GREENIE WATCH MIRROR The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

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

The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. My alternative Wikipedia. My Recipes. Email John Ray here.

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29 June, 2018

Guardian: 205 Feet Of Sea Level Rise By 2095!

In case you forgot for a minute that the left lives in a mindless, fact-free fantasy world, the Guardian is predicting Florida will soon be underwater. Rising seas: ‘Florida is about to be wiped off the map’

Actual data from Florida shows no change in the slow rate of sea level rise over the past century.


Sea Level Trends – NOAA Tides & Currents

The beach at Fort Lauderdale looks exactly the same as 55 years ago.

1960



2014



People on the left (including many prominent climate scientists) simply make things up, refuse to debate, lie to policymakers, and attempt to force their insanity on the rest of the world.

SOURCE 






ONLY 0.8% Of Tidal Gauges Show Sea Level Rise Near IPCC’s Alarmist Predictions!

Accurately measuring the sea level with a satellite is highly complex and fraught with uncertainty. Even the slightest equipment miscalibrations can produce inaccurate results.

For sea level rise, the figures that are often cited come from namely two sources: satellite measurement, which goes back 25 years and therefore doesn’t properly account for multidecadal variations, and tidal gauges placed along the coastlines where people actually live.

Satellite data may be overstating sea level rise

The assumed current global sea level rise from the satellite data TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft and its successors, which began collecting data in late 1992, was reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to be 2.8 inches(seven centimeters).

Some experts recently warned, however — after having made adjustments to the satellite measurements — that sea level rise has accelerated and thus could increase some 75 centimeters over the century, which would be in line with projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013.

Other sources say that sea level rise could be as much as 3.4 mm per year, and thus accelerating (e.g., see chart above).

Indeed, if these high-end projections were accurate, then coastal areas would be facing serious challenges. But those alarmist claims have been met critically, and at times even with derision.

There remains lots of uncertainty, and so the question today is: How much are coastal areas (where it really matters) at risk really?

Tide gauges: “most extensive, accurate and significant” datasets

One way to check what’s really going on is to examine the tide gauges along the coasts worldwide. Since the early 1800s, NOAA and its predecessor organizations have been measuring tide levels.

According to the NOAA, “This database has become one of the most extensive, accurate and significant geophysical data sets in existence.”

To do this the NOAA keeps a coastal station tide list for tracking global linear relative sea level (RSL). Manually I counted 358 stations.

A number of them stopped measurement some years ago, while others were put in operation in the 20th century. The list appears not to include the US tide gauges.

The data and charts can be looked at country-by-country here.

Less than 1% on track to meet IPCC’s 75 cm sea level rise by 2100

Examining the data to get a general idea of how the sea level is behaving at these tide stations. A number of points were observed:

1) Only three stations show an RSL rise of 7.5 mm/year or more, meaning that only three stations (0.8%) are on track to reach the IPCC’s alarmist 75 cm sea level rise projection by 2100. And if we use the more conservative 60 cm rise, only five stations (1.4%) are on track!

Only 14% show a rise equal to or greater than satellite global rate

2) Only 51 tide gauges (14%) are measuring 3.2 mm/year or more, which is approximately equivalent to about what the satellites are said to be measured globally. That figure would need to be near 50% if the satellites were true.

3) Fifty-four coastal tide gauges (15%) show that relative sea level has in fact been falling.

4) The mean relative sea level rise as to the tide gauges is about one third less than what is measured by the satellites, i.e. approx. 2.3 mm per year, or less than 10 inches per century.

This is only a rough overview. Naturally, a more detailed look recent tide gauge trends of the last two or three decades would tell us more about the accelerating sea level rise. Or maybe not: rate changes over such short time periods have more to do with natural variations.

So in general? If you’re living and working at the institutes who operate the satellites, then you might be showing concern about the figures you’re getting (it’ll help with funding, in any case).

But if you’re the average person living near the coast, then in most places there’s not much to be alarmed about. There’s a good chance the satellites are overstating sea level rise just a bit and so you can better rely on what your local tide gauge has been showing.

SOURCE 






The coldest place on Earth is even chillier than scientists thought: Temperatures plummet to -148F in 'supercold' areas of Antarctica's ice sheet

So a few degrees of atmospheric warming is supposed to melt it??

The coldest place on Earth is even colder than thought, a new study has found.

Researchers discovered tiny valleys near the top of Antarctica's ice sheet reach temperatures of nearly minus 100 degrees Celsius (minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter.

The results could change scientists' understanding of just how low temperatures can get at Earth's surface, according to the researchers.

The coldest spot on Earth was found on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high snowy plateau in central Antarctica that encompasses the South Pole.

The record breaking temperatures occur occurred in small hollows 2 to 3 meters (6 to 9 feet) deep in the surface of the ice, on the southern side of high ridges on the plateau.

The record of minus 98 degrees Celsius is about as cold as it is possible to get at Earth's surface, according to the researchers.

Scientists used satellite data between 2004 and 2016 to come up with the minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit figure, as the eastern plateau of Antartica is a barren, snowy region where surface-based weather instruments aren't available .

Small low-lying dips in the Antarctic ice sheet had the most frigid temperatures, they found.

Because cold air is dense, it funnels into the dips where it may stay trapped for several days when skies are clear and winds are light.

This is similar to how cold air drains into valley locations at night elsewhere in the world.

Scientists first announced in 2013 they had found the lowest temperatures on Earth's surface in the area.

Sensors on several Earth-observing satellites measured temperatures of minus 93 degrees Celsius (minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit) in several spots on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high snowy plateau in central Antarctica that encompasses the South Pole.

But the researchers revised that initial study with new data and found the temperatures actually reach minus 98 degrees Celsius (minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit) during the southern polar night, mostly during July and August.

When the researchers first announced they had found the coldest temperatures on Earth five years ago, they determined that persistent clear skies and light winds are required for temperatures to dip this low.

The new study found not only are clear skies necessary, but the air must also be extremely dry, because water vapor traps some heat in the air.

The high elevation of the East Antarctic Plateau and its proximity to the South Pole give it the coldest climate of any region on Earth.

The lowest air temperature ever measured by a weather station, minus 89 degrees Celsius (minus 128 degrees Fahrenheit), was recorded there at Russia's Vostok Station in July 1983.

SOURCE 






UK: Nuclear sector deal signals support for 'baby' atomic power plants

Small Modular Reactors are hoped to offer a cheaper alternative to conventional nuclear power stations such as Hinkley Point

A new generation of “mini” atomic power plants in the UK will get the strongest signal yet of government support on Thursday when the industrial strategy’s nuclear sector deal is unveiled.

Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark is due to set out £200m of funding for the industry at the nuclear-licensed Trawsfynydd site in North Wales.

While the bulk of the money is a re-announcement of support pledged last year, industry insiders say the site chosen to launch the sector deal is important.

Trawsfynydd is seen as the most likely location for a small modular reactor (SMR) – a new design of a baby nuclear plant which produces far less power than a traditional atomic plant such as Hinkley Point.

SOURCE 





Share bikes a failure in Australia

A Greenie dream dies.  Many people who hire them are too lazy to return them

Bike-sharing service oBike is staying in Sydney despite piles of the disused bicycles ending up dumped in streets and waterways across the city.

OBike is no longer in service in Melbourne after the city council started issuing fines for illegal dumping.

The company has also announced it would stop operating in its home base of Singapore.

An oBike spokesperson told the ABC it was 'not leaving Australia'. 'Our service is as usual. Meanwhile we are also working closely with local authorities in Melbourne for a detailed discussion on how we can better provide our service.'

The company's decision to withdraw from Melbourne comes after the  Environment Protection Authority announced steep new fines of $3,000 per dumped bike, payable by the business.

There are at least four bike-sharing companies in Melbourne and Sydney including oBike and ReddyGo which were launched last year after being popularly used overseas.

The heavily criticised share bike industry, which also operates in other major cities across the country, often leaves pedestrians frustrated as the bikes are left strewn across footpaths or thrown into trees.

Port Phillip Mayor Bernadene Voss told radio station 3AW she had been informed the bikes were on their way out of Melbourne.

'We've been told they are going,' she said. 'We do understand though that there is a new operator coming in.'

Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp asked people to stop using the rental scheme after the company confirmed it was pulling out of Melbourne, following controversy and hefty fines over bikes dumped on streets, up trees and in waterways.

'oBikes have decided to withdraw from our market here in Melbourne and we are working very closely with them to remove oBikes from the city streets,' she told reporters.

SOURCE 

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

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

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28 June, 2018

EPA’s Pruitt Wants to Limit His Own Agency’s Authority

The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to limit one of the agency’s most powerful tools to manage or block mining, real-estate and other developments by removing the effective veto power it has over permits to dump waste into waterways.

The move, described in a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, would limit the agency’s power to pre-emptively or retroactively block U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approval of the waste dumping, hindering or potentially killing large development projects.

It is the latest attempt at a regulatory rollback from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has pledged to ease environmental restrictions on businesses. He wrote in the memo to some senior staff, including regional administrators, that the powers he intends to curb have a chilling effect on economic development.

“I am concerned that the mere potential of EPA’s use of its… authority before or after the permitting process could influence investment decisions and chill economic growth by short-circuiting the permitting process,” he wrote in a four-page memo he signed Tuesday.

Mr. Pruitt is ordering EPA’s Office of Water to relinquish authority the agency has had for about 40 years under the Clean Water Act of 1972 to prohibit some approvals by the Corps even before a developer formally applies for them, or to throw them out years after they were granted—even after a project is complete and operational.

The Corps has permitting authority when developers want to dump excavated land and waste into waterways, most commonly sought for mines and real-estate development, experts said. But Congress granted EPA the review authority over that permitting and power to reject permits approved by the Corps. While advocates see it as a fail-safe the agency can leverage to encourage developers into more environmentally friendly practices, Mr. Pruitt thinks the power is so broad it is vulnerable to abuse, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

The agency has used that authority to block or restrict development only 13 times in its history, according to the memo, so shedding the authority would be broadly less influential than Mr. Pruitt’s headline initiatives like rollbacks on power-plant pollution rules, vehicle-emissions limits, and EPA’s power over streams and lakes.

But while few projects have been subject to that authority, it is one of the most extensive the agency has, with its potential to halt a project at preliminary stages in the permitting process or long after it has come to fruition, according to several policy experts.

The developers of Pebble Mine—an estimated $5 billion project in southwest Alaska—blame President Barack Obama’s administration for putting their project in regulatory limbo by using these powers against it in 2014. Mr. Pruitt refers to that decision specifically in the memo, which could erase the threat that the EPA could halt the project again after Pebble makes another effort to get federal permits, Tom Collier, chief executive of Pebble Limited Partnership, said in a phone interview from his Anchorage office.

Shares of the partnership’s parent company, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. , have lost about 60% since that decision and closed Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange at C$0.68. Northern Dynasty has also had trouble recruiting investors since then. Last month it said First Quantum Minerals Ltd. backed out of a deal announced in December to pay $150 million for an option to buy half of the project for $1.5 billion.

Pebble executives have urged Congress and officials in President Donald Trump’s administration to shed this authority, Mr. Collier said.

“It’s hugely helpful for us,” he added. “I think it sends a clear signal that making decisions about vetoing a project before you have had an application filed… is just not the right policy.”

Dropping the policy would eliminate a useful tool the EPA has to encourage developers to look harder for solutions that are friendly to the environment, said Bob Perciasepe, deputy EPA administrator under Mr. Obama and chief of the EPA’s air and water divisions during the Clinton administration.

The EPA’s rare use of the authority shows it has been reserved for special situations and not prone to abuse, he said.

It “could be self-defeating over time” for EPA to drop it, he said.

“If there isn’t a consequence to filling a wetland and destroying a habitat, then people will do it,” he said.

Mr. Pruitt’s memo directs EPA staff to send a draft policy to the White House for review within six months. The new policy would need to go through a public comment period before it is finalized, according to a person familiar with the process.

SOURCE 





What Warming? Blooming Date For Trees In Beijing The Same As 1741-1795 AD

China is a big place so what happens there is significant

The day of the year that a plant first blooms is widely considered to be “an important natural indicator of climate change” when observed over the course of decades to centuries.

A new study (Liu et al., 2018) reveals that a flowering plant in Beijing, the Amygdalus davidiana, has not been blooming any earlier in recent decades than it did during the second half of the 18th century.

The scientific literature is teeming with temperature reconstructions that depict a glaring lack of unprecedented, remarkable, or even detectable warming at sites all across the globe.  Hundreds of non-warming/non-hockey stick graphs have been published just since 2017 alone.

And when it comes to temperature reconstructions, one geographical region has seemed to receive more attention than any other: China.

Reconstructions of regional China temperatures consistently do not support the position that the modern period falls outside the range of natural variability.

In fact, in the first half of 2018 alone, there have already been 17 scientific papers published documenting a lack of conspicuous modern warming for regional China.

Unlike other temperature proxies used to reconstruct past temperatures, the day of the year a plant or tree blooms can be directly connected to the regional temperature.

Cooler temperatures translate to delayed bloom dates, and warmer temperatures indicate earlier bloom dates.

Compiled over decades to centuries, records of blooming dates can clearly depict long-term climate trends, as demonstrated in Liu and Fang (2017):

In a new study, Liu et al. (2018) obtained records of blooming dates for flowering trees in Beijing during the 260 years between 1741 and 2000.  Consistent with many other recent paleoclimate reconstructions for the region,

Liu et al. (2018) did not assess any significant differences between the first blooming dates in the second half of the 18th century (1741-1795) compared to the late 20th century (1963-2000).

In fact, even when including the delayed blooming dates (shown above) during the 1796-1832 period (attributed to that colder period’s higher volcanic activity and lower solar irradiance), the average day-of-year first blooming dates during the 90 years between 1741-1832 were effectively identical to the day-of-year first blooming dates for 1963-2000 (85.2 vs. 84.4).

As mentioned above, an abundance of proxy reconstructions from the region also show the modern period is no warmer — and even several degrees colder — than it has been for the last several centuries to millennia.

Therefore, it appears to be widely accepted in the scientific literature that China has not been impacted by dangerous or unprecedented “global” warming since the 18th century, or since CO2 concentrations began rising precipitously.

SOURCE 






Cooler Heads Need To Prevail On Texas Climate Predictions

For ll its positive attributes, the great state of Texas has one major failing: the inability of its mainstream media to rationally discuss climate change.

Unfortunately, Texas media are being used to implement the shock doctrine approach to environmental policy.

Back in 2014, one of us (S.R.) discussed this topic specifically in the context of the severe drought that was underway in North Texas. Readers may remember that at the time, Wichita Falls was ground zero for the drought, and its municipal drinking water reservoirs were being drawn down.  Residents were understandably concerned.

However, what emerged during this drought was some potentially problematic policy advice from the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.  As S.R. wrote in response at the time:

"The point of all this data is that we need to be cautious with precipitation and drought statistics in Texas.  Anecdotal writing is more popular in the media today than ever.  Sometimes this writing style can be useful, but very often it distorts reality by over-generalizing from an isolated case, in shock doctrine style[.] …

The worst drought conditions in the state from a couple years ago are easing. Although east Texas is almost out of drought, everywhere else is still in a significant drought – but if trends continue, the pressure may lift over the next couple years.  Now simply isn’t the time to create comprehensive and far-reaching water policy in shock doctrine style.

