their paper: “The economic case for limiting warming to 1.5°C is unclear, due to manifold uncertainties. However, it cannot be ruled out that the 1.5°C target passes a cost-benefit test.”

The skeptical reader should go ahead and click through to read the quote in context; I’m being completely fair. Believe it or not, the authors—including a Lead Author on the UN Special Report which advises governments on how to hit the 1.5°C limit—are arguing that because we understand this area so poorly, for all we know the UN target makes economic sense.

Is that the slam-dunk “consensus science” that citizens have been assured undergirds the suggested power grabs? Hardly. As I have been warning readers for years, the case for a carbon tax is far weaker than they’ve been led to believe.

Conclusion

One of the standard talking points among progressives is that the right-wing obfuscation machine will hide behind “uncertainty” in order to stall necessary action on climate change. And yet in this latest episode, the tables have turned. As Rachel Warren—a Lead Author on several important IPCC reports—and her co-authors argued in a 2018 paper, the uncertainty in our understanding keeps alive the possibility that the latest UN climate goal might pass a cost/benefit test after all.

SOURCE

Forbes ignores record crop production in the name of global warming

The climate alarmist echo chamber must have decided that this week will be national crop production alarmism week. As of Monday morning at 7:00 am Eastern, the top items for a Google News search on “climate change” are top-heavy with articles asserting global warming is destroying crop production all over the world. Yet the science is soundly settled and nothing could be farther from the truth.

In an article titled, “What You Can Do To Increase Food Security In The Face Of Climate Change,” Forbes columnist Joan Michelson writes, “Yes, climate change affects what you eat; you need look no further than how extreme weather and droughts have destroyed harvests and increased produce prices.”

Yet global crop yields are setting new records, yet again this year. This follows the past six years being the six highest years for crop production in human history. In fact, crop yields per acre are rising all over the world, setting new records almost every year. The facts demonstrate the complete opposite of Forbes lies about climate change destroying harvests, creating food shortages, and raising food prices.

The columnists at always-alarmist Forbes have developed a perfect recipe for manufacturing a climate crisis. Don’t worry about the facts; just make stuff up.

SOURCE

German Environmental Cofounder Calls Climate Movement Hysterical, Overhyped

Yesterday, the online Hamburg Abendblatt published an interview with Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt on the recent climate demonstrations and alarmism.

Vahrenholt calls the demonstrations and demands “over-the-top”, and a real threat to the economy. He says the climate models are unreliable and predictions of great warming “absurd.”

Vehrenholt is one of the founders of Germany’s modern environmental movement, the founder of the country’s largest renewable energy company, Innogy and a member of Germany’s SPD socialist parties.

Lately, the retired professor has become renegade among his peers by criticizing the “over-the-top climate debate” and warning against “hasty reforms.”

Vahrenholt tells the Abendblatt the climate debate has become hysterical and that in fact “we don’t have a climate emergency.”

He adds: “If Greta Thunberg’s demands are implemented, global prosperity and development will be massively endangered.”

Vahrenholt is one of the more prominent signatories of the letter to the UN: “There is no climate emergency.”

In the interview with the Abendblatt, Vahrenholt rejects Thunberg’s bleak world view, noting that human society has markedly improved on almost every front over the recent decades.

“The number of hungry people in the world has halved, life expectancy has doubled, and infant mortality has been reduced to tenths. These successes have been largely due to the supply of energy for electricity, heat, transport, and nutrition,” said Vahrenholt.

When asked why so few German scientists (12) signed a letter to the UN, Vahrenholt told the Abendblatt: “People no longer dare to express themselves differently.”

The German chemistry professor says spreading panic and fear is “irresponsible” and that we should: “Stop scaring the children – they are already getting delusions.”

Vahrenholt then tells the Abendblatt that “we have until the end of the century” to tackle greenhouse emissions – and not 12 years – and that the situation is nowhere near as serious as the alarmist voices claim it is.

Moreover, Vahrenholt reminds that the models still – which serve as the basis for the panic – have a long way to go before being reliable: “Many climate models have been shown to show too much warming and cannot reproduce the fluctuations of the past because they know only one factor: CO2.”

Later in the interview, he asks:

“What are we to think of models that neither reproduce the Little Ice Age nor the Medieval Warm Period – when it was about as warm as it is today?”

In other words: If they don’t even work for the past, then they are completely unreliable for the future.

SOURCE

Was Venus once warm and wet? New study of lava flow suggests not

A new study of the Ovda Fluctus lava flow on Venus indicates that it is made of basaltic lava. This discovery weakens the notion that Venus might once have been Earth-like with an ancient ocean of liquid water.

Previous studies suggested that early Venus was once warm and wet based on the chemistry of its atmosphere and the presence of highlands. These highlands were thought to be formed of granitic rock, like Earth's continents, which required oceans of water to form.

Scientists at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), including undergraduate student intern Frank Wroblewski from Northland College, find that a volcanic flow on Venus' Ovda Regio highlands plateau is composed of basaltic lava, calling into question the idea that the planet might once have been Earth-like with an ancient ocean of liquid water.

The LPI team re-mapped the Ovda Fluctus lava flow using radar data. They discovered that the flow is not granitic as was expected from its location, but is more likely made up of basalt rock which can form with or without water. The result has potentially significant implications for the evolutionary history of Venus. The new map and results are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

"We know so little about Venus' surface," says team member Dr. Allan Treiman, a Universities Space Research Association (USRA) scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI). "If the Ovda Regio highlands are made of basaltic rock as is most of Venus, they were likely squeezed up to their current heights by internal forces, possibly like mountains which result from plate tectonics on Earth.

SOURCE

Australia: Protesters to be sent straight to JAIL under new laws after reports of Extinction Rebellion activists using 'booby traps'

Protesters could be jailed for two years under new laws after Extinction Rebellion activists were accused of booby-trapping devices with wire, metal and glass.

The controversial environmental group was condemned by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk today after weeks of disruptive demonstrations besieged Brisbane.

On Tuesday, 29 protesters were charged after blocking roads, chaining themselves to fences and attaching themselves to devices such as drums filled with cement.

Among the protesters was Paul Jukes, 49, who suspended himself in a hammock from Brisbane's Story Bridge, demanding Ms Palaszczuk declare a climate emergency.

Ms Palaszczuk said the new laws would be fast-tracked as activists continued to put their own lives at risk and drain valuable police and emergency services resources.

'Enough is enough ... Someone is going to get hurt,' she told The Courier Mail. 'I say to protesters, what if it was your mother or grandmother that was held up from getting to hospital because of your actions, blocking streets?

'It's time to get these laws passed. We will bypass the normal submissions period and get them promulgated within days.'

But human rights advocates said the regulations could erode the public's right to peaceful protest.

The Human Rights Law Centre says the government has a legitimate interest in ensuring peaceful protests but that this law goes too far.

'Ms Palaszczuk has reportedly refused to produce evidence to support her claims that people have deliberately created lock-on devices that could harm police and emergency services attempting to remove them,' lawyer Alice Drury said.

'This proposed law could impose harsh prison sentences for their use in very broad circumstances, even if it's just blocking a footpath.

'We are seeing a clear and worrying wave of laws from governments across Australia that restrict people's ability to stand together and speak out on issues they care deeply about.'

But state Police Minister Mark Ryan said there was plenty of anecdotal evidence that protesters were 'booby-trapping' devices with wire, metal and glass.

'We've received advice from police that they have found evidence of materials in these devices that could cause harm,' he told ABC radio.

'What we're seeing is an escalation in some activities and of course the laws have to be nimble to respond to these escalating tactics.'

The protests are part of a week of action across Australia by activists trying to force the federal and state governments to declare a 'climate emergency' and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero within five years.

Many of them will appear in court.

SOURCE

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

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

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9 October, 2019

In the latest ‘driving is bad for us’ news, it turns out car tires may be one of the biggest sources of microplastics seeping into our oceans

But are microplastics bad for us? No evidence that they are. They are just another form of dust

Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem — turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters.

That is one of many new findings, released Wednesday, from the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California. Rainfall washes more than 7 trillion pieces of microplastics,much of it tire particles left behind on streets, into San Francisco Bay each year — an amount 300 times greater than what comes from microfibers washing off polyester clothes, microbeads from beauty products and the many other plastics washing down our sinks, sewers and storm drains.

These tiny plastics, invisible to the naked eye, have been vilified for tainting water and wildlife but are notoriously difficult to study. They’re everywhere and seemingly come from everywhere. They wash into the ocean in all different shapes and sizes, many covered with dyes and chemicals. Scientists and labs across the state, the nation and the world haven’t even agreed on how exactly to measure or sample or study them.

So a team of researchers, led by the San Francisco Estuary Institute and the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit research group focused on reducing plastics pollution, set off to create an inventory of sorts to identify all the ways these different microplastics were getting into San Francisco Bay. They analyzed hundreds of samples from fish, sediment, surface water, wastewater and stormwater runoff and tried to trace the origins of all these particles.

Mark Gold, who heads the state’s Ocean Protection Council and was recently appointed the state’s deputy secretary for ocean and coastal policy, said he was surprised that car tire particles were such a large source.

“I’m so used to thinking of the toxics that come from urban runoff and not the actual physical particles from something like tire dust,” said Gold, who has worked for 30 years on cleaning up California’s beaches and oceans from toxic chemicals. “But the sheer number of particles … the scope and scale of this problem makes you realize that this is something that’s definitely worth looking at a great deal more seriously.”

Once plastic enters the environment, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces but never goes away. Thetiny particles make their way into the ocean and the stomachs of marine animals, and ultimately the food and water that people consume.

A recent UC Davis study sampled seafood sold at markets in Half Moon Bay, Calif., and found that one-quarter of the fish and one-third of the shellfish contained plastic debris. A survey comparing 150 tap-water samples from five continents found synthetic microfibers in almost every sample — 94% in the United States.

Microplastics have been found in Lake Tahoe, in the deep, deep ocean — even in the Arctic, one of the most remote regions in the world. A scientific review of 52 studies recently concluded that humans on average consume a credit card’s worth of microplastic each week. The European Union is trying to classify microplastics as a contaminant that is unsafe at any level of discharge.

“We’re using more and more plastic, and it’s showing up as a footprint on the seafloor,” said Jennifer Brandon, a microplastics biologist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography whose research found that since the 1940s, the amount of microscopic plastics has doubled about every 15 years. “It begs the question: Is this what our civilization is going to be remembered for?”

Microplastics are commonly defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters and classified into five general categories: foam; “spheres or pellets,” such as microbeads; jagged “fragments” from larger plastic debris; “film,” such as broken-down plastic bags and wraps; and “fibers,” from the likes of textiles, fishing gear and even cigarette filters. Rubber is also considered plastic, both natural (isoprene) and synthetic (styrene butadiene).

These particles often contain harmful chemical additives such as flame retardants or plasticizers, but the diversity in size and chemical composition makes toxicity difficult to predict, let alone study.

What’s missing right now is a systematic approach to evaluating all these different microplastics. When every study does it differently, it’s hard to compare results, said Susanne Brander, an environmental toxicologist at Oregon State University.

As for rubber fragments, they can be toxic because of the fossil-fuel-associated compounds that they’re likely picking up. The San Francisco findings, Brander added, are a window into other populated coastal areas with so many bridges and roads crisscrossing the watershed.

San Francisco Bay is a good laboratory for investigating this emerging contaminant in an urban environment. Essentially a bathtub surrounded by more than 7 million people, it ends up trapping many of the contaminants before they disperse into the greater ocean.

In the latest study, a three-year, $1.1-million effort by a large team of researchers, microplastics from almost 400 samples were identified and analyzed with microscopes, tweezers and lasers in an ecotoxicology lab at the University of Toronto.

By establishing new standards for doing a large-scale study of a major estuary andcreating a baseline for all these diverse plastics, scientists found clues to where all the particles were coming from.

“We wanted to come up with methods that could be duplicated anywhere in North America — to measure the sources, pathways and fates of those various particles … so that we could standardize a definition of the problem,” said Warner Chabot, executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, an independent science think tank whose board draws not only from regulating agencies but those being regulated for water quality, as well as public interest groups.

“The goal was to provide the data and the science to define and quantify the microplastic problem and inform policy solutions.”

Researchers collected anchovies and smelt from six sites in the bay and found they had higher particle counts — particularly of man-made microfibers — than those tested in more undeveloped areas. These prey fish are a critical link between contamination in sediment and seawater and the rest of the food web — an indicator of exposure to larger predators and ultimately humans.

Eight wastewater treatment plants in the Bay Area were also examined. More than 90 million microparticles are discharged into the ocean every day through the facilities, the report said.

Sediment samples were also collected from 20 sites. Scientists found that many microplastics do indeed sink and accumulate on the seafloor, and that the highest concentrations of microparticles were in areas that received large volumes of wastewater and stormwater discharges. Public attention and scientific study, they said, need to focus beyond just the plastic floating on the surface.

Scientists were also taken aback by the sheer amount of particles coming from stormwater runoff, as well as the “black rubbery fragments” that made up almost half of all the particles collected from these samples.

“No one had looked at all the water rushing off the streets during rainfall events to see whether that had plastics in it,” said estuary institute scientist Rebecca Sutton, the study’s lead author.

Researchers in California have been working on documenting the presence of microplastics since the 1990s. Studies by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project found that tiny plastic pellets, or “nurdles,” have become a ubiquitous presence in Southern California beach sand.

The SCCWRP is now working with officials across the state to standardize the way microplastics are measured and studied. There’s been growing movement on the issue since two state Senate bills, signed into law in September 2018, called for the State Water Quality Control Board to develop plans for quantifying microplastic particles in drinking water by 2021, and for the Ocean Protection Council to come up with a statewide strategy on the problem.

At a gathering Wednesday in Berkeley, top state environmental regulators, policymakers and scientists examined the latest findings. They talked about the need for better filters in washing machines to trap microfibers, and the benefits of more advanced filtration at wastewater treatment plants

Eliminating plastic at its source will always be the ultimate, though somewhat unrealistic, solution. While people can stop using plastic straws, states can ban microbeads and companies can redesign their shrink wrap, reducing the world’s dependence on automobiles is a tougher nut to crack.

“The answer to many of these stormwater deposits is ... thinking about public transit, getting people out of their cars — all the things that we need to do anyway are just exacerbated by this issue,” said Jared Blumenfeld, who heads the California Environmental Protection Agency.

“Making this report actionable is about legislation, it’s about individual behavior change, it’s about more corporate responsibility. Together, we can make a big change.”

SOURCE

Cleaner planet? Start with our filthy cities

Some of the nation’s politicians who are the most ardent believers in catastrophic man-made climate change are in charge of the dirtiest localities. These same proponents who are pushing economically and socially disruptive solutions to address future, theoretical climate change, do so while presiding over present-day homeless and pollution crises on their own doorsteps.

Those public officials have their priorities backwards.

If we must address climate change by reordering society, should we not begin with the streets of major cities that are plagued with chronic homelessness and the squalor, drug needles and other filth left behind?

There were nearly 553,000 homeless people in the United States in 2018, according to the latest annual report on the subject by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Of this total number, more than one-third were in “unsheltered locations,” that is, living on the streets, alleyways or abandoned buildings, while most were staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs.

Nearly 25 percent of homeless people are in New York City and Los Angeles. California, with the nation’s largest state population, has four of the seven urban areas with the most homelessness.

These two states have public officials who are some of the biggest promoters of extreme environmental policies, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Mayor de Blasio is a staunch supporter of a national Green New Deal, and successfully pushed a New York City version last spring. But, he also has presided over growing homelessness and ongoing deplorable conditions in public housing, documented by the City Comptroller.

Mayor Garcetti just launched his own L.A. version of a Green New Deal, while the city’s growing homeless crisis is resulting in diseases thought to be eradicated, including at least 124 cases of Typhus and fears of a return of bubonic plague.

While L.A.’s homeless population was climbing and rare disease spreading, the mayor received a “Climate Protection Award” by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, given to him at the organization’s junket last year, held in Honolulu.

Gov. Newsom last month attended the United Nation’s Climate Action Summit in New York and proclaimed he was “embarrassed…[and] absolutely humiliated” by the Trump administration’s refusal to embrace climate alarmism. Evidently, the governor feels no such embarrassment or humiliation over his state’s tragic human suffering from homelessness, pervasive litter and piles of human excrement in some of its largest urban areas.

It has gotten so bad that officials in the greater Los Angeles area last week demanded Gov. Newsom declare a “state of emergency” to enable public funds be diverted from natural disaster relief to address the homeless crisis.

Mitigating and solving homelessness is complicated, but hardly impossible. It takes strong leadership and focus to tackle the myriad of issues that contribute to homelessness, including removing such victims from the streets. This may require expanding shelters, drug treatment and mental health wards. It also requires reversing the relaxation of criminal penalties for “non-violent” drug dealers and enforcing anti-loitering laws.

Dealing effectively with homelessness further entails increasing housing capacity by removing restrictive zoning and rent control laws, the latter of which provide disincentives for private construction of affordable housing. These restrictions, especially rent control, lead to dilapidated buildings and raise rents of buildings outside such controls. Nonetheless, both New York and California recently approved statewide rent control laws, which likely will restrict housing development and worsen homelessness.

Fixing the homeless crisis in New York, California and so many other places would provide real, immediate benefits to people, starting with the homeless, but also the residents and tourists trying to avoid them and the accumulated garbage.

Unfortunately, too many politicians would rather spout climate alarmism, promise to face down a theoretical “existential threat” to the planet in the distant future, and propose grandiose, unwarranted, and counterproductive policies. This is all rhetoric and vapid promises that help no one – especially the present-day homeless population suffering daily in the streets of progressive cities.

SOURCE

NYT: Millionaire money pours into climate alarmism

In yet another blow to the choreographed deception that big money skews the climate change debate to benefit skeptics, the New York Times published an article last week documenting millionaire money funding disruptive climate activism.

Dubbed the Climate Emergency Fund, organized campaigns to disrupt society via climate protests have raised more than $1 million from Daddy Warbucks families like the Gettys and the Kennedys.

According to the Times, “The grants have been welcome, said Roger Hallam, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, in a telephone interview from England. ‘My understanding is, unsurprisingly, some of the rich people are intelligent enough to do the basic maths [sic] and realize we’re heading toward extinction.’ Climate change, he said, makes strong protest reasonable, even necessary.”

But apparently Hallam is not “intelligent enough” to understand what most first-graders know; that “maths” is not a word.

