Global warming "science" on display

One recent article below says that particulate pollution, soot, causes warming.  The second says it causes cooling.  More evidence that Warmism is a deeply irrational religion.  Warmists are not really scientists at all. They only play at it.  They just grab any silly theory that leads to the conclusion they want

Soot is bad

Among climate scientists, the consensus is that we must become carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic environmental disruptions. Negotiators at the recent summit in Paris accordingly focused on curbing carbon dioxide emissions.

There's a major problem, however, with a CO2-centric strategy. Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more, and because we won't abandon fossil fuels overnight, neutrality by 2050 simply isn't good enough to keep the Earth from warming 2 degrees Celsius - the generally agreed-upon limit - much less the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees C that many nations support.

If we're serious about preventing or at least slowing climate change, we have to broaden our hit list; even as we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon coolants. These pollutants are about 25 to 4,000 times more potent warmers than carbon dioxide, but they remain in the atmosphere from mere days in the case of carbon soot to 15 years in the case of HFCs.

Curbing the emissions of these short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs, unlike curbing carbon emissions, will have an immediate effect and can dramatically slow global warming within a few decades.

To put real numbers on it: If we reduce our emissions of methane 50%, black carbon 90% and fully replace HFCs by 2030, then we'll cut in half projected global warming over the next 35 years. These steps will delay environmental disaster and give us time we desperately need to radically change our energy diet.

Existing technologies, clean alternatives and regulatory mechanisms such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol that have proved effective for other climate pollutants can be quickly repurposed to deal with SLCPs.

In November, the 197 parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed to work toward an HFC amendment in 2016. Some parts of the world aren't waiting. India and Pakistan committed to phase down HFCs. Mexico has pledged to cut SLCPs 25% by 2030. California has already cut its carbon soot and ozone-forming gases 90% and is on its way to curbing all four SLCPs.

There's no downside to this approach. By curbing short-lived pollutants, not only will we obtain short-term relief from rapid warming, but we will also slow sea-level rise, increase crop yields and score a major victory for public health. Indoor and outdoor pollution today causes more than 7 million premature deaths annually. Curbing SLCPs can benefit us now, saving potentially 40 million lives over the next 20 years.

What we have in front of us isn't a choice between pulling lever one (carbon dioxide) or lever two (SLCPs); it's crucial that we pull both levers with all of our collective might. We have a moral imperative to act immediately with everything at our disposal, not only because there's no Planet B - as environmental activists put it - but because climate change seriously harms human well-being.

SOURCE

Soot is good

It may seem counterintuitive, but cleaner air could actually be exacerbating global warming trends.

The soot and other particles that make up air pollution tend to scatter light back out into space. As countries around the globe have cleaned up their act, there are fewer particles to reflect light, meaning more sunlight is reaching the Earth's surface and warming it, Martin Wild, a researcher at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, said Tuesday (Dec. 15) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

That's not to say people can blame global warming on the clearer skies - the underlying cause of climate change is excess carbon emissions into the atmosphere. But air pollution may have counteracted some of that warming caused by excess carbon in the atmosphere, Wild said.

Perhaps surprisingly, the sunlight reaching Earth's surface hasn't remained constant, at least not on the timescale of human civilization, Wild said.

"The sunlight we receive at the Earth's surface is not stable over the years, but undergoes substantial decadal changes," Wild said at a news briefing.

To understand what's going on, Wild looked at the level of solar radiation at 56 spots across Europe between 1939 and 2012. There were big peaks in that period. It turned out that solar radiation spiked in the 1950s, and then decreased until the 1980s, when it started to uptick again.

But what could have been the source? Sunspots, which look almost like moles on the face of the sun, are areas of intense magnetic activity which are cooler than the surrounding regions of the sun. Because they emit less radiation at these cooler temperatures, the number and extent of sunspots can change how much light reaches the Earth. However, cycles between high and low sunspot levels are much shorter than the timescales of the global dimming and brightening trend, and these cycles weren't correlated with those larger changes, Wild and his colleagues found.

Curbing sulfur

It turned out that there was a huge spike in sulfur emissions up until the 1980s, at which point sulfur pollutants dropped, Wild said. The drop in sulfur emissions corresponds with the introduction of legislation in a number of countries to reduce air pollution, Wild said.  (Diesel exhaust often contains high levels of sulfur compounds.)

It's not surprising to scientists that higher levels of pollutants could dim the Earth's surface: After volcanic eruptions, for instance, the huge amounts of sulfur spewed into the atmosphere can cool the planet for a few years. That's because the tiny particles can scatter and absorb light, reducing how much of that light ultimately reaches the Earth's surface, Wild said.

Air pollution can also alter the light reaching Earth in other ways.

"Polluted clouds, counterintuitively, become brighter," Wild said. "The polluted clouds can also stay longer in the air because their droplets are small." [In Images: Mysterious Night-Shining Clouds]

Here's how the cloud brightening works: Aerosols that are normally in the air are insoluble and act as seeds for water droplets to condense around, and ultimately to form clouds. Polluted air, on the other hand, contains water-soluble particles, leading to clouds with more, yet smaller, water droplets. These numerous and tiny droplets provide more surfaces for light to reflect off, and voil… - brighter clouds.

These brighter clouds also reduce how much light reaches the ground, he added.

What's more, this unintentional geoengineering may have already impacted global warming, Wild said. Global temperatures held fairly constant from the 1950s to the 1980s, and warming only accelerated starting in 1985, when the global brightening seems to have begun, Wild reported in a study published this month in the journal WIREs Climate Change.

He also sees evidence that this unintentional geoengineering affected the world's hemispheres differently. Temperatures held steady until the mid-1980s in the Northern Hemisphere, where most of the world's population lives, and spiked up sharply afterward. By contrast, in the "relatively more pristine" Southern Hemisphere, which has much fewer people, the region experienced a steadier uptick in warming. That suggests that air pollution had a measurable effect on global warming on the globe's northern half, and less so in the southern half, he said.

SOURCE






Global Warming Is Now A `Women's Issue' Due To `Ecofeminism'

Surprise!  Feminism is just the women's branch of the far-Left.  They don't care about women at all.  If they did, they would be relentless foes of Islam

Environmentalists are increasingly claiming that global warming is a "women's issue" and that the world needs "eco-feminism" as a path forward.

"We know that the world's poor feel the effects of climate change most acutely, but it turns out there is an even more vulnerable subset to that population: women" reads the article The Sierra Club tweeted Monday.

The author worries about a "agricultural resource gap for women farmers" and that global warming could increase the risk of sexual assault. The author even notes that "women are too often portrayed only as victims of climate change who must learn to adapt, rather than potential leaders and decision-makers."

Ecofeminists believe that women and nature are bonded by  traditionally "feminine" values and their shared history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society. This patriarchal society is built on four intersectional pillars of sexism, racism, class exploitation, and environmental destruction.

The ecofeminist attempt to brand global warming as a "women's issue" was powerful enough to get December 8 designated as "gender day" at the United Nations COP 21 Paris global warming summit. Predictably, the ecofeminists aren't happy with the agreement.

"This agreement fundamentally does not address the needs of the most vulnerable countries, communities, and people of the world. It fails to address the structures of injustice and inequality which have caused the climate crisis," Bridget Burns, co-coordinator of the global warming summit's Women and Gender Constituency, said in a press release.

Environmentalist websites have already created a list of demands including a "gender-responsive approach" to global warming and banning nuclear power (which creates no carbon dioxide emissions). Other environmental websites  claim the COP 21 U.N. global warming summit is "ethically compromised" due to intense pressure exerted by "corporate environmentalism." It also claims the conference ignores "climate debt," the idea that rich countries owe reparations to poor countries for global warming.

SOURCE




British PM has sparked outrage by blaming Britain's flood crisis on global warming while admitting defences are not fit for purpose

The Prime Minister said more frequent `extreme weather events' driven by climate change were the main driver as Cumbria and the north braces for more hell.

However experts branded his comments "ludicrous excuses" blaming lack of investment on flood defences for the disaster and pointed to historic flooding which pre-dated global warming.

They accused the Prime Minister of deflecting attention away from accusations Britain is woefully unprepared for severe weather.

Climatologists say although devastating, the floods have nothing to do with global warming but are part of a natural weather cycle.

They say heavy and persistent rain not only in the UK but across the world has been bolstered by an especially strong El Nino this year.

The phenomenon - on course to be the strongest on record - is triggered by wind changes in the Pacific Ocean leading to a build up of warm water around the coast of Peru.

It has catastrophic impacts on the world's weather including heavy rain and floods in America and South America and warmer than average temperature across Asia.

Although its effects are still under discussion, it is thought increased atmospheric moisture may be responsible for heavy rain over Europe.

Mr Cameron spoke as he paid a visit to the northern city of York, currently devastated by weeks of heavy rain.

He said: "What has happened - the level of the rivers, plus the level of rainfall - has created an unprecedented effect and so some very serious flooding.

"We do seem to face more of these extreme weather events and problems of floods. "People are told that things that are one in 50, or one in 100, or one in 200 years, they seem to be happening more often.

"So what we should be doing is continuing with the very high level of investment in flood defences.

"The flood barriers have made a difference, both the permanent ones and the temporary ones, but it's clear in some cases they've been over-topped, they've been over-run and so of course we should look again about whether there is more we can do."

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Forum, slammed the Prime Minister for shrouding the real problem of poor flood defences with excuses. He said: "Flooding has happened through the centuries, though uncommon, what we are seeing is nothing new. "The most likely explanation is that the current El Nino has thrown more moisture into the air as sea waters have evaporated over the Pacific.

"This has nothing to do with climate change but is a natural phenomenon which was happening a long time before climate change took over the agenda. "This is just an excuse for the failure of a number of governments to address the reality that Cumbria and flood prone regions face."

Although Britain has been hit by extreme rainfall over the past few weeks, floods have ravaged UK shores for centuries - before climate change was named.

The North Sea flood of 1953 is long held as one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in British history.

Around 30,000 people were forced from their homes and more than 300 people lost their lives as water swept down the east coast.

In 1864 the Great Sheffield Flood claimed 270 lives and in 1928 heavy rain and melting snow doubled the amount of water in the Thames overflowing into London.

Lynmouth, Devon, was devastated by floods in 1952 which toppled buildings and led to the deaths of 34 people.