Following the advice of Rahm Emanuel to “never let a good crisis go to waste” will not lead Texas in the direction it needs to go, particularly when I see statements by the George W. Bush Institute such as “the trick is finding the right balance between planning and property rights.”

Discussions over property rights are never best conducted when a crisis is at hand.  Wait until the drought crisis settles down – which it undoubtedly will – and then begin examining proposals over this very contentious topic (especially in Texas, where property rights issues are taken more seriously than almost anywhere else)[.] …

Patience is needed in the Lone Star State on water policy.  Avoid the shock doctrine".

And sure enough, our recommendation for patience paid off. Within one year of our article being published, the reservoirs in Wichita Falls were already back up to effectively 100% of capacity, a point they have maintained ever since.

This brings us to a recent article in the Dallas Morning News predicting that “[c]limate change [is] to bring North Texas longer droughts, heavy rains, 120-degree temps within 25 years.”  And in this report, we find the following claims:

“Climate change is not just about polar bears,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University with an impressive YouTube following.  “It will affect North Texas profoundly.”

Between 2041 and 2050, Dallas-Fort Worth may see August temperatures rise from a mean of 86 degrees Fahrenheit at the end of the 20th century to 94 degrees, with extremes rising above 120, reports one study by scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington"

That’s a bold prediction.  Our concern with it is that there appears to be no evidence that extreme maximum temperatures in the Dallas-Fort Worth region for August will rise above 120 degrees by the 2041-2050 period.

Using historical data from NOAA going back to 1899 for the area, there is only a very weak time trend in the data, as can be seen in this graph.  In fact, the highest all-time August maximum temperatures occurred in 1909 and 1936 at 112 degrees.

Since this latter date, the region has hit 110 degrees only twice (in 1943 and 2011), and the average maximum high over the past three decades (104.0 degrees) is essentially the same as the average maximum high for the entire period since records began in 1899 (103.3 degrees).

Consequently, Dallas-Fort Worth “may see” extreme August temperatures in the 120-plus range by the 2040s, but if the 120 years of data for the region is any indication, this appears unlikely and not a rational basis for funding public policy.

Similarly, the prediction that August temperatures may rise from a mean of 86 degrees in the late 1990s up to 94 degrees by 2040 appears unlikely if historical trends since the 19th century are any indication.

There is a modest increasing trend in August temperatures for Dallas-Fort Worth since the late 19th century, but nowhere near dramatic enough to suggest that a rapid increase of 8 degrees will take place during the next 25 or so years.

For example, over the 120 years between 1899 and 2018, the average August temperature in this region of North Texas rose just 2 degrees from 84 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

If the historical trend continues, perhaps an increase to 87 degrees by 2050 will occur, or if the upper 95% confidence interval of the historical trend is extrapolated out to mid-century, maybe 88 degrees.

These slightly higher values are very different from a prediction that residents of Dallas-Fort Worth should prepare for an average August temperature of 94 degrees during the 2040s.

Drought is always an issue that ranchers are concerned about in North Texas, but more caution is warranted when considering the following predictions:

Along with heat will come stronger drought, which “has profound economic impacts,” said Hayhoe.

The prediction that North Texas will have longer and more severe droughts is based on multiple factors, including the relationship between high temperatures and soil dryness and the presence of more frequent and longer lasting high-pressure systems in summer that suppress rainfall and deflect storms away from our area.

Hayhoe points to Texas’ 2010-2013 drought as a probable sign of things to come.

Quite the contrary.  In none of the four climate divisions that make up the northern half of Texas have there been any statistically significant trends toward increasing drought since records began in 1895 (see graphs for climate divisions 1, 2, 3, and 4; positive values [green bars] represent increasingly wet conditions, while negative values [yellow bars] indicate increasing drought).

In fact, in divisions 2, 3, and 4 (the north-central and north-east regions of Texas), on the balance of probabilities, historical trends suggest less drought in the future, not more.

Climate predictions are hard, and the record in Texas has not been promising of late.

In a time of scarce public resources and more pressing, and demonstrably real, national security concerns – such as the border crisis – policy-makers in Texas need to consider a more balanced examination of climate change impacts on the state and avoid deploying limited funds and enacting unwise policies in an attempt to ward off projections that hold a significant chance of not coming true.

One way of decreasing pressure on Texas’s water resources would be to halt and reduce the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the state, whose “official” numbers increased by an order of magnitude to nearly 5 million between 1970 and 2014.

The actual number of illegal aliens in Texas is likely much higher and increasing more rapidly than official statistics suggest.  Curbing this population increase alone would go a long way to dealing with many of the issues raised in the Dallas Morning News article.

SOURCE 






Judge throws out SF and Oakland climate suits against big oil

A federal judge Monday tossed out two groundbreaking lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland that sought to hold some of the world’s largest oil companies liable for climate change.

In an exhaustive, 16-page ruling that touched on such scientific matters as the ice age and early observations of carbon dioxide, U.S. District Judge William Alsup acknowledged the problem of a warming planet but said it is just too big for the courts to solve.

The cities are trying to get five oil and gas giants, including Bay Area-based Chevron, to help cover the costs of dealing with sea-level rise, like picking up the tab for seawalls. However, Alsup, noting that Congress and the White House, not the judiciary, are responsible for addressing the fallout from fossil fuels, granted the industry’s request to dismiss the suits.

“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” he wrote.

"The two cases are among the first of many nationwide that have recently attempted to force the oil industry to pay for what might amount to hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change. While the other municipalities, including a handful in California as well as New York City and Kings County, Wash., are closely following what happens in the Bay Area, Monday’s decision does not affect the cases in other courts."

The cities and counties all claim that oil companies have long known that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are warming the planet. Yet, according to the suits, the industry did nothing to prevent problems and even sought to cover up its ties to the climate, akin to how big tobacco tried to deceive the public about the health impacts of cigarettes decades ago.

The lawsuits argue that like tobacco companies, the oil firms create a public nuisance and should be held accountable. San Francisco alone estimates that rising seas at the hands of climate change has put $10 billion of public property and as much as $39 billion of private land at risk.

But Alsup, who works in the court’s Northern District of California, opined that the world has undoubtedly benefited from fossil fuels, from the industrial revolution to today’s modern conveniences. The bench, he determined, was not in a position to weigh the industry’s positives against the negative.

“Having reaped the benefit of that historic progress, would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded?” he wrote. “Is it really fair, in light of those benefits, to say that the sale of fossil fuels was unreasonable?”

Alsup tried to grapple with such questions at a first-of-its-kind climate “tutorial” in March. He invited experts from both sides of the case to weigh in on the science of climate change. The hearing was so popular that it had to be live-streamed to an additional courtroom.

In the end, Alsup determined that the nation’s environmental agencies should be tapped for their expertise on the subject and that the legislative and executive branches of government should have final say.

Attorneys for San Francisco and Oakland are reviewing their options and are not yet ready to concede defeat.

“Our belief remains that these companies are liable for the harm they’ve caused,” said John Coté, spokesman for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. “This is obviously not the ruling we wanted, but this doesn’t mean the case is over.”

Besides Chevron, the targets of the lawsuits were BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which represents the interests of the oil industry, praised Alsup’s action.

“From the moment these baseless lawsuits were filed, we have argued that the courtroom was not the proper venue to address this global challenge,” said the association’s president and CEO, Jay Timmons.

Attorneys for the oil companies have long maintained that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are regulated under the Clean Air Act and remain the purview of lawmakers and the president.

While the San Francisco and Oakland cases are the first of the recent climate suits to get a decision, the others are in different courts, both at the state and federal level, and could elicit different judgments.

San Mateo and Marin counties are both trying to get climate suits heard in California court, where public nuisance cases are generally easier to make.

San Francisco and Oakland had initially tried to make their cases in state court, but Alsup determined that because of the scope of the matter, the issue belonged to the federal judiciary.


SOURCE 






'It's less efficient than regular unleaded': Australian motorists are being forced to use E10 fuel despite growing doubts about cost savings and environmental benefits

Motorists are being forced to use ethanol petrol despite industry doubts about its environmental benefits and cost savings.

Service stations in New South Wales and Queensland are being required to stock E10 petrol, which contains up to 10 per cent ethanol, and are hit with hefty fines if they fail to convert their tanks.

This lower octane unleaded blend, containing fermented sugarcane or grain, typically sells for $1.50 a litre in Sydney, compared with $1.75 a litre for premium unleaded.

Over a year, this equates to an extra $663 a year to fill up a small Mazda3 hatchback if motorists want to buy the superior premium unleaded petrol as lower octane, regular unleaded is replaced with E10 at service stations.

E10 is also three per cent less efficient per kilometre than regular unleaded petrol, with industry experts questioning its touted environmental benefits.

Independent petrol monitoring group Fueltrac said lobbying from ethanol producer Manildra and Queensland's sugarcane growers was forcing motorists in two states to pay significantly more for petrol if they didn't want to fill up with E10.

'There would be zero benefit in terms of environmental benefit and you've got the higher cost of the fuel,' the group's manager director Geoff Trotter told Daily Mail Australia today.

'The stuff only has 70 per cent thermal efficiency of a standard unleaded so you've got to use three per cent more to go the same distance.'

Mr Trotter, a former Shell executive, said the NSW government was threatening service stations with $500,000 fines if they didn't stock E10.

'When the motorists didn't respond to the mandate in the first tranche, they then threatened retailers with these huge fines,' he said.

'Unfortunately, what that's done is it's forced people to have to buy premium unleaded fuel which is between 15 and 20 cents a litre more than the previous standard unleaded. 'They haven't delivered any savings benefits for the poor old motorist.'

SOURCE 

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

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

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





27 June, 2018

Canadian pipeline WILL be built

Trudeau grows a spine

Last week was a trying one for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. You may think that I am referring to the imposition of U.S. tariffs on imports of Canadian steel. But Trudeau actually faced a harder issue than the one about how to respond to President Donald Trump’s declaration that trade with Canada posed a threat to U.S. security.

That was his decision to let the Canadian government purchase the Trans Mountain oil pipeline from Kinder Morgan for C$4.5 billion ($3.5 billion), and to finance its multibillion-dollar expansion. While the tariffs and pipeline are seemingly unrelated, the imposition of the first should ease criticism of Trudeau’s pipeline decision, given that the recent U.S. move highlights the growing unreliability of Canada’s ally to the south.

For decades, Canada was content to rely on the U.S. as its only market for its most important exports: not steel, but oil and gas. Virtually all of Canada’s oil and gas exports flow to the U.S. and always have. Energy exports to the U.S. make up slightly more than a fifth of all Canadian exports and a little more than 5 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product.

In recent years, however, many Canadians have wanted their country to develop the ability to export oil and gas to other markets. Some of the impetus for this sentiment was political, beginning well before Trump arrived in the White House. In 2011, Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered his cabinet to begin the exploration of alternative export routes after two tense exchanges with President Barack Obama concerning the Keystone Pipeline.

But much of the drive to send Canadian energy elsewhere is rooted in market realities. In the last 10 years, the advent of fracking and the subsequent production of shale gas in the U.S. has reduced American demand for Canadian natural gas, driving down imports by more than a fifth. The U.S. actually imports more oil from Canada than ever before, but America’s burgeoning oil production may cause Canadians to wonder if this will always be the case.

The imperative for Canada to find non-U.S. energy markets is easy to understand. But the ability to act on this vision has proven elusive. Large pipelines need to be built from Alberta, the fountain of most Canadian oil and gas, to one of the two distant coasts, with the western one making the most sense given both geography and the fact that Asia is the center of energy demand growth.

North American companies have sought to build pipelines that would carry Canadian energy to the ports, but environmentalists in British Columbia and elsewhere have resisted and in most cases thwarted these efforts.

The plan to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia began to look like it would be no exception. Threats began to fly between the two provinces, and in February, Alberta briefly banned the “import” of wine made in British Colombia. Since March, Alberta’s premier has been threatening to cut off the flow of oil to its western neighbor.

Finally, after years of effort, Kinder Morgan declared on April 8 that it would suspend its expansion project if the legal and regulatory challenges were not settled in its favor by May 31.

Canada was in a national emergency. Leading figures in the east, including Trudeau, stressed that completing the pipeline expansion was in the national interest. Polls showed that most Canadians agreed. Yet Trudeau’s government had not done enough to assure the pipeline company that this infrastructure could be built, despite the fact that it had the power to approve and regulate interprovincial pipelines and railways.

Faced with unpalatable options, Trudeau took the correct course in announcing on May 29 that it had purchased the existing pipeline and would ensure that the expansion project would be completed. He has been criticized from all sides for this action. Some detractors point out that it will entail political costs for his Liberal Party, while not necessarily enabling him to achieve all his climate and energy objectives. Others lament the negative signal sent to investors by the need for federal intervention.

There is no debate that it would be better for Canada if the Trans Mountain pipeline controversy had never gotten to this stage. Trudeau’s move does not clear away all the legal and regulatory barriers, but it will be harder for activists to stand in the way of a federal project. And rarely do policymakers get to choose between a good option and a bad one; instead, they get to select between flawed alternatives, hoping to pick the least bad.

Had Trudeau chosen to let Kinder Morgan cancel the project, investors would have looked at Canada in a less favorable light. They would no longer see Canada as a country of minimal political risk, but would have instead focused on uncertainty around the rule of law. For now, the big questions about whether laws will be enforced and federal prerogatives protected have been put to rest.

A cancellation of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would have been a significant setback in Canada’s pursuit of new international energy markets, something very much in the Canadian interest. Trump’s imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada seemed to punctuate this message sharply and may have even given Trudeau’s opponents a moment of pause. At this point, sadly, any step that helps reduce Canadian dependence on U.S. markets should strike Canadians as a smart one.

SOURCE 






Tesla electric cars no cleaner than petrol rivals, UK analysis shows

Tesla electric cars, marketed as being among the planet’s greenest vehicles, may be behind the production of just as much greenhouse gas as their petrol and diesel equivalents, according to energy analysts.

They have calculated the amount of greenhouse gas generated in building Tesla’s luxury cars and added this to the CO2 from the power stations that produce electricity to charge them. This was compared with the emissions from making and running normal cars.

“Teslas are not cleaner to run than the average car in the UK,” said Jonathan Harris, of Engaged Tracking, a London-based company that analyses the sustainability and “greenness” of firms for potential investors.

“The annual emissions of a UK car is 1.5 tons of CO2, based on an average of 7800 miles (12,550km) a year. Both the Tesla Model S vehicles we analysed have the same emissions (as an ordinary petrol car) of 1.5 tons of CO2 per year.”

Such issues affect all battery-powered cars, not just Teslas, because they are charged with electricity generated in Britain’s power stations. Half of UK power comes from coal and gas.

The issue is amplified by the inefficiencies of power generation: only a third of the energy consumed is converted to electricity, with the rest becoming waste heat. Even more energy is lost in transmission lines and in the complex circuitry used to charge electric cars.