It is hard to decide which is worse. Is it worse that alarmists and their media lapdogs keep peddling the laughably false story that disproportionate funding benefits skeptics in the climate change debate, or is it worse that huge alarmist funding is promoting ridiculous assertions like the assertion that global warming is threatening imminent human extinction?

It gets still worse. Discussing law-breaking disruption perpetrated by the Extinction Rebellion group, the Times observes, “Mr. Hallam seemed to find these distinctions a bit fussy. The money the group raises doesn’t precisely go to someone to break the law, he said, but ‘it goes without saying that Extinction Rebellion is involved in civil disobedience, and civil disobedience involves breaking the law.’ But, he said, the group draws the line at destructive and violent acts.”

The Times adds, “The scale of the problem, he said, makes rebellion necessary. ‘Sometimes it’s common sense that you have to cause harm to prevent a greater harm.’”

Rich oligarchs give millions of dollars to promote climate alarmism and societal disruption. They admit they are causing harm, but justify causing harm under the assertion that the ends justify the means. And then the media vilify climate realist scientists and allege that big money is skewing the debate in favor of skeptics/realists.

Sure, whatever you say….

SOURCE

Hydropower works

The Australia-based ScienceAlert.com, in an article by publisher Carly Cassella, has a bright new idea. Since dams are bad anyway, why not knock all of them down (at least the ones that generate electricity), drain the reservoirs, and install solar panels in their stead.

Cassella admits that, at least for now, the ambitious idea is “just a thought experiment.” But not to worry. This new idea marries the hatred of dams in general (that has led to a growing dam removal movement) with the religious zeal of the ‘clean energy” movement.

But, you may say, hydro power IS clean energy. As recently as 2014, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz touted an agency report encouraging new hydro projects. The report estimated that there are over 65 gigawatts (GW) of potential new hydropower development across more than three million U.S. rivers and streams – nearly equivalent to the current U.S. hydropower capacity.

According to Moniz at the time, “As the Energy Department works with industry, universities and state and local governments to advance innovative hydropower technologies, the resource assessment released today provides unparalleled insight into new hydropower opportunities throughout the country.”

How things change.

Today, Cassella, echoing a growing number of critics, asserts, “While it’s true that hydropower dams are a renewable source of energy, they still produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and can be environmentally destructive and costly to maintain in the long term.”

She claims that “only” 1.3 million acres of solar panels would be needed to generate as much electricity as we now get from hydropower (about 13 percent of total reservoir capacity). The rest of this reclaimed land could, she suggests, be used for wildlife habitat, recreation, and agriculture.

Yet these lakes and reservoirs are already used for wildlife habitat, recreation, and water for agriculture! [Some might also note that hydropower is 24/7 while solar and even wind are intermittent.]

Another new argument against dams comes from a recent Washington State University study which claims that methane makes up 80 percent of the emissions from water storage reservoirs created by dams – none of which is currently included in global greenhouse gas inventories.

But an earlier Brazilian study [in 2007 by the National Institute for Space Research, INPE], while noting that large dams release methane into the atmosphere, saw this as an opportunity to capture the methane [aka natural gas] for use in electricity generation. [Of course, California has banned new gas stoves and sees natural gas as just as evil as coal.]

The Federal Emergency Management Administration notes that the United States is second only to Canada as a producer of hydropower. America’s dams produce over 103,800 megawatts of renewable electricity and meet 8 to 12 percent of the Nation’s power needs – and, according to the National Hydropower Association, 52 percent of the nation’s renewable energy. FEMA states that “hydropower is considered clean because it does not contribute to global warming, air pollution, acid rain, or ozone depletion.”

FEMA also lists the many benefits other than electric power generation of dams – topping the list are the recreational benefits they provide for tens of millions of Americans. Boating, skiing, camping, picnic areas, and boat launch facilities are all supported by dams. Lake fishing is yet another related benefit.

The mammoth state of Texas is blessed with a single natural lake (Caddo Lake), yet 67 manmade lakes and reservoirs enabled over 2 million Texans and nonresidents to purchase fishing licenses in 2018, bringing that state nearly $60 million in revenues. [Texas is third behind California and Washington State in fishing licenses issued.]

Dams also protect homes, businesses, recreational areas, livestock, and wildlife from many of the devastating impacts of floods. They also provide water storage for feeding livestock, fighting fires, and more. About 10 percent of America’s croplands rely on steady flows of irrigation water thanks to dams.

There are concerns over dam construction, some of which are arguments for dam removal, while others indicate the need for proper management. Algal blooms, invasive plants, sedimentation, the needs of migrating species (like salmon), evaporation, and saltwater intrusion downstream all are well known concerns, but the larger concerns cannot be addressed unless entire cities are dismantled and the urban waste (concrete, steel, etc.) returned to the ground.

While Cassella cites deforestation, loss of biodiversity, substantial emissions, the displacement of thousands of people, and harms to nearby food and water quality as reasons to remove dams and drain lakes and reservoirs, most of these are actually arguments AGAINST dam removal.

But, as the title suggests, the best argument against dam removal is that this boat does not need rocking. Nor, for that matter, do we need to retrofit every U.S. building or submit to any other hare-brained ideas.

SOURCE

Warning of 'Fukushima-style' disaster as Labor pushes back against plans for nuclear power plants in Australia to reduce greenhouse gases

A chilling warning has been issued of a 'Fukushima-style' disaster in Australia as the LNP continue to push to explore nuclear power.

Nuclear power is currently a banned source of power in Australia despite the country having the world's biggest uranium reserves, but the Queensland Government is looking to open a nuclear power plant in Maryborough.

Bruce Saunders, the Labor member for Maryborough in Queensland's Legislative Assembly, has slammed Keith Pitt - the LNP member for the federal seat of Hinkler - for his push to open the 'Fukushima-style' nuclear plant.

'Mr Pitt - the man behind it all - owes it to our community to declare where he sits in the widening rift that is LNP energy policy,' Mr Saunders told The Chronicle.

In 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was hit by the devastating tsunami in the region, causing a meltdown at the plant which necessitated the evacuation of all people in a 20-kilometre radius due to the release of large amounts of radiation.

It is considered the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power, behind the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the viability of nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gases from reliance upon coal-fired power plants.

'Angus Taylor has said he's more than willing to consider nuclear, opening the door to a Fukushima-style disaster right here in Maryborough,' Mr Saunders continued.

Mr Pitt spoke out against the 'outrageous claims' and said he had the best interest of Queenslanders when it came to cheaper and reliable energy. 'I want cheaper power prices not cheap political point-scoring from Mr Saunders,' he told the publication.

He stated that renewable energy sources are unreliable and don't meet the needs of stable energy supply. 'Renewables don't work 100 per cent of the time and there are businesses and industries that need reliability, so solar is just not suitable for them,' he told The Northern Star.

'I called for an inquiry into nuclear power to get the facts, to look at the new technology available and to have an adult conversation.

'I'm pleased Minister Taylor has asked the Environment and Energy Committee to consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power.'

SOURCE

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

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

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8 October, 2019

The Amazon rain forest has existed for 10 million years. It might not survive the next 100

This article starts out with a lie. Amazonia was extensively inhabited by native people within historical memory. Does any reasonable person believe that the natives would have built great civilizations in Mexico and Peru (Aztecs and Incas) and at the same time ignored the vast expanse of the Amazonian lands?

The Spanish conquistadores and the priests who followed them reported great cities in the Amazon basin when they arrived and they called the area Amazonia. In the warm tropics of Amazonia however the diseases that the Spaniards brought with them spread like wildfire, wiping out whole cities at a time. And with their civilization destroyed, the few natives who survived reverted to primitive ways.

And there is one legacy of that past big settlement that you can see today: black soil. The natural Amazonian soils are thin and poor so the natives had to fertilize them to get the most out of them. And a principal way of doing that was by fire. Any vegetation that came to hand was burnt to enrich the soil. And that produced the black soil we see today. And "black" soils are found throughout Amazonia today.

So most of the forest in Amazonia is actually a recent growth, not much more than 400 years old. And what can grow once can grow again. There is no tragedy in turning forest into farms. And once the loggers have departed, the land does often become farms -- thus bringing Amazonia back to what it once was. And it was burning that made Amazonia as fertile as it is today.

Fuller details of all that here . I reproduce below just the opening blast from a very long-winded article in "Time" magazine

Five decades ago Brazil incentivized millions of its people to colonize the Amazon. Today their logging yards, cattle enclosures and soy farms sit on the fringes of a vanishing forest. Powered by murky sources of capital and rising demand for beef, a violent and corrupt frontier is now pushing into indigenous land, national parks and one of the most preserved parts of the jungle.

Brazil’s new President, Jair Bolsonaro, an unapologetic cheerleader for the exploitation of the Amazon, has the colonists’ backs; he’s sacked key environmental officials and slashed enforcement. His message: the Amazon is open for business. Since his inauguration in January, the rate of deforestation has soared by as much as 92%, according to satellite imaging.

As human activity in the Amazon ramps up, its future has never been less clear. Scientists warn that decades of human activity and a changing climate has brought the jungle near a “tipping point.” The rain forest is so-called because it’s such a wet place, where the trees pull up water from the earth that then gathers in the atmosphere to become rain. That balance is upended by deforestation, forest fires and global temperature rises. Experts warn that soon the water cycle will become irreversibly broken, locking in a trend of declining rainfall and longer dry seasons that began decades ago. At least half of the shrinking forest will give way to savanna. With as much as 17% of the forest lost already, scientists believe that the tipping point will be reached at 20% to 25% of deforestation even if climate change is tamed. If, as predicted, global temperatures rise by 4°C, much of the central, eastern and southern Amazon will certainly become barren scrubland.

The fires that raged across the Amazon in August helped illuminate something the world can no longer ignore. Inside the crucible of this ancient forest, relentless colonization is combining with environmental vandalism and a warming climate to create a crisis. If things continue as they are now, the Amazon might not exist at all within a few generations, with dire consequences for all life on earth.

To understand what is truly happening to the world’s largest rain forest, TIME journeyed thousands of miles by road, boat and small plane this year to the front lines of deforestation. We spoke to loggers, tribespeople, environmentalists, ranchers and scientists. Despite growing outrage and threats by Western leaders to withhold trade with Brazil until Bolsonaro reverses course, on the ground we discovered the battle for the Amazon is close to being lost. The emboldened forces of development are running without restraint, and the stakes for the planet couldn’t be higher. As the official formerly responsible for Brazil’s deforestation monitoring, Ricardo Galvão, who was fired in August for defending his data on tree loss, told us, “If the Amazon is destroyed, it will be impossible to control global warming.”

The Amazon is 10 million years old. Home to 390 billion trees, the vast river basin reigns over South America and is an unrivaled nest of biodiversity. From blue morpho butterflies to emperor tamarins to pink river dolphins, biologists find a new species every other day.

The first humans migrated to the Amazon from Central America about 13,000 years ago. Up to 10 million tribespeople lived in fortified settlements, creating ceremonial earthworks, and cultivating fields and orchards. The Karipuna tribe roamed one enclave just south of where the Madeira River splinters into its tributaries amid rapids and waterfalls, in what today is the Brazilian state of Rondônia. The mouth of the Amazon sits 1,000 miles to the northeast. To the west and north the forest stretches into Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.

The European colonization of the Americas from 1492 saw settler plantations advance across the New World, bringing deforestation on a vast scale for farmland, firewood and houses. By the early 20th century, the world had lost trees that would have covered the Amazon rain forest at least once over, but its rain forest remained largely intact. Not so its inhabitants. As with many of the more than 300 tribes that survive in Brazil, contact with outsiders decimated the Karipuna’s numbers through illnesses such as measles and flu.

The 20th century saw more global tree loss than the rest of history. The Amazon, with vast mineral riches under its soil, finally came under threat. In 1964, Brazil’s military dictatorship took power and decreed the “empty” jungle was a security risk. It went on to create the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) to conquer the forest and make it an agricultural stronghold.

In the early 1970s, the government ran television ads for a new mecca of cheap land—and freedom. Bertola and his family, farm laborers descended from Italian immigrants to the south of Brazil, joined millions flooding northward on newly built highways. “Everyone had the same dream,” says Bertola, now 52. “It just meant deforesting it all.” Men like Bertola are the forward cavalry of deforestation. Where main roads are built, hundreds of makeshift logging tracks splinter offin a fish-bone pattern. The land is demarcated, often illegally, and lots are typically sold for a few hundred dollars by grileiros, or “land grabbers,” to poor farmers, who raze the forest and build communities.

Over time, electricity and phone lines arrive, and the jaguars that threaten the cattle disappear from the landscape. Once infrastructure is in place, wealthy tycoons buy up the land to build cattle ranches or vast fields of soy. Bertola and those like him track the frontier northward into the virgin forest.

Once in motion, expansion is relentless. In Brazil— one of nine countries in the Amazon basin—an area larger than Texas has been cut. Here in the frontier state of Rondônia, ranching is king, much economic activity is illegal, and state agents are bought offor outmuscled. Agri business in Brazil generates nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP, and the Amazon alone has over 50 million cattle.

SOURCE

Nature is not just for environmentalists

You don't have to be a green zealot to care about the environment

As the atmosphere surrounding environmental issues and climate change becomes more politically and emotionally charged, the criteria of what constitutes a good environmental citizen continues to narrow.

In days gone by, if you recycled, made a deliberate choice about driving an environmentally friendly vehicle, and composted your green waste, you were generally considered an upstanding and responsible, environmentally aware citizen. But in recent years, prominent environmental groups have narrowed that criteria considerably, to the point where anyone who flies to their annual holiday on the sunny beaches of the Mediterranean may no longer make the grade.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to the impression that the likes of eco-activist Greta Thurnberg and members of climate-change advocacy groups, such as Extinction Rebellion are alone against the world in the fight to save the environment.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Many people in nations across the globe care deeply about the natural world and their environment. While some may be sceptical about the extent of mankind’s contribution to climate change, or believe reducing carbon emissions to zero is unnecessary, many of the same people who hold these now scorned viewpoints also believe strongly in protecting the environment.

If you were to ask 100 random members of the public on any high street in Britain if they thought that policies should be enacted to protect fish stocks, encourage reforestation and ensure biodiversity, I would imagine a large majority would agree that they should.

After all, there aren’t many people in this world who purposefully want to cut down the rainforests and consign endangered species to extinction.

While the public is generally reticent to commit to supporting environmental groups as a whole, on an issue-by-issue basis there is often broad public support for protecting the environment. But instead of environmentally focused political parties and advocacy groups pressing hard for policies such as saving the rainforest or protecting fishing stocks, with the overwhelming support of the general public, the focus generally remains on an ‘everything or nothing’ approach.

Policies such as protecting fish stocks could be passed through parliament and start having a positive effect on the environment in the here and now. While their contribution to combating climate change would surely be relatively minor compared with the more comprehensive proposals environmental groups advocate, small-scale achievable projects would still be a step forward.

It is not hard to understand why so many people feel it is necessary to pursue the goal, say, of zero carbon emissions globally, given the potential consequences of inaction laid out by scientists. But environmentalists also need to learn how to take a win, even if protecting fish stocks or a policy ensuring biodiversity in an area of the countryside are relatively minor aims compared to the overall goals of environmentalism.

Despite the mistaken impression that hardcore eco-warriors are alone in the battle to save the planet, there are members of the public who are ready and willing to back the policies and changes necessary to make a difference right now.

Rather than greens solely focusing on a great environmentalist crusade, perhaps a portion of their energy would be better spent pursuing those smaller-scale proposals the public tends to support. If environmentalists could only adjust their sights, and seek to win public consent for achievable proposals, they might be able to start saving the environment today.

SOURCE

The Real Problem with Greta Thunberg is Not Her Age

March 15 saw enthusiastic worldwide school student protests inspired by the passionate appeals by 16-year-old Swedish school-girl-turned-global-leader Greta Thunberg. Thunberg first came into the public light last year when she started a school strike on climate in front of the Swedish parliament. She rose to worldwide fame in January when she addressed the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Predictably, a lot of the reactions from those who are sceptical of climate change alarmism seem to focus on Thunberg’s age. Even Bjorn Lomborg seems to have alluded to her in his remark about how the predominant narrative about climate change makes children scared.

I disagree with this perspective. I believe that people in the age of 16 have as much intellectual capacity as those who are legally adults to understand the issues related to climate change and potential measures that could be taken to mitigate it.

However, if 16-year-olds desire to seriously contribute to important political debates, they should, as anyone else, do it without engaging in demagoguery and scaremongering. It is here that Greta Thunberg — in spite of all her genuine sincerity and passion — has failed spectacularly and made the legions of her fans, as well as people who may face the consequences of the panicky measures she advocates, a great disservice.

To get a taste of the content of Thunberg’s preachings, let us consider her recent remarks to the European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker:

We have to focus every inch of our being on climate change. Because if we fail to do so then all our achievements and progress have been for nothing. […] According to the IPCC report, we are about 11 years away from being in the position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control. To avoid that, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place within this coming decade.

There is no place for nuance here, no trace of uncertainty, no appeal to actual facts or pragmatics of politics, only the demand for total commitment and sacrifice because the absolute urgency of the our predicament is supposed to be self-evident, since none other than IPCC purportedly said so.

I would wager that it would be pointless to ask Thunberg any serious questions about the actual science underlying the climate change issue.

* To ask her how much the Earth has warmed so far since 1979 compared to computer model predictions.

* That the bulk of the recent warming occurred during the El Ninho stages of the ENSO climate oscillation.

* Or whether she is aware that the doubling of CO2 can only in itself cause only about 1°C of warming and that to postulate alarmist scenarios one needs to postulate uncertain positive feedbacks, whereas, in reality the net feedback may be zero or negative.

*That a lot more people die from cold temperatures than from hot ones, and that it is not the extreme cold temperatures that are the most deadly.

*That increased CO2 concentrations are good for plant life, and so on.

Let us focus on an easier issue and ask whether the latest IPCC report even in the (as usual) distorted summary for policymakers says anything remotely similar to Thunberg’s 11-years-left-till-Apocalypse-unless-we-act claim. Unsurprisingly, the summary — biased as it is in favor of alarm — says no such thing.

Thunberg seems to be wildly misinterpreting the statement on page 6 of the summary that “global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 (till which date 11 years remain) and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” There is no implication in the summary that this extent of warming may cause catastrophic planetary consequences.

Even if we take what Thunberg claims about the inevitable impacts of an unaddressed climate change at face value, she does not appear to be congnizant that the only viable way of reducing CO2 emissions is switching to nuclear power.