In 1998 Easter floods crippled the Midlands with the Rivers Avon, Ouse and Nene bursting their banks during heavy downpours.

More than 4,000 homes were destroyed while power supplies were lost leaving a clean-up bill of œ350 million.

Even further back in history Britain has battled floods with a catalogue of weather-related disasters spanning the last five centuries.

In 1607 Wales and the southwest was all but washed away after the January Bristol floods which some attribute to a huge storm surge or tsunami.

The Great Storm of 1703 saw central and southern England clobbered by strong wind and rain which people at the time blamed on  the wrath of God for the sins of the nation.

Most recently the town of Boscastle, in Devon, was ravaged by torrents of swirling floodwater after heavy rain in August 2004.

Dr Peiser said the answer is to spend more on flood prevention drawing examples with Europe where investment in defences has prevented a similar crisis. "You only have to look at Holland, which is much more prone to flooding but they have sorted it out," he added.  "They have protected their country and their communities.

"The Prime Minister is right that the UK flood crisis is man-made, in that people havent taken this seriously enough. "The Government needs to spend money on protecting people from floods, not blaming climate change.

"This is nothing to do with climate change, it is simply an excuse."

SOURCE





EPA Now Says It's Not to Blame for Gold King Mine Spill

On August 5, a crew from the Environmental Protection Agency caused a spill of 3 million gallons of water laden with mercury, arsenic, and other toxic metals from the Gold King mine into a river that supplies drinking water for three states.

While the EPA initially promised to hold itself accountable in the same manner that it would hold a private party, it is becoming increasingly evident that this assertion was not entirely accurate.

After the spill, the EPA commissioned an initial analysis of what happened from the Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation (BOR).

The Bureau of Reclamation found that the EPA hit a spring with a backhoe to cause the spill, but the report did not assign blame. Now, a new EPA report has the same failing, further showing that the EPA report is shirking responsibility for its actions.

The EPA's Report

In their report, the EPA claims it was engaged in only "careful scraping and excavation" with a backhoe outside the mine. "Just prior to finishing, a team noticed a water spout a couple of feet high in the air near where they had been excavating."

The report goes on to say that the spout (that they just happened to notice) quickly turned into a gusher of yellow toxic water.

It seems the EPA would have us believe the mine erupted on its own (which is like arguing, but, Your Honor, I was just carrying the gun when it went off all on its own!).

The EPA's report goes on to allege that the mine entrance (or adit) was larger than they "anticipated," and the "fact that the adit opening was about 2 times the assumed 8 to 10 foot maximum adit height resulted in a closer than anticipated proximity to the adit brow, and combined with the pressure of the water was enough to cause the spout and blowout."

In other words, the mine did it!

Is it possible that the spill was caused by the EPA being careless? Nope. The authors claim they were digging "to better inform a planned consultation" scheduled for nine days later.

Essentially, the EPA claims that the spill was an act of God, rather than its own fault.

Not a Good Argument

The EPA argument is unpersuasive for two reasons. For starters, the EPA has prosecuted private parties for the same conduct.

The government prosecuted Edward Hanousek, an employee of the Pacific Arctic Railway and Navigation Company, for conduct so similar to the EPA's that one can simply switch out the nouns in the prosecutor's closing argument that proved successful in that case.

It would seem to be just as apt to the facts of the Animas River spill:

"When [the backhoe operator] hit that unprotected [spring] and that [3 million gallons of toxic mine water] fired out of that [spring], sprayed up into the air, and got into that [Animas River], the[] defendants . [became] guilty of negligent discharging [acid mine water] into the [Animas] River."

Second, although the initial Bureau of Reclamation report buries most of the facts that are relevant to the cause of the spill under 120 pages of superfluous information, the Bureau of Reclamation report includes just enough facts to make it clear that had a private party caused the Animas River spill, the government would probably have criminally prosecuted that party.

Government Accountability

Remember EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's announcement shortly after the spill occurred?

McCarthy said then that "we want to reassure everyone that the EPA does take full responsibility for the spill."

It turns out that the federal government's measure of "full responsibility" has typically meant that criminal charges will be brought for the same conduct by which the EPA caused the Animas River spill as long as only private parties are to blame. The truth is that the EPA has now made several attempts to evade responsibility.

First, the EPA allegedly "doctored" a video of the spill-getting "called on the discrepancy during a House committee hearing."

Then the EPA commissioned a report from the Bureau of Reclamation that was designed to look credible-which, like a bad student term paper, was lengthy and full of unnecessary charts and illustrations-but recited just enough facts to stay relevant to the spill. And even those facts made the EPA look bad.

Now the EPA has published an eleventh-hour report that not only reads like a term paper written on the bus en route to school, but also evades responsibility almost entirely.

In a glimmer of honesty, the EPA report admits that "[i]n retrospect, and based on information learned [later]," the EPA's team was "much closer [to the opening of the mine] when excavating on August 5 than they thought."

This is like saying the Titanic was closer to an iceberg than the captain thought.

Heritage Foundation scholars initially argued that the EPA "should prosecute the subordinate and supervisory EPA officials in this case or stop bringing similar charges against private parties for their negligence."

Had Hanousek worked for the EPA, it seems, he would never have been stigmatized and punished as a criminal.

After the Bureau of Reclamation report, we argued that "[s]omeone should ask the EPA and the Justice Department why the federal government discriminates in favor of government employees and against private parties."

Now, after the EPA published its own report, it seems like Congress will have its work cut out for it if it's going to get even so much as a meaningful acceptance of responsibility from this agency.

SOURCE





Australia: More reductions in solar panel handouts planned

HUNDREDS of thousands of homeowners with solar panels would lose the generous feed-in tariff if they install energy-storing batteries, under a proposal by Energex.

In a submission to the Queensland Productivity Commission electricity pricing inquiry, the state-owned power distributor calls for the law to be changed to strip customers' eligibility for the 44›/kWh tariff if they fit Battery Energy Storage Systems.

The Palaszczuk Government says battery storage was not envisaged when the solar bonus scheme was introduced. But it was not ruling the proposal in or out at this stage and would consider it along with other recommendations after the commission released its report in mid-February.

Queensland has almost 400,000 homes with PV panels. Stripping eligibility to the 44› rate would affect about 265,000 households.

Energex argues the increased ability to keep large amounts of power for release back into the network would give those solar householders on the top rate an unfair advantage which was never intended by the bonus scheme.

Ergon does not call for eligibility to be removed in its submission, but argues that generous government rebates and feed-in tariffs have shifted the mindset of many customers from an environmental motivation to seeking a financial return.

But solar owners are furious. Brisbane resident John Sheehan, who has been the local co-ordinator for Solar Citizens, said the proposal unfairly penalised individuals and undermined the State Government's own target of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

He said such a move would discourage people from installing batteries until the bonus scheme ended 12 years from now.

"Energex's action in proposing to block 170,000 homes from installing batteries conflicts with their rhetoric about price signals and reducing peak loads. It's hypocritical and a bit childish really.''

Mr Sheehan speculated that the distributor was concerned that batteries would reduce evening peak demand - and reduce the amount power companies could charge under planned demand-based tariffs.

The 44c/kWh feed-in tariff, brought in by Labor in 2008 as an incentive to encourage homeowners to fit photo voltaic systems, has helped make Queensland the solar capital of Australia.

The rate was reduced to 8c/KWh for new customers in 2012 by the incoming LNP government, which shut it down in 2014. Home-owners in southeast Queensland now have to negotiate a rate with their individual energy retailer, while regional customers get 6.348c/kWh.

But those on the 44c level continue to receive it.

SOURCE

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Here we go again: Foods That May Disappear Thanks to Climate Change

Even the opening sentence below is wrong.  Global warming is NOT making the world a different place.  Why? Because warming is  not happening.  So it can't cause anything. So the various phenomena they list may or may not be happening but they are not caused by global warming.  That graph again:



And all the foods they list are plant products.  And plants LOVE warmth.  You just have to see how lush the tropics are to know that. And plants love CO2 as well.  They grow bigger with more of it.  Why do you think greenhouse owners pump CO2 into their greenhouses?  The CO2 level in greenhouses is typically more than twice that in the open atmosphere.

And warming would open more of Northern Canada and Siberia up to farming.  And do you know how big Siberia is?  It is 5 million sq. miles.  Australia, Canada and CONUS are each about 3 million sq. miles. So a suddenly temperate climate in Southern Siberia would grow all the temperate climate crops you like.  The latitudes in which the various crops grow could change but grow they will. So warming would in fact produce food ABUNDANCE.  It's cooling that would be dangerous


Climate change is making the world a different place. There are more floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves and other extreme weather events. Animal species around the world are either shifting habitat locations or simply dying off. Even humans are migrating due to a warmer world.

But there is one effect that will hit many of us right in the gut: Certain foods could disappear thanks to our changing climate. Brace yourself: here are 10 foods you’ll probably be sad to see go.

1. Guacamole

Around 8 million pounds of guacamole are consumed during the Super Bowl, but football fans might soon have to find something else to dip their tortilla chips into. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predict as much as a 40 percent decrease in avocado production over the next 30 years due to increasing temperatures brought on by climate change.

As a result, the fast food chain Chipotle, which goes through 97,000 pounds of avocados a day — 35 million pounds every year — has warned that if climate change worsens, it may be forced to stop serving guacamole. The company says it "may choose to temporarily suspend serving menu items, such as guacamole or one or more of our salsas, rather than paying the increased cost for the ingredients.”

2. Apples

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces," the German theologian Martin Luther said, “I would still plant my apple tree.” He didn’t figure that there might be a tomorrow in which apple trees can’t properly grow. In 2011, an international team of scientists published a study which found just that: Temperate fruit and nut trees like the apple tree, which need a certain period of winter chill to produce economically practical yields, could be affected by global warming as winter temperatures rise. They said farmers should prepare for a warmer future by breeding cultivars with lower chilling requirements.

Such apples will likely taste different from the ones we have today, according to a Japanese study which found that rising temperatures are causing apple trees to bear fruit sooner, making them softer and sweeter. “If you could eat an average apple harvested 30 years before and an average apple harvested recently at the same time, you would really taste the difference,” said Toshihiko Sugiura of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, the study’s lead author.