Tesla cars’ performance is worse than that of many other electric vehicles because they are larger.

“BMW’s i3 electric vehicle (a smaller model) has annual emissions of 1.3 tons of CO2 - 15 per cent more efficient than Tesla’s Model S,” said Harris.

Tesla was co-founded by the US entrepreneur Elon Musk, who recently launched a Tesla roadster into space on a rocket made by his company SpaceX.

Aside from such grand gestures, however, Tesla has suffered technical problems at its Nevada “Gigafactory” and has been beset by delays and financial difficulties.

The company said Engaged Tracking’s figures were unfair because the Model S was much larger than the average UK car and so was bound to use more energy overall.

“When a UK grid-powered Model S is compared to the large sedans (saloons) it competes with, (the saloon) produces 300 per cent more emissions,” it said. “Emissions from oil extraction, refining and distribution add another 25 per cent to the CO2 emissions of a petrol car. Any fair analysis shows that vehicles like Teslas generate less CO2 than any comparable petrol car.”

SOURCE 






Ethanol Boondoggle Causing Headaches for Pruitt

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is finding himself getting the squeeze from competing sides over the ethanol mandate. As the Washington Examiner explains, “The EPA is poised to order refiners to blend more ethanol in 2019 to make up for the agency granting ‘hardship’ waivers to dozens of refiners to help them reduce the cost of blending ethanol in gasoline.” In other words, the EPA is set to increase the total amount of ethanol blended gasoline mandated by the Renewal Fuel Act, which in turn increases the cost of business for the refinery industry. And the refinery industry is clearly not happy about it.

On the other side, farmers and ethanol producers are not happy with the continued extension of hardship waivers. Iowa Democrats have sent a letter to the EPA that states, “The Environmental Protection Agency continues to hurt farmers and undermine the biofuels market by extending waivers to an unusually large number of refineries.” They are essentially demanding an end to the granting of any waivers.

This is a textbook example of the problem with setting up a sector of the economy around a government policy. It always devolves into the politics of the government essentially picking winners and losers, irrespective of the free market. So long as the ethanol boondoggle remains, expect to see more of these needless conflicts of interest.

SOURCE 






Elecric buses in LA give big problems

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s long-time mission to electrify the city’s buses is turning into a massive waste of time that could further disrupt the West Coast Democrat’s hopes of running for president in 2020.

The city began buying a lot of buses in 2008 from a Chinese battery manufacturer called BYD Ltd., which promised to create thousands of new green energy jobs and provide L.A. buses with long-range use that could clean up the environment. The promise became an expensive flop, according to a report published Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times.

BYD’s buses stalled on hills, required frequent service calls and had unpredictable driving ranges below advertised distances, which were impaired by temperature changes and the driver’s braking. In fact, the first five buses BYD sent to LA Metro, which manages the city’s public transportation, were pulled off the road after less than five months of service.

Metro staff called them “unsuitable,” poorly made and unreliable for over 100 miles, internal city emails show. The transit agency awarded BYD tens of millions of dollars more in public contracts despite concerns the buses were becoming a headache and perhaps not worth the expense.

But Garcetti, a Democrat and proponent of electric vehicles who chairs Metro’s board, often tossed lifelines to BYD as the company lobbied its way into the city’s pocketbook.

The mayor invited BYD in 2016 to test new product lines within city agencies and arranged for officials to visit the company’s factory. Records show two city departments gave BYD contracts without competitive bidding. When the projects hit snags, city managers told staff the purchases were “political,” the LA Times reported.

Garcetti led an effort to force Metro to convert its 2,200-bus fleet to electric despite the poor results with BYD. He and his staff wrote policy motions and created a private meeting between Metro executives and environmental lobbyists, the LA Times reported.

BYD rolled out its first five buses for an Earth Day ceremony in 2015 outside LA’s Metro headquarters. They were quietly sent back to the factory shortly thereafter, according to the LA Times.

Internal Metro reports show the buses needed “extensive campaign of retrofits, modifications and upgrades to correct irregularities.” Problems only metastasized, internal metro logs show.

One bus puffed plumes of white smoke from its wheels, while another wouldn’t start its second run of the day and on its next run needed a jump-start. Another bus limped back to the depot and failed to complete a scheduled route when its battery dropped to 15-percent charge after only 68 miles.

Metro records show the buses never traveled further than 133 miles, although BYD promised the units had a range of 175 miles. Reports also show drivers got an average of 59 miles between charges when service stops were factored in. Other cities had problems with the buses, too.

Officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for instance, were so alarmed with production problems and severe range shortfalls that they raised concerns about its $23-million contract. “The whole thing is a bit of a lemon, and now we’ve got to learn to make lemonade,” said Mayor Tim Keller.

Garcetti did not agree to an interview with the LA Times, but his staff said in a press statement that the mayor’s office has met with BYD representatives in the past. “To be clear, access in the form of meetings and conversations does not equal business,” the statement said. A beleaguered electric bus fleet is not the only problem the mayor must wrestle with before moving on to higher office.

SOURCE 






Cattle the next target in climate war

Storm clouds have gathered over the long paddock as beef production becomes the target of a building global campaign that threatens to make cows the next coal in ­climate change action.

Australia’s biggest integrated cattle and beef producer, Australian Agricultural Co (AAC), has been thrown on to the defensive after it was named and shamed as a global laggard.

AAC, the oldest continuously operating company in the nation, claims a “high risk” rating by a group representing investors worth $5.9 trillion was more due to poor communication than bad management.

But a war of competing scientific views has been ramping up over the impact of cattle on ­climate, with Oxford University research rejecting the benefits of grazing and claiming diets with less meat of any kind were needed to save the planet.

Land emissions were due to surface as the next challenge for the federal government, which ­remains bogged down in energy policy and strongly resistant to plans to tighten regulations for new cars and the transport sector.

Some commentators claim Australian cattle, sheep and pig herds will need to be cut by millions of animals to meet agriculture’s share of the 26 to 28 per cent cut to carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 2030.

The fear is that climate policies would do to meat prices what had been done to electricity.

The Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation has responded to pressure with a public ­“ambition” to make the livestock sector carbon-neutral by 2030.

Rather than cut animal numbers, the industry says better land management, improved stock ­selection and handling can offset the impact of methane and carbon dioxide emissions from cows.

About 13 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions come from agriculture compared with 35 per cent from electricity generation and 17 per cent from transportation.

The livestock sector represents about 70 per cent of emissions from agriculture, with beef cattle production mostly responsible.

Beef cattle produce high levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane when they graze and when they pass wind.

A spokesman for the federal Environment Department told The Australian the $2.5 billion emissions reduction fund allowed at least six methods the livestock industry could use to generate ­additional income while providing productivity benefits.

A government paper said to ­reduce the emissions intensity of beef, growers could reduce the ­average number of days from birth to slaughter, reduce the ­average age of the herd or reduce the number of animals in the herd.

CSIRO is exploring ways the industry can be carbon neutral while the national herd can ­remain stable at 28 million cattle and 70 million sheep.

MLA managing director Richard Norton said paths to becoming carbon neutral “don’t require the heavy hand of regulation”.

“What they do require is the commitment of industry, the right policy settings from federal and state governments and continued investment in research and development,” he said.

Mr Norton said the red meat industry had already reduced its share of Australia’s total emissions from 20 per cent of Australia’s 600 million tonnes total emissions in 2005 to just 13 per cent in 2015.

AAC said it was committed to working to further reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

“To do this, we recognise the importance of better understanding agricultural greenhouse gas flows at pasture and production level,’’ the company said. “Better data and industry benchmarking will help us drive further, long-term improvement.’’

Australia currently ranks as the world’s third largest beef ­exporter behind Brazil and India.

SOURCE 

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

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

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26 June, 2018

Three Climate Change Questions Answered

A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.  But three crucial questions are: 1) is the scientific community really united?, 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today's world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet?  The answer to all three questions is no.

A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily be checked out by a simple Google search.

One of the most persistent false impressions, which the mainstream media have ingrained in us, is that 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is indeed doing irreparable harm.  However, this figure was obtained not by a respected, impartial polling organization, but by believers for their own purposes.

Exactly what do the 97% agree on?  Had the question been "Do you believe that the Earth's climate is changing, and does mankind have an effect on the climate?," the response would not have been 97%, but 100%.  But had the question been "Is burning fossil fuel such a threat that there should be a major effort to stop?," who knows?  Probably less than 50%.  That question was never asked on a large-scale survey, done by a respected polling organization and documented in a place easily available to the public.

To get an idea of how divided the scientific community is, a petition was circulated, led by Friedrich Seitz, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, disputing the ill effects of CO2.  It garnered 32,000 signatures, over 9,000 by Ph.D. scientists.  To justify the 97%, there would have to be another opposing petition signed by a million scientists.

Still not convinced? Consider this excerpt from Steven Koonin, director of the Institute for Urban Studies at NYU, in the Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2017:

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science.  At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate's natural variability.  At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent – and unexpected – slowing of global sea level rise over the past two decades.

Judging by Koonin's particular experience, the number would be around 50%.  So much for the 97%!

Despite the lack of consensus, there is a push by various organizations like the Sierra Club and 350.org, and Al Gore, to end the use of fossil fuel.  The Sierra Club website states, "We are ready for 100% clean energy," apparently wrongly believing that solar and wind can replace fossil fuel.  But in 1998, about 86% of world energy was from fossil fuel, 9%, nuclear, and solar and wind round off to the nearest integer down to 0%.  Google "graph % of world power from solar and wind."

In 2017, after 20 years and hundreds of billions spent to develop and promote solar and wind – around $150B in the USA alone (Google "GAO budget for climate change"; the numbers are 85%, 5%, and rounds off up to 1%).  Clearly, solar and wind will be unable to supplant fossil fuel any time soon.  But think of what an 85% decrease in energy would mean for your lifestyle: cars, air-conditioning, high-tech medicine, air travel, most electricity, many manufactured goods.  All gone, except for society's grand pooh-bahs.

The simple truth is that the world will not voluntarily end the use of fossil fuel until another energy source, most likely nuclear, becomes available at about the same quantity and price.  Rapidly developing countries such as China, India, Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria understand this ironclad relationship between prosperity and fossil fuel use, even if we in the richer parts of the world have forgotten it.  They will not stop using fossil fuel because the Sierra club lectures them to switch to solar and wind so as to save the planet.  In fact, before fossil fuel was widely used, civilization was a thin veneer on a human base of poverty and squalor, a veneer supplied by colonies, slavery, and the like.  Is this what we want?

Regarding harm CO2 may have done, there is a simple check.  (1) Whenever a believer says such and such is happening, check it out with a Google search.  For instance, say the claim is that sea levels are rising rapidly, as many definitively asserted when the Paris climate agreement was being negotiated.  Simply Google "graph of sea level rise."  A variety of graphs will pop up, all showing a persistent rise of between 20 and 30 cm per century, with no increase around 1950 as CO2 levels started to increase.

Say the claim is that ice in Antarctica is rapidly melting. Google "NASA Antarctica ice."  It will show that ice is rapidly melting in some regions – for instance, near the Antarctic Peninsula.  This provides dramatic pictures for the evening news.  However, over the entire huge continent, the most recent NASA measurements of total ice show that ice is not melting, but forming – about 80 billion tons per year.

With an internet search, anyone can check out such assertions of gloom and doom, anywhere, anytime; virtually none stands up to serious scrutiny (1).  In fact, it is amazing that the mainstream media have never performed these simple checks.  This author is convinced that such journalistic irresponsibility will ultimately harm the media's credibility for decades to come.

It is much more likely that CO2 has been beneficial.  It is not a pollutant, but an important nutrient for plants; without atmospheric CO2, life on Earth would not be possible (2).  In fact, recent NASA measurements show that over the past 40 or so years of satellite measurements, the earth has been "greening."  To see this, Google "NASA measurements of Earth's greening."

So should we be on a breakneck race to replace fossil fuel with solar and wind?  Considering that the scientific community is, in reality, divided; the harm to civilization would be catastrophic should solar and wind fail, as they have up to this point; and that up to now, there has been little if any harm to the environment from burning fossil fuel, this author's answer is no.

SOURCE 







Energy Independence Day: A Story of Shale and Sand

People over 50 remember the OPEC oil embargoes and Americans waiting in line to buy gasoline. We were the most powerful nation the world. We had won World War II, rebuilt Europe and Japan. Yet, here we were begging some faceless Middle Eastern Sheiks for a few gallons so we could get to work. It was both frustrating and humiliating.

The answers we got from our political leadership were pathetic. Yes, they authorized farmers to start making ethanol and gave tax credits to the big refineries to get them to blend it. Congress created a Department of Energy to look for new sources of energy. They came up with some interesting ideas, but most of them were far too expensive. Americans were told to slow down, dial back on the thermostat and buy more sweaters. In short, the days of affordable energy were over and we would just have to get used to it.

Adding insult to injury, we were told that it was our fault.

Without much help from the Department of Energy, some enterprising entrepreneurs began to explore the possibilities of unlocking enormous amounts of oil and gas trapped in shale formations deep in the earth. To accomplish this they would combine new technologies. The first involved vertically drilling up to a mile deep to reach the layer of shale. They next figured out how to turn the drill bits to drill horizontally into the shale formation. No small feat. The second was perfecting a somewhat proven process called hydraulic fracturing. By pumping water down the well at very high pressure, they could create tiny cracks in the shale allowing the oil and gas to be tapped. A key was to include sand with the water to hold those tiny fissures open when the water was pumped out. Not just any sand. It had to be extremely hard to withstand the enormous pressures. It also had to be spherical, unlike beach sand which is cubicle.  Rounded sand prevents plugging up the plumbing. Fortunately, the United States has some very large shale formations and significant reserves of that special sand.

At first our OPEC puppet masters, ignored this shale and sand revolution. But, a few years ago they began to take notice of the dramatic improvements in fracking technology. They also noticed the steady increase in U.S. domestic energy production. At the rate we were going, in a few years we might not need to buy their oil. They began to try to undercut American frackers in an attempt to bankrupt them. They opened their spigots and drove down the world price of oil. They also underwrote anti-fracking public relations efforts. The combination slowed growth, rig counts dropped but our production continued to climb.

It was a war. OPEC believed they could hold their breath longer than American frackers. They were wrong. I suspect that they were shocked to learn that efficient frackers in North Dakota and West Texas could make money on oil at less than $50 a barrel. Many of the OPEC members needed more than that to keep their governments afloat. It was a war that they could not win.

So, after two years of waging war on American fracking, on September 29, 2016 (Energy Independence Day) the once powerful international oil cartel surrendered. Although they didn’t announce it that way, it was on that day that OPEC decided to begin reducing their production, ceding market share to frackers. Oil prices began to rise. Their ability to dictate to the United States would be forever diminished. We will soon be energy independent. Congress changed the law and we began to export oil and gas again to eager buyers like China.

The frackers won the energy war. But, in a larger sense the war was won with good old American ingenuity. It was won with simple, basic things. As basic as shale and sand.