Writing for that famous den of climate change deniers MIT Technology Review last July, James Temple cited an estimate that if even California, with its abundant sunshine, were to switch to 100% to renewables, that would make the price per megawatt-hour skyrocket to $1612.

Instead, we hear from her the usual platitudes that massive emission reduction should be made immediately using renewable energy sources. Added to this are calls to abandon the focus on competition and focus on equity, as if that clearly had anything to do with climate change or handling it.

We must also reflect on the fact that Thunberg is considered by lots of people to be a global hero. She has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But is it really brave or enlightened to advocate a cause that has long enjoyed the status of a conventional wisdom? To which one can only sadly hear widely disseminated public objections from the likes of President Trump, who is, admittedly, as clueless on the issue as the most religious alarmists are, and who does not care about the outrage his remarks can cause.

It is sad if this is what is taken for Nobel-worthy heroism these days. Countless Venezuelans, for instance, risk their freedom, health and lives every day, protesting against the Maduro regime that has lost any semblance of connection to reality and plunged the formerly richest country in Latin America into the literal darkness of the pre-industrial age.

It is people like them who should be invited to global fora to tell their tale. Them, not a girl from one of the richest and most comfortable countries on Earth who is in too much panic because she cannot make herself actually read up on the actual science about climate change and the real state of the potential solutions.

To wrap up, the real problem with the climate change activist sensation Greta Thunberg is not that she is 16 years old. Rather, it is that she is a clueless fanatic who is considered brave and enlightened for promoting a cause that almost everyone agrees with without any study or reflection. And it is the duty of anyone who does not want clueless fanaticism to determine policies affecting billions to call it out as such.

SOURCE

Environmentalists need to check their privilege

Wealthy middle-class Westerners think nothing of telling the world's poorest how they should live.

‘You don’t have to be posh to be privileged’, said Joanna Lumley in insurance ads of the noughties. This could be a mantra for our age, an age in which the homeless white man can apparently be a beneficiary of ‘white privilege’.

While parts of the left have taken the idea of privilege to such bizarre conclusions as these, there’s one area where they don’t seem to apply the same analysis. One area, that is, where it is socially acceptable to exercise one’s privilege and tell poor people, many of them non-white, that they aren’t living their lives in the correct way. One area where the moral imperialism of the privileged is still fashionable.

That one area is climate change. Here, some environmentalists really show how much their own privilege has clouded their judgment. This is the case both domestically and internationally. In the UK, middle-class campaigners are happy to tell us all that we must use electric cars and avoid mass-produced food, while signally failing to acknowledge that such sacrifices might not be possible for many of the worst off in our society. They don’t tend to ponder whether a single mum in a low-wage job can really afford a Toyota Prius, or an organic farmhouse joint of Aberdeen Angus. They don’t really consider whether it’s reasonable to insist upon regressive taxes like the green levy or the ‘clean air’ tax, when these will inevitably hit the poorest the hardest.

The campaigners don’t think about these things, because most of them have not had to face real financial hardship in their lives. And so, to them, the idea of paying extra for green energy or cutting foreign meat out of their diet is a no-brainer: they can afford it. And they are so convinced by their own understanding of climate change that even if they did think about these things, they’d deem them irrelevant. They deem climate change to be an issue of such overwhelming importance – an emergency, no less – that everything else must be sacrificed if it conflicts in any way with addressing it.

The eco-privilege problem really reaches its greatest level on the international stage. It is here that comparatively wealthy white people are prepared to inform poor non-white folk in other countries that they need to stop burning fossil fuels, and in so doing kiss goodbye to a big chunk of their prospects of material advancement. It is particularly odd that activists are prepared to make such demands when many of them spend the rest of their time talking about racial inequality in our society. They don’t seem to see the irony of condemning Western imperialism with one hand, and re-enacting it with the other.

It is even more confusing when we recall the basic fact that Western economies were built on fossil fuels. So when we go and tell Nigeria that it needs to cut out coal, oil and gas, we’re basically saying that they don’t have the same right as we had to extract as much out of the world’s natural resources as possible. They missed the boat: we had our Industrial Revolution yonks ago, and they’ve come to it too late.

It’s a case of Western countries being able to do what they want, and non-Western ones being told what to do. Westerners who have grown fat off the profits of an economy driven by fossil fuels are telling those at the bottom they’re not allowed to do the same. Because Western environmentalists are so much better-off, they don’t see the sacrifices they are demanding from the rest of the world as a big deal. They are genuinely oblivious to how absurd their orders sound to struggling farmers in India or factory workers in Nigeria.

Surely this is the essence of ultimate privilege — that one not only benefits from one’s country of birth or one’s parents’ wealth, but is also completely unaware of doing so, and is utterly unable to fathom how anyone could have lived any differently. Too many environmentalists are blissfully ignorant of how hard life is for much of the world’s population, who haven’t had the good grace to be born into the middle class of one of its richest countries.

Such views as I’m expressing will no doubt be branded by many as right-wing. But there’s nothing more right-wing than a rich person telling a poor person that they’re being irresponsible with their resources. Which is precisely what the environmentalist movement is doing. This betrays a total failure to understand that not everyone has it as good as environmentalists. It constitutes the imposition of middle-class morality on to the lives of those who simply can’t relate to it.

So if we’re going to talk about privilege, let’s at least be consistent. It’s true that not everyone in the environmentalist movement is middle class or white. But activists in this country have the benefit of living in a society wealthier than most. Let’s be conscious of the vast number of people in the world who don’t live amid the same abundance that most Brits do. Let’s beware telling them how to live their lives. Let’s remember who we are, and where we come from.

SOURCE

Crippling drought ravaging Australia HAS been caused by climate change according to minister - after he stumbled when asked if he thought global warming was man-made

He's out of his depth. There is no way that global warming could generate drought. Global warming would cause the seas to evaporate off more which would come down as rain. Warming would cause MORE rain, not less

Drought Minister David Littleproud insists the federal government is acting on a major report into the prolonged dry spell in Australia which he accepts has been partly caused by man-made climate change.

The government has resisted calls to make Drought Coordinator Stephen Day's report public because it's headed to cabinet for consideration.

Senior ministers are yet to see it, with Mr Littleproud agreeing to wait until the National Farmers' Federation finalises its drought strategy before sending it to cabinet.

Mr Littleproud stumbled in September when asked if he thought climate change was man-made. 'I don't know if climate change is man-made,' he told the Guardian.

On Sunday, Mr Littleproud told the ABC's Insiders that 'there was nothing in Major-General Day's report that we are not already acting on'.

But Labor's agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon said that claim should be tested by making the document public. 'He should let farmers be the judge of that by releasing the taxpayer-funded drought coordinator's report,' he said.

Mr Littleproud said he '100 per cent' believed the science around human contribution to climate change, which is playing a role in the drought.

'I live it. This drought in my electorate alone has been going for eight years,' he said. 'We can't run away from that. We simply have to get on with it and equip our farmers and communities with the tools to be able to adapt as best they can.'

He said Australia had a responsibility to reduce emissions and would do so through meeting international commitments.

Additional support for farmers appears to be edging closer after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spent three days with Mr Littleproud in some of the worst-affected areas of NSW and Queensland last week.

'We understand this is going to cost more and the treasurer has been quite clear he accepts that,' the drought minister said.

NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall launched an extraordinary attack on Mr Littleproud after he toured through drought-ravaged Inverell last week.

The federal government has been calling on the states to look at payroll tax and council rates in drought-hit communities, but praised NSW for planning to fund dam-building.

The savage criticism left Mr Littleproud miffed. 'I was surprised by that. In fact, most of my comments have been that New South Wales has done the heavy lifting,' he said.

'It's sadly been Victoria and Queensland that haven't lifted a finger.'

Mr Littleproud also rebuffed suggestions the government lacked a long-term drought strategy, pointing to a future fund which will dole out $100 million a year for resilience and other projects from 2020.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here 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 October, 2019

Suffer the Little Child to Warn of Global Doom

Better yet: Look at the figures

Those concerned with the dangers of global warming were enraptured by the anger and indignation of Greta Thunberg during the September United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City. Here was an articulate teenager from the other side of the Atlantic, speaking very good English, condemning and challenging the older generations of the world for failing to save the planet for those of her age. Her life has been ruined, her future has been stolen from her, and millions are being left to suffer and die, she insisted, because people just talk instead of doing, and care more about money than mankind.

The villain in this drama about the declared worsening condition of Mother Earth is the profit-pursuing greed of private businessmen, who care little or nothing about the increasing temperatures and rising seas that threaten the habitableness of the planet for all life forms. “Man” is the criminal, due to his addiction to fossil fuels and obsession with mindless material growth. How dare you!

What happens if humanity does nothing? It will be the end of the world as we know it. The Day of Judgment will have arrived. We will live one of those great special-effects disaster movies in which all life ends on the planet. Be sure to bring your jumbo popcorn and mega soda drink; we will all be in the front row.

False Fears About Climate Change Worst-Case Scenarios

Earlier this year, Ronald Bailey at Reason magazine summarized, based on the UN’s own environmental report in 2018, what the worst-case scenario might look like if nothing was done to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the remaining decades of the 21st century:

If humanity does nothing whatsoever to abate greenhouse gas emissions, the worst-case scenario is that global GDP in 2100 would be 8.2 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

Let’s make those GDP percentages concrete. Assuming no climate change and a global real growth rate of 3 percent per year for the next 81 years, today’s $80 trillion economy would grow to just under $880 trillion by 2100. World population is likely to peak at around 9 billion, so divvying up that GDP suggests that global average income would come to about $98,000 per person. Under the worst-case scenario, global GDP would only be $810 trillion and average income would only be $90,000 per person.

This would be the global effect. What about the impact on the United States if nothing were to be done to diminish the possibility of global warming? Over at the Heartland Institute in Chicago, Illinois, one of its climate scholars, Stan Liebowitz, examined a widely touted 2018 U.S. government report, The Fourth National Climate Assessment, in terms of the long-term consequences of climate change on the U.S., which were asserted to be dire.

However, when Liebowitz looked at the data and the tables in the report, and did the math using the numbers provided in the text, he discovered the following:

[The report] estimates the damage the nation will experience from climate change in the year 2090…. Scenario RCP8.5 (8.5) … assumes the United States and the world keep increasing carbon dioxide emissions through the end of the century, approximately tripling their current yearly level….

[The report] estimates the dollar value (in 2015 dollars) of twenty-two different categories of potential damage in the United States from global warming in the year 2090…. The 22 categories include damages due to rising oceans, mortality due to excessive heat or poor air quality, damage from additional diseases such as West Nile Virus, and repair costs for roads and bridges damaged by floods or erosion….

Surprisingly, the total cost of the 22 rows of estimated harms is never summed up so as to show the total dollar value of climate-induced damage. Nor are those damages ever compared to the 2090 GDP predicted by [the report] ….

When the rows are summed, the total damages are shown to be $507.6 billion…. The simplest way to put the number in perspective is to compare this predicted 2090 loss with the predicted 2090 GDP, [and when done so] predicted climate change damages in 2090 represent slightly more than 0.7 percent of [2090] U.S. GDP.

Thus the damage from climate change in NCA4’s worst-case scenario, according to our “best scientists and experts,” is less than 1 percent of U.S. GDP in 2090. The ratio would be even lower if any of the advanced technologies certain to be created in the next 70 years were used to help reduce carbon emissions.

Accordingly, the findings of the report are clear: Under even the worst-case scenario, the harms from climate change in 2090, assuming 70 years of increasing carbon dioxide emissions, are fairly trivial.

Yet, here we are with a hyped-up hysteria supercharged by the impassioned declarations of a 16-year-old placed front and center on the world stage as if she is a learned expert on climate science pointing an accusatory finger on her shaking hand about how the world is about to become uninhabitable in the way we have known life up till now on this planet. And … how dare you!

SOURCE

Dear True Environmentalists: Fight Corporate Criminality, not Atmospheric Gases

Denis Rancourt is a Leftist nut but you can't fool him about the climate. See below

Corporate pollution and releasing of toxic substances should be treated as a criminal act, with full power to seize assets for reparations, actual reparations, not just punitive fines.

However, the planet and biosphere are not at risk of imminent collapse, and certainly not from CO2.

The “imminent collapse” fabrication serves powerful manipulators, and necessarily diverts us away from attaining actual democracy and fairness. In the words of Chomsky:

"For example, suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effect has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover—with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there just are no other alternatives around right now."

Rather than accept fascism or totalitarianism, corporate and finance criminality can best be fought from a position of realistic perspective regarding the end of the world, sober analysis of means regarding leverage for change, and focused political targeting against corporate rule without accountability.

History of imbedded doomsday narratives

All societies are dominance hierarchies, and all large, human dominance hierarchies have hired high-priests that construct and maintain the State doomsday narrative. These high-priests constantly instruct us on required beliefs and behaviours that minimize the deleterious effects of the alleged impending catastrophe. The behavioural instructions fan everything from diet, to hygiene, to dress code, to physical activity, to work ethics, to attitudes and morals, to child rearing, to political positions, to deference to experts, and so on.

It would be delusional to believe that this structural feature of society is any different than it ever was. In present Western society, the high-priests are the “scientists”, which include the medical doctors and all the “experts”.

This does not mean that science itself is not a valid and rigorous method to test and eliminate hypotheses and theories. It only means that establishment scientists are hired high-priests, notwithstanding the rare exceptions that prove the rule. It also does not mean that scientists never tell the truth. It only means that establishment scientists never harm or rebel against the dominance hierarchy, except by accident or solely in appearance.

These days, there is an industry of scientists that indulge in generating, testing and ameliorating ever more creative doomsday predictions, which are hoped to be of utility to the bosses. The said utility is often termed “societal relevance”. As an eminent example, we have the theory of a “tipping point” towards irreversible total collapse of the ecosphere, often referred to as a “species mass extinction”. The notion of a tipping point has also been advanced for planetary climate, wherein, in the absence of any non-human cause, one crosses into a global climate regime of constant extreme weather and flooded continents.

Whereas past planetary transformations have been related to game-changers, such as the advent of photosynthesis, the calming of tectonic (volcanic) activity, and so forth, and whereas the known recurring climate catastrophe of ice ages is believed to be driven by variations in solar isolation, the new “tipping points” spontaneously occur from the gradual changes of increased modern human or industrial activity, including: habitat destruction, burning of fossil fuel, population growth, and dispersal of toxic substances.

The new “tipping point” theory is not unlike the deluge of the Old Testament, which followed an accumulation of human depravity, except that no god is postulated, and building the Ark requires a centralized and globally restructured economy, handled by overarching elite private institutions, of course. War, disease, hunger … are all defeated under the same umbrella, death itself eventually.

The accompanying calls from establishment icons are often shrill. In the words of Prince Charles, in 2009:5,6

"If we do nothing, the consequences for every person on this earth will be severe and unprecedented – with vast numbers of environmental refugees, social instability and decimated economies: far worse than anything which we are seeing today … We have 100 months left to act."

While the leader of the most warring nation on earth, President Barack Obama, concluded in his 2015 State of the Union speech:7

"No challenge ?poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change"

The role of scientists

The scientists follow and are often not more contained than Prince Charles or President Obama:

Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet. As scientists who study the interaction of people with the rest of the biosphere using a wide range of approaches, we agree that the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life support systems is overwhelming. We further agree that, based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path. Science unequivocally demonstrates the human impacts of key concern: Climate disruption – more, faster climate change than since humans first became a species.

We maintain that humanity’s grand challenge is solving the intertwined problems of human population growth and overconsumption, climate change, pollution, ecosystem destruction, disease spillovers, and extinction, in order to avoid environmental tipping points that would make human life more difficult and would irrevocably damage planetary life support systems.

But today, for the first time, humanity’s global civilization—the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded—is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as ‘an act of suicide on a grand scale’, facing what the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental problems.

The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating severity, especially climate disruption. But other elements could potentially also contribute to a collapse: an accelerating extinction of animal and plant populations and species, which could lead to a loss of ecosystem services essential for human survival; land degradation and land-use change; a pole-to-pole spread of toxic compounds

The loss of biodiversity is one of the most critical current environmental problems, threatening valuable ecosystem services and human wellbeing. A growing body of evidence indicates that current species extinction rates are higher than the pre-human background rate, with hundreds of anthropogenic vertebrate extinctions documented in prehistoric and historic times.11

In fact, there is no science of a “tipping point” for earth biodiversity or for earth climate. No such testable theory has been elaborated. The entire notion of “tipping point” is hypothetical and tenuous. It is a product of bias to presume that a large and complex system (planet) would be susceptible to “tipping” rather than extraordinarily stable against internal superficial changes. A recent paper describes how one might begin to define concepts or measures that would allow even discussing the topic of “tipping point” intelligently, for realistic ecological systems.

Furthermore, even among scientists, still getting their bearings, there is persistent disagreement as to whether species extinction rates are higher in recent decades. A critical review concludes:

"Net species gains or losses should be assessed with respect to common baselines or reference communities. Ultimately, we need a globally coordinated effort to monitor biodiversity so that we can estimate and attribute human impacts as causes of biodiversity change. A combination of technologies will be needed to produce regularly updated global datasets of local biodiversity change to guide future policy. At this time the conclusion that there is no net change in local species richness is not the consensus state of knowledge".

Reality check

There is a large structurally imbedded industry of doomsday narrative. In addition, individuals are reared in a dominance hierarchy and therefore constantly seek messaging about fitting in. The result is that we adopt the State religion. Even if the State is occupied by an exploitative elite, we continue to uphold and follow any State religion that has been sufficiently implanted.

In this case, the State religion is that we are cared-for by mother earth but that our bad behaviour is poisoning mother earth and that we are therefore all at risk, unless we adopt the new stringent conditions that should be imposed globally. Non-believers should be rooted out and isolated. We should demand that all our peers and our representatives do what is proscribed by the State religion.

Meanwhile corporate criminality, while dressed in the colours of the State religion, will continue at an accelerated rate, and our minds and bodies will continue to be occupied.

I say no. To escape this trap, we must realize that the planet is, well, a planet, with huge response capabilities; that the planet is far more resilient and robust than we imagine.

Habitat destruction and industrial practices are grotesque, and these cause real and significant harm to human communities and ecosystems — more so even than actual wars in the present era … although not more so than so-called economic sanctions and exploitative nation financing. In contrast, “warming” itself cannot hurt the biosphere or humans, nor is the planet at risk of “collapse” from all the criminal practices. That is fabricated nonsense.