3. Beer

It’s sad, but true. Beer is already a victim of a changing climate, with brewers increasingly finding it more difficult to secure stable water supplies. According to a 2010 report commissioned by the National Resources Defense Council, about a third of counties in the United States "will face higher risks of water shortages by mid-century as the result of global warming." Between 2030 and 2050, the difficulty in accessing freshwater is “anticipated to be significant in the major agricultural and urban areas throughout the nation.”

Some specialty hops used by craft brewers have already become harder to source, since warming winters are producing earlier and smaller yields. “This is not a problem that’s going to happen someday," said Jenn Orgolini of Colorado's New Belgium Brewery. “If you drink beer now, the issue of climate change is impacting you right now.” She said that in 2011, the hops her brewery normally uses weren’t available due to Pacific Northwest weather conditions.

4. Rice and Beans

The late comedian/philosopher Bill Hicks once said, “The American dream is a crock. Stop wanting everything. Everyone should wear jeans and have three T-shirts, eat rice and beans.” He didn’t live long enough to find out that climate change could threaten the ability to follow his wise suggestion. It’s hard to overstate the importance of rice to world. It is a food staple for almost half of the world's population. But climate change could significantly impact rice yields in this century.

According to a 2005 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “temperature increases, rising seas and changes in rainfall patterns and distribution expected as a result of global climate change could lead to substantial modifications in land and water resources for rice production as well as in the productivity of rice crops grown in different parts of the world.” A 2005 report by the United States Department of Agriculture found that the viability of rice-growing land in tropical areas could decline by more than 50 percent during the next century.

Beans feed the majority of the human population in Latin America and much of Africa and are a part of the daily diet of more than 400 million people across the developing world. But beans may also experience declines due to a warming world. According to a report the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), higher temperatures could reduce bean yields by as much as 25 percent. “Beans are highly sensitive to heat, and the varieties that farmers currently grow do not yield well under night temperatures over 18 or 19 degrees Centigrade,” writes Nathan Russell of CIAT. “Higher temperatures drastically reduce seed fertility, leading to lower grain yields and quality.” Thankfully, CIAT scientists have identified about 30 “elite” bean lines that have demonstrated tolerance to temperatures 4°C higher than the crop’s normal “comfort zone.”

More idiocy HERE





Bernie Sanders: A completely nutty Greenie

On the campaign trail in nearby New Hampshire, Democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders bangs the drum for a carbon tax and single-payer health care – despite the failure of both in his home state of Vermont.

When it comes to progressive causes, the left has no greater champion than Vermont’s junior senator. On the environment, Sanders proposes a national tax to cut carbon levels by 80 percent by 2050. His campaign site calls it “one of the most straightforward and cost-effective strategies for quickly fighting climate change.”

But in Vermont, where a proposed carbon tax is now in its second year of seeking legislative support, backers are struggling to convince the public the policy is environmentally or economically sound.

The carbon tax legislation calls for a $100 per ton of carbon emissions tax on gasoline, propane, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Proponents say a carbon tax will slash Vermont’s carbon emissions by 2 million tons annually and direct tax revenue to weatherization and energy efficiency programs. Critics blast the tax as regressive, arguing it will harm Vermonters whose pocketbooks are sensitive to fluctuations in gas prices.

Either way, the tax is projected to boost the cost of gasoline by up to 88 cents per gallon, assuming fuel distributors pass the cost on to consumers. A gallon of propane would rise 58 cents; heating oil and diesel fuel could jump $1.02 per gallon.

While the tax may nudge many Vermonters to fill up vehicles in nearby states like New York and New Hampshire, there’s a bigger problem: carbon-tax backers admit it won’t change global CO2 levels.

Faced with the prospect that Vermont’s carbon tax can do little – maybe nothing – to help global warming, Paul Burns, executive director of the pro-carbon-tax Vermont Public Interest Research Group, recently said during a Montpelier debate, “Alone, sure, we can’t do it.”

Perhaps not even together. In that debate, panelists were considering the provocative findings of economist Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. CO2 reduction initiatives in the just-wrapped 2015 Paris Climate Summit agreement, Lomborg concludes, will reduce global temperatures by only one-sixth of one degree by the end of the century.

Such policy-killing admissions occur frequently in Vermont, where the state is on track to create an all green-energy economy that runs on 90 percent renewables by 2050.

Asa Hopkins, Vermont’s policy chief at the Department of Public Service, spoke to Watchdog about the impact an all-green Vermont would have on global warming. His analysis was surprisingly honest, if self-defeating.

“Climate change is a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem where no one person’s actions, no one state, or even one country’s actions is attributable to even more than maybe a few percent of the global challenge,” Hopkins said.

Convincing Vermonters to sacrifice money and comfort for a policy that does nothing to avert a supposed climate apocalypse looks like a losing political battle. In fact, the tax is so steep and ineffective that Vermont’s Democratic governor doesn’t endorse it.

State lawmakers aren’t biting either. Earlier this month, the chair of the House Energy Committee, Rep. Tony Klein, D- East Montpelier, told Watchdog “everybody knows that there will be no carbon tax bill seriously moved forward in any way, shape or form this session.”

When it comes to pushing a carbon tax on the nation, Sanders seems not to have gotten Vermont’s memo.

Sanders’ embrace of a single-payer health care system has fared no better in his home state.

In a rousing back-and-forth with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders reaffirmed his belief in a Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. That policy met crushing defeat exactly one year ago in Vermont.

Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin, the top pitchman for a single-payer system in states, worked tirelessly for years to sell a government-run health care system that covered all 630,000 Vermonters. But after two years of concealing the system’s financing plan under executive privilege, and after consultant – and Obamacare modeling expert – Jonathan Gruber discredited himself in a series of candid video moments, Shumlin quietly killed single-payer.

“As we completed the financing modeling it became clear that the risk of economic shock is too high at this time to offer a plan I can responsibly support for passage in the Legislature,” Shumlin said at the news conference announcing the event. “The taxes required to replace health-care premiums with a publicly financed plan that would best serve Vermont are, in a word, enormous.”

The new taxes required to pay for single payer were estimated at $2.6 billion for 2017, increasing to almost $3.2 billion in 2021. Estimates showed taxpayers couldn’t pay for single-payer even with a massive 11.5 percent payroll tax on all businesses and a sliding-scale income tax of up to 9.5 percent.

Sanders’ continued support of government-run health care and the carbon tax may have a simple explanation: despite their dramatic failings in Vermont, both underscore Sanders’ image as a democratic socialist. Sanders founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the 1990s, and pushed for single-payer in Obamacare’s so-called public option. Touting progressive policies out on the stump has certain appeal with voters who appreciate Sanders’ do-gooder politics.

But as word leaks about the failure of progressive policies in his own backyard, Sanders may find it harder to convince national audiences they’ll work for America.

SOURCE





Expensive Green Energy Program Saves No Energy

Hawaii's Green Energy Market Securitization program (GEMS), financed with $145 million in bonds, was touted as a program to help poor  homeowners and renters obtain energy-saving technologies they otherwise could not afford. Yet, in the first ten months of its existence, despite receiving nearly 150 completed applications, GEMS has not granted a single loan.

A report by the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism submitted to the Public Utilities Commission showed the program launched in November 2014 received 149 completed loan applications as of September 30. Forty three of applications came from non-profit organizations, 41 of which were classified as “under review,” while two were declined. Another 106 came from residences, 35 of which were declined, five withdrawn, and 66 remain listed as “under review.”

While GEMS has yet to make any loans, financial documents indicate it is spending and collecting a fair amount of money. A financial summary of the program reported that GEMS’ current assets amounted to $145,891,273.34, from bond offering, as of September 30, with expenditures topping $111,909, all for the cost of administering the program. Yet, according the Hawaii Free Press, the financial summary fails to reveal the whole story. A worksheet from Hawaiian Electric covering the period of December, 2014 through June 30, indicated the company anticipated collecting more $7,976,862.60 in Green Infrastructure Fees from utility customers, 45 percent from residential ratepayers, with the entire amount slated to pay principal and interest on the GEMS bonds. In addition, by the end of 2015, the utility will need to collect $7,940,691.56 more to fulfill “revenue requirements” for GEMS.

What this means, according to Patricia Tummons of Environment Hawaii, is “Framed another way, GEMS has cost electric ratepayers more than $15 million since November of 2014. And as of September 30, the state had not one kilowatt of renewable energy installed to show for it.”

SOURCE





Global Warming Is Not the Problem. Global Governance Is.

by James Delingpole

Media Matters for America – George Soros’s pet attack poodle site – has published a list of the 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said In 2015.

I’m proud to say that I come in at number 6 (though obviously I would have preferred higher) with my statement that alarmist climate scientists are “a bunch of talentless low lives who cannot be trusted.”

In retrospect I wish to apologise for that sentence.

What I really should have said is that these are a bunch of lying, cheating, scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, third-rate tosspots who don’t even deserve the name “scientists” because what they practise isn’t really science but data-fiddling, cherry-picking, grant-troughing, activism-driven propaganda. Posterity will grant them about as much respect as we now accord the 17th century quacks who bled their patients using leeches, or the early 20th century German scientists who helped Hitler compose his diatribe against the discredited Jewish science of Einstein, or the scientists who ganged up on Alfred Wegener for his novel – but correct – theories on continental drift.

Really, if none of them ever published another paper in their lives and all their grant funding dried up at midnight tonight, the cause of climate science would not suffer one jot – and the world would become a much better (and richer) place.

Having read through all the other items on the Media Matters list, I can’t find much fault with any of them either.

Take Mark Steyn telling Fox News that “[ISIS leader] al-Baghdadi will be sawing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) head off, and he’ll be saying as his neck is being sliced, ‘If only we’d had an emissions trading scheme.'”

Apart from being very funny it also happens to be true. The attempts by Bernie Sanders – and many others including the Prince of Wales and US Secretary of State John Kerry – to link “climate change” to terrorism are both hysterical and wrong, as I demonstrate here, here and here.

Worse than that, though, these claims are fraudulent. They represent a deliberate conspiracy by our political class (and their amen corner in the media) to mislead us about the relative urgency and risks of the threats facing us in the coming years.

To anyone with even half an eye on world events, it’s perfectly obvious that there are many more desperate problems – fundamentalist Islam, say – than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. So why do our political class persist in pretending to us, in defiance of all the evidence, that “climate change” represents the only global issue serious enough to justify the convening of a conference like the recent one in Paris attended by 40,000 delegates and the leaders of over 150 nation states?