SOURCE 






Sound (and light) reasons to tilt at windmills

Two simple words were enough to put me firmly in the anti-turbine camp: shadow flicker. How innocent — even poetic — it sounds, until you bear witness. If you haven’t and are undecided, I urge you to go online and find a video. It’s not hard.

It’s not exactly a trade secret that a tall object planted between you and the sun is going to cast a shadow. To provide a sense of scale, Jim Feasel, in a recent letter to the editor, has memorably written of St. Joseph’s Church with the steeple as a fan blade. As I’m in the UK, I’d change that to Big Ben, though it’s bigger than that. So we’re talking major flicker.

If you haven’t gone online to see one of those videos yet, just start blinking your eyes as you’re reading this. Now keep blinking them, slowly and regularly, until it gets annoying. Doesn’t take long, does it?

Or wait until it’s dark, sit yourself comfortably down, and ask a less-than-loved-one to flip the light switch on and off all evening.

Or imagine you live in a fridge and someone keeps opening the door. This scenario hits particularly close to home, as growing up, it drove my dad crazy when I kept doing that to check if the food was still there.

I don’t think any of these illustrations quite capture the torture of what it must be like to have to put up with shadow flicker hour after hour, day after day. Curtains don’t help. Nothing helps, except fleeing to a windowless bunker. The only relief comes when the sun god Ra shifts the running shadow over your enemies, or you manage to sell your house to someone who remembers and loves disco.

There are also noise issues (search “wind turbine sound” on YouTube, or sit under a flight path near a busy airport for an approximation); safety issues, including the thrilling prospect of ice flung at great velocity; politicians-steamrolling-the-locals issues; a lot of birds and bats that are going to have an unhappy ending; and real questions about just how beneficial these things are going to be once you have a look at the numbers.

“Is it worth putting our neighbors in this position for $65?” asked the author of that letter I mentioned. “We should not do it for all the money in the world, much less $65. Shame on all of us if we do.”

Yes, the planet would appreciate more green energy. But such projects often seem more motivated by greenbacks in the right pockets than high ideals.

If I had any say in the matter I’d only put these less than benign giants in the back yards of anybody in a position to approve them or profit handsomely from them. Naturally, the biggest wind farm of all would be placed in a ring around Washington, D.C., so the rest of the country could bask in the bloviated megawatts thus generated.

SOURCE 







A Different War of Attrition

Steve Hayward’s recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece provides an important reminder of the life cycle of advocacy driven environmental issues and the importance of persistent, fact-based resistance to counter campaigns based on ideology and visions of impending catastrophes.

Going back to the 1960s, we have witnessed an unending series of apocalyptic threats created by ideologues who have tried to use them promote increased political control by entitled elites. In all cases running from the population bomb to the limits of growth, to the war on pesticides, and climate change over the last 30 years, the problem has always been activities promoting economic growth and the solution has always been a reduction in personal freedom, serious constraints on market-based progress, and increased control from the center. Federalism and the Constitutional based limited government are treated as quaint ideals that have long outlived their relevance.

Steve Hayward takes us through the five stages that climate change has passed through to go from the “center of public concern …into a prolonged limbo.” He bases his narrative on a 1972 article by Anthony Downs, Up and Down With Ecology.

The stated objectives of climate advocates have been to eliminate fossil fuels from the globe’s energy budget, to bring atmospheric CO2 levels down to pre-industrial levels, to promote wind and solar as substitutes for fossil fuels and reduce the carbon foot print of all. All of these objectives are championed as necessary to save the planet. The real objective has been increased political control of the economy by self-ordained elites. We should not forget that in the early 2000s, French President Jacque Chirac called for a world government. And, Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, prior to the 2015 meeting in Paris bluntly stated “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. “

While some ideologues may have entertained the notion that decarbonization objectives could be achieved in a matter of a few decades, no one who understood how the world works could seriously believe that. Instead, advocate leaders championed lofty and unattainable goals recognizing that incremental progress was the real objective. And since the time of Kyoto, they have promoted actions that incrementally would reduce the role of carbon in the global economy. But over time the costs of forced decarbonization have become more apparent and as they have counter pressures has increased. Germany, the leading advocate for alternative energy, is rolling back its Energiewende in the face of growing emissions and costs and the US is undoing much of the Obama initiatives. Other nations, as evidenced by the Paris Accord, have moved from supporting binding targets and timetables to accepting a voluntary agreement that will be honored in the breach while they pursue economic growth and higher standards of living..

There are two major reasons why the march to global government and rapid decarbonization have stalled. First, the public has never ranked climate change as one of its top priorities. Nor has there been any indication that the public at large is willing to sacrifice the benefits that come from continued economic progress. Second, while those opposed to draconian climate change actions are relatively small in number and underfunded, they have been well focused and persistent in pointing out the flaws in the climate orthodoxy and the folly of mandated decarbonization. Climate advocates have imposed significant cost from their actions and policies but those costs are far less than they could have been. And, as Steve Hayward insightfully observed, “Treating climate change as planet scale problem that could be solved by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

SOURCE 






Being ‘green’ is easy, ignore facts

If you thought the “green movement” was more about self-righteous politics than clear-headed science, here are two tales that prove the point.

In Arizona a petition is being circulated in an effort to get on the ballot an initiative called the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona Amendment. This would require 50 percent of the electricity generated in the state to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The petition states: “The Amendment defines renewable energy sources to include solar, wind, small-scale hydropower, and other sources that are replaced rapidly by a natural, ongoing process (excluding nuclear or fossil fuel). Distributed renewable energy sources, like rooftop solar, must comprise at least 10% of utilities’ annual retail sales of electricity by 2030.”

To get on the November ballot petitioners must gather nearly 226,000 signatures by July 5.

If the measure passes it would necessitate the closure of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix, which currently provides about 35 percent of the state’s electricity, even though it produces no carbon emissions.

If the state were to achieve the goal of 50 percent of its power coming from mostly solar and wind, both of which are intermittent, there would be no room on the grid for Palo Verde’s power, because reactors can’t be quickly turned off and on — it takes weeks of preparation.

“We would have to shut Palo Verde down during the day every day,” one plant official was quoted as saying by Cronkite News. “But that’s not how nuclear plants really work. Nuclear plants can’t just be shut down and then started up again.”

The most likely source of rapid start-up generation would be natural gas, which produces carbon emissions, especially when frequently idling.

Adding wind and solar to the power grid could increase the carbon dioxide output.

Retired electrical engineer Kent Hawkins wrote in February 2010 that “the introduction of wind power into an electricity system increases the fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions beyond levels that would have occurred using efficient gas plants alone as the providers of electricity equivalent to the firmed wind.”

This is because every kilowatt-hour of intermittent electricity introduced into the grid must be backed up by a reliable fossil-fuel generator. When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the demand for electricity remains.

Starting and stopping natural gas-fired generators is inefficient, comparable to operating a car in stop and go traffic instead of steady and efficient on the open highway. Just like the car, the fuel consumption can double, along with the carbon emissions, negating any presumed carbon savings by using solar or wind.

Opponents of the measure say it will drive up power bills in the state. Proponents argue long-term benefits of solar power and reducing nuclear waste offset any immediate cost spike.

Meanwhile, in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to build $6 billion worth of offshore wind turbines while shutting down the nuclear-powered, emission-free Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that the wind turbines will produce only 60 percent as much power as the nuclear plant being closed.

How will this gap be covered? You guessed it, natural gas.

“The irony here is colossal. Mr. Cuomo, who banned hydraulic fracturing despite the economic boon it has created in neighboring Pennsylvania, and who has repeatedly blocked construction of pipelines, is making New York even more dependent on natural gas, which will increase its carbon emissions,” Bryce writes. “At the same time, he has mandated offshore wind projects that will force New Yorkers to pay more for their electricity, even though the state already has some of the nation’s highest electricity prices.”

This past week NV Energy announced plans to contract to build six new solar power projects at a cost of $2 billion and double the state’s renewable energy capacity, but only if voters reject the Energy Choice Initiative on the November ballot that would end the company’s monopoly in most of the state and allow competition. No mention was made of how this might impact power bills.

In all three states emissions would likely increase, as well as power bills.

Being green is a state of mind. Just never let the facts get in the way.

SOURCE 

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

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

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




25 June, 2018

James Hansen: Prez. Obama ‘failed miserably’ on climate – ‘Late, ineffectual & partisan'

At least Hansen is honest in revealing that all of the alternative energy solutions agreed to in Paris and elsewhere will have no measurable effect, and are just political posturing to placate a gullible constituency

James Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.

James Hansen: ‘Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.’ 

There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.

Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.

“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
   
SOURCE 






Antarctica Is Getting Taller, and Here’s Why

If you read the article below in full, you will see that this is all just guesswork

Bedrock under Antarctica is rising more swiftly than ever recorded — about 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) upward per year. And thinning ice in Antarctica may be responsible.

That's because as ice melts, its weight on the rock below lightens. And over time, when enormous quantities of ice have disappeared, the bedrock rises in response, pushed up by the flow of the viscous mantle below Earth's surface, scientists reported in a new study.

These uplifting findings are both bad news and good news for the frozen continent.

The good news is that the uplift of supporting bedrock could make the remaining ice sheets more stable. The bad news is that in recent years, the rising earth has probably skewed satellite measurements of ice loss, leading researchers to underestimate the rate of vanishing ice by as much as 10 percent, the scientists reported.

An incomplete picture

Interplay between bedrock and mantle in Antarctica is just one of the many geologic processes that happen all over our dynamic planet. Under Earth's crust cover, the molten mantle extends over 1,796 miles (2,890 kilometers) down to Earth's core. Mantle movement is known to ripple up and affect the crust's tectonic plates, as these plates ride convection currents in the mantle's outermost part, known as the lithosphere.

But while computer models give scientists an idea of how the mantle behaves, the picture is incomplete, lead study author Valentina Barletta, a postdoctoral researcher at DTU Space, the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, told Live Science.

"The study of this — the distribution of viscosity in the mantle — is still in its infancy," Barletta said. "We know where the Earth is hotter and cooler — more or less. However, the viscosity of the mantle depends not just on temperature, but also on water content." Estimating the temperature of the mantle in a given area could therefore give an inaccurate view of how fast-moving it is — a cooler patch with high water content could be just as viscous as a hotter zone that contained less water, Barletta explained.

Dramatic changes such as those that the researchers observed in Antarctica's bedrock — nudged upward by the mantle below — were thought to happen over thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years. Their new findings show that this shift in response to vanishing ice can take place much more rapidly, over centuries or decades. This suggests that the mantle under Antarctica, which is lifting the bedrock upward, may be more fluid, flowing more quickly than previously suspected, the study authors reported.

Measuring rebound

Antarctica's bedrock is difficult to study because most of it is covered by thick layers of ice; the continent's ice sheet cover holds about 90 percent of all the ice on Earth, containing enough water to elevate sea levels worldwide by about 200 feet (61 meters), according to NASA. To measure how it was changing, the researchers installed six GPS stations at locations around the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE), a region of the ice sheet roughly the size of Texas, that drains into the Amundsen Sea. They places the GPS monitors in places where bedrock was exposed, gathering data at a spatial resolution of 0.6 miles (1 km), higher than any recorded in prior studies.

The scientists expected to see some evidence of slow uplift in the bedrock over time, which could be linked to historic ice loss — because "when ice melts, the earth rebounds elastically," Barletta said. Instead, they saw that the rate of the uplift was about four times faster than anticipated from ice-loss data. The velocity of the rebound in the ASE — 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) per year — was "one of the fastest rates ever recorded in glaciated areas," study co-author Abbas Khan, an associate professor at DTU Space, said in a statement.

Their findings suggested that the mantle underneath is fast-moving and fluid, responding rapidly as the heavy weight of ice is removed to push the bedrock upward very quickly, Barletta said.

An uncertain future for Antarctica's ice

The bedrock uplift is a result of ice loss over the past century, but ice continues to vanish from parts of Antarctica at a dramatic rate, spurred by human-induced climate change. An estimated 3 trillion tons of ice have vanished from the continent since 1992, causing about 0.3 inches (around 8 mm) of sea level rise. And scientists recently predicted that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) could collapse entirely within the next 100 years, leading to sea level rise of up to nearly 10 feet (3 meters).

But the researchers suggest that there may be a ray of hope for the weakening WAIS. The deforming bedrock under Antarctica, buoyed by a fluid mantle, could provide an unexpected source of support for the WAIS, the scientists discovered. In fact, the bedrock's uplift could stabilize the WAIS enough to prevent a complete collapse, even under strong pressures from a warming world.

There's a downside to their findings, too. Estimates of ice loss in Antarctica depend on satellite measurements of gravity in localized areas, which can be affected by significant changes in mass. If the bedrock under Antarctica is rapidly adjusting in response to ice loss, its uplift would register in gravity measurements, compensating for some ice loss and obscuring just how much ice has truly disappeared by about 10 percent, according to the study.

Hopefully, now that scientists are aware of this discrepancy, it can be addressed in future models of disappearing ice, Barletta said.

SOURCE 
https://www.livescience.com/62885-earth-rising-under-






GOP Senators Accuse National Science Foundation Of Funding Climate 'Propaganda'

Four Republican senators this week demanded an investigation of the National Science Foundation’s grants, accusing the federal agency of “propagandizing” by supporting a program to encourage TV meteorologists to report on climate change.

In a letter sent to the agency’s inspector general Wednesday, the senators ? Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.) and James Lankford (Okla.) and Jim Inhofe (Okla.) ? said the $4 million Climate Matters program, which sponsors classes and webinars for meteorologists and provides real-time data and graphics with TV stations, went beyond the scope of the National Science Foundation’s mission of funding “basic research.” They urged the inspector general to probe whether the grants violated the 1939 Hatch Act, which bars government agencies from engaging in partisan activity.

“It is unacceptable for federal agencies to support such research which attempts to convince individuals to adopt a particular viewpoint rather than conducting objective research examining a given topic,” they wrote in the letter.

The call for an investigation came the same day NBC News published a feature on Climate Central’s efforts to train more than 500 TV weathercasters across the country on how to understand global warming and its local impacts. NBC News first reported on the letter.

In a lengthy statement to HuffPost, the NSF said its grants undergo a rigorous merit review process “considered to be the ‘gold standard’ of scientific review” and said its staff receives an annual ethics training that includes the Hatch Act.

“Nearly every proposal is evaluated by a minimum of three independent reviewers consisting of scientists, engineers and educators who do not work at NSF or for the institution that employs the proposing researchers,” Sarah Bates, an agency spokeswoman, said in the statement. “Each proposal submitted to NSF — including those deemed ‘troubling’ by Senators Paul, Cruz, Lankford and Inhofe ? is reviewed by science and engineering experts well-versed in their particular discipline or field of expertise.”

The NSF’s inspector general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The senators cited a six-year-old opinion column in The Washington Post that described Climate Central, the group that runs the program with researchers at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, as “an advocacy group.” They called the NSF grants “egregious” and accused Climate Central of changing “the manner in which it describes itself, perhaps due to the attention it received from The Washington Post.”

“Research designed to sway individuals of a various group, be they meteorologists or engineers, to a politically contentious viewpoint is not science ? it is propagandizing,” the senators wrote.  Such efforts certainly fail to meet the standard of scientific research to which the NSF should be devoting federal taxpayer dollars.”