Our joint efforts should be on justice, attaining actual democracy, the elimination of criminal behaviour, extortion and exploitation, enforcement of reparations, enforcement of corporate transparency and accountability…

The problem is human behaviour against humans and nature, organized by an occupied dominance hierarchy, and the solutions are political; nothing to do with CO2, methane or anything else in the atmosphere.

SOURCE

Joe Hildebrand on why the climate kids can’t win

Even a Warmist can see that the demands of Thunberg and her ilk are impossible

In the year 2000, more than 200,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to support Indigenous reconciliation and demand the Howard government apologise to the Stolen Generations.

I was one of them. It felt like a great movement, both symbolically and literally, an unstoppable force.

This brings us to Greta Thunberg, the electric sceptic who has electrified both the left and right like a 50 amp fuse.

Amid all the breathless outrage and hyperbole on both sides, there is one question that remains unasked and unanswered: What exactly is she trying to achieve?

Of course we know that Greta wants the world to stop warming and world leaders to make that happen. But how? And who? And by what means does she plan to persuade those she has denounced as self-serving money-grubbing environmental vandals to act?

Perhaps somewhere in the millions of words that have been written and spoken and chanted and shouted by her and her schoolyard climate strikers this question has been answered but for the life of me I haven’t seen it.

All I have heard is a lot of talk about how passionate the kids are and how wonderful that is. But passion on its own achieves nothing without a practical plan to back it up.

Romeo and Juliet were passionate and look what happened to them.

The hard truth is that unless it is directed towards an effective and realistic goal, passion is pointless. And that is the most baffling thing about the whole climate strike phenomenon.

Firstly, whose minds are they trying to change? The hundreds of thousands in the crowds? The evil capitalists they shout about? The so-called climate sceptics in the commentariat? The general public?

It’s a fair bet that the soulless capo-fascists are unlikely to have a Damascene conversion at the hands of some angry adolescents.

Meanwhile, the climate sceptics are having a field day skewering the inevitable wild claims that emerge from any teenage gathering. Just ask a 17-year-old how many roots he pulled at Schoolies.

And as for the general public, they’re already on board. Poll after poll has shown an overwhelming majority of people believe in man-made climate change and think something should be done about it. Their only question is what that something is and how much it will cost them.

Of course pensioners want their grandkids to have a good life but they also need to pay their power bills. Of course workers in mining towns would rather not scoop coal every day but they need to put food on the table.

So again: Who is the audience? Where are the votes? What is the plan?

The reason I want to know is because like most people, I believe in climate change. I believe humans are causing it and I believe something needs to be done about it. This is because I know that there are people smarter than me who have done the research and the vast majority of them have concluded that this is a problem we need to fix.

But I also know that unless Doogie Howser M.D. was a documentary series, not one of those people is a teenager whose sole qualification in global warming is knowing how to skip class on a sunny afternoon.

And all of my climate change-believing friends are equally perplexed: How on earth did a rational debate once led by professors in lab coats get hijacked by hysterical teenagers in hoodies? And how do they imagine the conversation will go?

“Hey presidents and prime ministers! You know how you ignored that massive body of evidence all those scientists gave you? Well we hate you so shut up and change your mind!”

If anything, the history of the climate debate has demonstrated time and again that the more extreme and apocalyptic the claims the more damage it does to the cause because when they don’t materialise, it gives sceptics bucketloads of ammunition to argue that the rest of the data must be bogus too.

Just look at how successfully the right has used Tim Flannery’s wildly inaccurate predictions to rubbish the whole climate argument. Or how celebrities and political leaders alike were busted by real scientists for using old photos and discredited claims about “the lungs of the world” in their frenzied rush to jump on the “Amazon is burning” bandwagon. Hasn’t that gone quiet.

The fact is that managing climate change is incredibly difficult and complex and the only certainty is that anyone who thinks it can be fixed by a hashtag or placard is 100 per cent wrong. A close friend of mine works for the UN helping to set up emissions trading and carbon abatement schemes for developing countries. He is one of the best people in the world at doing what he does and even he struggles to explain what that is in language an educated adult could understand, let alone an anxious adolescent.

And a US researcher recently crunched the numbers and found that in some cases, the recycling process could actually produce more carbon dioxide than just throwing recyclable materials in landfill. It is a difficult day for simple solutions when even recycling turns out to be bad for the environment.

And so, again, tackling climate change is complicated and often counterintuitive.

China produces the world’s greatest volume of CO2 because it’s the world’s biggest country whose economy has been exploding. Its per capita output is far lower than Australia and the US and it is doing more to tackle climate change than either nation.

In other words, China is at once both the problem and the solution. In a perfect illustration of this, the global monitoring program Climate Action Tracker noted China is simultaneously the world’s largest consumer of coal and the world’s largest producer of solar technology. It described it as “almost paradoxical”.

Now I’m not sure if any of the millions of kids on the streets came up with a fix for this paradox but if they did, they really should tell somebody.

And so the question remains: What do the climate change strikers actually think they are changing? Unfortunately, it certainly isn’t the climate and it probably isn’t anything at all. But still, I guess it’s better than doing drugs.

The good news is that older and wiser heads have been working on these questions for years, sensible scientists and pragmatic policymakers who are constantly racking their brains and pressing the flesh to come up with workable solutions to a problem that is as excruciating as it is existential.

And they are probably the sort of people who stayed in school.

SOURCE

The Climate Crisis that Wasn't: Scientists Agree there is "No Cause for Alarm"

America, as well as many other places throughout the world, has witnessed mass protests, claiming catastrophic disasters if fossil fuels are not eliminated. However, only a very small percentage of protesters know the methods and science upon which they are protesting. This is dangerous to our society.

Foreseeing the potential for horrific political decisions based on inadequate science and mob rule, five hundred scientists and professionals in climate related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which strongly states, “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”

Thomas D. Williams, the Senior Research Associate at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, writes, “The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.”

Williams emphasizes that the essence of the Declaration is that general-circulation models are not competent. “In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as ‘unfit for their purpose.’”

The Declaration adds that the models, which have predicted far more warming than they should, “are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” “they… exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

Again Williams writes, “Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models.Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.”

In America and many places on earth, the human caused global warming models and predictions are forged with political ambitions and lusts for power that will result in enormous disruptions to humanitarian, economic, and political institutions.

In the United States, the Justice Democrats are one of many organizations that are manipulating the masses to protest. The Justice Democrats are strongly supporting the Green New Deal, knowing that the alleged existential climate crisis is a great vehicle to move America away from small and limited government to socialism. Saikat Chakrabarti, former Chief of Staff to Rep. Alexandrai Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), revealed the alarmist agenda:

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, Chakrabarti said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Chakrabarti continued, “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

The Justice Democrats and Mr. Chakrabarti are small players in this dangerous climate hoax. The real threat comes from the meteorologists receiving government grants that manipulate the data claiming that there is an existential crisis that endangers all life on earth. Tony Heller explains how picking the start dates of climate indicators manipulates the trend line to show a deadly worsening climate. Just two examples: The start date for Arctic Sea Ice lessening is 1979 which was the peak of sea ice thickness. What was hidden from the public and policy makers is that in the early 1970s the sea ice was less thick than today. Heat Wave Magnitude is the second example. The start date is 1960 which shows a trend line of increasing heat. What was hidden from the public and policy makers was substantially higher heat waves going back to 1900.

These deceptions and general ignorance of how the climate models are constructed have caused everyone vying for the Democrat nomination for president to pander to these notions. Senator Warren was overtly playing the most fashionable frenzy of the day when she tweeted, “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere.” Such political action would most assuredly lead to devastating economic, personal and political consequences to every American and millions of people throughout planet earth.

Wisely, the “European Climate Declaration” calls for the Secretary-General of the United Nations to organize a meeting of scientists representing both sides of the debate in early 2020. The meeting is absolutely essential and time is of the essence. I suggest the format should be similar to a legal trial, with discovery and cross examination.

SOURCE

Warning of 'Fukushima-style' disaster as Labor pushes back against plans for nuclear power plants in Australia to reduce greenhouse gases

A chilling warning has been issued of a 'Fukushima-style' disaster in Australia as the LNP continue to push to explore nuclear power.

Nuclear power is currently a banned source of power in Australia despite the country having the world's biggest uranium reserves, but the Queensland Government is looking to open a nuclear power plant in Maryborough.

Bruce Saunders, the Labor member for Maryborough in Queensland's Legislative Assembly, has slammed Keith Pitt - the LNP member for the federal seat of Hinkler - for his push to open the 'Fukushima-style' nuclear plant.

'Mr Pitt - the man behind it all - owes it to our community to declare where he sits in the widening rift that is LNP energy policy,' Mr Saunders told The Chronicle.

In 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was hit by the devastating tsunami in the region, causing a meltdown at the plant which necessitated the evacuation of all people in a 20-kilometre radius due to the release of large amounts of radiation.

It is considered the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power, behind the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the viability of nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gases from reliance upon coal-fired power plants.

'Angus Taylor has said he's more than willing to consider nuclear, opening the door to a Fukushima-style disaster right here in Maryborough,' Mr Saunders continued.

Mr Pitt spoke out against the 'outrageous claims' and said he had the best interest of Queenslanders when it came to cheaper and reliable energy. 'I want cheaper power prices not cheap political point-scoring from Mr Saunders,' he told the publication.

He stated that renewable energy sources are unreliable and don't meet the needs of stable energy supply. 'Renewables don't work 100 per cent of the time and there are businesses and industries that need reliability, so solar is just not suitable for them,' he told The Northern Star.

'I called for an inquiry into nuclear power to get the facts, to look at the new technology available and to have an adult conversation.

'I'm pleased Minister Taylor has asked the Environment and Energy Committee to consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power.'

SOURCE

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

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

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6 October, 2019

EPA Lowers Boom on San Francisco for Violations of Clean Water Act

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice Wednesday accusing San Francisco of violating the Clean Water Act, a 1970s environmental regulation designed to protect the country’s waterways and tributaries.

San Francisco is struggling to maintain its sprawling sewage system, allowing “substantial volumes of raw and partially-treated sewage to flow across beaches and into the San Francisco Bay,” EPA spokeswoman Molly Block told reporters ahead of the notice. California and the administration have traded barbs over the issue recently.

EPA’s regional director representing San Francisco noted that sewage is overrunning the city in some areas.

“There have been instances of sewage flowing in the streets and entering people’s homes,” Michael Stoker, head of EPA’s Region 9 district, wrote to Harlan Kelly Jr., the general manager of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Data also show high concentrates of zinc and lead threaten the city’s beaches, he added.

“President Donald Trump criticised the city recently for the violations, telling reports aboard Air Force One on Sept. 19 that “we’re going to be giving San Francisco, they’re in total violation, we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.” He added that “It’s a terrible situation.”

San Francisco has experienced an 18% rise in homelessness since 2015, and the issue is causing the streets to be littered with trash, feces, and used needles. An interactive map created in 2014 called “Human Wasteland” shows a heavy concentration of incidents of human excrement throughout the city.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler seized on the issue, writing a Sept. 26 letter to Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom citing multiple instances of California failing to meet federal water quality standards, noting that the problems are stemming from the state’s homeless population.

SOURCE

The Danger Of Being ‘Endangered’

New regulatory reforms seek to better align the incentives of landowners with the interests of species

BEFORE the ink dried on the Trump administration’s regulatory revisions to the Endangered Species Act last month, environmentalists and the media declared them a disaster. “These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity in a widely quoted statement. “For animals like wolverines and monarch butterflies, this could be the beginning of the end.”

Almost every past attempt to update the nearly 50-year-old law has been met with strong resistance, regardless of the administration in power—and understandably so. Public support for the act consistently ranks high, and the appeal of saving species from extinction transcends party affiliation

But much of the commentary about the new rules—which make several changes to the way the government implements the act—has nonetheless been misleading and overblown. Far from “gutting” the act, as CNN reported, many of the revisions are procedural changes. And some of the more substantive changes have a good chance of improving the overall effectiveness of the act.

As a tool for protecting and recovering imperiled species, the Endangered Species Act has a mixed record. On one hand, 99 percent of species listed under the act have avoided extinction. On the other hand, only 2 percent have recovered and been delisted.

It’s not hard to see why. The act’s punitive regulatory approach may be good for stopping destructive land-use activities that could push a species beyond the brink of extinction, but it does little or nothing to reward private landowners who recover species or restore critical habitat. In fact, it often does the opposite: The act imposes costly regulatory burdens on landowners, effectively turning endangered species into liabilities to be avoided rather than assets to be conserved. And because most endangered species rely, at least in part, on private lands for habitat, few species have recovered.

A clear-eyed assessment of the Trump administration’s changes would consider not simply whether the new rules are more or less stringent than before, but whether they are likely to improve what the act does poorly (recovering species) while preserving what the act does well (preventing extinctions). A strong case can be made that the new rules will succeed on both counts.

To see how, consider one of the more significant rule changes: the removal of a blanket policy issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1975 that extends the act’s full protections to all listed species, regardless of whether they are considered endangered (those currently at risk of extinction) or threatened (those that could become endangered “in the foreseeable future”). Since then, the same strict regulations have applied to threatened species and endangered ones, unless the agency issues a special provision stating otherwise.

The new rules will restore Congress’s original distinction between threatened and endangered species by tailoring protections to match the needs of the species—a change that could provide better incentives to recover species. Going forward, the Fish and Wildlife Service will decide on a case-by-case basis which protections a threatened species should receive, allowing the agency to issue baseline protections without unduly restricting activities that pose little or no threat to the species—including management actions such as grazing or forest management that could improve habitat for certain species but might otherwise have been forbidden under the full endangered-species protections.

This could go a long way toward encouraging species recovery. Before the recent rule change, landowners who worked to improve species’ status from endangered to threatened often received nothing in return. And likewise, once a species was listed as threatened, landowners had little reason to prevent a further decline: The same burdensome restrictions applied in either case.

Now, under the new rule, the incentives of landowners will be better aligned with the interests of at-risk species. Landowners can be rewarded with regulatory relief if an endangered species’ status improves, and they will have ample incentives to recover threatened species to avoid a more-stringent endangered listing. And, importantly, the Fish and Wildlife Service will be able to craft more-flexible rules for threatened species that encourage states, landowners, and conservationists to collaborate on recovery efforts—such as projects that permit certain land-use activities in exchange for conserving and improving habitat elsewhere—while retaining the ability to impose stricter endangered protections if a threatened species continues to decline.

As an example, consider the monarch butterfly. Populations of the iconic insect, which migrates throughout much of the United States each year, have fallen as much as 90 percent in recent decades. The decline is in large part due to a lack of milkweed, a plant that monarchs depend on but that is being increasingly eradicated by modern agriculture.(Milkweed is, after all, a weed.) The Fish andWildlife Service has until next year to decide whether to list the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act—a decision that could affect landowners across the country.

Under the old rules, in which all listed species receive full protection by default, listing the butterfly under the Endangered Species Act would be the surest and fastest way to deter many landowners from helping recover the species. Landowners would have no incentive to plant milkweed, which the species relies on exclusively to lay eggs and as a food source for its caterpillars. Planting milkweed would create monarch habitat, which could then make landowners subject to burdensome regulations. Harming a butterfly or its habitat—even inadvertently, as part of everyday land-use activities—could trigger the act’s full civil and criminal penalties.

Some landowners might even be encouraged to preemptively destroy existing monarch habitat, a phenomenon that has been well documented for other endangered species. For example several studies have found that timber owners in North Carolina began cutting trees earlier, or clear-cutting forests entirely, to avoid land-use restrictions that would have arisen if their forests became old growth habitat for endangered red cockaded woodpeckers.

The new rules aim to change that. In the case of the monarch, a less-stringent threatened listing could allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to encourage participation in voluntary conservation measures without creating perverse incentives that would undermine the butterfly’s recovery. The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, has been developing a habitat exchange program that offers incentives for farmers to plant milkweed. Similar programs could be encouraged or developed under the new threatened-species listing rules, which could be crafted to support— not undermine—ongoing voluntary conservation efforts. For instance, rules could be issued that allow landowners enrolled in a voluntary conservation program to be exempt from certain land-use regulations.

Another rule change reverses a policy that allowed the government to designate “critical habitat” on lands that are currently unoccupied or uninhabitable by a species. Such designations impose costly regulations and permitting requirements on landowners and generate plenty of conflict, but they do little to promote conservation.

In 2011, the government designated 1,500 acres of private land in Louisiana as critical habitat for the endangered dusky gopher frog—even though the species had not been seen in the state for 50 years and could not survive on the land unless significant modifications were made to it, including replacing the current commercial pine plantation with the historic, fire-dependent longleaf pine forest found there centuries ago. The landowner’s reward for receiving such a designation: a potential $34 million loss in development value, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own estimates.

SOURCE

Reusable plastic cups are better for the environment than 'swaps' - even wooden cutlery, Greenpeace report says

You can't win

Many feel virtuous when they opt for wooden cutlery over disposable plastic, and supermarkets across the country are redesigning their packaging to be on-trend.

However, Greenpeace has said that it is "dangerous" to think that substituting one set of disposable packaging for another is eco-friendly.

In a new report, the campaign group has found that wooden substitutes used by supermarkets cause deforestation, and bioplastics which decompose take decades to do so and release harmful pollutants into water and soil.

Those who think that by choosing compostable plastics they are saving the Earth may be contributing to landfill as they only break down in industrial conditions, and councils which lack industrial composters are likely to landfill or incinerate ‘compostables’.

Bioplastics require very specific conditions to actually biodegrade and they break down into microplastics which are harmful to marine wildlife.

Fiona Nicholls, ocean plastics campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Companies swapping single-use plastic for other throwaway items need to think again. “We can’t carry on using up land or chopping down forests to make cutlery, cups or packaging that gets used for a matter of moments, and could pollute our planet for hundreds of years to come. It’s grotesque.

“Businesses like supermarkets and cafes must switch to a reuse and refill model. That means metal cutlery, proper cups, water refill stations, and selling products in refillable packaging or none at all. It’s common sense.”

The UK's biggest supermarket chains have made switches to wooden cutlery and paper cups over plastic, but have been urged to encourage customers to consider reusables instead.

Mary Creagh MP, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, agreed with the report and said: “We need to turn back the tide of plastic waste. “But we should reduce first before turning to substitutes which have unintended consequences of forest clearance and creating ocean microplastics.

“Incentivising reusable materials, extending producer responsibility and introducing a deposit return scheme before 2023 would do just that. ”

Helen Bird from waste charity WRAP added: "Any packaging item has an environmental impact; and while we need to tackle the plastic waste crisis, it is critical that all environmental considerations are taken into account when selecting a material, including the carbon impact of their production and supply.