The answer to this is too complicated for one sentence – for the full story read this book – but the consequences can be summed up in two words: global governance.

This was always the masterplan of the sinister Marxist billionaire who invented the global warming scare – Maurice Strong. (You can read more about him here and here). Environmentalism, he understood early on, was the perfect excuse to override the democratic process: after all, when the future of the world is at stake, it only makes sense to ignore the little people and concentrate power in the hands of enlightened technocrats like Maurice Strong and his eco-fascistic control freak pals….

Here’s how he once put it:

    "The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental co-operation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of global environmental security."

There’s the plan: One World Government in the name of “global environmental security”. And it’s happening across the world right now. Never mind the facts that COP21 was a bit of a flop and that the Pope’s encyclical on the environment was widely ridiculed. The great global governance caravan is trundling on regardless: it’s now a business, remember, worth $1.5 trillion a year. There are an awful lot of snouts stuck in that trough and they’re not about to leave it any time soon.

Yet it’s something that is almost never mentioned in the mainstream media. How many times have you read or heard, anywhere in the MSM, about Agenda 21? It has been the guiding force behind most environmental policy across the world since it was born at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (established by Maurice Strong) which in turn spawned all the big eco conferences we’ve had since, such as the recent COP21 in Paris. But no one ever talks about it. It just sounds like too much of a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory.

And that, I’m afraid, is also part of The Plan. Anyone who dares question the “consensus” on global warming – see Media Matters above – is dismissed as a fruitcake: journalists are marginalised, scientists lose tenure or funding, politicians are denied preferment, businesses lose contracts. Speaking out against climate change is the modern equivalent of being Galileo before the Inquisition…

So that’s going to be one of my jobs in 2016 – telling it like it is, regardless of what the bastards say.  I consider it both a pleasure and privilege

SOURCE  (See the original for links)





At Idaho Legislature, Many Doubt Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Cause

“Listen to Rush Limbaugh once in a while,” Rep. Dell Raybould said. “See what he thinks about it. He’ll tell you that this is just a bunch of nonsense.”  Raybould was talking about the idea that burning fossil fuel causes climate change. The Rexburg Republican is chairman of the House Resources and Conservation Committee and the Legislature’s expert on water issues.

Climate change skepticism is fairly common in Idaho, especially among its elected lawmakers.

Many Idahoans don’t accept the consensus among qualified scientists that global temperatures are rising due to human activity.

A June poll by Idaho Politics Weekly found that 44 percent of Idahoans believe both that the climate is warming and that it constitutes a crisis. Another 26 percent said it was changing but not too harmful, and 21 percent said they don’t think climate change is happening at all.

Whether or not you’re a skeptic depends largely on what political party you identify with. The same poll found that only 20 percent of Republicans think there’s an ongoing climate crisis, while 84 percent of Democrats hold that view.

That fits with a broad trend throughout the nation, according to polling by the Pew Research Center.

It will be difficult to build support for state policies to combat a problem many Idahoans don’t think exists.

Even among lawmakers who accept the consensus view, there isn’t a clear vision of what the state can do about it.

Although scientists say dramatic action is needed immediately, there is no indication such action will take place in Idaho.

Senate Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said he believes that the climate is warming, but it’s unclear how much is caused by human activity.

Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone, belongs to the camp that sees recent climate change as part of natural cycles.

“We get climate change four times a year — it’s called the four seasons,” Loertscher said. “… I think we’re pretty vain if we think we can control the climate.”

Loertscher, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, sent along two articles that he said support his view.

One is an article from a London tabloid listing 100 reasons climate change is natural.

The other is an article by Edmund Contoski, an author and speaker for the Heartland Institute, who is not a climatologist. The Heartland Institute is a think tank that rejects the consensus view on global warming, as well as the view that secondhand smoke is unhealthy.

Loertscher’s view isn’t at the extreme end of the Legislature. Of nine lawmakers who responded to a four-question survey sent to all members of the Legislature by the Post Register, two said they don’t believe global temperatures are rising at all.

The Impact on Policy

Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Idaho Falls, is chairman of the House Environment, Energy and Technology Committee which oversees many issues that involve greenhouse gas emissions such as energy policy.

Thompson thinks scientists broadly disagree about whether the climate is warming at all.

“You can find people who say that it’s not happening and people who say that it is happening,” Thompson said in an interview.

Thompson recently authored an op-ed in the Idaho Statesman, calling on Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to join a court case challenging the legality of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules requiring greenhouse gas reductions at power plants.

“My biggest concern is what it’s going to do to electric rates for the citizens of Idaho,” Thompson said.

Although Idaho doesn’t contain any coal-fired power plants, and its two major natural gas power plants are up to EPA standards, Idahoans do import a significant amount of coal-generated electricity from Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Oregon. So higher standards there could have a big impact on Idaho electrical rates, Thompson said.

While EPA had initially called for Idaho to cut its emissions by some 33 percent, recent revisions to the rule mean the cuts will be significantly smaller, said John Chatburn, administrator of the Idaho Office of Energy Resources.

The group is still analyzing the 500-page rule to determine what it will mean for the state, Chatburn said.

House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said he is “somewhat skeptical” of the scientific consensus. But he said state and federal water regulators should be ready to make changes if predictions of lower snowpacks come true.

The state should work to build more reservoirs and to do more aquifer recharge in order to mitigate possible low flows late in the irrigation season, he said.
Idaho’s Contribution

But even with imported coal-generated electricity, most of Idaho’s greenhouse gas emissions come from other sources.

The biggest source is transportation, and the second-biggest is agriculture, according to a 2008 report from the Center for Climate Strategies commissioned by the Department of Environmental Quality.

The good news is that the report projects agricultural greenhouse gas emissions — mainly methane produced by livestock — will level off on their own in coming years.

But emissions from transportation — mainly fuel burned in commercial and passenger vehicles — are projected to continue rising rapidly, by about 11 percent between 2010 and 2020.

Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, said there are lots of state policies she thinks should be enacted to combat climate change, but political realities don’t leave much hope that will happen. “What I think and what’s plausible are two different things,” she said.

House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, accepts the consensus view on climate change. But he said cutting emissions from vehicles in the state is a hard problem. Significant portions of Idaho’s population live in rural areas where driving is a necessity.

And it’s also hard to see how emissions from livestock could be cut without significant changes in the American diet, he said.

Pro Tem Hill said the state should focus on promoting technological innovation, such as work on nuclear power occurring at Idaho National Laboratory.

Stennett said she doesn’t think the Legislature will take any significant action on climate change until it becomes a clear economic necessity. If anti-climate change measures can be sold as an economic boon, they have a shot, she said.

Rusche said the state is already seeing the effects of rising temperatures, and sooner or later it will have to deal with the issue.

“The Legislature has been trying to deny and ignore it, but the fact is that we’ve been having to respond to some of the impacts of climate change, whether it’s the economy in ski areas or the water in the East Snake Plain Aquifer,” he said.

SOURCE





Bob Hawke Says Nuclear Waste Dump 'A Win-Win' For Australia

Being arguably the most popular Leftist Prime Minister Australia has had, Hawke still has influence on the Left, so this is significant.  The Labor Party Premier of South Australia is of the same mind

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke is still pushing for Australia to become the world's nuclear waste dump, calling the plan "a win-win" that could "transform our own fiscal situation."

Hawke was an advocate for nuclear waste to be stored securely in Australia's remote regions from the time of his Prime Ministership which ended in 1991; now, a quarter of a century later, the Labor Party elder statesman said he still wanted to see the idea come to fruition.

Speaking at the embargoed launch of cabinet papers from 1990 and 1991 -- the turbulent period which saw him elected to an unlikely and record fourth term as PM, then quickly dumped from the top job as Paul Keating's second leadership spill saw him seize power in December '91 -- Hawke spoke widely on both historical and contemporary issues.

"In my last final period as prime minister, I had a world economic group of geologists and experts commissioned to find out where are the world’s safest remote sites for storage of waste, and all the sites were in Australia," he said.

"We would negotiate with the countries to take the waste and we’d make the world a safer place by having all this unsafe stuff around the world stored safely, and at the same time we’d transform our own fiscal situation. This is what my Chinese friends call a win-win situation."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here 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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More non-global warming in the Arctic

It always amuses me when Leftists seem to get erections over warming in the Arctic that is out of step with global temperatures. They seem to think that a non-global event is proof of a global event, even when there is demonstrably nothing global going on.  It surely shows both a profound lack of logic and a need to believe. They mock Christians for their beliefs in the invisible but they too in fact believe in invisible events. They see warming that is not there.  That graph again:



Some VERY out-of-step Arctic events are reported below.  This time however, an explicit connection with global warming is not made, though all the excitement about it is presumably meant to make you think that something important is going on.  Maybe logic eventually finds its way even into a Warmist skull.  That the Arctic is anomalous because of the powerful volcanoes underneath much of it (e.g. along the Gakkel ridge) is not mentioned, of course.


The North Pole is experiencing a heatwave as temperatures came close to melting point yesterday, making the Arctic region warmer than some major cities in Europe and the US.

According to ocean measurements from the North Pole Environmental Observatory, the mercury tipped -1.9°C (28.6°F) on Wednesday as the Arctic bathed in an unseasonably warm spell.

The hike in temperature is reportedly due to the same low pressure system which has brought flood chaos to England and Scotland, and made areas of the Arctic up to 35˚C (63°F) warmer than the seasonal average.

Earlier this week, meteorologists tracking the path of a powerful North Atlantic storm over Iceland had forecast that the Arctic temperatures could peak above freezing, with the storm being one of the strongest on record and wind speeds of up to 230mph (370km/h).

Typically, the Arctic would be expected to be somewhere in the depths of up to -35°C (-31°F) in December, with 24 hour darkness.

ARCTIC HAS WARMEST YEAR IN HISTORY

Earlier this month, the average air temperature over Arctic land reached 2.3°F (1.3°C) above average for the year ending in September.

That's the highest since observations began in 1900.

The new mark was noted in the annual Arctic Report Card, released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Arctic centres on the North Pole and reaches into North America and Eurasia.