In reality, the Princeton, New Jersey-based nonprofit produces original research and deeply-reported feature stories. Climate Central operated a robust news site until last August, when it laid off most of its staff reporters to focus its resources on research.

“We are an independent organization and scrupulously avoid advocating for any policy or political position,” Climate Central CEO Ben Strauss, also the group’s chief scientist, wrote in an email Thursday.

He pointed out that the opinion column the senators cited was “not news reporting,” and that “it was soundly refuted at the time by then-CEO of Climate Central Paul Hanle in a letter to the editor.”

“Climate Central is not an advocacy organization, and the scientific consensus on climate change is not a political viewpoint,” he added.

The NSF funding covered less than a quarter of the Climate Matters budget over the last three years but provided a critical boost at a time when cable news’ failure to report on climate change is becoming a crisis unto itself. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox aired a combined 260 minutes of climate change coverage last year, according to a February study released by liberal watchdog Media Matters for America.

Of that, 205 minutes, or 79 percent, focused on actions or statements by the Trump administration, most often the president’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Nearly all coverage of climate change on the influential Sunday talk shows ? 94 of 95 minutes ? focused on the administration. At the same time, TV giant Sinclair Broadcast Group, criticized for requiring its local stations across the country to air right-wing political propaganda, is accused of forcing its meteorologists to insert climate denialism into their coverage.

In 2017, Climate Matters helped local weathercasters report on the impacts of climate change 879 times, covering 40 states and Puerto Rico.

“There have already been a few hundred stories so far in 2018,” Strauss said.

The Senators’ letter marks the latest high-profile Republican attack on federal funding to deal with climate change. Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed climate change as “a hoax,” purged federal websites of references to global warming and instructed the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department to eliminate regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel extraction in an effort to transform the country into the world’s leading oil and gas exporter. Republicans in Congress attempted to zero out funding for renewable energy subsidies in the GOP tax bill last year, despite including $25 billion in giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

Even amid an ongoing avalanche of corruption scandals, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has proposed a series of new rules to dramatically scale back the few remaining Obama-era rules to reduce planet-warming emissions, and prohibit the use of most public health studies when writing regulations, a move widely panned as an “attack on science.”

The GOP remains the only major political party in the developed world to make climate change denial a platform issue.

The scientific consensus on climate change is not a political viewpoint. Climate Central CEO Ben Strauss

The senators who authored the letter are among the biggest recipients of fossil fuel donations. In a ranking of all U.S. senators over the last three decades, Cruz came in third for the all-time largest total of direct contributions from oil and gas companies, receiving over $2.7 million since he took office, including during his presidential campaign, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Inhofe ? who infamously brought a snowball to the Senate floor as proof of climate scientists’ supposed folly ? ranked seventh, with nearly $1.9 million. Lankford ranked 16th, with $1.1 million. Paul fell well below the others at $284,328.

Likewise, all four senators reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, putting them at odds not only with nearly every credible scientist but the vast majority of Americans.

Ninety-seven percent of peer-reviewed research has concluded that burning fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial farming are enshrouding the planet in heat-trapping gases, while a research review published in 2015 found significant flaws in the methodologies, assumptions or analyses used by the 3 percent of scientists who concluded otherwise. Meanwhile, 69 percent of survey respondents know global warming is happening, and 52 percent understand humans are the main cause, according to 2016 survey data from Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication.

Yet just 39 percent believe climate change is causing harm right now, according to a George Mason survey from March of 1,278 adults.

Climate communications experts say TV meteorologists are best positioned to bridge that cognitive gap by localizing the broad planetary trends, said Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, which partnered with Climate Central on Climate Matters.

“It’s important to share information with all Americans about the local impacts of climate change in their community,” Maibach, who has served as the principal investigator on all the NSF grants to fund Climate Matters, said in an email. “There is no better way to do that than through the local news.”

The program has yielded success. In 2010, only half of the 571 weathercasters George Mason surveyed believed global warming was happening, as NBC News reported, and a quarter called it “a scam.” A new survey taken last year showed that 95 percent of meteorologists believed the planet is warming.

Yet they remained divided on the cause. Just 15 percent said human activity is “largely or entirely” causing the climate to change, while 34 said it was mostly due to human activity. Twenty-one percent said natural events and human activity were equally to blame, and 13 percent said it was mostly due to natural events.

“NSF funding has helped us help TV weathercasters provide this important information to their viewers,” Maibach said. “And their viewers appreciate the information; hundreds of TV weathercasters have told us so.”

Climate communication has become a burgeoning field of study as scientists seek to better understand how people come to understand an environmental phenomenon of unprecedented proportions. The issue has the added challenge of overcoming years of misinformation spread by fossil fuel corporations, think tanks they funded and politicians who receive their patronage.

Climate denials efforts have managed to help politicize climate change even as fossil fuel emissions continue to rise and 2017 marked the most expensive year on record in damages from natural disasters linked to climate change.

On Thursday, an anonymous user with no previous submissions to Wikipedia updated Climate Central’s page to call it a “fake news” organization.

SOURCE 






Green Mafia Lynch An Innocent Bystander: CO2

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 36ºF at sunrise to a balmy 72ºF in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 36º of warming came via radiation from the sun.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact, it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.

At the deep Mount Isa Mine in NW Queensland, the surface temperature may average about 77ºF but it increases by about 20ºF every 50 meters of depth – rock walls are red hot in places.

The enormous heat causing this comes via conduction from Earth’s geothermal heat plus some oxidation and heating of the sulfide ores as they come in contact with natural air containing oxygen. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no part in this heating.

There are volcanic windows open right now in Hawaii, Japan and the Galapagos revealing the vast resources of volcanic geothermal heat which is always migrating towards the cooler surface, sometimes violently.

Temperatures vary greatly over Earth’s surface, making a mockery of attempts to calculate an “average” for the globe. Air surface temperature may be minus -22ºF at the South Pole, while at the same time it can be plus 86ºF at the Equator.

This enormous difference is caused by the varying intensity of solar radiation striking the surface – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in creating this variance.

Surface air temperatures in big cities can be 9ºF hotter than surrounding rural land partly because bitumen roads, roofs, and runways heat up more than the grassy or forested countryside.

Mega-cities are also full of heat-producing humans, engines, trains, vehicles, air conditioners, heaters, stoves, fridges, pumps, and mowers.

Urban heat also comes from the warm bodies and hot exhalations from millions of humans digesting carbon-based foods, from stored chemical energy from burning hydrocarbons (wood, lignite, coal, oil, and gas) or from nuclear power.

Using green energy also adds to the urban heat. Wind towers and solar panels extract energy from wind and sun in the countryside and release it where most of the electricity is used, usually in cities and suburbs.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no measurable part in producing these islands of urban heat.

Longer term, the Medieval Warm Era and the Little Ice Age were natural occurrences almost certainly triggered by solar cycles that activated undersea volcanic activity along Earth’s extensive mid-ocean trenches/ridges.

Human production of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere played zero part in these natural global warming and cooling episodes.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere varies annually with the seasons reaching a maximum in the South Hemisphere summer for two perfectly natural reasons.

First, the huge southern oceans expel carbon dioxide as the surface water warms with the return of the summer (like an opened bottle of soda water in the sun).

At the same time, it is turning to winter in the large northern hemisphere landmass where deciduous trees and forests are dropping their leaves, and crop residue is accumulating on cultivated lands.

As this dead plant material decomposes it recycles its CO2 to the atmosphere. And as winter grips these densely populated lands, humans are also burning wood, peat, cow dung, coal, oil, and gas to keep warm, releasing even more CO2.

Then as the sun-driven seasons change, the southern oceans cool again and much of this carbon dioxide returns to the sea from whence it came.

And the northern farms and forests grow faster in their summer, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar energy to produce food and lumber.

This annual fluctuation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result, not a cause, of the seasonal temperature changes.

What happens in the seasonal weather cycle also occurs as a result of longer climate cycles of cooling and warming.

The ice core records show that the changes in global temperatures precede by about 800 years any changes to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This is probably a result of large slow overturning in the oceans as global temperatures change in response to cycles of solar energy and earth volcanism.

Despite all of this evidence of natural changes in Earth’s temperature, man’s production of invisible life-supporting carbon dioxide is being slandered daily with words like “dirty” “black”, “polluting” “heat causing”.

And those who point to dissenting evidence are called “deniers”, “shills” and worse, and gagged by intimidation lawsuits and media silence.

Billions of dollars are also being spent on a propaganda storm of anti-carbon scare stories, Papal proclamations, cunning calculations, doctored data, and poignant pictures about polar bears, penguins, koalas, super-storms, social costs, floods, fires, mega-droughts, heat waves, and blizzards, all supposedly impacted by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

With just 0.04% in the atmosphere, to create such havoc carbon dioxide must be the most powerful super-gas ever imagined by the alarmists.

The green mafia is trying to lynch an innocent victim – the gas of life, carbon dioxide.

They would be better served by focusing on real pollution of air, land, and water caused by their own well-traveled, air-conditioned, electronic, fast-food, throw-away, tax-supported lifestyle.

If they fear carbon dioxide so much, they should stop exhaling.

We need more light and less heat in the climate debate.

SOURCE 





This energy hex Australian governments place on all Australians is madness

If our worst enemies abroad were given one evil wish to destroy our economy they probably would look to curse perhaps our greatest natural advantage: access to almost unlimited cheap energy.

Yet, as if to prove that fact is stranger than even this madcap fiction, this is a hex we are visiting upon ourselves.

If a prosperous nation decided to burden its people with expensive and unreliable power, imposing hardships including job losses, costs on struggling families, reduced profits and missed investment opportunities, to create a more benign environment for all the people of the world, it would be truly altruistic. But if it were inflicting pain on its citizens and handicapping future generations for no discernible benefit, then it would be an act of sheer madness.

Yet here we are. We are in a self-imposed energy crisis. No one disputes the urgency — Coalition and Labor politicians, state and federal, agree prices are too high; they are spending on diesel generators, large-scale batteries and stored hydro to find a way through; companies are having power cut or being paid to reduce demand; consumers and industries fear dire consequences; regulators sound alarms about lack of supply; and policymakers float a raft of possible solutions.

Yet it is all our doing. By mandating renewable energy targets, committing to global carbon dioxide emissions-reduction goals, subsidising wind and solar generation including by domestic consumers, toying with emissions trading schemes and imposing (for a time) a carbon tax, we have up-ended our electricity market, forced out some of the cheapest and most reliable generation and made our power more expensive and less reliable. The lion’s share of investment across a decade — upwards of $30 billion — has gone into the sure bet of subsidised renewable energy that has a guaranteed market but that cannot be relied on to meet peak energy output at any given time. Billions more have been spent on government payments and grants. All this money is recouped in the end from consumers, who are paying enormous sums to go backwards.

Since 1999, average spot prices per megawatt hour have leapt from $50 to $110 in South Australia and from less than $25 in NSW and Victoria to $80 and $95 respectively. Electricity costs for manufacturers have increased 79 per cent since 2010 and in that period there have been net job losses of about 140,000 in the sector. Price rises have squeezed family budgets, created hardship for pensioners and forced companies to cut jobs or shut down.

South Australia was plunged into darkness for hours and the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned that without remedial action, even in NSW where cheap and reliable coal-fired power has been abundant, there will be supply vulnerability in the coming years that could lead to 200,000 homes going without power during peak summer demand. The closure of NSW’s Liddell coal-fired power station in a few years will make the situation worse.

This month AEMO warned again that the “unprecedented transformation” of our electricity system means Australia “does not have the energy reserves it once had to lean on” when we need it. This is deplorable.

We are the world’s largest coal exporter. We will soon be the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. We are the third largest exporter of uranium.

Australia powers the economic and manufacturing powerhouses of northeast Asia, and other parts of the world, with cost-effective and reliable energy supplies. But we decline to do the same for ­ourselves.

We may as well feed the people of the world with our wheat and sheep exports while our own people go hungry. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Politicians from both major parties and the Greens pretend — surely they are feigning because they must know the facts — that this is our contribution to global efforts to combat global warming. This is fraudulent.

We need to do what the climate activists constantly implore of us: back the science. All the facts tell us that, scientifically, Australia’s climate action is doing nothing to improve the global environment. We are putting ourselves through extended economic pain, with deep social consequences, for nothing more than climate gestures. This is the hard edge of gesture politics: national virtue-signalling, with the poorest citizens and jobless paying the highest price.

Don’t take my word for it; listen to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, who the government tasked with revising policy. He confirmed before a Senate estimates committee hearing a year ago that Australia’s carbon emissions amounted to 1.3 per cent of the global total (that proportion is shrinking as world emissions grow). Finkel was asked what difference it would make to climate change if all of our nation’s emissions were cut — pretend 25 million of us left Australia idle — so that world emissions dropped by 1.3 per cent. “Virtually nothing,” was his reply.

But wait. Our contribution is much less significant even than “virtually nothing” because we will not eliminate all our emissions. We aim to reduce them by 26 per cent — so our best impact may be a quarter of virtually nothing. Wait again; we become even more irrelevant. Global emissions are on the rise. Led by China (growing by up to 4 per cent so far this year) world CO2 emissions are increasing at close to 2 per cent. So, more science, more facts. China’s annual emissions are about 30 times higher than ours and in any given year the increase alone in China’s emissions can be more than double what we plan to cut by 2030. While global emissions rise our piddling cuts do zip. We are emitting into the wind. Our price rises, blackouts, job losses, investment droughts, subsidies and energy system dilemmas are all for nothing.

Anyone with a pulse must understand this. Why they persist with proposing or backing costly climate policies is the question. They want to display their commitment to the cause. They want to associate themselves with protecting the planet. It is earth motherhood, dictated by political fashion and a reluctance to go against the zeitgeist. What a sad indictment on our political/media class — indulging its progressive credentials for social and diplomatic acceptance at the expense of struggling families, jobless blue-collar workers and our economic competitiveness.

The Coalition is starting to tear itself apart again; led by Tony Abbott, those who understand mainstream concerns are rising up against those stuck in commercial, media and political orthodoxy. Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg’s national energy guarantee is a retrofit mechanism to encourage some investment in dispatchable electricity.

As they negotiate for a bipartisan position they could be left with a stark choice: satisfy Labor and its premiers or placate the Coalition partyroom. It may be impossible to do both — the partyroom may at least demand a plan to extend the life of Liddell — and another political short-circuit may be in the offing.

The national energy system is so badly distorted by a decade of renewable subsidies and the threat of future carbon prices that there is no easy solution. All sides of the debate propose expensive government interventions. Investors in anything but renewables are wary.

If we had done nothing on climate action we might have had plentiful and cheap coal and gas power on the back of private investment. But we killed that goose. There is bound to be a reckoning; eventually we will reclaim the energy advantage we export to other nations. And if we ever need a zero-emissions future, we will embrace the silver bullet of nuclear energy. The only question is whether it takes us three years or three decades to come to our senses — and how many political careers will be hoist with this petard in the interim.

SOURCE 

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

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

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





24 June, 2018

Will global warming damage marine parks?