"Increasing greenhouse gas emissions need to be avoided, while ensuring that we keep plastic waste out of the environment and in the recycling system to reduce the need for new plastic being produced.

"Innovation is also needed to rethink how we deliver products to citizens that could negate the need for some packaging.”

SOURCE

Energy Secretary Rick Perry eyeing exit in November

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to announce his resignation from the administration by the end of November, according to three people familiar with his plans.

Perry, who had been Texas' longest-serving governor before joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet in 2017, has largely avoided the controversies that felled others in the administration. But his travels to Ukraine lately have embroiled him in the impeachment inquiry engulfing Trump and his inner circle, even though two of the people called the scandal unrelated to Perry's departure, which they said he has been planning for several months.

Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is expected to replace Perry, according to three people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss the departure before an official announcement was made.

Perry's plans after leaving the Energy Department were not immediately known, but the 69-year-old has ruled out another try for the White House after running unsuccessfully in the 2012 and 2016 Republican primaries. “I’m done. Quote me on that,” he said when asked about another presidential campaign last year, adding that he’d “totally failed” at retiring earlier as Texas governor.

But it's an open question how much of his retirement will be spent answering questions about the Ukraine affair, which centers on questions about whether Trump withheld U.S. military aid to pressure the government in Kiev to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Perry has drawn scrutiny because he led the U.S. delegation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's inauguration in May, a visit that came as the administration was trying to determine whether the new leader would be amenable to Trump's demands, according to a whistleblower's report that the White House released last week. Perry was a last-minute replacement for Vice President Mike Pence, who is facing mounting questions about his own role in the scandal.

Brouillette has been filling in for Perry at Cabinet meetings for the past few months, one source added. Many of Perry’s former DOE staff members — including chief of staff Brian McCormack and special assistant Luke Wallwork — have all left DOE in recent weeks, a source said.

Perry, a frequent traveler to Eastern Europe as pitchman for U.S. energy exports, was also a subject in the subpoena that House Democrats served to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani earlier this week. The subpoena includes a demand for documents and other communications involving Perry and the former New York City mayor connected to Ukraine. A second subpoena expected to be issued this week will seek details of conversations between acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Perry, as well as records from other current or former DOE officials.

Perry had been sharply critical of Trump in 2015, calling his then-rival's campaign "a cancer on conservatism." But Trump nevertheless tapped him to run the Energy Department — an agency Perry once pledged to shut down had he been successful in his White House bid. He came to D.C. wary of getting caught up in the sort of scandals that eventually forced out former Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to multiple people close to him.

Perry eagerly took the lead in Trump's effort to resurrect the struggling coal industry, but his bid to persuade energy regulators to establish financial support for coal power plants was soundly rejected by the bipartisan Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He shifted his attention to promoting U.S. supplies of coal, oil and natural gas to foreign governments, positioning U.S. energy supplies as a counterbalance to Russian and OPEC exports. Still, his earnestness often drew mockery, including his references to American natural gas as "molecules of U.S. freedom."

But he proved to be a successful promoter of liquefied natural gas exports, traveling regularly to Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and other Eastern European countries to pitch exports.

"We're going to bring our A-game," he said after a 10-day trip to Eastern Europe in 2018. "We're going to try to win every contract that we can, knowing that we can't win every contract and we can't supply every contract. But if we're in the game in a very substantive way, we will help drive the competition, which will drive down the cost of gas."

He also often touted the fuel's role in cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, even though he was criticized by Democrats and environmentalists for rejecting the scientific data showing carbon dioxide was the main factor in driving climate change. As recently as August, he ridiculed Democrats for living in a "fantasy world" in their calls for aggressive action to fight climate change.

SOURCE

Australia: How workers can SUE climate change protesters if they make them late for work - as Extinction Rebellion greenies vow to bring Australia to a standstill for a WEEK from Monday

Workers could sue climate change protesters if they are late for work or suffer financially as a result of streets being blocked, legal experts say.

Extinction Rebellion radicals are vowing to bring Australia to a standstill for a week from Monday, using militant tactics to demand the banning of fossil fuels and 100 per cent renewable energy.

Left-wing activists in Brisbane have so far been the most extreme, with their followers gluing themselves to the city streets.

In a taste of what's to come, one protester earlier this week dangled herself from a giant bamboo tripod on the busy Victoria Bridge, stopping cars and buses during the morning peak-hour rush.

Employment lawyer Joydeep Hor said individual workers could 'theoretically' sue protesters for interrupting trade.

'They would have to establish there has been some kind of interference with contractual relations or something like that,' the founder and managing principal of People + Culture Strategies told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday.

'It's not unusual for employers to take action against unions and protesters when there are strikes.'

Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts said individual workers and companies could sue specific protesters, provided they could quantify the loss and prove there were no ways to mitigate it.

'If someone causes a loss or a harm to somebody else, then they can be effectively sued for it,' Mr Potts, a criminal law firm founder, told Daily Mail Australia.

'In Queensland, we've had a number of people who have effectively caused significant delay and the question then is, "Can they be sued?" and the answer is yes in theory but in practice there are significant hurdles to overcome.

'You actually have to show and quantify the amount of loss or damage you have actually suffered.'

Environmental protesters face being sued too if they interfere with emergency services and put people's lives at risk.

'If harm is caused as a result of somebody's deliberate actions, then litigation becomes a possibility,' Mr Potts said.

'You have to show that that was in fact the specific cause of the injury.'

Australians are being warned to brace for a week of mayhem as Extinction Rebellion plans to disrupt major cities around the country.

The militant activist group are planning demonstrations in Melbourne and Brisbane to protest against existing climate change policies.

Queensland Police have prepared for mass arrests of Extinction Rebellion protesters seeking to disrupt Brisbane's city centre next week.

Acting Chief Superintendent Tony Fleming said police would use force if necessary. 'If that is what is necessary to open up the city then that is what we will do,' he told reporters on Friday.

Operation Romeo Arrowhead will be deployed to keep traffic flowing in the city during the protests.

Extinction Rebellion organisers have not sought police permission to march or asked for the roads to be closed. The protest group is running training workshops for activists to prepare for the mass week of protests starting on October 7.

More than 8,100 people have registered on Facebook as 'guests' of the 'International Rebellion Week'.

'Thousands of rebels will descend on the Queensland capital over the period to take part in major actions, occupations and disruptions - every day,' Extinction Rebellion said on social media.

On Friday, the protest group held workshops for experienced activists 'to learn how to take non-violent direct action effectively, safely and inclusively'.

The protests are part of a global week of action for 'international rebellion week' from October 7 to 11, aimed at bringing major world cities to a standstill.

Extinction Rebellion South East Queensland is planning to march from South Bank across the river into Brisbane's city centre on Monday morning.

Protests will be held in the city each morning from 7.30am to disrupt traffic and conclude on Friday morning with a sit-in occupation of William Jolly Bridge.

On Monday this week, Extinction Rebellion blocked Brisbane's Victoria Bridge in the city during the busy morning rush-hour when an activist midwife, Sophie Thompson, climbed a ten-metre bamboo tripod.

She listed four demands: 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, to preserve biodiversity, for the media to 'actually tell the truth' about climate change and to 'dismantle colonial systems of oppression'.

Extinction Rebellion is also planning mass protests across Melbourne next week.

They have vowed to occupy the city centre on Tuesday followed by an 'extinction rave' on the Friday night and a 'nudie parade' on Saturday.

Federal Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has threatened to suspend welfare payments to unemployed activists who are caught protesting instead of looking for jobs.

'Taxpayers should not be expected to subsidise the protests of others. Protesting is not, and never will be, an exemption from a welfare recipient's mutual obligation to look for a job,' Senator Cash told The Australian newspaper.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has this week also urged the community to push back against disruptive protesters by circulating their images on social media.

He also agreed with Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley's suggestion they should have their welfare cut off.

Extinction Rebellion is a militant green group with UK origins that was inspired by Swedish teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

SOURCE

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

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

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

4 October, 2019

Germany On Economic Suicide Watch

Spooked by big protests

Haunted by visions of a climate collapse, German government decides to postpone its economic death leap, instead proposes highly watered down climate-rescue plan.

FFF’s draconian demands

The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement is sweeping across Germany. Media reports claim more than a million people attended rallies and blocked streets in dozens of cities throughout the country yesterday. The demonstrators’ demands are clear: Away with cars, industry, meat and plastic, etc. In short: Economic suicide.

Merkel announces “climate rescue” plan

And spooked by the gains made by the Greens in recent EU elections, the German mainstream Socialist SPD and Conservative CDU parties have been scrambling to take climate rescue really seriously. “No more playing around,” they declared. Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU/SPD coalition government announced “an immense act of strength” would be taken to combat climate change.

From that point on Germany has been on economic suicide watch with the country watching in suspense.

No economic death leap

After having met some 19 hours in a “Climate Cabinet” meeting, the suspense ended yesterday as Chancellor Merkel’s government compromised and announced its long-awaited bold plan. The promised “act of immense strength” plan, however, turned out to be every thing but, and is light years away from what the FFF movement and climate cultists had been demanding.

Though the package promises more economic hardship and environmental destruction, the country at least as put off its economic death leap – for the time being.

The German plan forsees higher fuel prices for consumers, 10 million electric cars by 2030, a network of one million charging stations, an air traffic tax, cheaper train tickets, and more solar panels and wind turbines.

German industry already reeling from the Green onslaught

But already the now high energy prices and massive attack on fossil fuels and the automotive industry have been causing Germany’s precarious economy to enter a nose dive.

Germany’s once powerful automobile industry – the backbone of the country’s economy – is already reeling. The entire industry is under “massive pressure”, says Axel Dransfeld, head of restructuring at Brandl, and automotive supplier.

German online NTV reports how workers at a number of automotive suppliers have not been getting their wages: “Just how dramatic the situation is is shown by the appeal made by IG Metall [trade union] spokesman Thorsten Dellmann at an information event for employees: ‘Let’s all pray that money will come.'”

Greens, FFF activists outraged by government’s plan

The Greens and FFF movement in Germany reacted to Merkel’s timid plan with outrage. For example, green lobbyist Volker Quaschning tweeted he couldn’t eat as much as he’d “like to vomit” and that it’s “a black day for the climate”.

FFF German activist Luisa “Longhaul” Neuerbauer retweeted Quaschning’s comment. Many activists are stunned and speechless by the timidity of Merkel’s 100-billion euro climate plan. However, the student protesters are absent from the streets today

“Collective psychosis…”wild fears and demnds”

Interestingly, some German climate alarmists are becoming alarmed by the hysteria the demonstrators have been showing on the streets and by the sheer uncompromising vehemence of their demands.

One RTL West reporter, Jörg Zajonc, commented “not only is our Earth doing poorly, but so is our understanding of freedom and responsibility. […] What I’ve also massively experienced today borders on a collective psychosis, paired with wild fear and demands. Ever shriller, ever louder, ever faster”.

Like the 1930s?

Zajonc also added that feasibility is being replaced by ideology, and anything that disagrees is getting labelled “criminal and so must be outlawed”.

He comments that the nation is becoming irreversibly divided by the extremism. Anyone expressing common sense is getting labeled “an enemy of the environment, a denier, someone who needs to be morally punished”.

The demonstration shell-shocked RTL West reporter Zajonc says: “I can barely believe any of it.”

Zajonc summarizes: “Freedom, democracy, liberal thought – all of it being sacrificed .. […] and everyone is enthusiastically cheering it on. What a development.”

SOURCE

Russian president described Swedish schoolgirl as a 'poorly informed teenager'

Vladimir Putin took aim at teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg today, calling her a 'poorly informed teenager' who was being 'used by adults'.

The Russian president said the 16-year-old should 'tell developing counties why they should live in poverty' over her campaign to cut fossil fuel use.

At an energy forum today Putin told the audience he did not share the excitement about the Swede's United Nations speech last month.

The schoolgirl electrified the UN summit in New York when she denounced world leaders for failing to tackle climate change, unleashing the outrage felt by millions of her peers by demanding: 'How dare you?'

Putin told the energy conference, adding it was deplorable that Thunberg was being used by some groups - which he did not name - to achieve their own goals.

Chairing a session titled 'Energy Partnership for Sustainable Growth' at an energy forum in Moscow, Putin said: 'I may disappoint you but I don't share the common excitement about the speech by Greta Thunberg.

'No one has explained to Greta that the modern world is complex and different and...people in Africa or in many Asian countries want to live at the same wealth level as in Sweden.

'Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden.'

US President Donald Trump mocked Thunberg and Canadian Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier called her alarmist and mentally unstable.

Thunberg said their mockery of children who were protesting showed her message had become 'too loud to handle'.

Putin said young people who paid attention to environmental issues should be supported, adding: 'But when someone is using children and teenagers in personal interests, it only deserves to be condemned.

'I'm sure that Greta is a kind and very sincere girl. But adults must do everything not to bring teenagers and children into some extreme situations.'

Inspired by Thunberg's solitary weekly protest outside the Swedish parliament a year ago, millions of people have poured onto the streets around the globe to demand governments take emergency action on climate change.

SOURCE

Hydro power in Africa not a good prospect

Hydro power is a good way to generate electricity. In most political circles, it is considered environment-friendly because it does not produce carbon dioxide, and it is not complicated. Norway has extensive hydro and can claim to have very green energy, which Norwegians do.

Hydro is wonderful, in fact—if you have the water. Norway’s hydro dams are constructed between rather vertical rock walls, which form the famous Norwegian fjords and tower above Norwegian valleys. Many of these geological formations are permanently topped with ice and snow, which constantly melts into reservoirs behind the dams, and is supplemented by regular rainfall, keeping water supplies plentiful and the water height and volume essentially constant.

Africa is different, and its electricity supply challenges are quite monumental. The continent is larger than the USA, China, India and Europe combined. The standard common flat map projection is based on Europe for historical reasons, and does not adequately portray the true size of Africa.

Many African countries have very little electricity, and again a major challenge is their size. South Africa alone is the size of all Western Europe. The distance from its capital city Pretoria to its southernmost city Cape Town is equal to that from Rome to London, or New York to Milwaukee.

Many African countries are less than 20% electrified, some only 10% electrified. Some 700 million Africans still have no electricity or have it only a few hours a week, at totally unpredictable times. Many African countries also rely heavily on hydro power; in fact quite a few are 100% hydro. That is environmentally and politically great, except for those who hate damming rivers. But there is a snag.

African hydroelectric systems tend to involve very wide, flat expanses of water, and many African countries are rather dry. So evaporation off their reservoir surfaces is dramatic. The only way their reservoirs are filled is from periodic rainfall, not constant ice and snow runoff. Rainfall can be really “periodic,” and water levels can fall quickly when prolonged drought conditions set in.

In South Africa, large dams are built to accommodate droughts of up to five years. A year ago a number of South African dams were down to 15% of capacity. Cape Town started preparing for a drinking water emergency. Thankfully enough rains came just in time to stave off real trouble.

In South Africa the issue involved drinking water, more than electricity, because South Africa has a relatively small percentage of hydro-power. But as the moment, Zimbabwe’s large Kariba Dam is only 25% full and it is very important for Zimbabwean electricity production. They are very worried.

Many African leaders have very wisely said they cannot possibly continue to base 21st Century economies on African hydro-power. Mother Nature cannot be cajoled into arranging for more rain.

Another problem with expanding African hydro-power is that all the cheapest sites were used first. For hydro, one has to build dams where it is possible to dam a geological feature to create the dam. Due to Africa’s size, each potential new site is very much further away from consumers. Many also provide major engineering challenges, due to the lack of Norwegian-style fjord rock walls.

SOURCE

The Limits of Clean Energy

If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels

The conversation about climate change has been blazing ahead in recent months. Propelled by the school climate strikes and social movements like Extinction Rebellion, a number of governments have declared a climate emergency, and progressive political parties are making plans—at last—for a rapid transition to clean energy under the banner of the Green New Deal.

But a new problem is beginning to emerge that warrants our attention. Some proponents of the Green New Deal seem to believe that it will pave the way to a utopia of “green growth.” Once we trade dirty fossil fuels for clean energy, there’s no reason we can’t keep expanding the economy forever.

This narrative may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but there are good reasons to think twice about it. One of them has to do with clean energy itself.

The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs.

We need a rapid transition to renewables, yes—but scientists warn that we can’t keep growing energy use at existing rates. No energy is innocent. The only truly clean energy is less energy.

In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.

That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.

The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting sustainable levels by 82 percent.

SOURCE

The UN’s climate summit

“How dare you!” Even by her impassioned standards, the address to the UN General Assembly by Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish climate activist, was coruscating stuff. “How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.” She will have seen or heard little at the UN’s one-day climate summit or in the wide range of get-togethers surrounding it which made up New York’s climate week to placate her wrath.

The summit concluded with a torrent of new announcements. There was a commitment by 65 countries and the European Union to reach net-zero carbon emissions— taking as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they are putting in—by 2050. Germany, Slovakia and others joined an alliance to halt the construction of coal plants; 32 countries are now members. Companies and investors announced measures to reduce emissions from shipping, buildings and more. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, set a new 450-gigawatt target for his country’s renewable-energy capacity, more than five times the current level. The UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, professed himself pleased: “Today, in this hall, the world saw clear ambition and concrete initiatives.”

Some announcements were promises of future announcements. Fully 59 countries said that they would shortly be unveiling more ambitious commitments under the Paris agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures “well below” 2°C above those in pre-industrial times; a global round of such increased commitments is to be negotiated next year.

Even if all the pledges are acted on, though, the gap between what the summit promised and what needs to be done remains a chasm. If Mr Modi were to quintuple India’s renewable power capacity over 11 years, that would represent an annual growth no higher than that of renewable generation worldwide in the decade 2007-17—and he said nothing about reining in the support that India’s state-owned banks offer coal companies. India has made no commitment to reach net-zero by 2050 or at any other time—any more than America, China or Russia has.

Away from the UN, businesses got in on the act. Some 87 companies, including Nestlé and Salesforce, a big provider of software-as-a-service, pledged to reach net-zero emissions in their businesses by 2050. Jeff Bezos did them ten years better, announcing that Amazon would reach netzero emissions by 2040 and that it was buying 100,000 electric lorries to move towards that goal. Overall, some 650 companies with a market value of $11trn have signed up to the Science-Based Targets Initiative, a consortium of ngos which certify and monitor the commitments firms make to align themselves with the Paris objectives. Many aim to cut emissions by around 2.5% a year. They are trying to reduce energy consumption in their supply chains and in the way their products are used, too. On average these emissions are almost six times larger than those from a firm’s direct operations, says Alberto Carrillo Pineda of cdp, an ngo which monitors corporate climate efforts.