But while large fluctuations of up to 30°F in air temperature are fairly typical in the Arctic, this latest weather system was expected to push the variability to as high as 50°F or 60°F.

Although no instruments for measuring temperature are operating on the North Pole to provide precise reading for the temperature spike, experts indicate temperatures may have pushed past zero.

Data pulled from one ocean buoy in the Arctic reported a temperature spike of 0.7°C, but Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at US company Weather Bell said on Twitter this data may have a large range of uncertainty.

Meteorologist Bob Henson, from WeatherUnderground, added that the December temperatures at the North Pole have only reached or gone above freezing just three times since 1948, but none during between January and March.

By comparison, yesterday's lowest temperature in Vienna was -1°C (-30°F) while Chicago was -2°C (28°F).

The same low pressure system responsible for the Arctic warmth is responsible for Storm Frank, which hit the UK with winds of 85mph (137km/h).

BBC weatherman Simon King, tweeted: 'A bit warm at the North Pole! Thanks to Storm Frank the temp is a very rare +1°C compared to the average -28°C.'

More weather disruption is expected over the New Year.

A larger than expected El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean is disrupting air currents, which is having a knock on effect on weather patterns around the world, including the North Atlantic.

Monitoring the weather event from space, Nasa has warned that satellite data indicate that this year's El Nino could be as strong as that of 1997 and 1998 which was the strongest on record.

The phenomenon is the result of a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator.

Usually the wind blows strongly from east to west, due to the rotation of the Earth, causing water to pile up in the western part of the Pacific. This pulls up colder water from the deep ocean in the eastern Pacific.

However, in an El Niño event, the winds weaken and the warmer water to shift back towards the east. This causes the eastern Pacific to get warmer.

As the ocean temperature is linked to the wind currents, this can cause the winds to grow weaker still and so the ocean grows warmer, meaning the El Niño grows.

The effects of this year's El Niño event could extend well into 2016, causing further weather chaos.

SOURCE





Study finds surprisingly high geothermal heating beneath West Antarctic Ice Sheet

I have been pointing to polar vulcanism for years so I am pleased that it is now being cautiously recognized

UC Santa Cruz team reports first direct measurement of heat flow from deep within the Earth to the bottom of the West Antarctic ice sheet

The amount of heat flowing toward the base of the West Antarctic ice sheet from geothermal sources deep within the Earth is surprisingly high, according to a new study led by UC Santa Cruz researchers. The results, published July 10 in Science Advances, provide important data for researchers trying to predict the fate of the ice sheet, which has experienced rapid melting over the past decade.

Lead author Andrew Fisher, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, emphasized that the geothermal heating reported in this study does not explain the alarming loss of ice from West Antarctica that has been documented by other researchers. “The ice sheet developed and evolved with the geothermal heat flux coming up from below–it’s part of the system. But this could help explain why the ice sheet is so unstable. When you add the effects of global warming, things can start to change quickly,” he said.

High heat flow below the West Antarctic ice sheet may also help explain the presence of lakes beneath it and why parts of the ice sheet flow rapidly as ice streams. Water at the base of the ice streams is thought to provide the lubrication that speeds their motion, carrying large volumes of ice out onto the floating ice shelves at the edges of the ice sheet. Fisher noted that the geothermal measurement was from only one location, and heat flux is likely to vary from place to place beneath the ice sheet.

“This is the first geothermal heat flux measurement made below the West Antarctic ice sheet, so we don’t know how localized these warm geothermal conditions might be. This is a region where there is volcanic activity, so this measurement may be due to a local heat source in the crust,” Fisher said.

WISSARD Project

The study was part of a large Antarctic drilling project funded by the National Science Foundation called WISSARD (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling), for which UC Santa Cruz is one of three lead institutions. The research team used a special thermal probe, designed and built at UC Santa Cruz, to measure temperatures in sediments below Subglacial Lake Whillans, which lies beneath half a mile of ice. After boring through the ice sheet with a special hot-water drill, researchers lowered the probe through the borehole until it buried itself in the sediments below the subglacial lake. The probe measured temperatures at different depths in the sediments, revealing a rate of change in temperature with depth about five times higher than that typically found on continents. The results indicate a relatively rapid flow of heat towards the bottom of the ice sheet.

This geothermal heating contributes to melting of basal ice, which supplies water to a network of subglacial lakes and wetlands that scientists have discovered underlies a large region of the ice sheet. In a separate study published last year in Nature, the WISSARD microbiology team reported an abundant and diverse microbial ecosystem in the same lake. Warm geothermal conditions may help to make subglacial habitats more supportive of microbial life, and could also drive fluid flow that delivers heat, carbon, and nutrients to these communities.

According to coauthor Slawek Tulaczyk, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and one of the WISSARD project leaders, the geothermal heat flux is an important value for the computer models scientists are using to understand why and how quickly the West Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking.

“It is important that we get this number right if we are going to make accurate predictions of how the West Antarctic ice sheet will behave in the future, how much it is melting, how quickly ice streams flow, and what the impact might be on sea level rise,” Tulaczyk said. “I waited for many years to see a directly measured value of geothermal flux from beneath this ice sheet.”

Melting ice shelves

Antarctica’s huge ice sheets are fed by snow falling in the interior of the continent. The ice gradually flows out toward the edges. The West Antarctic ice sheet is considered less stable than the larger East Antarctic ice sheet because much of it rests on land that is below sea level, and the ice shelves at its outer edges are floating on the sea. Recent studies by other research teams have found that the ice shelves are melting due to warm ocean currents now circulating under the ice, and the rate at which the ice shelves are shrinking is accelerating. These findings have heightened concerns about the overall stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The geothermal heat flux measured in the new study was about 285 milliwatts per square meter, which is like the heat from one small LED Christmas-tree light per square meter, Fisher said. The researchers also measured the upward heat flux through the ice sheet (about 105 milliwatts per square meter) using an instrument developed by coauthor Scott Tyler at the University of Nevada, Reno. That instrument was left behind in the WISSARD borehole as it refroze, and the measurements, based on laser light scattering in a fiber-optic cable, were taken a year later. Combining the measurements both below and within the ice enabled calculation of the rate at which melt water is produced at the base of the ice sheet at the drill site, yielding a rate of about half an inch per year.

SOURCE





Did the GOP Congress Change Energy Policy?

Last year, when Republicans gained a decisive edge in both houses of Congress, I made predictions as to the six energy-policy changes we could expect—as the two parties have very different views on energy issues.

Now, halfway through the “two years” for which I projected, here’s where American energy policy stands today.

Keystone Pipeline

As predicted, the GOP got right to work backing the Keystone pipeline. With strong bipartisan support, on February 11 Congress passed the bill approving construction. Though many Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans, the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act fell a handful of votes short of making it veto-proof. As expected, two weeks later, President Obama vetoed the bill.

I was optimistic that some late night arm twisting would bring the needed Democrats on board, but on March 4, the vote to override the veto failed.

While the bill ultimately failed, my projection was accurate: understanding the impact the Keystone pipeline would have had on job creation and energy security, Republicans made the Keystone pipeline a high priority.

Oil Exports

A bill to lift the decades-old oil export ban was introduced in February and gained momentum throughout the year. On September 17, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to send the legislation to the full House for final passage—which took place on October 9.

As with Keystone, the bill had bipartisan support, though many Democrats opposed it. Comments made in the House chambers before the vote reflected the partisan divide on energy issues. Opposing the bill, Democrats grandstanded saying it would put more money in the pockets of big oil. In contrast, Republicans understand that successful businesses hire people.

The White House threatened a veto.

Despite passing another committee vote in early October, the Senate didn’t take up the bill. Lifting the ban, however, was included in the omnibus-spending package that Obama quickly signed on December 18.

With the ban now officially overturned, the spread between the global benchmark price, known as Brent, and the U.S. benchmark, known as WTI (for West Texas Intermediate), has virtually disappeared. Within a matter of days, the first shipment of U.S. crude will be heading overseas—to Switzerland.

Climate Change

Last year, I wrote: “The Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) Chairmanship will change from one of the biggest supporters of Obama’s climate change agenda (Senator Barbara Boxer [D-CA]) to the biggest opponent of his policies (Senator Jim Inhofe [R-OK]).” With that change, we’ve heard a different tune coming from The Hill.

Days before the U.N. conference on climate change took place in Paris, the Senate held a hearing and passed resolutions designed to let the world know that Obama did not have the support of the U.S. Senate—which would be needed for any legally binding treaty. The New York Times reported: “proponents believe their defiance will have diplomatic repercussions.” In a statement following the vote, Senator Inhofe said: “The message could not be more clear that Republicans and Democrats in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House do not support the president’s climate agenda and the international community should take note.”

The plan was successful; the “international community” took note. It is believed that the Republican drumbeat, prompted the European Union to back off of its insistence that any carbon goals in the final agreement need to be legally binding. The agreement that was ultimately reached in Paris is, according to the New York Times, “essentially voluntary.”

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

In the December 18 spending bill, the EPA didn’t get a budget increase while many other departments did. It is considered a “loser.” Funding levels for the EPA in 2016 are at a level lower than 2010, but on par with 2015.

Additionally, the agency has received several smack downs in 2015 from federal courts—including putting its onerous Waters of the U.S. Rule on hold. Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the focus of the Senate’s resolutions, is facing numerous lawsuits and may also be awarded a stay. This is surely an issue to watch in 2016.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA)

One of the big concerns for anyone in the West who earns a living from the land—ranching, farming, mining and mineral extraction—has been the potential listing of the greater sage grouse as an endangered species. While it did not get listed, and the omnibus deal blocks the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from putting it on the Endangered Species list, the Bureau of Land Management has enacted land use plans that that will likely have many of the same effects of listing under the Act. It is time for ESA reform.

Federal Lands

This final issue saw little action in 2015, but with the anti-fossil fuel movement’s aggressive plans to keep resources in the ground, especially on federal lands, this one is ripe for attention from the GOP-controlled Congress.

For 2016, Congress will need to stay on top of Obama’s rules, regulations and executive orders aimed at burnishing his legacy on climate change. It should also rein in the EPA, reform the ESA, and work to reduce the amount of land owned by the federal government.

Let’s hope for more positive movement in 2016—including a new resident in the White House, who understands the important role energy plays in making America great.