The article below says it will. Surprise! But it is nonsense on stilts.  All it does is take figures from Greenie modelling and plug them into new models.  It is guesses upon guesses.  So it is not even carefully founded prophecy that works from first principles.  So, like almost all prophecy, it is bound to be wrong and falsified by events.  That the prophecy will be wrong is therefore your best guess

Climate change threatens the world’s marine protected areas

John F. Bruno et al.

Abstract

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary management tool for mitigating threats to marine biodiversity1,2. MPAs and the species they protect, however, are increasingly being impacted by climate change. Here we show that, despite local protections, the warming associated with continued business-as-usual emissions (RCP8.5)3 will likely result in further habitat and species losses throughout low-latitude and tropical MPAs4,5. With continued business-as-usual emissions, mean sea-surface temperatures within MPAs are projected to increase 0.035?°C per year and warm an additional 2.8?°C by 2100. Under these conditions, the time of emergence (the year when sea-surface temperature and oxygen concentration exceed natural variability) is mid-century in 42% of 309 no-take marine reserves. Moreover, projected warming rates and the existing ‘community thermal safety margin’ (the inherent buffer against warming based on the thermal sensitivity of constituent species) both vary among ecoregions and with latitude. The community thermal safety margin will be exceeded by 2050 in the tropics and by 2150 for many higher latitude MPAs. Importantly, the spatial distribution of emergence is stressor-specific. Hence, rearranging MPAs to minimize exposure to one stressor could well increase exposure to another. Continued business-as-usual emissions will likely disrupt many marine ecosystems, reducing the benefits of MPAs.

Nature Climate Changevolume 8, pages499–503 (2018)






NEW BOOK: From Malthus to Mifepristone: A Primer on the Population Control Movement

by William Kay (Author)

Part One of this book provides a history of the population control movement from 1798 to 1998. Proper focus is given to the eugenicist, racist and economic motivations of the elite groups driving and funding population control.

Part Two profiles the leading organisations of the modern population control movement.

The book offers unique and extensive coverage of the political economy of the abortion, contraception, and sterilisation industries; and of the efforts of governments and elites to bring on sweeping changes in sexual and reproductive behaviour. Particular attention is given to the funding of the modern abortion-contraception-sterilisation complex.

The complete book has 200 pages of text and 30 pages of footnotes and bibliography. The book contains 233 standard footnotes plus links to the official webpages of 137 the most prominent organizations within the modern population control movement. The bibliography also contains links and references to scores of books, academic papers, government reports and news articles dealing with population control. There is also a list of 43 lists of population control organizations (which number in the thousands) gleaned from the Internet.

SOURCE 





Listening to James Hansen on Climate Change, Thirty Years Ago and Now

There is an article below from the "New Yorker" by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert.  She is very good at regurgitating Warmist talking points but shows no sign of critical thinking about Hansen's prophecies.  Immediately below her article is another article that shows what she could have written if she had any brains

On June 23, 1988—a blisteringly hot day in Washington, D.C.—James Hansen told a Senate committee that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now.” At the time, Hansen was the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and though his testimony was certainly not the first official warning about the “greenhouse effect”—a report to President Lyndon Johnson, in 1965, predicted “measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate” in the decades to follow—it was the first to receive national news coverage. The Times ran the story at the top of the front page, with a graph showing a long-term rise in average global temperatures.

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of Hansen’s testimony, and it would be hard to think of a more lugubrious milestone. In the intervening three decades, nearly half of the Arctic ice cap has melted away, the oceans have acidified, much of the American West has burned, lower Manhattan, South Florida, Houston, and New Orleans have flooded, and average temperatures have continued to climb. Just last week, a team of scientists reported in Nature that the rate of melt off Antarctica has tripled in the past decade; as the Washington Post put it, “If that continues, we are in serious trouble.” (Were the Antarctic ice to melt away entirely, global sea levels would rise by two hundred feet; if just the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea levels would rise by about ten feet.) Also last week, scientists reported that most of Africa’s oldest baobab trees have died, probably because of climate change, and last month researchers showed that rising CO2 levels were reducing the nutrient content of rice, which is probably the single most important food source for people. Yet Washington continues to ignore the problem, or, worse still, to actively impede efforts to address it. How can this be?

A possible answer, which seems to be the one that Hansen himself, at least in part, subscribes to, is that scientists are to blame. Hansen is now seventy-seven and retired from NASA. He recently told the Associated Press that he regrets not being “able to make this story clear enough for the public.” Many climate scientists seem similarly to believe that they are not good at conveying information to lay audiences, and, as a result, dozens of Web sites and several whole organizations have been created to help them communicate better.

As someone who has interviewed a lot of climate scientists—including, on several occasions, Hansen—I can attest that, as a group, they are not particularly good at expressing themselves. (I once wrote a Profile of Hansen, and watched him lose even audiences predisposed to adore him.) But thirty years into the so-called climate debate—fifty-three years, if you go back to the report to L.B.J.—I also think it’s time to put this particular story line to rest.

Back in 1988, just about the only information available on climate change was written in the dry-as-standard-deviations style of academic science. The following year, Bill McKibben published the first book on the subject aimed at a popular audience, “The End of Nature.” Since then, more generally accessible books have been written on the climate than even the most avid reader could possibly keep up with; these include kids’ books, comic books, and even a coloring book. Meanwhile, countless newspaper and magazine articles, television specials, and documentaries have appeared on the topic. Above all, climate change has become obvious. You don’t need to read or watch or hear about it; in many parts of the world, all you have to do is look around. The southwestern United States, for instance, is currently experiencing such a severe drought that water restrictions are in place and many national forests are closed. “Thirty years ago, we may have seen this coming as a train in the distance,” Deke Arndt, the chief of climate monitoring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration center in Asheville, North Carolina, recently told the A.P. “The train is in our living room now.”

Instead of using this anniversary to lament the failures of climate scientists, I’d like to propose that we use it to celebrate—well, “celebrate” probably isn’t quite the right word, but maybe recognize—their successes. Three decades ago, led by Hansen, they made a series of predictions; for the most part these have proved to be spectacularly accurate. That we, the general public, have failed to act on these predictions says a lot more about us than it does about them.

I happened to interview Hansen last year, for a video project. I asked him if he had a message for young people. “The simple thing is, I’m sorry we’re leaving such a fucking mess,” he said. Could the message be any clearer than that?

SOURCE 







Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?

James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.

Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios—enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.

What about Mr. Hansen’s other claims? Outside the warming models, his only explicit claim in the testimony was that the late ’80s and ’90s would see “greater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest.” No such spike has been measured in these regions.

As observed temperatures diverged over the years from his predictions, Mr. Hansen doubled down. In a 2007 case on auto emissions, he stated in his deposition that most of Greenland’s ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine on the history of Greenland’s ice cap demonstrated this to be impossible. Much of Greenland’s surface melts every summer, meaning rapid melting might reasonably be expected to occur in a dramatically warming world. But not in the one we live in. The Nature study found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain.

Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.

The problem with Mr. Hansen’s models—and the U.N.’s—is that they don’t consider more-precise measures of how aerosol emissions counter warming caused by greenhouse gases. Several newer climate models account for this trend and routinely project about half the warming predicted by U.N. models, placing their numbers much closer to observed temperatures. The most recent of these was published in April by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry in the Journal of Climate, a reliably mainstream journal.

These corrected climate predictions raise a crucial question: Why should people world-wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if those cuts have already been made?

On the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s galvanizing testimony, it’s time to acknowledge that the rapid warming he predicted isn’t happening. Climate researchers and policy makers should adopt the more modest forecasts that are consistent with observed temperatures.

That would be a lukewarm policy, consistent with a lukewarming planet.

SOURCE 






Australia's supermarket plastic bag ban ‘like religion’

Although the small extra inconvenience of the new system does not bother me, it is clear that the ban on convenience bags takes us back 50 years for no provable beneft. I remember in my youth that all women took with them a wicker basket or a string bag to go shopping

The ban is a craze driven by false reporting, nothing else. It is third world countries that are responsible for the suffering of some marine creatures.  We dispose of ours properly.  In most of Africa and Asia they do not

The author of a landmark study into plastic bags has likened to “religion” their impending removal from supermarkets, suggesting ­arguments against them are “complete furphies you can demolish in a few minutes of analysis”.

Phillip Weickhardt, lead ­author of a 2006 Productivity Commission inquiry into waste management, said raising fines for littering made more sense.

“This is largely religion, deeply felt,” he told The Weekend Australian. “Plastic bags are useful: ­hygienic, water proof. They have multiple uses and functions,” he added.

Coles will join Woolworths in removing “single use” plastic bags from its stores next month, extending nationwide bans on the ubiquitous bags already in place across all states and territories ­except NSW and Victoria.

“The evidence plastic bags hurt marine life is very unpersuasive. When we looked at this we found that a lot of studies just cite each other; in fact we sourced it all back to some guy in Canada in the 1970s who’d done a study on the effect of fishing ropes on marine life,” he said.

Woolworths surveyed 12,500 of its customers last month, finding more than three-quarters wanted plastic bags scrapped. The retail giant, which gave out 3.2 billion plastic bags last year, points to a CSIRO study that found up to a third of the world’s turtles and 43 per cent of seabirds had eaten plastics.

The Productivity Commission in 2006 concluded: “Plastic bags take up little landfill space, and their inert characteristics can ­actually help to reduce a landfill’s potential for adverse environmental impacts”. “The true extent to which plastic-bag litter injures populations of marine wildlife, as opposed to individual animals, is likely to remain very uncertain ­because it is extremely difficult to measure,” it added.

Mr Weickhardt said: “Our conclusion generated the most angry vocal response from people who, with religious fervour, believe this is critical.”

The retail giants will instead offer a range of reusable bags, ­including 15c recycled bags.

A recent study in Britain, where plastic bags are taxed, found re­usable bags needed to be reused up to 173 times before they had a lower environmental impact than ordinary plastic bags.

“The environmental impact of all types of carrier bag is domin­ated by resource use and production,” it found.

“Whatever type of bag is used, the key to reducing the impacts is to reuse it as many times as possible and where reuse for shopping is not practicable, other reuse, eg store-place bin-liners, is beneficial,” it said.

A 2012 University of Pennsylvania study found San Francisco’s 2007 plastic bag ban killed people because reusable bags increased shoppers’ exposure to harmful bacteria that can infest them. “The San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths,” the authors concluded.

RMIT economist Sinclair ­Davidson said he was surprised Coles and Woolworths would ­“deliberately pursue a policy that they know will reduce the consumer satisfaction”.

“How consumers react remains to be seen — I suspect we’ll see less impulse purchasing,” Professor Davidson said.

“All-up, this is a virtue-signalling policy being adopted by Coles and Woolies; I suspect they have done their market research and are pretty confident they can impose their world view on consumers with little consequence.’’

SOURCE 

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

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

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22 June, 2018

Judge's ruling against Minnesota wind farm causes alarm for advocates: They say judge's opposition to proposal could threaten future of the industry

A judge’s recommendation that a proposed Minnesota wind farm be nixed over turbine noise has drawn a flurry of opposition from the wind-power industry, which fears a chilling effect on development.

In a rare move, Administrative Law Judge LauraSue Schlatter last month recommended that the Freeborn Wind farm be denied an operating permit, saying the southern Minnesota project failed to show it can meet state noise standards.

Freeborn Wind’s developer, Invenergy, has objected, saying Schlatter’s interpretation of state noise rules would be “impossible” to meet. Last week, two wind-industry trade groups and three of Invenergy’s competitors also filed objections to Schlatter’s recommendation, as did four clean-energy and environmental groups.

The judge’s “interpretation of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s (MPCA) noise standards would have a detrimental impact on other current and future wind-energy projects throughout the state,” the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy wrote in its objection.

Administrative law judges like Schlatter are appointed to contested cases before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, which will eventually vote whether to approve the project. The proposed Freeborn Wind farm is the first contested PUC case involving a wind farm. The project southeast of Albert Lea has drawn opposition from some local residents over fears of excessive noise and other quality-of-life issues.

The $300 million Freeborn Wind project would include 42 turbines in Freeborn County and another 82 turbines across the state border in Worth County, Iowa. The project was initially supposed to be solely in Minnesota, but Chicago-based Invenergy moved a big chunk of it due to opposition from the Association of Freeborn County Landowners.

There’s no specific Minnesota rule for wind-farm noise, though there are general MPCA noise standards. Schlatter concluded the MPCA standard applies to total noise: background noise — like roadway traffic — combined with any wind-turbine sounds. Invenergy and the wind industry contend that the MPCA standard applies to wind-turbine sounds alone and say that’s how the PUC has historically viewed the issue.

“If the (PUC) adopted a ‘total noise’ standard, such an interpretation would effectively ban future wind development in Minnesota, and potentially provide anti-wind activists a tool to attempt to adversely affect the operation of existing projects,” the American Wind Energy Association wrote.

But the Association of Freeborn County Landowners said in a filing that “there is no evidence that profitable wind projects” can’t be sited in Minnesota with existing standards. “Wind developers are up in arms, wringing their hands, and quaking, arguing for continuance of prior lax rule interpretations, improper siting procedures and ineffective regulatory oversight.”

The Minnesota Department of Commerce, which represents the public interest before the PUC, said in a recent filing that it’s trying to stake out a “middle ground,” recommending that the PUC “limit a wind project’s total turbine-only noise” to a certain decibel level.

Still, the commerce department concluded that “interpreting the [state’s] noise standard as a limit on total noise that applies to all sources is not an impractical or novel regulatory scheme.”

Other parties that have filed PUC briefs opposing Schlatter’s decision include: wind-energy developers Apex Clean Energy, RES Group and EDF Renewables; wind-turbine manufacturer and Freeborn Wind supplier Vestas; the Minnesota Conservative Energy Forum; and Wind on the Wires, a Minnesota nonprofit that represents wind and solar developers as well as clean-energy advocacy groups

SOURCE 






Billions in U.S. solar projects shelved after Trump panel tariff

President Donald Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels has led U.S. renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of more than $2.5 billion in large installation projects, along with thousands of jobs, the developers told Reuters.

That's more than double the about $1 billion in new spending plans announced by firms building or expanding U.S. solar panel factories to take advantage of the tax on imports.

The tariff’s bifurcated impact on the solar industry underscores how protectionist trade measures almost invariably hurt one or more domestic industries for every one they shield from foreign competition. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, for instance, have hurt manufacturers of U.S. farm equipment made with steel, such as tractors and grain bins, along with the farmers buying them at higher prices.

White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump announced the tariff in January over protests from most of the solar industry that the move would chill one of America's fastest-growing sectors.

Solar developers completed utility-scale installations costing a total of $6.8 billion last year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Those investments were driven by U.S. tax incentives and the falling costs of imported panels, mostly from China, which together made solar power competitive with natural gas and coal.

The U.S. solar industry employs more than 250,000 people - about three times more than the coal industry - with about 40 percent of those people in installation and 20 percent in manufacturing, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"Solar was really on the cusp of being able to completely take off," said Zoe Hanes, chief executive of Charlotte, North Carolina solar developer Pine Gate Renewables.