Unfortunately, while target-setting firms account for 14% of the world’s stockmarket value, they emit only 2% of its carbon. Between 1988 and 2015, according to cdp, 71% of greenhouse-gas emissions came from fossil fuels sold by 100 energy giants. On the afternoon of September 23rd the bosses of companies including Exxon- Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and bp sat in the airy Morgan Library for a forum organised by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry effort to reduce emissions from operations and invest in technologies that will help mitigate climate change.

The firms vowed to limit methane emissions and highlighted their investment into carbon capture and sequestration. But they also explained that they were continuing to develop new oil and gas fields. “We are meeting a demand for a product that makes the quality of life in the world better,” said Mike Wirth, the boss of Chevron.

They are unlikely to stop unless demand drops off. That might happen if, or when, the regulatory war on carbon enters a new phase. A new report by Principles for Responsible Investment, an unsupported group of investors with $86trn under management, predicts “abrupt and disruptive” climate policies by 2025, as authorities wake up to the urgency of the climate challenge. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, used his UN speech to stress the need for businesses to be made to disclose the costs that climate change and climate policies could stick them with.

A complement to better assessing the climate risks of investment is to invest in things that reduce the climate risk in the first place. This is aim of the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (cfli), a group of banks, asset managers and energy developers handpicked by Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and a UN special envoy for climate change.

There is a huge need for energy investment in poor countries. There is a huge amount of capital in rich-world pension funds. At the moment, though, zero-car-bon energy in developing countries does not appeal to those funds’ appetite for safe and reliable investments.

That is where the cfli comes in. By bringing together asset managers, like axa and Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, banks, like hsbc, and energyproject developers, such as Enel, it can cover the pipeline of renewable investment projects—from capital raising and allocation to project development.

In a recent report the cfli said that closer ties between private finance and development-finance institutions would allow greater use of tools that share risk between public and private investors. With that in mind, on September 25th the cfli announced a tie-up with the Association of European Development Finance Institutions. The association’s members have experience in emerging markets; they can scope out projects for the cfli and bear some of the risks.

The cfli plans to invest $20bn in the next five years. Compared with the trillions needed in clean energy, that does not sound much. But Daniel Klier of hsbc argues that by creating successful pilot projects the cfli can demonstrate the attraction of its strategies for removing risk from renewable energy investments.

Such promising initiatives are unlikely to placate Ms Thunberg. “All you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she raged at the general assembly before seeking to conscript another UN body to her cause. Under the “third optional protocol” to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the Rights of the Child can be petitioned by children being denied their rights. Ms Thunberg and 15 other young people filed such a complaint against five countries that have ratified the protocol— Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey—for following climate policies that do not respect or protect children’s rights.

SOURCE

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

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

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

3 October, 2019

Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire From Fact-Checking

This Wall Street Journal article is reproduced below with an important correction by Coalition Executive Director Dr. Caleb S. Rossiter

Facebook plans to exempt opinion pieces and satire from its fact-checking program, according to people familiar with the matter, as the social-media giant grapples with how to stop the spread of falsehoods while maintaining its own neutrality.

As part of the new rules, Facebook will allow publishers of information found to be false by outside fact-checkers to appeal to the company, said the people familiar with the changes. Posts that Facebook deems to be either opinion or satire won't be labeled as false even if they contain information the fact-checkers determined was inaccurate, the people said.
The new rules follow Facebook's acknowledgment last week that it will continue exempting politicians from fact-checks, on the grounds that such comments are newsworthy, as well as a recent controversy arising from a third-party fact checker's determination that an antiabortion group's video was false.

The rules, which haven't been announced, coincide with Facebook's decision last week to remove a false designation from a Washington Examiner opinion piece, overriding the conclusion of one of its fact-check partners. That op-ed argued that global-warming climate models have been inaccurate and that the risks of climate change is overblown.

The removal of the false label was celebrated by the CO2 Coalition, which employs the op-ed's authors and argued in a letter to Facebook that the company had "used a partisan fact-check group to defame them." The group, which receives funding from the oil-and-gas industry, dismisses global warming as a hoax and advocates for the "important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy."

[Dr. Caleb S. Rossiter, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, wishes to correct this inaccuracy:

"The article claims that the CO2 Coalition 'which receives funding from the oil-and-gas industry, dismisses global warming as a hoax....'

To the contrary, all of our scientific publications and congressional testimony consistently state that carbon dioxide is a warming gas that has contributed to the one degree rise in global mean temperature in the past 140 years. The UN body that reports on climate change is confident that a quarter of the degree global rise comes from carbon dioxide emissions, rather than natural causes. We agree that is a reasonable estimate. The UN body also estimates that temperature 'sensitivity' to a doubling of carbon dioxide levels ranges from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees -- a three-fold difference. Research by Coalition atmospheric physicists argues that the lower estimate is closer to reality, but never claims that the proper estimate is zero!

"As for funding by the oil-and-gas industry, this is an ad hominem attack, and isn't even accurate. I would be happy to accept funding from anyone, but the CO2 Coalition has not received any such funding, with the exception of a $5,000 grant from Marathon Oil in 2015. That accounts for two-tenths of one percent of our income since then.

As a candidate for Congress and as head of a non-governmental arms control group I accepted over a million dollars from people who supported the positions I held. That never stopped me from changing my positions when the data and analysis required it. The CO2 Coalition's 50 climate scientists and energy economists have a long record of valuing principle over paycheck."]

A Facebook spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for comment on the new rules.

Together, the changes demonstrate the company's continuing struggle to limit the spread of so-called fake news and other misinformation without being accused of stifling free speech.

"I know Facebook doesn't want to be in the middle of this, but here they are," said Angie Drobnic Holan, the editor of PolitiFact and a member of the board of the International Fact-Checking Network, which accredits Facebook's fact-checking partners.

Ms. Holan said she expected that the changes as described would only affect the overall fact-checking program at the margins, but noted that publishers of false statements have a history of arguing that they are opinions.

"There are cases where the line between fact and opinion are not as bright as you might think," she said.

Other fact-checkers have noted similarly slippery boundaries between fact and satire.

Rappler, a Manila-based news outlet that fact checks Facebook content in the Philippines, has documented bad-faith publishers dressing up false stories as satire. If such a dodge is allowed, Rappler wrote last year, "purveyors of fake news will now be able to escape accountability by simply labeling their stories as satire, no matter the intention, how badly written they are, how many clues they use to overrationalize, or even if they disregard every rule of satire."

Facebook's fact-checking program has become a central piece of the company's response to misinformation since its unveiling in late 2016. Fact-checking groups choose what content to review, and material deemed false or partially false carries a warning and is distributed by Facebook's algorithms to fewer people.

The program is limited to just over 50 groups world-wide, many of whom receive funding from Facebook.

The recent controversy over the fact-check of antiabortion organization Live Action illustrates the stakes. In a video distributed on Facebook, Live Action said that abortion is never medically necessary.

Science Feedback, a French nonprofit that was approved as a Facebook fact-checking partner earlier this year, labeled the claim false. Though Science Feedback's conclusion was in line with medical literature and the primary professional association for obstetricians and gynecologists, Live Action alleged that the doctors who had consulted on the fact check were biased by their affiliation with abortion-rights organizations.

Live Action accused Facebook of suppressing debate, and the complaint was widely circulated in conservative media and eventually drew the support of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

Facebook removed the false designation from Live Action's video, pending an investigation by the International Fact-Checking Network about whether Science Feedback's actions were appropriate. On Friday, the IFCN said it stood by Science Feedback's process and determination.

As of Monday afternoon, Facebook hadn't restored the designation of Live Action's video as false. The company also didn't immediately respond to questions about whether the statement that abortion is never medically necessary might be classified as opinion.

A Live Action representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook's fact-checking program has been panned by critics, and some partners have reported frustration over the limited tools provided to them.

Yet both fact checkers and the company have of late said the program is improving.

"I really appreciate that Facebook works with us to help find hoax content," said Ms. Holan.

This article appeared on the Wall Street Journal website at https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-create-fact-checking-exemptions-for-opinion-and-satire-11569875314

SOURCE

Children’s Crusade of UN Global Climate Week Gets a Cold Shot

“Sacramento saw record cold temperatures Sunday morning ahead of more stormy weather set to hit Northern California in the afternoon,” the Sacramento Bee reported on September 29. To the north, “Red Bluff also set a record Sunday morning, reaching 42 degrees and breaking a 1971 record low of 45 degrees.” Snow was falling in the Sierra Nevada, but nothing like Montana.

As USA Today reported, also on September 29, “one week after summer’s end, a ‘winter’ storm began blasting parts of the West with up to 3 feet of snow, smashing records with low temperatures, heavy snow, strong winds and blizzard conditions.” In addition, “Many daily record low maximum temperature records are possible through Monday, especially across the Northern Great Basin, Rockies and Northern California.”

The snow and record low temperatures arrive after what several publications described as a “children’s crusade,” a feature of the United Nations’ “Global Climate Week.” As the kids had it, the global climate is heating up, so politicians better do something, right now. Trouble was, parts of the globe such as Northern California and Montana were experiencing record cold temperatures, capped off with three feet of snow. This cold shot arrives in September at the outset of autumn, not winter.

The lesson here is that nothing becomes true simply because indoctrinated teenagers shout it through a bullhorn. For a different take on climate, have a look at Lowell Ponte’s 1976 The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Begun? Can We Survive it?

SOURCE

Western Lawmakers Prepare Bills to Modernize Endangered Species Act

Local conservation efforts, not U.S. government regulations, boosted the population of a bird species in Colorado, one lawmaker said during a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill focused on practical reforms to the Endangered Species Act.

Other House members who belong to the Congressional Western Caucus, along with “industry stakeholders” and policy analysts, described how the federal government’s designation of “critical habitat” often undermines conservation.

They also expressed concern about how environmental litigation violates property rights while failing to protect wildlife.

The Sept. 24 roundtable, involving 15 lawmakers and 27 business leaders meeting in the Senate Visitors Center, suggested broad agreement on the need to reform the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The law has resulted in a recovery rate of only 3% for the wildlife it was designed to protect, according to the Congressional Western Caucus, which counts 72 members of both parties from 32 states and territories.

Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., vice chairman of the Western Caucus, emphasized that localities and states need to have more latitude to pursue their own conservation efforts without federal intrusion.

Tipton pointed to efforts in Colorado to preserve the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird species, as an example of successful wildlife protection done locally. He said his state’s pilot program involving ranchers and farmers helped to rehabilitate the species.

“We were seeing the sage grouse numbers go up and growing,” Tipton said. “This ought to be our goal, not [to] have them listed [as endangered] in perpetuity.”

Tipton and other lawmakers present took the opportunity to roll out a draft package of bills designed to “modernize” the Endangered Species Act.

Tipton already has introduced a bill (HR 6344) to encourage voluntary conservation efforts at the local level.

Ben Goldey, communications director for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., chairman of the Western Caucus, told The Daily Signal that the caucus is still in the process of building support from “stakeholders” and potential co-sponsors of the new bills.

Once the bills are introduced formally, the caucus will press for hearings and votes, Goldey said.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., appeared to speak for many participants when he told fellow Western Caucus members that “we need to get the Endangered Species Act out of the courtroom and empower the agencies administering the law to follow the science and do their jobs.”

The California Republican also said “powerful special interests are invested in the status quo,” but the status quo “is not working for people or for listed species.”

Calvert cited figures showing that 2,300 species have been listed as endangered or threatened, while only 72 species have been taken off the list.

Calvert sponsored a bill (HR 548) that would consolidate management and regulation of the Endangered Species Act within the Fish and Wildlife Service. Currently, that agency, part of the Interior Department, shares responsibility with the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the Commerce Department.

The draft package of legislation includes 18 other related bills.

The problems with the Endangered Species Act flow not just from its language but its implementation, Daren Bakst, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, said during his presentation.

In 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that 1,500 acres in Louisiana should be designated as critical habitat for a species known as the dusky gopher frog, Bakst said, citing one example.

Just one problem, he said: The frog had not been seen in Louisiana for more than 50 years. But because of the “critical habitat” designation, the federal government sought to impose a ban on development that would deprive property owners of more than $30 million in value, the Heritage policy analyst told attendees.

“So, what was the point of this effort?” Bakst asked. “It didn’t serve the interests of the dusky gopher frog, but there are plenty of losers in this effort, including the property owners plus other threatened and endangered species.”

Other listed species lost out, he said, because resources that could have been allocated elsewhere were diverted to an area where the species in question wasn’t even present.

The example of the dusky gopher frog highlights what Bakst described as “two central problems” with the Endangered Species Act.

“One, the Endangered Species Act doesn’t focus resources where they can be most effective,” he said. “And, two, the law attacks property owners, when the best approach would be to recognize that property owners are integral to preserving species.”

Karen Budd-Falen, the Interior Department’s deputy solicitor for fish, wildlife, and parks, briefed other roundtable participants about the Trump administration’s efforts to reform the law.

“While the administration is committed to protecting threatened or endangered species, that should not be an excuse to hold up a project, to hold up decisions, to hold up ideas, and to hold up things that may actually help species,” Budd-Falen said. “So, we are trying to have specific time frames and keep activities to those time frames. The Department of Interior is not yet done with regulatory changes.”

In August, the Trump administration rolled out a new set of rules that officials said were designed to improve implementation of the Endangered Species Act.

The new rules clarify the distinction between “threatened” and “endangered” species, and set higher standards for unoccupied areas to be designated as critical habitat. Before federal officials declare a critical habitat, the area must contain one or more physical or biological features essential to conserving the species.

SOURCE

The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived.

In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age, act as if they live in a uniquely broken world on the precipice of disaster. This is a tragedy.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg lectured the world. And maybe she’s right. We’ve failed her by raising a generation of pagans who’ve filled the vacuum left by the absence of faith, not with rationality, but with a cultish worship of Mother Earth and the state. Although, to be fair, the Bible-thumping evangelical’s moral certitude is nothing but a rickety edifice compared to the moral conviction of a Greta Thunberg.

It’s not, of course, her fault. Adults have spent a year creating a 16-year-old because her soundbites comport with their belief system. It was “something about her raw honesty around a message of blunt-force fear [that] turned this girl from invisible to global,” says CNN in a news report about a child with a narrow, age-appropriate grasp of the world.

It should be noted that “blunt-force fear” is indeed the correct way to describe the concerted misinformation that Thunberg has likely been subjected to since nursery school.

There probably isn’t a public school in America that hasn’t plied the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster in their auditoriums over and over again. New York City and other school systems offered millions of kids an excused absence so they could participate in political climate marches this week, as if it were a religious or patriotic holiday.

We’ve finally convinced a generation of Americans to be Malthusians. According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, nearly 30% of voters now claim to believe that it’s “at least somewhat likely” that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out over the next 10-15 years. Half of voters under 35 believe it is likely we are on the edge of extinction. Is there any wonder why our youngest generation has a foreboding sense of doom?

It’s the fault of ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, ignoring the massive moral upside of carbon-fueled modernity. It’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly to tell voters that their utopian vision of a world run on solar panels and windmills is fairy tale.

It’s the fault of media that constantly ignores overwhelming evidence that, on balance, climate change isn’t undermining human flourishing. By nearly every quantifiable measure, in fact, we are better off because of fossil fuels. Though there is no way to measure the human spirit, I’m afraid.

Thunberg might do well to sail her stern gaze and billowing anger to India or China and wag her finger at the billions of people who no longer want to live in poverty and destitution. Because if climate change is irreversible in the next 10-12 years, as cultists claim, it can be blamed in large part on the historic growth we’ve seen in developing nations.

China’s emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world. But, sure, let’s ban straws as an act of contrition.

Boomers, of course, have failed on plenty of fronts, but the idea that an entire generation of Americans should have chosen poverty over prosperity to placate the vacuous complaints of privileged future teenagers is absurd. No generation would do it. Until recently, no advanced nation has embraced Luddism. Although these days, Democrats who advocate for bans on fossil fuels and carbon-mitigating technologies such as fracking and nuclear energy are working on it.

Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. The emission cuts that environmentalists insist are needed to save the earth would mean economic devastation and the end of hundreds of years of economic growth. This is a tradeoff progressives pretend doesn’t exist.

And Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat, and work on.

One imagines that most Americans, through their actions, will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason they should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation won’t have to suffer needlessly.

SOURCE

Australia eyes 'clear gaps' in US minerals supply amid China trade row

It would be Yuge if Australia replaced China as a supplier of "rare earths"

Australian rare earth miners could become major exporters to the United States as the Trump administration looks to lessen its reliance on China for the supply of valuable ingredients used in high-tech weapons, smart phones and electric vehicles.

In a new report released on Tuesday, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (ATIC) has highlighted the potential for Australia to increase exports of a group of 17 obscure minerals that are used to manufacture high-technology products, as well as critical minerals such as cobalt, magnesium and lithium, which is used in batteries.

Its release comes as China's dominant position as the world's primary producer of rare earths and minerals triggers growing alarm in Washington following warnings that Beijing may move to restrict shipments due to its trade war with the US.

According to some estimates, China may hold up to 50 per cent of known global resources of rare earths elements and 80 per cent of their production, the report said.

Australian miner Lynas is the only significant rare earths producer outside of China and any move by Beijing to crimp supply would increase Lynas' importance. Lynas has recently secured a temporary increase in its licence to operate in Malaysia amid widespread opposition to the low level radioactive waste produced by the process.

Lynas is developing a processing plant in Texas in a partnership with Blue Line Corporation to separate and extract rare earths from ore.

"We have some of the world's richest stocks of critical minerals," Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said.

"This report shows there are huge export opportunities for Australian critical minerals producers in markets such as the US where there are clear gaps in the supply chain."

Australia is home to some of the world's largest recoverable deposits of critical minerals and the world's second-largest producer of rare-earth elements including neodymium and praseodymium, which are used to make permanent magnets, Resources Minister Matt Canavan said.

"Our political stability, strong environmental and safety regulations and existing expertise in the resources sector also adds to our appeal as a partner in the global supply chain of rare-earth elements," Mr Canavan said.

US President Donald Trump earlier this year moved to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains for the US defence department, prohibiting the purchase of devices that contain magnets or tungsten from China, North Korea and Russia. And Mr Trump in July signed a memorandum authorising the defence department to direct funding to resources or technology.