SOURCE





2015 Was One Of The Coolest Years On Record In The US

Government climate experts say that the US is getting much hotter, but the exact opposite is true. Both the number of hot days and the areal extent of heatwaves in the US is plummeting.

In 1936 nearly 80% of US stations reached 100 degrees, but the the past three years have been closer to 30%. A massive decline.



The frequency 100 degree days has plummeted from 5% in 1936 to about 1% in recent years.



The frequency of 90 degree days has also plummeted from 15% in 1936, down to 9% in 2015.



Most of the time when you hear a climate statistic from a government expert, it is pretty safe to assume that the exact opposite is true

SOURCE





Drowning In Red Tape During California’s Historic Drought

California is facing a years-long water crisis precipitated by intense bouts of drought. Mandatory water rationing, water fixture replacement, and irrigation restrictions are some of the emergency measures that Californians have had to bear. The solutions are drowning in red tape. Activists from across the political spectrum - from environmentalists to anti-density advocates to animal rights groups to federal bureaucrats - have pursued and supported policies that are making it worse, at the expense of Californian farmers, residents, and businesses.

The water crisis is driven by a years-long lack of rainfall, but there are solutions that governments are unfortunately ignoring and examples abound of technological and engineering projects that could have helped. A recently-opened desalination plant faced 15 years of bureaucratic holdups and environmentalist lawsuits, while another desalinization plant is in limbo due to environmental concerns of the California Coastal Commission. The Obama Administration's Department of the Interior has advocated destroying four dams on the Klamath River that have helped water conservation efforts in order to save the salmon population. Gov. Jerry Brown has drained precious reservoir water - enough for hundreds of thousands of California residents - for the purpose of fish preservation.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has proven to be anti-growth over the long haul, facilitating and enabling lawsuits that slow development and add enormous costs to new technological projects. CEQA requires all projects to assess long-term environmental impacts to things like air quality and carbon emissions and affected wildlife, among many others. Both Californian bureaucratic agencies and independent environmentalists are able to put water development projects on hold by using provisions of CEQA to tie them up with litigation.

Despite no mention of the problems with CEQA from Gov. Brown, efforts have been made in the California legislature to make incremental reforms to CEQA that would help government get out of the way of technological and environmental solutions to the Californian water crisis. Some of these solutions are piecemeal and insufficient, but step one is recognizing that a problem exists.

Presidential candidate and longtime California resident Carly Fiorina has attacked the environmental opposition to these projects, calling the drought “a man-made crisis” and saying “liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled.”

It’s not merely a California issue, either. The federal Endangered Species Act gives federal authorities purview over much of the waterways where a fish called the Delta Smelt lives. They’ve flushed trillions of gallons of water that could have sustained the lives of millions of Californians, and they’re planning on spending billions of dollars to come up with a tunnel system to protect the fish.

Republicans in Congress have proposed legislation that would alter the Endangered Species Act to give California more leeway around how they treat the waters where the smelt lives, but Democrats have consistently refused to consider the legislation and President Obama has promised to veto it.

These are all political and regulatory hurdles to solving the California drought crisis. From water storage to desalinization to natural dam projects, there are ways to solve the crisis – and some of these projects have been left in limbo since long before the drought. The technological solutions are there, but artificial scarcity created by environmental regulations at both the state and federal level have become counterproductive. A massive drought like the one California is currently experiencing is a challenge, to be sure. But what it has done is highlight how the environmental and regulatory framework currently in place do more to strangle solutions rather than enable them when crisis does strike.

SOURCE





What’s Really Behind The Left’s Climate Scheme…And What They’re DENYING

It looks like liberals at least in the eastern part of the United States are going to have one holly, jolly Christmas this year. Temperatures look to be well above normal and will give Climate Change disciples ample opportunity to crow over their Christmas turkeys that their deception for societal “reordering” is undoubtedly true.

Here in North Georgia, the temperature on Christmas looks to be twenty degrees or more above normal. This is fine with me since I’d rather smoke our Christmas turkey when it’s seventy degrees rather than forty degrees.

It’s funny though. At the beginning of this year, we had actual temperatures (not wind chill) of a few degrees below zero at my house. This was way below normal, but I didn’t hear anyone screaming for more carbon dioxide emissions to avert disastrous global cooling. I guess any drastically sharp cold spell is just an anomaly. A warm Christmas though and global devastation is imminent if we don’t send all of our wealth to the third world via the U.N.

I got an early Christmas present this year, an Apple iPhone 6S Plus. It is a marvelous device and as you Apple owners know, new iPhones now come with an Apple news consolidator app.

One of the news sources loaded on the app is New York magazine, a typical northeast liberal rag. I’ve been checking it out lately since everyone needs a few good laughs every now and then.

This week, of course, there is the obligatory pro-global warming article written by one Jonathan Chait. A well-credentialed liberal, Chait makes the point that because the evidence for global warming is so overwhelming, global warming deniers can no longer deny. So instead, they are making the case that none of the provisions recently reached in Paris will really have any affect on the coming drastic temperature rise.

Critics are basing this argument on a recent MIT study that concluded that even if the accords reached in Paris were followed to the letter by the governments of the world, the reduction in temperature would only be at most .2 degrees C. Many conservative outlets have expounded on this point.

Chait counters that the MIT study is just one of many and that there are others that show the Paris provisions will prevent much more than a .2 degree C temperature rise.

I believe Chait is wrong in assuming that because conservatives have cited the MIT study we are accepting the global warming premise. Far from it. The fact is that sacrificing trillions of dollars of economic benefit to humanity for a meaningless climatic effect is one more reason for rejecting the global warming scheme and does not imply acceptance of climate change orthodoxy.

Beyond all dispute, science agrees that there has been no global warming for the last twenty years. The temperature data is irrefutable. Both satellite and weather balloon data confirm this. The computer models that the global warming schemers rely on didn’t predict this, so why would we expect them to be reliable looking from this point forward?

Additionally, there is ample data showing that the rise of atmospheric temperature precedes the rise of carbon dioxide not the reverse. CO2 rise precipitating a temperature rise is the foundational claim of the global warming schemers. If temperature rises and THEN the carbon dioxide levels go up, there’s clearly another phenomenon causing the warming.

There is also very strong evidence that solar cycles are the big forcing function for global temperatures, far in excess of atmospheric CO2 levels. And the Sun appears to be entering a dimming phase that could cause significant COOLING over the next couple of decades.

I question all of the cataclysmic claims the schemers make about a warming earth, too. History tells us that mankind does better when the earth is warmer. Warm temperatures allow wider growing areas and longer growing seasons. Trees and plants become lusher and produce more fruit when there are higher levels of CO2. The claims of catastrophic flooding and desert spreading just don’t have a lot of scientific support.

There is another point that Chait makes that gives insight into the state of liberal thinking in general. He makes the claim that:

    …data can change liberal economic thinking in a way it can’t change conservative economic thinking. Liberals would abandon, say, new environmental regulations if evidence persuaded them the program was not actually improving the environment, because bigger government is merely the means to an end.

Man, is it hard to type with a belly laugh! Can you cite any instance when liberals have cut the size of any part of government? Can you point to one government agency, committee, panel, bureau, or commission that liberals have ended without putting an even bigger drain on the economy in place? I dang sure can’t.

Liberals ARE the party of government. They believe they are the anointed ones, the gifted ones that can save humanity from itself. Therefore, they have a natural right to total power and control. Through their superior intellect they can perfect humanity, so just shut up and do what they tell you.

It’s not conservatives that want to repeal the First Amendment and prosecute climate change deniers. It’s not conservatives that are pushing for an end to carbon-based industry that will banish millions to crushing poverty. It’s your benevolent liberal overlords. Their pursuit of delusion will be our suffering.

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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NYT: Global Warming Could Be Causing Malformed Babies In Brazil

This is all just speculation -- and speculation that is demonstrably wrong.  There has been no warming for many years now so it cannot be causing anything

The New York Times reported Wednesday that a virus spreading throughout Brazil causing brain damage and malformations in infants could be the result of man-made global warming.

The paper notes that researchers have suggested the Zika virus, which has stoked widespread panic in pregnant women in Mexico and Brazil, is likely the result of an upsurge in the mosquito population brought on by global warming. The carrier of the disease, a mosquito called the Aedes, is believed to carry other viruses, such as Dengue and Yellow fever.

Researchers point to the virus’s ability to hopscotch from one part of the world to another, seemingly at ease, as just one reason why the virus has surged.

“They are particularly worried that the disease is wreaking havoc in a region where the population has not encountered it before, and that climate change may be allowing viruses like Zika to thrive in new domains,” The New York Times claims.

“Some researchers emphasize the role that climate change may play in Zika’s spread,” the article continues, adding: As temperatures get hotter in some regions, researchers argue, “mosquitoes can multiply more quickly, potentially enhancing their collective ability to transmit diseases.”

Brazil has a storied history with pest-born viruses. Malaria rates spiked, for example, in Brazil after the country banned the use of DDT, the insecticide that nearly eradicated the Malaria virus during the 1960s. The number of reported Malaria cases jumped from 52,000 in 1970 to 508,864 in 1987 after Brazil decreased its use of DDT. The country eventually banned its usage outright in 1990.

The Zika virus has already hit several Latin countries hard, and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning that Zika could come to the United States before long.

The New York Times also reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blames the virus for an uptick babies born with abnormally small skulls, a condition called microcephaly.

There have been 2,782 cases of microcephaly this year, Brazilian officials state, and 40 of those cases have been fatal. Those who survive, researchers state, can expect to live with severe intellectual disabilities.

Other researchers, the article adds, are not as sure about the link between the virus and mental infirmities. More research needs to be done to establish the link, suggesting that the virus may not be as impactful as some have made out.

SOURCE





Documentary “Climate Hustle” Exposes Global-warming Con Job

For all those who still have to deal with that crazy uncle over the Christmas season who insists that human emissions of the gas of life, or carbon dioxide, are causing dangerous global warming, fear not — the solution has arrived. It is called Climate Hustle, and it masterfully debunks the claims of the “climate cult,” as many experts now refer to the alarmist movement, like no other resource produced thus far. Well-known analysts are already saying it will turn the tables on the alarmists. But more importantly, it will bring to light the facts and the science surrounding alleged man-made global warming that the establishment press has tried so hard to conceal.