GTM Research, a clean energy research firm, recently lowered its 2019 and 2020 utility-scale solar installation forecasts in the United States by 20 percent and 17 percent, respectively, citing the levies.

Officials at Suniva - a Chinese-owned, U.S.-based solar panel manufacturer whose bankruptcy prompted the Trump administration to consider a tariff - did not respond to requests for comment.

Companies with domestic panel factories are divided on the policy. Solar giant SunPower Corp (SPWR.O) opposes the tariff that will help its U.S. panel factories because it will also hurt its domestic installation and development business, along with its overseas manufacturing operations.

"There could be substantially more employment without a tariff," said Chief Executive Tom Werner.

LOST PROFITS, JOBS

The 30 percent tariff is scheduled to last four years, decreasing by 5 percent per year during that time. Solar developers say the levy will initially raise the cost of major installations by 10 percent.

Leading utility-scale developer Cypress Creek Renewables LLC said it had been forced to cancel or freeze $1.5 billion in projects - mostly in the Carolinas, Texas and Colorado - because the tariff raised costs beyond the level where it could compete, spokesman Jeff McKay said.

That amounted to about 150 projects at various stages of development that would have employed three thousand or more workers during installation, he said. The projects accounted for a fifth of the company's overall pipeline.

Developer Southern Current has made similar decisions on about $1 billion of projects, mainly in South Carolina, said Bret Sowers, the company’s vice president of development and strategy.

"Either you make the decision to default or you bite the bullet and you make less money," Sowers said.

Neither Cypress Creek nor Southern Current would disclose exactly which projects they intend to cancel. They said those details could help their competitors and make it harder to pursue those projects if they become financially viable later.

Both are among a group of solar developers that have asked trade officials to exclude panels used in their utility-scale projects from the tariffs. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it is still evaluating the requests.

Other companies are having similar problems.

Scott Canada, senior vice president of renewable energy at solar project builder McCarthy Building Companies, said his company had planned to employ about 1,200 people on solar projects this year but slashed that number by half because of the tariff.

Pine Gate, meanwhile, will complete about half of the 400 megawatts of solar installations it had planned this year and has ditched plans to hire 30 permanent employees, Hanes said.

The company also withdrew an 80-megawatt project that would have cost up to $150 million from consideration in a bidding process held by Southern Co (SO.N) utility Georgia Power. It pulled the proposal late last year when it learned the Trump administration was contemplating the tariff.

For some developers, the tariff has meant abandoning nascent markets in the American heartland that last year posted the strongest growth in installations. That growth was concentrated in states where voters supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

South Bend, Indiana-based developer Inovateus Solar LLC, for example, had decided three years ago to focus on emerging Midwest solar markets such as Indiana and Michigan. But the tariff sparked a shift to Massachusetts, where state renewable energy incentives make it more profitable, chairman T.J. Kanczuzewski said.

Other developers are forging ahead, keen to take advantage of the remaining years of a 30-percent federal tax credit for solar installation that is scheduled to start phasing out in 2020.

Some firms saw the tariff coming and stockpiled panels before Trump’s announcement. 174 Power Global, the development arm of Korea's Hanwha warehoused 190 megawatts of solar panels at the end of last year for a Texas project that broke ground in January.

The company is paying more for panels for two Nevada projects that start operating this year and next, but is moving forward on construction, according to Larry Greene, who heads the firm's development in the U.S. West.

Intersect Power, a developer that cut a deal last year with Austin Energy to provide low-cost power to the Texas capital city, is also pushing ahead, said CEO Sheldon Kimber. But the tariff is forcing delays in buying solar panels.

The 150-megawatt project is due to start producing power in 2020. Waiting until the last minute to purchase modules will allow the company to take advantage of the tariff’s 5-percent annual reductions, he said.

Trump’s tariff has boosted the domestic manufacturing sector as intended, which over time could significantly raise U.S. panel production and reduce prices.

Panel manufacturers First Solar (FSLR.O) and JinkoSolar (JKS.N), for example, have announced plans to spend $800 million on projects to increase panel construction in the United States since the tariff, creating about 700 new jobs in Ohio and Florida. Just last week, Korea’s Hanwha Q CELLS (HQCL.O) joined them, saying it will open a solar module factory in Georgia next year, though it did not detail job creation.

SunPower Corp, meanwhile, purchased U.S. manufacturer SolarWorld's Oregon factory after the tariff was announced, saving that facility’s 280 jobs. The company said it plans to hire more people at the plant to expand operations, without specifying how many.

But SunPower has also said it must cut up to 250 jobs in other parts of its organization because of the tariffs.

Jobs in panel manufacturing are also limited due to increasing automation, industry experts said.

Heliene - a Canadian company in the process of opening a U.S. facility capable of producing 150 megawatts worth of panels per year - said it will employ between 130 and 140 workers in Minnesota.

"The factories are highly automated," said Martin Pochtaruk, president of Heliene. "You don't employ too many humans. There are a lot of robots."


SOURCE 






Effort to turn weathermen into climate activists fraught with bad science

By: Marc Morano

NBC News is hyping a report that claims meteorologists are supporting the George Mason and Climate Central effort to promote climate change fears on your nightly weather forecast. See: ‘Global warming,’ now brought to you by local TV weathercaster

The climate information being promoted by the activist meteorologists is highly suspect and the groups behind the effort have supported shutting down any scientific debate by supporting RICO statures against skeptics and they have benefited greatly from federal funding of their efforts.

The information the meteorologists are peddling is pure propaganda, as the video accompanying the article shows a montage of weather forecasters using a 1970 start date to claim warming temperatures. Ever wonder why they chose 1970 as the start date?

Here is why:

Cheating For Dollars At Climate Central: ‘The 1970 cherry picking scam has become a centerpiece of the global warming fraud. The 1970s was one of the coldest decades in US history’ – By Tony Heller – ‘By starting in 1970, Climate Central is intentionally defrauding their readers. Had they started in 1950, there would be almost no warming shown Also important to remember that all recent temperatures are jacked up by 0.5F Bottom line is there has been little or no long term warming in the US’

But just who is behind this effort to turn your local TV weatherman into an Al Gore spouting climate fear promoter?

Climate Depot and the new book ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,’ reveal the answers to these questions.

NBC News describes thusly the effort to turn your local weatherman into a mini Al Gore: “Key to the shift has been Climate Central, the nonprofit that helped school LaPointe. The Princeton, New Jersey-based organization sponsors classes and webinars for meteorologists and also shares real-time data and graphics with TV stations. The group has reached more than 500 local TV weathercasters — about a quarter of those working in the U.S. — since it started its “Climate Matters” education program in 2012, and it is expanding this week to a wider group of journalists.”

Who is Climate Central? A climate activist group funded by the federal tax dollars that helps promote climate fears.

‘There is evidently heavy funding as well from Federal organizations. So taxpayers are having to pay Climate Central to produce what is often grossly inaccurate and misleading propaganda, which in turn supports the Federal Government’s agenda.’

NBC News touts George Mason professor Ed Maibach as “the climate change center’s director” at the University. Who is Ed Maibach and just who is behind the effort to turn your weather forecast into nightly climate propaganda?

Excerpt: “Maibach, you may be surprised to learn, is no climate scientist but has a BA in social psychology from University of California, and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University.” According to the Centre’s blurb: “Ed joined the George Mason University faculty in 2007 to create the Center for Climate Change Communication. Trained in public health and communication…”

Maibach was also a signatory of the infamous letter to President Obama urging the use of RICO statutes against climate skeptics.

"Twenty climate scientists, including Top UN scientist Dr. Kevin Trenberth, & George Mason’s Ed Maibach, call for RICO investigation of climate skeptics in letter to Obama – Via Politico: ‘Twenty climate scientists called for RICO investigation in a letter to Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.”

Maibach’s funding also raises questions:

Excerpt: “This is one hell of a high powered effort to push out global warming propaganda, and heaven knows what it all costs. Amongst its providers of major funding are listed NASA, the National Science Foundation and private foundations such as Grantham Foundation and Rockefeller Family Fund. It could hardly be a more incestuous relationship. NASA pumps funding into the Center in order to persuade the public of the terrors of global warming, which in turn will help to maintain their own funding, which can then be used to further ramp up the scare. It is no wonder Mr Maibach is so keen to sign the (RICO) letter, and silence skeptics”

Maibach has a long history of climate propaganda.

See: Climate spin: Behind-the-scenes emails show warmist prof Ed Maibach evading questions – By Maxim Lott – June 01, 2016 – FoxNews.com – Newly released internal e-mails show George Mason University climate professors plotting a petition calling on the government to prosecute skeptics of global warming using RICO laws designed to go after the mob. They got 20 scientists to sign their petition and sent it to government officials before withdrawing in the face of controversy. The new emails show GMU professors Jagadish Shukla and Edward Maibach discussing everything from how to craft their petition to appeal to conservatives, to getting warnings from others that the petition would go over poorly, to evading media questions.

In the emails, the professors decided to ignore questions from FoxNews.com about why the lead petition author, Jagadish Shukla, used government grants to give himself and his family some $500,000 in salary and benefits in 2014 — which FoxNews.com reported in October. The professors decided to reach out to the Washington Post instead. “They were running a well-used page in their playbook … get the legacy media to play defense for them,” Chris Horner, who forced the public release of the emails by filing a “Freedom of Information Act” request, told FoxNews.com.

SOURCE 







Magical Wind Power: Illusions versus Reality

The number-one challenge of our times is to separate the wheat from the chaff.  To assist in this task, we are blessed with more information than ever before – but we are also simultaneously burdened with more misinformation than any prior generation has ever had to deal with.

We look back and wonder how trusting citizens were so easily victimized by snake oil salesmen, but today, in the golden age of cons, we are being duped on a daily basis.

As a representative matter (and a national issue of great significance), let’s look at what’s happening with industrial wind energy.

The primary reason why wind energy has been a success has nothing to do with wind energy!  Instead, its success is 100% due to the fact that wind energy proponents are masterful lobbyists.

If one reads The Business of America Is Lobbying, it’s apparent that the wind industry has used every trick in the book, and then written some of its own.

For example: Wind lobbyists have successfully infiltrated our language with totally inaccurate and misleading terminology, such as “wind farms” and “clean energy.”  Neither exists.

For example: Wind marketers have successfully portrayed their product as “Free, Clean, and Green” – despite it being none of those.  The reason they have coined these malapropisms is simple: those who control the words control the narrative.

For example: Wind salespeople have successfully convinced financially distressed communities that hosting a wind project will be an economic windfall – even though numerous studies from independent experts indicate that the net local economic impact could well be negative.

For example: Wind-peddlers have successfully sold technically challenged local representatives that the wind-developer is their friend and business partner – even though these sophisticated and aggressive entrepreneurs typically look at these rural people as rubes and marks, and their number-one focus is to make as much money as possible, at the rubes’ expense.

For example: Wind developers have successfully persuaded much of the public that wind energy is an inevitable matter, so fighting it is a lost cause.  The reality is that in many cases, local communities can effectively defend themselves by simply passing a proper wind ordinance.

For example: Wind-supporters have successfully imparted the belief that a certain wind project will power 20,000 homes – even though that project will not actually power a single home 24/7/365.

For example: Wind advocates employ a sleight-of-hand tactic to dismiss noise complaints by claiming that “wind turbines don’t make any more noise than a refrigerator.”  The fact is that the main acoustical concern with wind turbines is the infrasound generated (which is below our level of hearing).  So discussing the audible part of turbine noise purposefully distracts from the serious inaudible (but still very much experienced) noise issue.

For example: Wind propagandists say that wind energy is saving the environment – even though the evidence indicates that it is environmentally destructive on multiple fronts.

For example: Wind promoters have successfully conveyed the idea that wind energy is a low-cost option of electricity – even though when all its costs are fully accounted for, wind energy can be three to five times as expensive as traditional electricity sources.

For example: Wind advocates have successfully communicated the notion that using more wind will directly result in the closure of coal plants – even though 10,000 wind turbines could never equal the performance of even a single coal facility.

For example: Wind-boosters have successfully disseminated the impression that wind is a major and essential contributor to preventing climate change – even though there is no empirical scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2.

For example: Wind champions have successfully relayed the conviction that the DoD Clearinghouse assures us that wind projects will not adversely affect the mission or operational readiness of our military or our national security – even though the DoD Clearinghouse was set up to accommodate wind energy (not the military), and the actual process is much more about promoting political correctness than protecting our national defense.

I could go on and on, as the list of wind lobbyists’ deceptions is distressingly long.  That said, there is an additional major falsehood that needs to be exposed: that there is such a thing as wind energy by itself.  This seemingly innocuous deceit is actually extraordinarily important.

The fact is that there is no such animal on the grid as wind energy by itself.  What actually typically exists is a “Wind+Gas” package.  This is mandated by the inescapable reality of wind energy’s unrelentingly unpredictable and uncontrollable output.  No conventional source of electrical energy has these characteristics, so none need this special augmentation.

The importance of understanding this reality is that when we are talking about wind energy economics or environmental consequences, the only truthful analysis is objectively and comprehensively looking at the results of the Wind+Gas package.*

For example, it should be apparent that wind energy (i.e., the Wind+Gas package) is not a CO2 zero-emitter.  In fact, due to other technicalities (never acknowledged by wind lobbyists), some studies have concluded that gas (combined cycle) by itself produces less CO2 than the Wind+Gas package.

Let me restate that extraordinary finding: gas can produce less CO2 than wind energy does!

Is the success of wind energy due to the sophistication of the con artists they’ve engaged or to our gullibility?  In either case, the takeaway is that lobbyists are not reliable sources of information, especially when it involves significant money, our health, or our national security.  The bottom line is that wind energy is palliative pabulum, not suitable for prime time.

SOURCE 






Former PM steps up attack on Australian climate plan

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told Liberal and Nationals MPs that Australia must do its part to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as his predecessor Tony Abbott led another attack on the issue in the Coalition party room.

Mr Turnbull held the line on the government’s pledge to cut emissions by 26 per cent by 2030 under the National Energy Guarantee, against vocal concerns from six Liberal MPs, including Mr Abbott.

At one point Mr Abbott claimed he was “misled by bureaucrats” over the cost of the emissions cut he helped decide as Prime Minister in 2015, which was taken to the United Nations climate talks in Paris that year.

The skirmish is another stage in the federal government’s painful internal debate on energy and climate change, in the face of objections from conservative MPs including Mr Abbott, backbencher Craig Kelly and former ministers Eric Abetz and Ian Macdonald.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg defended the National Energy Guarantee against the criticisms and cited support from industry executives to assure backbenchers the plan would succeed.

Labor is attacking the guarantee for cementing cuts that it regards as too weak while Mr Abbott and his colleagues argue the targets are too ambitious, adding to the obstacles to an agreement in Federal Parliament.

Mr Abbott challenged Mr Frydenberg to address concerns aired by Tomago Aluminium chief Matt Howell about the unreliability of renewable energy sources and the fact that its battery system would only last minutes when the smelter in NSW needed power for hours.

Mr Frydenberg replied by telling the meeting he had spoken to Mr Howell before the Coalition party room meeting and could assure MPs the Tomago chief supported the guarantee.