The Australian Trade and Investment Commission said such moves had opened up a new opportunity for Australian companies to supply a growing US specialist manufacturing industry.

The Minerals Council of Australia, an industry group representing the nation's biggest miners, said there was "enormous potential" to grow Australia's trade and investment through the rare earth and critical minerals.

"Australia is well-positioned to extract and export the critical minerals the world needs for faster, smaller and more powerful technology," Minerals Council chief executive Tania Constable said.

"Australia has pioneered new advances in extractive technologies and is ideally placed to lead the growth of critical minerals globally."

SOURCE

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

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

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2 October, 2019

Dr. Tim Ball on victory over Michael Mann

Upbeat Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr Tim Ball, gives his first video interview after his epic legal victory over alarmist Dr Michael E Mann, dubbed “the science trial of the century.” Ball again challenges the defeated Mann to “come out and debate anytime, anywhere!”

At the very start, Dr Ball speaks of the disturbing trend in society for people in positions of power to rush to law to silence critics. Clearly, despite relishing defeating Dr Mann, Ball would much prefer scientific disagreements be kept out of the courtroom.

“These are called SLAPP lawsuits, that’s an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Why have I received lawsuits? Why not all the other skeptics out there who have challenged what is being said – why have they focused on me?”

Dr Ball jokes that he would like to think that the lawsuits are because he’s the most brilliant guy in the world, but anyone who knows him, knows that it isn’t that. It is, in fact, because Dr Ball is a bona fide climatologist; a scientist who hold a PhD in the study of historical climate change.

Dr Ball points out that the irony is this requirement only goes one way; no one criticizes Al Gore (or Greta Thunberg, etc) for not being qualified (they aren’t in the slightest!). The hypocrisy reveals the deep political bias that Ball says has pervaded the climate debate for 30 years.

“I have the knowledge of the history to argue these alarmist claims were all nonsense. So, I ended up with three lawsuits, all from the same lawyer (Roger McConchie), all from members of the UN IPCC. The first lawsuit, my wife and I agreed we couldn’t afford to fight it so we withdrew what I wrote. That turned out to be a good thing, ironically, because a few months later we got a second lawsuit from Andrew Weaver. My wife and I said we are not going to be legally bullied; we’re going to fight this.”

“Weaver was a professor of climatology at the University of Victoria but didn’t have any training in climatology. I knew from the first time I interviewed him he knew nothing. But this is the problem; they create a ‘climate model’ and suddenly they are a climate expert.”

Andrew Weaver, despite knowing nothing about climate, was appointed the lead modeler for the UN IPCC. After that he left his university post and became the leader of the Green Party in British Columbia. He now sits in the British Columbia legislature with his political bias now disclosed by his activities.

“The lawsuit that he brought against me – I won that one – the courts threw that one out. So that was the first victory. “

The second lawsuit that came shortly after the Weaver one, was brought by the ‘world’s leading climate scientist’ Michael E Mann of Penn State University.

“Mann had produced this model of the historical climate record that was, in fact, complete fake news. He completely re-wrote the climate history. I knew immediately when I saw it what was wrong with it, so, of course, started open attacks on it. Shortly afterwards I got served the lawsuit. It was a defamation lawsuit, as they all are, which tells you all about this being an attack on free speech. I have given a presentation of what Mann had done and how he had done it – how completely false it was. For example, he used one tree record for a thousand years and then adds onto that the instrumental record to create the ‘hockey stick’ shape graph. It is completely scientifically illegal to attach data from one source to another source. Yet that is what he did.”

A smiling Tim Ball then says, he naturally linked the fact Mann was at Penn State and flippantly used word play to create his now famous quip that Mann ‘belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.’

“I thought that was pretty good!” laughs Dr Ball. “But within hours I had a lawsuit from him. That lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial on February 20th 2017 but Mann, himself, backed out on that. Yet he now accuses me of delaying the thing. He just weaselled out – backed right out on it.”

Dr Ball explains that Mann was given almost nine years to prepare for the case. “I’m ready to go any time he wants!” exclaims a defiant Dr Ball.

Ball laments that cowardly Mann is: “now going on the internet saying I’m the one who’s caused the delay. But I will meet him any time and any place he wants! Name it and I’ll be there” scoffs Ball. Indeed, Mann and his shyster lawyer never stop lying and misrepresenting the facts.

“But he’s got a PR campaign going on there now saying that I’m the weasel and the one who won’t face up to the realities, so I’ve just sent an email to my lawyer where we are preparing a response to this to go on the internet explaining what the actual truth is"

Despite his humiliating defeat and bogus assertion he would appeal the decision (he can’t – the deadline has expired), Mann is still threatening lawsuits and making ridiculous climate claims.

On the Issue of Legal Costs

The judge in the Mann-v-Ball case ruled that the defeated Mann must pay Ball’s legal costs, which are in excess of US$700.000. But Mann has already indicated he won’t pay. Dr Ball explains that he and his wife expended all their savings in fighting the case:

“ We don’t regret that, we knew what we were doing and I’m so grateful for my family’s support. But then after, John O’Sullivan [Principia Scientific International] over in England, who has been battling this too, he helped me set up a website and I got a lot of donations from people to help with the legal costs.”

Dr Ball then reveals to the public for the first time that he then got a lot of help from the famous New York hedge The Top 5 Individual Donors for Election 2016fund manager, Bob Mercer.

“He (Mercer) just said ‘Look, I’ll provide all the legal funds you want.’ So, Mercer arranged everything through my lawyer. Mercer’s only comment to me was ‘Michael Mann is a charlatan and he needs to be exposed.’”

Ball goads Michael Mann for his cowardly avoidance of open debate – the proper arena to determine the merits of scientific disputes.

The rest of the interview reveals interesting background information on the myth of the ’97 percent’ consensus on climate change, exposing how the UN was corrupted by Maurice Strong to pursue socialist ideology via Agenda 21.

Dr Ball gives a huge boost to skeptics by hinting of his plans to continue the battle to expose the corruption of climate science. In that venture he is being ably backed by a consortium of like-minded skeptics and advocates who want to see more open science and true accountability in a sea change in the way government research is managed.

SOURCE

Book Review: "Black Dragon: Breaking the Frizzle Frazzle of the Big Lie of Climate Change Science" by Geraint Hughes

Reviewer J.A. Cook

This isn’t the first book I have reviewed on climate science (see here and here). I had never heard of Geraint Hughes before but upon opening this book for the first time, I know he understands the lies we are being fed and seeks to debunk them one by one.

The first myth Hughes debunks is the nonsense about how a greenhouse actually works. For most young people, like myself, we were taught in school that back radiation heats the greenhouse, that the glass of the greenhouse returns the sun’s heat to the ground thus increasing the temperature however. But this is an unscientific falsehood.

A greenhouse actually works due to convection. A strong convection current within the greenhouse creates a cycle of warming and cooling. The sun heats the earth which causes the air close to the ground to heat up and rise, it is trapped by the glass where it cools and falls back to the earth where the cycle repeats. Knowing this is the lynchpin of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.

The ‘greenhouse’ analogy completely falls apart already just knowing this, but Hughes continues to pick apart every lie the Alarmists use. The mission of the book is achieved step by step exposing the shocking truth that mainstream science claims about the Greenhouse Gas Theory are pure junk science garbage.

Most books I’ve encountered that focus on climate science are daunting to read. They require an understanding of physics and thermodynamics in order to carefully follow what we are being told.

Within the first 25 pages of ‘Black Dragon‘ I gleaned more insight into these issues than I found in my five years of senior school studying GCSE Physics.

Hughes makes the task easier by completely breaking down the science and equations he is using so that anyone can understand them. He then explains the physical application of this science and how it in no way relates to the Greenhouse gas Theory – which he repeatedly disproves.

Since I am a college undergraduate currently studying Bioscience – Chemistry, Biology and Psychology, one thing Hughes debunks really fascinated me; Hughes beautifully exposes the ubiquitous Climate Change in a Bottle experiment.

My old science teacher actually used this experiment to ‘educate’ us about Climate Change, but it completely misses out some glaringly obvious things that would affect the results.

For example, the experiment completely neglects the fact that the density of both Air and Carbon Dioxide are different and the specific heat capacity of both these gases is different, which would affect the rate at which these gases absorb IR.

Now, is this deliberate deception or simply the product of incompetence and misunderstanding among ‘experts’?

For me, the whole Climate Change narrative seems to be a case of the more you look, the less you see. What I mean by this is the more you focus on what you are being told, it reveals itself as completely wrong. Cautious (skeptic) minds need to take a step back and view it objectively – then everything becomes a lot clearer.

The whole section on Venus was interesting to read. Those spouting alarmist nonsense would have us believe Venus’ high temperatures are caused by a runaway greenhouse effect. But Venus’ temperature is due to its natural structure and formation, however, the interesting thing about this section isn’t the debunking myth about Venus but what we learn about Venus itself.

Throughout the book Hughes makes insightful and interesting points with strong evidence to prove why the various (sometimes competing) theories on Greenhouse Gas are incorrect.

One of the key things that will stick with me is that difference between Oxy and CO2 gas planets, Oxy or oxygen gas planets and Carbon Dioxide gas planets have very different temperatures for one simple reason – how emissive the abundant gas is.

Oxygen is far less emissive than CO2, therefore Oxy planets have higher temperatures, because of this it is impossible for CO2 to be the cause of global warming and Climate Change. While this isn’t the most comprehensive book I have read on the subject (it is quite short, just 152 pages), it is one of the most informative.

I highly recommend reading Black Dragon: Breaking the Frizzle Frazzle of the Big Lie of Climate Change Science if you have an interest in the subject, or even if you are just curious about the climate ‘hype’ – it is aimed at non-experts, so anyone should ‘get it.’

SOURCE

Climate Change Fears Used To Justify Radical Agendas

Exaggerated claims and fearmongering to push a political narrative isn’t a new tactic, which explains how the thoughtful, former House Speaker Paul Ryan became a caricature in a campaign ad pushing an elderly women over a cliff or how President Lyndon Johnson blew up a virtual 3-year-old girl in the famous Daisy ad, insinuating his opponent wanted nuclear war.

But the hyperbole of the climate change movement puts such efforts to shame as they preach both that their worldview is correct and undebatable and that all who oppose them are “evil” — deserving, one assumes, whatever they get because in about 10 years it’s all over.

While the environment is not the kind of issue I usually address, a new trend forces me to confront an agitated and organized movement.

Convinced that people are the problem, in all our forms, abortion is now emerging as a “solution” to climate change, pushed forward in an atmosphere of fear.

The anti-child movement being developed, named things like #NoFutureNoChildren, equates population control with climate control, making the answer to the world’s problems a reduction in the number of people.

As I travel across the country speaking to college and university student groups as head of Students for Life of America, I hear this often as earnest and fearful students say that they are not going to have children, while others fret about children enduring a “post-apocalyptic Mad Max hellscape.”

Celebrities add to this tension. Prince Harry recently said he and his celebrity wife would only have two children because of climate concerns.

Speaking to Elle magazine, Miley Cyrus said, “We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child. Until I feel like my kid would live on earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”

British musician Blythe Pepino founded “BirthStrike” because of her fears for the environment, even though she told CNN, “I really want a kid … I am in a position to be an activist. It’s a stronger calling than motherhood, even though I still mourn the idea.”

And when the elites get together at the highest levels, using government to control outcomes comes next. Case in point, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who turns a jaundiced eye toward his fellow humans.

At a CNN event, Mr. Sanders praised the abortion lobby in the U.S. that allows the procedure through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason at all, and sometimes with taxpayer funding.

But worldwide abortion is the thing we really need to change the temperature, he indicated, “especially in poor countries around the world.”

Following that thinking, will an income test become law before people can attempt a child? It seems a one-percenter kind of arrogance to assume that money means someone is better suited to parenthood.

Disrespect for human life also leads to all kinds of Hollywood-esque policy conclusions.

Stockholm School of Economics professor and researcher Magnus Soderlund has suggested that eating “human meat” (better known as cannibalism) is a way to reduce gases and create food “sustainability” despite the known health risks when eating human flesh.

Late-night movie buffs might remember Oscar-winning Charlton Heston in “Soylent Green,” an apocalyptic horror flick that aired the same year that Roe v. Wade became law, in which food shortages and global unrest were to be soothed with “Soylent Green,” a sustainable protein source that was supposed to be algae.

Except it turned out that, as the great actor screamed at the end, “Soylent Green is people. Soylent Green is People!”

As a mother of four, also upsetting is how adults are using children’s stress over the environment to score political points.

Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg’s anxiety over the environment reflects, as The Federalist’s David Harsanyi notes, a child’s “narrow, age-appropriate, grasp of the world.”

Of course, she is scared and upset as schools parrot information on an issue in which all the solutions are draconian, life-ending events.

Yet, rather than helping her process her fears, she is brought out to argue for a dramatic government takeover of all international business and government, with a chilling line that seems borrowed from Sting, “We will be watching you.”

Like most people, I care about the environment because I want a safe world for my children and future generations. But killing the preborn, eating the dead and turning control of all human life over to the government isn’t a solution, but rather another set of problems.

Fear of climate change is being used to justify a radical social agenda, including abortion. I wonder if a child in the womb identified as a tree, would that be enough to justify saving that life? This debate is getting out of control.

SOURCE

Iceberg FIVE times the size of Malta breaks off glacier in Antarctica - the largest in 50 years - but experts aren't blaming climate change

An iceberg five times the size of Malta has broken off Antarctica. The D28 iceberg was captured by the European Union Earth Observation Program calving from the Amery ice shelf.

Known as 'Loose Tooth', this iceberg is 688 feet thick and contains 347 billion tons of ice –scientists are not connecting this event to climate change, but have concerns about ships traveling in its path.

Although some may point to climate change as the cause for the separation, Scripps and her team say this event is not linked to it. Scientists have said that this is a natural event and this is how 'ice streams maintain equilibrium, balancing the input of snow upstream', according to BBC NEWS.

Amery is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, and extends inland from Prydz and MacKenzei bays – both feed into the Indian Ocean.

The 'calving', or breaking away, of a massive iceberg from the Amery glacier has not happened since the early 1960s – a chunk of ice that was 3,474 square miles in area, according to BBC News.

D28 was only 631 square miles, which is just a little smaller than Scotland's Isle of Skye, but still poses a threat to ships traveling in its path.

However, scientists were expecting this Loose Tooth to break off.

Professor Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography had predicted this event back in 2002 -- suggesting it would calve sometime between 2010 and 2015.

'It is the molar compared to a baby tooth,' Professor Fricker told BBC News. 'I am excited to see this calving event after all these years. We knew it would happen eventually, but just to keep us all on our toes, it is not exactly where we expected it to be.'

'While there is much to be concerned about in Antarctica, there is no cause for alarm yet for this particular ice shelf,' Prof Fricker added.

SOURCE

Chief UN Climate Scientist Calls the Climate Crisis Narrative "Religious Extremism"

CO2 Coalition Releases First Professional Translation of Controversial Article in Finnish Business Journal

"IPCC reports are read like the Holy Book, where certain sentences are sought to justify their own extreme position. It has the features of religious extremism ....This world will not end.... We are at the best of mankind's time in many ways."

The CO2 Coalition of over 50 climate scientists and energy economists today released the first professional translation of a controversial article that appeared in a Finnish business newspaper on September 6, 2019. The article contained a lengthy interview with Dr. Petteri Taalas, who is the Secretary-General of the UN's World Meteorological Organization. This position makes Taalas the top climate scientist at the UNIPCC, which advises governments on climate science and energy policy.

The article has created controversy, with Taalas being portrayed as both a supporter and a critic of the climate crisis narrative. The CO2 Coalition paid for an impartial, professional translation so that Taalas' opinions can be fairly assessed. The article was translated from the Finnish Financial Newspaper Talouselämä (The Journal) for the CO2 Coalition by Language Innovations LLC, on September 23, 2019.

The headline on the article is: Climate guru Petteri Taalas: Climate change is not yet out of control, but the debate is - "It has the features of religious extremism."

Here is a key excerpt from the article:

The career meteorologist does not see the basis for the apocalyptic scenarios that are being predicted now. According to Petteri Taalas, there are, as of yet, no signs of horror images of climate change, such as the reversal of the Gulf Stream or large-scale methane depletion as the Siberian permafrost melts.

More excerpts and quotations are provided on the CO2 Coalition's website.

Dr. Caleb Rossiter, a climate statistician who directs the CO2 Coalition, said that the full article shows that Dr. Taalas remains convinced that carbon dioxide is warming the planet, but disagrees with claims that the warming is catastrophic for humanity. "We applaud the UN's top climate scientist's rejection of the climate crisis narrative. The scientific data to date show a modest impact of CO2 emissions on temperature, virtually no impact on rates of extreme weather like hurricanes, droughts, and sea-level rise, and a major, positive impact on plant growth. I agree with Dr. Taalas that the media should stop promoting essentially religious views as science."

SOURCE

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

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1 October, 2019

Climate justice campaign resembles a pagan cult

They believe it is better that a human life be lost than risk offending the climate gods

If, as Edmund Burke said, man is by his constitution a religious animal, then it stands to reason that even if he should cast off true religion, the religious sensibilities remain. The need to believe, to be part of a community, to revere moral rectitude, to condemn offences against the moral code: these persist. In the last few weeks, all these features have been evident in the “climate justice” movement. Despite describing itself as based on science, it is increasingly evident that it has become a cult – and a pagan cult at that.

What are some of the hallmarks of paganism? Obvious examples that spring to mind include nature worship, ritual sacrifices and doomsday prophecies, all of which are present in the climate justice cult.

Christianity has always maintained that mankind, as steward of creation, has a responsibility to care for our common home. It is an obligation that is imposed not for the sake of the world itself, but to give glory to its creator and because of the many benefits it confers on us. By contrast, the climate justice cult worships nature. It values the Earth and nature as ends in themselves, subjugating human beings and treating humanity as a problem to be solved for the good of the planet.

Which brings us to the second characteristic: ritual sacrifice. In its less extreme form, this involves quasi-religious practices such as abstaining from meat to demonstrate moral purity and in the hope of satisfying the gods. We have also heard from groups of women on “birthstrike”, who have committed not to bear children – for the sake of the planet. These vestal virgins will ensure that there will be no pitter-patter of carbon footprints on the face of the Earth. We have reached a stage where the young are being encouraged to believe that it is shameful to bring new life into the world.