The new documentary, which premiered in Paris this month amid the United Nations COP21 “climate change” summit, will serve as the perfect antidote to the increasingly shrill global-warming alarmism being peddled by the UN, the Obama administration, and others. It will also be exactly the tool you need to educate any remaining global-warming alarmists you may know, particularly those who got their inaccurate beliefs from error-riddled propaganda films such as Al Gore's discredited “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth, which was essentially banned in U.K. schools after a court recognized it was filled with falsehoods and ordered that children be warned about them in advance.

Indeed, Climate Hustle, with climate realist Marc Morano of Climate Depot serving as the host, even uses some of Gore's own tactics in exposing the anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming theory, minus the falsehoods and misleading propaganda. Among the best scenes in the entire film is when Morano uses a construction elevator, mimicking Gore, to travel upwards while exposing inconvenient science omitted from Gore's propaganda film. Gore used a similar scene to promote his discredited theory about CO2 driving global warming. Some 94 percent of poll respondents on Morano's ClimateDepot.com webpage said Climate Hustle was the “Anti-Incovenient Truth.”

Among the film's most important contributions to the climate debate: Morano allows alarmists to speak for themselves throughout the documentary. Climate Hustle is packed with clips and interviews of alarmist politicians, “experts,” celebrities, and scientists bloviating about alleged man-made global cooling, warming, the supposed urgency of doing something about it, and more. Hilariously, some of the supposed effects of alleged man-made global warming — everything from weather events and increased prostitution to rape, car theft, airplane turbulence, barroom brawls, and even the extinction of coffee — are highlighted, too. The humor throughout the film is absolutely fantastic, making it perfect to watch with others of all political persuasions. Morano also catches some climate alarmists involved in blatant, demonstrable deception.  

Another excellent point brought out in the film is the fact that the climate industry has a terrible track record. Ranging from its failed predictions of a new man-made “Ice Age” a few decades ago, to more recent pronouncements that ended up being proved just as ridiculous, the documentary exposes what alarmists want hidden: The fact that they have been wrong about virtually everything, and still are. For instance, alarmists and the UN predicted less snow and less cold. But when record snow and cold arrived, increasingly outlandish alarmists, including Obama's Science Czar John Holdren, a former global-cooling alarmist and proponent of a “planetary regime” and coercive abortion/sterilization, insisted that the record snow and cold were caused by global warming. Seriously.

Narrating the film, Morano goes through a wide range of such examples, and the changes in alarmist terminology that have accompanied the silliness: global cooling, global warming, climate change, global climate disruption, global weirding, and so on. That way, as the film shows, no matter what happens — heat, cold, snow, drought, rain, floods, tornado, hurricane, storms, no storms, etc. — can always be blamed on evil humans and their evil CO2 emissions. The pleas in the film by politicians and others for “climate action” that must happen this minute, this week, this year, or whatever — supposedly to prevent an imminent climate catastrophe — only become more humorous and entertaining in that context.  

Balancing out all the ridiculous comments from alarmists, Climate Hustle also features a great deal of commentary from more rational scientists willing to acknowledge the observable evidence — especially, among other examples, the nearly 19-year (and counting) pause in global warming that exposed every single climate model used by the UN as bogus. The interviews in the film range from discussions with prominent and widely respected “deniers” of AGW to mere skeptics of the theory who warn against the fanatical zeal of the climate cult and the lack of current understanding when it comes to the unfathomably complex climate system. Many of the scientists in the film exposing the AGW scam are in fact proud political leftists, too, potentially making it easier for other leftists to distance themselves from the climate alarmism while holding firm to their convictions.

Among the scientists featured in the film pouring ice on the warming alarmism are geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, former chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania; award-winning climatologist Dr. Judith Curry, who chaired the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology; Climate Statistics Professor Dr. Caleb Rossiter of American University; Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, a former senior NASA climate scientist who now leads a climate research group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and many, many more. A group of six or seven scientists even attended the premiere to answer questions.

Some experts quoted in the film compare the current government-funded climate hysteria to the hysteria surrounding the witchcraft trials of centuries ago. Also mentioned in relation to the increasingly bizarre climate alarmism: Aztec blood sacrifices to end drought, including the sacrifice of thousands of people in a few weeks to appease the angry climate gods. If the current climate alarmists had their way, more than a few experts have made clear that millions of innocent people, condemned to energy famine and thus perpetual poverty by “climate action,” would almost certainly end up as modern-day human sacrifices to the climate gods. In short, as many climate scientists and experts (including the disgraced head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC) have explained, the warmist movement has become a religion — and a dangerous one at that.        

While the humor is fun and entertaining, the film is not all funny. Among other troubling elements are the increasingly totalitarian attacks employed by alarmists against those who disagree with the AGW theory. From calling for energy producers to be put on trial for “Crimes Against Humanity” to demanding that skeptics be re-educated, imprisoned, and even executed, as the evidence debunking AGW theory piles up, proponents of the theory are becoming increasingly unhinged and potentially dangerous. The implications are frightening. The policies being advanced by the alarmist movement, too, represent a frontal assault on liberty, prosperity, national sovereignty, the poor, and common sense. Cooler heads must resist.

As Morano explained throughout the film and in an interview later with The New American at the red-carpet premiere in Paris, the AGW movement is really engaged in a con job of massive proportions. Dressed up as the “climate monarch,” Morano noted that the UN and its alarmist allies are literally plotting to empower themselves at humanity's expense, all under the supposed guise of battling the gas of life. “The Emperor has no clothes,” Morano said, adding that the film would help wake people up to that fact. “The United Nations is essentially taking away free choices of sovereign states.”

Under the UN “climate” vision, the masses will be “controlled by a small governing elite, which they call global governance, telling them how to live their lives,” Morano continued. And international wealth redistribution to governments ruling poorer nations is the key to getting those governments to sell out their people, he added, blasting the UN for its efforts to create a “climate monarchy.” From central planning to energy restrictions, the plan is for unelected and unaccountable forces to govern humanity. Morano also said the U.S. Republican Party needed to get serious about opposing the major policy implications of the agenda rather than just noting that the "science" behind AGW hysteria is fraudulent.

Before the film started, alarmist protesters were at the cinema shrieking about “climate justice” and “climate criminals.” Morano and CFACT, the pro-market environmental group behind the film, were portrayed as “climate criminals” and stooges for Big Oil. Eventually police had to be called, again illustrating the dangers to basic freedoms, such as free speech, represented by the alarmists. In typical fashion, though, the warmists were on the warpath long before the film even premiered. Greenpeace, for example, released a screed a month before the documentary was released claiming Climate Hustle was a “science denial movie” apparently aimed at making Morano rich. How Greenpeace would have known that, since the film was not even ready yet, was not immediately clear. The numerous scientists in it would likely disagree with Greenpeace.

Ironically, though, The New American had a chance to interview Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore, also featured in the film, while in Paris. He made clear that the climate alarmists were not only wrong about the science, but they were putting the lives and livelihoods of billions of people at risk to pursue their “anti-human” agenda — essentially, destroying industrial civilization and crushing liberty. As if to confirm the thesis, Greenpeace activist Connor Gibson concluded his anti-Climate Hustle ramblings by suggesting Morano and other “climate deniers” might be prosecuted by the Obama administration for refusing to genuflect before the climate movement's increasingly discredited dogmas.    

The audience loved the film, cheering and clapping enthusiastically at the packed cinema premiere. Afterward, scientists and experts from around the world answered questions from attendees. Climate Hustle should be available in the United States by 2016

SOURCE





EU Greenies are to Blame for Britain’s Flood Disaster

Northern Britain has spent Christmas being inundated with floods of “biblical proportions”.

For green activists like Bill McKibben this is obviously another consequence of man-made climate change.

And the politicians agree – not just left wing ones like Hilary Benn but also notionally conservative ones like local MP Rory Stewart, Environment Secretary Liz Truss and Prime Minister David Cameron. All have suggested that the floods are the result of unprecedented ‘extreme weather events’ whose consequences are quite beyond their control.

Either they are ignorant or lying or buck-passing – or all three.

As it was in Somerset in early 2014, so it is with the floods which have ravaged the north of England (and which are fast spreading south) this year. Yes, they are indeed a man-made creation – but the people mainly responsible are the bureaucrats and green activists at the European Union whose legislation has made it illegal for Britain to take the measures necessary to reduce the risk of flooding.

British rivers have always been prone to flooding because Britain is a kingdom of rains (where royalty comes in gangs).

But traditionally, those living in flood-threatened areas have been able to mitigate the problem by making sure that their rivers are well dredged – and thus able to flow freely.

For an excellent historical perspective on this read Philip Walling’s recent piece for the Newcastle Journal, reprinted here by Paul Homewood:

" …For all of recorded history, it almost went without saying that a watercourse needed to be big enough to take any water that flowed into it, otherwise it would overflow and inundate the surrounding land and houses. Every civilisation has known that, except apparently ours. It is just common sense. City authorities and, before them, manors and towns and villages, organised themselves to make sure their watercourses were cleansed, deepened and sometimes embanked to hold whatever water they had to carry away.

In nineteenth century Cockermouth they came up with an ingenious way of doing this. Any able-bodied man seeking bed and board for the night in the workhouse was required to take a shovel and wheelbarrow down to the River Derwent and fetch back two barrow-loads of gravel for mending the roads. This had the triple benefit of dredging the river, maintaining the roads and making indigent men useful.

In Cumbria they knew they had to keep the river clear of the huge quantities of gravel that were washed down from the fells, especially in times of flood. For Cumbrian rivers are notoriously quick to rise as the heavy rain that falls copiously on the High Fells rapidly runs off the thin soils and large surface area over which it falls. Cumbrian people have always known that their rivers would be subject to such sudden and often violent inundations and prepared for them by deepening and embanking their channels. Such work was taken very seriously".

So what changed? EU Regulation, that’s what.

Thanks to the European Water Framework Directive – which passed into UK law in 2000 and which is enforced by the Environment Agency – the emphasis has shifted from preventing flooding to encouraging it.

Yes, you read that right. Under EU legislation, dredging rivers is considered environmentally unfriendly because it takes them away from their “undisturbed”, “natural” state.

 Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions’. ‘Heavily modified waters’, which include rivers dredged or embanked to prevent flooding, cannot, by definition, ever satisfy the terms of the directive. So, in order to comply with the obligations imposed on us by the EU we had to stop dredging and embanking and allow rivers to ‘re-connect with their floodplains’, as the currently fashionable jargon has it.

And to ensure this is done, the obligation to dredge has been shifted from the relevant statutory authority (now the Environment Agency) onto each individual landowner, at the same time making sure there are no funds for dredging. And any sand and gravel that might be removed is now classed as ‘hazardous waste’ and cannot be deposited to raise the river banks, as it used to be, but has to be carted away.

On the other hand there is an apparently inexhaustible supply of grant money available for all manner of conservation and river ‘restoration’ schemes carried out by various bodies, all of which aim to put into effect the utopian requirements of the E W F Directive to make rivers as ‘natural’ as possible.

For example, 47 rivers trusts have sprung up over the last decade, charities heavily encouraged and grant-aided by the EU, Natural England, the Environment Agency, and also by specific grants from various well-meaning bodies such as the National Lottery, water companies and county councils. The West Cumbria Rivers Trust, which is involved in the River Derwent catchment, and includes many rivers that have flooded, is a good example.

But they all have the same aim, entirely consonant with EU policy, to return rivers to their ‘natural healthy’ state, reversing any ‘straightening and modifying’ which was done in ‘a misguided attempt to get water off the land quicker’. They only think it ‘misguided’ because fast flowing water contained within its banks can scour out its bed and maybe wash out some rare crayfish or freshwater mussel, and that conflicts with their (and the EU’s) ideal of a ‘natural’ river .

 Few politicians will admit this. Those who have attempted to do so – such as the former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson – have been shouted down as swivel-headed loons. After all, really, what could be more absurd than blaming the European Union of all things for a natural disaster like flooding.UK FLOOD

Absurd it may be but it happens to be true. Paterson dared speak out because he is openly anti-EU. Most politicians don’t – nor do any green activists – because they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Of course pro-EU David Cameron is never going to admit that this mess is of the EU’s making, any more than is pro-EU shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn.

Far easier for them to point the finger of blame at “climate change.”

SOURCE





Climate change alarmist Michael E. Mann acknowledges role of ‘RECORD STRENGTH’ El Niño

Michael E. Mann, climate scientist and author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines,” must be tired of hearing that the uncharacteristic weather that surprised much of the nation this holiday season wasn’t definitive proof of climate change but rather an effect of El Niño.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders might have been in a panic because “nobody can recall a Christmas Eve where the temperature was 65 degrees,” but Mann has a scientific explanation that handily fits inside a tweet.

"No--record warmth isn't just "El Nino". It's RECORD STRENGTH El Nino + human-caused climate change = dramatically more likely heat extremes".

Now if someone tries to tell you El Niño is the cause of recent weather systems, you’ll know that it’s El Niño combined with human-caused climate change to blame.

SOURCE





Paper: Scientists Still Can’t Explain The ‘Grand Hiatus’ In Global Warming

Scientists are not only having trouble explaining why global surface temperatures did not warm for 15 years in the 21st century, they still have not adequately explained why there was an even longer 30-year “grand hiatus” in global warming during the mid-20th century.

“The climate models making dire predictions of warming in the 21st century are the same models that predicted too much warming in the early 21st century, and can’t explain the warming from 1910-1945 or the mid-century grand hiatus,” Dr. Judith Curry writes in a Wednesday op-ed published in The Financial Post.

The so-called “grand hiatus” was a period from 1945 to 1975 where the world stopped warming, and even cooled slightly, despite carbon dioxide emissions rapidly rising. Scientists have thus far been unable to explain why there was no warming even though global warming theory predicts there would have been warming.

“The mid-century period of slight cooling from 1945 to 1975 – referred to as the “grand hiatus” – also has not been satisfactorily explained,” Curry writes. Curry is a climatologist at Georgia Tech University. She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers on the climate.

Climate scientists claim carbon dioxide emissions are driving the global warming trend since 1950, but they have trouble explaining warming that occurred early in the 20th century. Nearly half of the 20th century warming trend occurred from 1910 to 1945, but CO2 emissions didn’t increase enough to explain most of the warming.

“In fact, the period 1910-1945 comprises over 40 per cent of the warming since 1900, but is associated with only 10 per cent of the carbon dioxide increase since 1900,” Curry writes. “Clearly, human emissions of greenhouse gases played little role in causing this early warming.”

“If the warming since 1950 was caused by humans, what caused the warming during the period 1910-1945?” Curry asks.

Curry also notes there’s evidence the Earth has been warming for the past 200 years — a period that began before human carbon dioxide emissions would have been a factor.

Like today’s 15-year “hiatus,” (the “hiatus” grows to 21 years when looking at satellite temperature data for the lower atmosphere) scientists have tried to explain the “grand hiatus” away by adjusting it out of the data to correct for “biases” in thermometers that may have caused the world to appear warmer than it was.

The highly-controversial Climategate emails leaked to the public in 2009 include a conversation between a U.S. and U.K. scientist on “correcting [sea surface temperatures] to partly explain the 1940s warming blip.”

Ironically, U.S. government scientists claimed to eliminate the 15-year “hiatus” during the 21st century by adjusting sea surface temperatures upwards — a move that doubled the warming trend during that time.

What’s unclear, however, is if these thermometer data “adjustments” will stand the test of time and continue to be validated by the scientific community. It’s especially unclear given the huge uncertainties looming over climate models and the accuracy of the global temperature record.

“The politically driven push to manufacture a premature consensus on human-caused climate change has resulted in the relative neglect of natural climate variability,” Curry writes. “Until we have a better understanding and predictive capability of natural climate variability, we don’t have a strong basis for predicting climate change in the decades or century to come.”

SOURCE





Australian uranium in demand as China goes full steam for nuclear

Despite reactor closures in Europe and the US, the global outlook for uranium looks bright, with Asia's burgeoning nuclear energy industry fuelling demand for the radioactive metal.

Australia's uranium market is also set for a bright future, with a strong possibility of new mines opening in Western Australia provided global demand strengthens as forecast.

And, as with so many of the world's minerals, Chinese demand is a key driver.

A recent commodities research note from Macquarie Bank called uranium the "best mined commodity of 2015".

After a collapse in generation following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, "nuclear power has been making a quiet comeback," said Macquarie. "We have now seen more than two years of consistent year-on-year growth. Total output this year is set to be the strongest since 2011."

China, India, Korea and Russia were the engines of growth in the industry, said Macquarie, expected to contribute 70 per cent of new reactors by 2030. Furthermore, Japanese reactors were returning to the fleet, with 20 Japanese reactors back online by 2020.

However, cheap gas and coal, the rise of politically-friendly renewable energy and the costly need to extend the life of reactors had hit the industry in the West, the paper said.

In the US five reactors had closed since 2012, "with potentially as many to follow"; Germany will phase out all reactors by the early 2020s; while Sweden will cut back its reactor fleet by 40 per cent.

New capacity in Asia

However, said Macquarie, "the combined size of these reductions is less than half of the scheduled new capacity additions" in Asia. Widespread closures in the US, despite record-low energy prices, were "unlikely": US nuclear energy use was its highest since 2009, nuclear power was still cheaper than fossil fuel, and the focus on reducing coal usage meant uranium had become a relatively more popular source of baseload power generation.

"We still see nuclear power as a growth industry," said Macquarie. "We still expect solid demand growth on a five-year view."

The paper singled out China's "staggering" stockpiling. In 2016, the Chinese will have the equivalent of nine years of projected 2020 consumption in inventory. "China's annual uranium requirement is likely to grow by more than the rest of the world's combined requirement over the next five years."

China has 26 nuclear reactors in operation and 25 under construction. But long-term plans call for 92 reactors operating by 2025 and 129 by 2020.

In 2015, China approved new reactors for the first time since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2009, with the China General Nuclear Power Corporation receiving the go-ahead for two gigawatt reactors.

China was "the only part of the world that's really increasing reactor capacity by any large margin", said ‎Mining and Metals Senior Associate at Citi, Matthew Schembri.

But Chinese demand for the radioactive metal far outstripped supply. China only produced 1450 tonnes of uranium in 2015, far less than its 8160-tonne consumption rate.

Consequently, the Chinese were trying to create "uranium independence," said Mr Schembri, not only by producing more but also by stockpiling and buying equity shares in foreign projects.

"They're aiming for one-third to be domestically produced, one-third from foreign equity ownership in foreign mines, and one-third to be imports," said Mr Schembri.

But the world was not likely to face a shortage of uranium despite the uptick in demand, he said.

"It is going to be an important power source in the future and the most recent Chinese five-year plan has said that, but even so, the world has enough uranium that's it's not going to create a particularly tight market."

Uranium has fallen from around $US152 per pound in 2007 to well under $US60 since the global financial crisis, with a low just above $US28 in May 2014. This year, it peaked around $US40 in March. It is currently trading at $US35.35, which is just off the year's lows.

Mr Schembri said that the price would return to $US40, rising to $US50 in the longer term. At these price levels, existing mines would remain viable and new ones would open, he said.

Macquarie agreed, stating that "almost all mine output is cash-positive at current price levels".

Mr Schembri added that the recent Paris Climate Summit – which pledged to restrict global warming to "well below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels", a goal that is expected to increase demand for nuclear power as countries shift away from carbon-dioxide-producing coal power – had had no effect on the uranium market or prices.

Australia, which produces 11 per cent of the world's uranium and is the world's third-largest producer after Canada and Kazakhstan, currently has three operating uranium mines: Ranger in the Northern Territory, Olympic Dam (the world's largest uranium deposit) in South Australia and Four Mile in South Australia. Australian-listed uranium miners and explorers include Energy Resources of Australia, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Paladin Energy, and Mintails.

There are a numerous proposals for new Australian mines, including four well-advanced proposals in Western Australia alone: Lake Way (Wiluna), which Toro Energy hopes to mine; Yeelirrie and Kintyre, which Canadian uranium miner Cameco wishes to develop; and Mulga Rock, which Vimy Resources has an interest in.

However, the new mines – which could create up to 1300 long-term jobs and be worth $1 billion a year to Western Australia by 2020 – have still not been formally approved and are dependent on the uranium price improving as forecast.

They are also the subject of fierce opposition from environmental groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, while the Western Australia's ALP opposition opposes uranium mining and export. The next Western Australian election is in March 2017.

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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