Human sacrifice

One of the US Democrat party presidential hopefuls, Bernie Sanders, has even gone so far as to propose abortion as a solution to the problem presented by humanity, which is to say, the problem caused by poor women having babies. In answer to a question concerning how population growth should be addressed as a major contributor to “climate catastrophe”, he immediately cited the ready availability of abortion in the United States as a model for the rest of the world to follow.

Thanos is the villain whose response to the universe’s resources being overstretched is simply to annihilate half the population
This is nothing short of human sacrifice to appease the sun-god. It is the morality of Thanos. In the Marvel cinematic universe, Thanos is the villain whose response to the universe’s resources being overstretched is simply to annihilate half the population.

And as for the prophecies, we cannot escape the lurid warnings of our imminent destruction. Every media report is laden with dark omens, calculated to induce terror, even panic. Unless we repent and change our ways, we are doomed.

This world view is the direct opposite of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. By contrast with the climate justice cult, which values the planet above all else, the Judaeo-Christian tradition puts the ultimate value on the human soul. In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, every individual is worth more than the entire universe. The world and all its beauty is there for the use and enjoyment of human beings. The world will end one day – although, contrary to media reports, it is unlikely to be anytime soon. The human soul, however, lives forever. The universe is God’s gift to mankind. It deserves to be looked after as the common home of the human race. But the climate cult’s propensity to elevate the care of natural resources above the lives of human beings is a subversion of true morality.

Which is why it is so disappointing to see the Catholic Bishops’ Council for Justice and Peace, the men entrusted to carry the torch lit by St Patrick – in defiance of the pagan druids – jumping on board the solar-powered climate justice bandwagon. In a press release, they say they stand with those on the global climate strike, and call for a radical ecological conversion. Another press release from the Catholic Communications Office to mark the “Season of Creation”, states that, unless we listen to David Attenborough, much of the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years’ time.

Sin and recycling

It is tempting to point out that much of the world is – and always has been – uninhabitable and actually that it is the ingenuity of man that has allowed human beings to live in areas that otherwise would be completely unsuitable for occupation. It is almost as if human beings – even non-believers – were obeying God’s command to fill the Earth and subdue it.

Nonetheless, the same press release tells us that “Recycling is no longer an optional habit; it is the very basic and nothing more. Illegal dumping needs to be exposed and uncovered. Incorrect recycling needs to be corrected, what goes where and into which bin.” While I have recycled for many years and support such initiatives, I was of the view that I was answerable to the local council rather than to the episcopate for any failures. Is recycling to be added to the litany of sins to be confessed by Catholics, and if so, into which category must it be sorted – venial or mortal?

Here is the thing: if you have to add another word before “justice”, you are no longer talking about justice. Justice is sufficient unto itself.

In the climate cult, in contrast to the Christian beatitudes, it is the rich who shall inherit the Earth, living in their A-rated houses and driving their electric cars. The poor in developing countries – who often suffer from unreliable electricity supplies and whose hospitals may have to rely on even less reliable back-up generators – will be told “Too bad – no coal or oil-powered electricity for you.” Never mind that the ventilator might run out of power mid-surgery. Better that a human life be lost than risk offending the climate gods.

SOURCE

Is climate alarmism tearing itself apart?

First it was AOC and the Sunrise Movement versus Pelosi and the moderate Democrats in Congress. Now it is Greta Thunberg and the so-called youth movement versus the UN and the world’s major governments. Between the moderates in power and the new radicals, climate alarmism has split wide open. This has to hurt the cause, which is a good thing indeed.

The global split happened with elegant quickness. On Friday a million or more climate extremists marched around the world. On Monday, at UN headquarters, Greta Thunberg denounced the major world governments to their faces, while they dutifully explained that they had no new ambitions. The contrast between radicals and moderates was hilarious, and telling.

The problem for the alarmists is enormous. The new radicals are making demands that are impossible, not just politically but technologically. Complete decarbonization of the global economic system by 2030, for example.

To make matters worse, the radical climate alarmists have been joined by the social justice warriors, creating the nonsensical goal of climate justice. There has always been a vague undercurrent of this in UN climate deliberations, but now social justice is front and center, vying with decarbonization in the goal department.

The moderates are trying to press on but their efforts are being denounced by the extremists. Germany just wrought, with great political difficulty, what the moderates consider a bold new climate action plan. It was immediately denounced as trivial by the extremists. Realism is verboten.

How is the alarmist establishment to handle this schism? At this point their biggest enemy is not the skeptics; it is the extremists. Fighting on two fronts is politically damaging at best.

But it remains to be seen just how enduring and active the radical wing really is. Greta, AOC and the big rallies may just be a green flash in the pan. In fact AOC seems to have faded from view already.

Perhaps the next big test will be the upcoming UN Climate Summit in Chile, beginning late November. Unlike Monday’s no action one-day Climate Summit, the Chile meeting is the real deal, the annual formal negotiations under the Paris Accord. These annual meetings are each called a Conference of the Parties (to the UN global climate change treaty) or COP. They routinely draw 20,000 negotiating delegates, from almost 200 countries, and last well over a week.

By coincidence this will be an especially humdrum COP and Chile is far away from the centers of extremism. The 2018 COP was a biggie, because it worked out the detailed rules for the Paris Agreement. The 2020 COP will be a monster for two reasons. First, all the governments are supposed to come up with new, Soviet style, 5 year plans, with greater ambition than their first plan. Second, a mythical $100 billion a year is supposed to start flowing from the developed countries, like America, to the developing countries, including China. Moderate alarmism might even collapse under these twin pressures.

But in Chile this year there are no big issues on the table, just a lot of detail work. So the big question is will the new radical wave rise up in the wake of the 2018 COP? If not then they might lose momentum.

Or they might save their collective strength for the U.S. Presidential race and the 2020 COP. I imagine the radical leaders are already discussing these options, or as soon as they finish partying.

In this context one interesting possibility is that the radicals will support a third party green candidate in the U.S. presidential election, as well as green challengers to moderate Democrat incumbents (as AOC did). I can easily imagine Bernie Sanders running for president as an independent, if he fails to get the Democrat nomination, which is likely.

If the radicals bolt the Democratic Party and split the liberal tickets it will be very good news for the President Trump and Republicans. This is the potential upside to the new green extremism.

As things stand now the climate alarmist movement is coming apart at the seams. I say let her rip.

SOURCE

Will Haiti's Revolution Be the First Blamed on Climate Change?

The country of Haiti is convulsed by growing unrest, with thousands taking to the streets to demand the ouster of U.S.-backed President Jovenel Moise. The issues are familiar to the impoverished nation: food and fuel shortages, a mismanaged economy, and rampant corruption.

But also driving the protests has been the government's response to several severe storms and hurricanes that have ravaged the island nation. Destroyed housing and businesses have not been rebuilt and the frustration of the people in their government's malfeasance and incompetence has boiled over.

As usual, class envy has played a role in the violence.

Al Jazeera:

In the wealthier neighbourhoods of Delmas and Petion Ville, angry crowds also looted several stores, banks and money transfer offices, ATMs and pharmacies. They also set a building on fire.
Crowds stripped the abandoned police station in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince's poorest neighbourhood, of sheet metal roofing, furniture and police protection equipment.

A ruling party senator tried to disperse demonstrators when he fired a pistol into a crowd of protesters outside of parliament, wounding a reporter. The police used tear gas and live ammunition yesterday, trying to break up the protests. Moise cancelled his speech to the United Nations General Assembly and delivered an emotional address to the nation, firing several security aides for human rights violations and proposing a unity government.

That doesn't look likely. The police are losing control of the streets and Moise's days may be numbered.

But what sets this revolution apart from others is the apparent blame being cast -- not on people, but on the climate.

The crisis started last year and was compounded by natural disasters that have repeatedly devastated the island nation. Hurricanes destroyed housing, food production, livelihoods and infrastructure and a severe drought dried up the island's water resources.

While international media has focused on a familiar story of corruption and mismanagement, what lies beneath this debilitating crisis is much more serious - a deadly combination of neocolonialism, neoliberalism and climate injustice. Indeed, what is happening now in Haiti is extreme and should scare us all, as it foreshadows what could happen to the rest of the planet if we do not take immediate action.

The "immediate action" that should be taken is to find some honest, competent politicians to run the government. Other Caribbean nations have been hit by the same storms as Haiti and yet, there's no revolution breaking out anywhere else. Even Cuba, which has more reason than most to stage an uprising, has been quiet.

Yes, there have been bad storms, but even a moderately competent government could have dealt with the crisis. For instance, the problem of fuel shortages is a result of Haiti's reliance on Venezuelan oil and overly-generous fuel subsidies. When the Venezuelan oil industry went belly up, Haiti was stuck having to buy oil on the open market. Already massively in debt, shortages were inevitable.

Removing fuel subsidies should have alleviated the crisis, instead, the graft and outright theft of oil resulted in too little oil going to too few people.

And then there's "climate injustice." Asking Haiti to follow emission rules despite the fact that they contribute less than 0.02% in carbon emissions to the world total, is monumentally stupid. Haiti needs to revive its economy and it's not going to do it by adhering to artificial emission limits placed on what little industry there is.

With most of the Haitian economy is "off the books," new businesses don't have a chance to get started. It's not climate change that's driving the revolution. Haiti needs leadership and an elite that won't rob the people blind.

SOURCE

Climate protesters: If you want to save the planet, you should support capitalism not socialism

Employees in the D.C. area experienced an even worse-than-normal commute on Monday. No, the Metro wasn’t on fire again: Climate change protesters brought traffic to a virtual standstill in busy intersections around the city by physically blocking roads. Apparently they think you stop climate change by making cars sit idle in traffic for hours.

Notably, at least some of the protesters made anti-capitalism a key theme of their protests. In fact, one group of protesters prominently displayed a banner that read: “Capitalism is killing the planet.” As Ken Cuccinelli, who saw the banner from his office, rightly noted: “[W]hat [the protesters] are really against is capitalism and freedom.”

Climate protesters who rail against capitalism display woeful ignorance of history. Not only does socialism have a disastrous history when it comes to human rights, it also has a terrible environmental record because of central planning and the misallocation of resources.

“When historians finally conduct an autopsy of the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism, they may reach the verdict of death by ecoside,” wrote Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly in their 1992 book, Ecoside in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege. “For the modern era, indeed for any event except the mysterious collapse of the Mayan empire, it would be a unique but not an implausible conclusion.”

“No other great industrial civilization so systematically and so long poisoned its land, air, water, and people. None so loudly proclaiming its efforts to improve public health and protect nature so degraded both. And no advanced society faced such a bleak political and economic reckoning with so few resources to invest toward recovery,” they added.

Soviet irrigation projects quite literally caused what was once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea, to nearly dry up. The ecosystems around the sea have been ravaged as a result. Even years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the land had been so badly polluted that during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, visitors were warned not to use the water in their rooms.

Of course, pollution remains a problem in the other major state-run economy, China, which is, by far, the world’s largest carbon emitter and has been for more than a decade. It’s true that China has made some progress on renewable energy, yet, ironically, the environmental problems there have advanced to such a point that air pollution is preventing solar panels from being used to their full potential.

These examples from the now-former Soviet Union and China don’t even scratch the surface. There is ample research available on the high rates of certain diseases and respiratory illnesses in socialist nations as a result of decades of environmental disasters and pollution.

Meanwhile, carbon emissions in the United States in 2017 were down to a level not seen since 1993. As economist Mark Perry has noted, “For that impressive ‘greening’ of America, we can thank the underground oceans of America’s natural gas that are now accessible because of the revolutionary, advanced drilling and extraction technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal/directional drilling, and are increasingly displacing coal for the nation’s electricity generation.”

In a mostly-free economy, businesses are incentivized to conserve and properly allocate resources through market forces. Competition encourages innovation that produces more environmentally friendly products. Meanwhile, in socialist countries resources are allocated by a cumbersome bureaucracy that is slow to respond and lacks the incentive to improve. Socialist countries have, time and time again, misallocated resources, often with environmentally and economically disastrous — not to mention deadly — results.

At a time when protesters are calling for an end to capitalism, we should be studying socialism’s environmental record and its misallocation of resources to make sure similarly terrible ideas never catch hold here. Unfortunately, they may be on the rise: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s so-called Green New Deal has captured nearly 100 co-sponsors in the House and 14 in the Senate.

Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, accidentally revealed the sinister intent of the Green New Deal in May when he said, “[W]e really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” He’s right: The platform, if enacted, would represent a fundamental restructuring of the economy, allowing the federal government to allocate most of the nation’s resources, from housing to healthcare to transportation. The end result isn’t hard to predict, based on the environmental record of socialism. And it isn’t very “green” after all.

We should be concerned about the environment, and we should all strive to protect it. But we should embrace capitalism to accomplish this goal, not abandon it for socialism.

SOURCE

False alarm: the great Australian rainforest fire that wasn’t

A frightening image. Pristine rainforest that has not burned for millions of years is ablaze as bushfires of unprecedented intensity roar through the hinterland of southeast Queensland. It’s difficult to imagine a more graphic illustration of the consequences of climate change. That is what was widely portrayed during the region’s fire emergency earlier this month. The only problem is, it didn’t happen.

The destruction of ancient World Heritage-listed Gondwana subtropical and temperate rainforests by fire was reported unequivocally as fact. Guardian Australia proclaimed in a headline: “Like nothing we’ve seen: Queensland bushfires tear through rainforest.” The landscape of Lamington National Park surrounding the historic Binna Burra Lodge, which was destroyed in the fires, was “blackened remnants of what used to be lush rainforest”, reported the Australian Associated Press in a story carried by many news outlets.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is working on its sixth assessment report. Australian climate scientist Joelle Gergis, a lead author of the report, declared: “What I find particularly disturbing is that World Heritage rainforest is burning. It has been hard to watch news coverage of these exceptionally rare rainforests burning … the potential loss of these areas is something I never thought I would witness in my lifetime.”

Social media lit up with expressions of despair about the rainforest losses. Typical of the angst was a tweet insisting that any journalist interviewing the Prime Minister who failed to question the climate implications of Queensland rainforests burning “isn’t doing their f..king job”.

But the Gondwana rainforests, those priceless relics of times long gone, did not burn. No news coverage showed rainforest burning. The 20,600ha Lamington National Park in Queensland and the adjoining 31,700ha Border Ranges National Park in NSW encompass the largest expanse of subtropical rainforest in the world. As on countless occasions over the centuries, fire raging in surrounding eucalypt woodland did not destroy the rainforest.

To be sure, bushfires of such intensity in the region are unusual, especially in early spring; 16 homes were lost in southern Queensland. Unlike southeast Australia with its hot and dry summers, the subtropics are usually afforded a degree of protection by high humidity, an absence of prolonged periods of scorching temperatures, and generous rainfall which — as in much of the country — has been in short supply lately.

Binna Burra Lodge is not encircled by rainforest, as was claimed repeatedly. The lodge is surrounded on three sides by eucalypt woodland; it came close to being lost when a control burn 20 years ago got away. This time, explains Binna Burra chairman Steven Noakes: “The fire went tearing up a steep slope through eucalypt woodland and we’re perched on a ridge at the top. With those winds there was nothing we could do.”

A camping ground and teahouse that adjoin rainforest survived the inferno; flames did not extend beyond the lodge into rainforest. A few kilometres across Lamington National Park from Binna Burra, O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat was evacuated during the fire emergency. Unlike Binna Burra, O’Reilly’s is surrounded entirely by rainforest. O’Reilly’s manager, Shane O’Reilly, says there was no need for evacuation; the nearest fires were 15km away: “The rainforest here doesn’t burn. It was pretty much eucalypt country that burned … There’s a lot of emotion surrounding this.

“A story is being propagated that it’s more of an issue about rainforest than it is.”

O’Reilly adds that an international scientific symposium at the lodge in 2011 heard the rainforest had not burned for at least three million years.

Patrick Norman, a Griffith University PhD student and former Lamington park ranger, has analysed satellite data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite over burnt forest. The images indicate about 400ha of rainforest burned, but this was primarily dry rainforest at lower altitudes known as vine scrub. Burned areas also included wet sclerophyll, a forest type comprised of tall eucalypts with some rainforest plants.

“Drawing a line between rainforest and wet sclerophyll is a tricky task,’’ Norman says. “By and large, the rainforest that burned was on the drier end of the spectrum. I am quite confident no warm or cool temperate rainforest was burned.” The affected dry rainforest mostly burned lightly, with the ground layer impacted. Norman cautions that if the forests burn again in the foreseeable future there could be more serious impacts.

Kaye Healing, the Queensland Rural Fire Service acting southeast regional manager, played a central role in fighting the fires, which continue to smoulder. Healing says while fires “burn crazily” through eucalypt woodland, they tend to “walk through” vine scrub and wet sclerophyll forest. “When it gets to true rainforest, the fire self-extinguishes,’’ he says. “You’ve got a closed canopy in true rainforest and it holds moisture. The rainforest is not on fire. The fire is in dry eucalypt forest and woodland.”

Healing says similar conditions were experienced before, for instance in the early 1990s: “I’m not going to get into a climate-change conversation but climate varies between floods and drought in this country and historical records show that.”

Claims about Australian rainforest burning for the first time also circulated late last year when 121,000ha of land around Eungella National Park near Mackay were scorched. At the time, the ABC published a photograph of a fire-stricken area; the caption said it had been a “rich green subtropical rainforest”. Although it was pointed out that the area had been grassland and shrubs, the captioned photograph remains on ABC websites.

The ABC reported that Eungella rainforests were reduced to cinders and would take hundreds of years to recover. Rural Fire Service manager for the Mackay region Andrew Houley, a former forester, says rainforest that burned around Eungella was largely regrowth on cleared land. Recent images show tree ferns and some other rainforest plants regrowing. However, the heat was so intense that 10m-15m of the edge of pristine rainforest in places was destroyed before the fires stopped. Houley adds: “Headlines say the fires are once in a lifetime but these weather patterns affect us every 25 years or so.”

A crisis facing rainforest is under way not in Australia but in Southeast Asia, the Amazon Basin and central Africa. Huge tracts of forest are being intensively logged or bulldozed for livestock or crops. Extensively damaged rainforest remnants and felled trees are then burned. In some countries, such as Indonesia, sound environmental laws are in place but are largely unenforced or ignored. In others, such as Brazil, governments are unapologetically pursuing polices to develop rainforest. Australia is fortunate its World Heritage rainforests are standing tall.

SOURCE

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

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

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IN BRIEF

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Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here. It shows that we actually live in an era of remarkable temperature stability.

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

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

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

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