Mr Frydenberg also cited support for the guarantee from steelmaker BlueScope and mining giant BHP Billiton, according to government MPs in the room.

In a revival of earlier disputes within the Coalition, Mr Abbott expressed concern about the 26 per cent target despite the fact his government signed off on the commitment in 2015 in a decision cleared with the Coalition party room at the time.

Mr Abbott argued in the meeting that the target was “aspirational” but Mr Frydenberg said this was not the case, quoting the former prime minister’s own words from three years ago.

In September 2015, Mr Abbott said: “Unlike some other countries which make these pledges and don’t deliver, Australia does deliver when we make a pledge.”

Fairfax Media was told that Mr Abbott warned about the cost of meeting the target and said he may have been “misled by the bureaucracy” about the full implications of the Paris commitment.

When Senator Macdonald questioned why Australia had to reduce any emissions, Mr Turnbull responded by emphasising the need to ensure the guarantee delivered on the targets agreed in 2015.

Mr Turnbull told the meeting that Australia had to “do our bit” to reach the target.

SOURCE 


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

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

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21 June, 2018

Michigan Dems Call New Curriculum ‘Far-Right’ Over Climate Change Exclusion

Now even something you DON'T say is “far-right”

Michigan Democrats are petitioning against a “far-right” school curriculum revision over its removal of references to climate change, the LGBT community and Islam.

The recently proposed social studies standards, drafted largely by Republican state senator Patrick Colbeck, have plucked out climate change information from the 6th grade geography unit and dropped references to various minority groups, according to MLive. The phrase “core democratic values” was also eliminated.

A petition — seeming launched by Ann Arbor school board secretary Jeff Gaynor — claims the revisions are “far-right” and “endanger not only our past, but our future.”

“By altering the standards for teaching history in Michigan, they cut many people out of history – and silence the work of those who have worked to fulfill the American promise of liberty and justice for all,” the petition states, seeking 5,000 signatures.

The curriculum would be applied to K-12 students throughout Michigan.

State senator David Knezek (D-Dearborn Heights) claimed it’s “mind-numbing” how the proposed curriculum describes the KKK as an anti-Republican group and not anti-black.

“Five references to the NAACP and the role that they played in desegregation, eliminated. Every reference to the LGBT community, eliminated. Every reference to Roe v. Wade, eliminated,” Knezek argued during a speech last Tuesday, adding that Republicans are “quite literally attempting to rewrite history.”

Knezek also accused Colbeck of misinterpreting the “core democratic values” phrase as a reference to the Democratic Party.

The petition authors created a “Defend MI History” Facebook page calling the conservatives “extremists.”

Michigan’s education board in August will review public comments on the matter, but a final vote on the curriculum is not yet scheduled, Bridge Magazine reports.

Colbeck, representing Wayne County north of Detroit, is currently running for governor.

SOURCE 





Solar 'Incentives' Are Busting Out All Over

Ever wonder why installations of household solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and utility-scale solar power have surged since 2014? The declining cost of solar technology is part of the reason. But a bigger factor may be the profusion of state and federal “incentive” programs, i.e. subsidies.

A new report by the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) examines solar power incentive programs in 25 states. The report considers five categories of “direct” incentives: federal tax incentives, state tax credits, state rebates, utility programs (such as net metering), and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

Amazingly, in eight states (Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Minnesota), incentives exceed 100 percent of the costs of installing solar PV systems. Massachusetts leads the pack, with incentives equaling 218 percent of installation costs. Subsidies equal or exceed 77 percent of costs in all but five of the states surveyed.

“Residential solar PV systems receive, on average, between 104 percent and 140 percent of total system costs in incentives,” CEA finds. In contrast, utility-scale solar installations receive “about 45 percent of total system costs in incentives.”

Of course, solar subsidies do not fall like manna from heaven. Governments cannot give to some without taking from others. Taxpayers and consumers foot the bill for solar incentives.

“Through the 30 percent federal tax credit, various state tax credits and state rebates ranging between 10 percent and 65 percent, and the additional tax deductions provided by the depreciation of the solar assets for third-party-owned systems, taxpayers as a whole are covering a significant portion of the cost of an individual’s residential solar PV system in the United States,” according to the CEA report.

Similarly, through “utility programs and utility purchases in REC markets, utility customers in all customer classes share the cost of residential solar PV systems,” with general ratepayers contributing directly in about half the states analyzed and paying about 30 percent of costs in at least five states.

Plus, in a majority of jurisdictions, net metering programs, which allow solar PV owners to sell power back to the grid, pay none of the “capital expenditures for the poles, conductor, transformers, switches, and metering devices, as well as additional operation and maintenance expense to operate the system safely and reliably.”

CEA acknowledges that net metering programs may “shift fixed infrastructure costs onto non-solar customers” and even “shift costs onto less affluent customers.” However, the report does not suggest that a retrenchment would be desirable for reasons of either equity or efficiency.

SOURCE 




This Obama-Era UN-EPA Agreement Has To Go

As the Trump White House continues its cleanup of the mess — foreign and domestic — left behind by the Obama administration, it should toss out a little-noticed document that entangles the U.S. in some of the worst schemes ever cooked up by U.N. bureaucrats and their cronies in the global environmental movement.

On September 16, 2016, the Obama EPA entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Concluded just a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election, the MOU bears the signature for the U.S. of then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. In the document, UNEP and the Obama EPA vow to “consolidate, further develop and intensify their cooperation and effectiveness to achieve their common goals and objectives in the field of the environment.”

And therein lies the problem. For the “common goals and objectives” shared by the U.N. body and the Obama administration are specifically crafted to hamstring American fossil-fuel energy development, promote an assortment of politically fashionable, but otherwise uncompetitive, green technologies and products, and perpetuate the deplorable living conditions in the world’s poorest countries.

An Instrument of the Paris Climate Accord

The document was signed nine months after the adoption of the U.N.-sponsored Paris climate accord, and the wording of the MOU leaves little doubt that it was seen as an instrument to underscore America’s commitment to curtail its production and use of energy in the name of combatting climate change. Thus, UNEP and the Obama EPA agreed to “cooperate on responses to climate change,” including mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, reducing short-lived climate forcers and supporting adaptation and resilience to climate change.

Taking these and similar steps, the MOU says, will enable the advance “toward green economies and resource-efficient societies through collaborative activities to promote and support sustainable consumption and production.” In truth, “green economies” are those with taxpayer-subsidized and government-mandated renewable energy (primarily wind and solar). And what constitutes “sustainable consumption and production” is in the eyes of the beholding bureaucrat, empowered either by the administrative regulatory state or by legislation adopted at the behest of deep-pocketed special interests.

All of this is to be pursued through jointly held symposia, seminars, workshops, study tours, collaborative research and development projects, exchanges and training programs and other forms of cooperation that strengthen the bonds between UNEP and the U.S. Under the MOU, each side is to name a “Senior Coordinator” to oversee the holding of “regular joint meetings on matters of common interest.” To make sure the two sides stay in touch, “such meetings are to take place at least once every six months in accordance with an agenda approved by them in advance of every meeting.”

The outfit the Obama administration teamed up within the MOU, UNEP, was founded in 1972 by wealthy Canadian businessman Maurice Strong; it is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and has an office conveniently located in Washington, D.C. Strong (1929–2015) was Under-Secretary-General of the U.N. when he founded UNEP and was an early advocate for combatting what he said was human-induced climate change, then known as global warming.

In keeping with Strong’s vision, UNEP has worked closely with the Bonn-based United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For its part, UNFCCC has enthusiastically spread climate alarmism and gone to extraordinary lengths to deny the residents of the world’s poorest access to reliable and affordable electricity and transportation fuel, thereby perpetuating their poverty.

Anti-American Agenda

Given UNEP’s pedigree and the Obama administration’s unbridled hostility to fossil fuels, President Trump should scrap the UNEP-EPA MOU. Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt inherited the MOU from their predecessors and are under no obligation to adhere to its content. The White House has already withdrawn from the Paris climate accord, and President Trump chose to skip the climate-change session at the recent G7 meeting in Quebec.

Continued fealty to the Obama-era MOU runs counter to the president’s goal of American global energy dominance, which is anchored to our abundance of oil, natural gas, and coal. The ties that bound the UN and the Obama administration should not be allowed to constrain the choices of everyday Americans.

Even if the MOU is “non-binding,” so, too, are the commitments all parties agreed to under the Paris climate accord.  But recognizing the threat the Paris accord posed to U.S. energy security, the Trump White House wisely walked away from it. The UNEP-EPA memorandum is little more than an implementation tool of the Paris agreement and should suffer the same fate.

Both are part of what is, at its core, a decidedly anti-American agenda.

SOURCE 






Florida Utility Becomes US Leader In Renewables Thanks To Taxpayers

NextEra Energy has successfully leveraged government mandates and taxpayer-funded subsidies to become an international powerhouse in the renewable energy market.

NextEra — a major U.S. company that boasts a large wind energy portfolio — has served as a model of unprecedented growth over the years. The Florida-based utility company was ranked the 30th largest American power company in 2011 and carried a $10.2-billion valuation. The company currently touts a market capitalization of $74 billion and is heralded as the world’s biggest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun. Fortune Magazine ranked the company in 2018 as one of the most admired among gas and electric utilities, earning the distinction for the 11th time in 12 years.

NextEra has been able to experience rapid growth, with its expansion even more impressive considering demand for power has mostly flatlined. Credit is given to its executive leadership members — including chief executive James Robo — who have carefully managed longterm contracts and avoided debt. (RELATED: Germany Won’t Meet Its Global Warming Targets Despite Spending $200 Billion On Green Energy)

However, there is another entity that deserves major credit for the company’s rise: the U.S. government.

NextEra has been able to capitalize off federal subsidies and state mandates implemented over the years to promote wind and solar technology, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Congress began handing out tax credits in earnest for renewables in the 1990s. At the time, the wind and solar industry was minuscule, and no one anticipated the industry to take off. As the sector grew, so did the number of companies wanting credits. NextEra has been especially aggressive at obtaining them. For example, wind farms in 2008 produced around $600 million in tax credits. They are estimated to produce $4.8 billion in 2018. NextEra has been able to use $401 million of these tax credits in the past three years to offset taxes.

State governments have also served as a major contributor to the proliferation of renewables. Almost no state governments enforced a renewable energy mandate at the turn of the 21st century — a requirement that utilities obtain a certain amount of their electricity from renewable sources. Nearly 30 states have some form of a renewable energy mandate in 2018. This total will only rise as states, such as Michigan and Arizona, have experienced environmentalist-lead campaigns to increase their renewable portfolios.

Unable to produce enough energy from wind turbines, many utilities sought to purchase electricity from companies that could. NextEra, a top producer of wind energy, has been able to gobble up many of these contracts, providing renewable energy to companies that are facing higher and higher standards.

NextEra’s renewable energy arm raked in nearly $3 billion in net income in 2017.

As for the future, the company aims to keep expanding. NextEra expects to boost the number of wind and solar projects that are in different stages of the leasing and permitting process.

SOURCE 





Fake Support for a Free Market in Energy

All of a sudden, everyone on the Left wants “free markets in energy policy.” As someone who’s advocated for that for, oh, about three decades, this riff should be music to my ears. But is laissez faire energy policy really what liberals are seeking?

First, some context. A few weeks ago, liberal activists leaked a draft of a Trump administration directive that would order utilities to purchase coal and nuclear power as part of their energy mix in supplying electricity to homes and businesses. There are good arguments for and against this policy — I’m fairly neutral — but what was fascinating was the indignant response from those on the Left who hate fossil fuels. “Crony capitalism!” they shrieked in unison. Catherine Rampell, an economic columnist at The Washington Post, moaned that President Donald Trump “is wielding the power of the state to keep uncompetitive companies in business, and costing taxpayers and consumers lots of money in the process.” “If that doesn’t count as ‘picking winners and losers,’ it’s hard to say what would,” Rampell wrote.

The Los Angeles Times slammed the Trump plan as “a preposterous idea”: “Continuing to operate financially nonviable power plants and forcing grid operators to buy power they don’t need or want is an unacceptable governmental intrusion into the power market that, by one analysis, would needlessly cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

This could cost hundreds of millions of dollars? That’s bad, for sure, but have you ever heard the Los Angeles Times rail against subsidies for wind and solar power? I haven’t. The Obama administration’s policy was to try to bankrupt coal, oil and other fossil fuels through regulation, while enriching their renewable energy pals in Silicon Valley with lavish subsidies.

Remember Solyndra? That was the company that was going to revolutionize solar power, and it went bankrupt after the Obama administration gave the firm hundreds of millions of dollars. All told, $150 billion was pipelined into the green empire under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and most of the money funded such fiascoes. But now Trump is the one who is accused of “picking winners and losers”?

An even bigger farce is the idea that Adam Smith’s invisible hand of free-market forces is what is driving certain nuclear power and coal plants into bankruptcy. (Coal still provides five times more electric power than wind and solar combined.) Rampell of The Washington Post explains: “The reason these [coal and nuclear] plants are struggling, after all, is that they can’t compete with cheaper natural gas and renewables.” That’s half-true. Yes, $3 natural gas prices have revolutionized the electric power markets and driven down costs.

But the idea that renewables are “cheap” is a lie, and those on the Left know it. Let’s be clear about an economic reality that environmentalists have spent four decades trying to hide: Without massive government subsidies, there would be no wind or solar energy to speak of. They are complete creatures of government favoritism, and after 30 years, we still can’t cut the umbilical cord.

Consider how gargantuan the green-energy subsidies are. First, wind and solar receive a tax credit that is basically a 35 percent-off coupon for the energy they supply, with taxpayers picking up the tab. If coal or nuclear power got a 35 percent taxpayer subsidy for every kilowatt of electricity they supplied, they would be basking in profits. I helped write and negotiate the just-passed Trump tax bill. When we tried to get rid of the renewable energy tax credit (i.e., create a “free market in energy”), the green lobby went ballistic and told Republicans this would put much of the industry out of business.

For every dollar of subsidy that coal and nuclear power receive, wind power gets almost $5 and solar receives about $20. This does not even include the biggest subsidy of all: About half the states have renewable-energy standards requiring utilities to buy 20 percent to 30 percent of their power from wind and solar, regardless of the price. What other industry in America has that kind of golden parachute?

In terms of assessing the merits of energy alternatives, we ought to have an insurance policy against brownouts and blackouts. Other nations and California have suffered from these because of overdependence on intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. We may regret shutting down reliable nuclear or coal plants, which can’t be easily powered up again, during storms, cold winters or hot summer days when we need electricity the most.

In the meantime, enough hypocrisy from liberals who lecture us about bailouts and subsidies as if they were Milton Friedman disciples. There is nothing more horrifying to proponents of renewable energy than a genuine free market in energy.

SOURCE 

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

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

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




20 June, 2018

On the Impossibility of the Ultimate Climate Catasrophe

This week’s good news is that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), by far the world’s biggest ice mass, was largely intact during the entire Pliocene epoch.  The Pliocene was slightly less than three million years in length, and preceded the Pleistocene, the epoch of the ice ages.

The implications for human-caused warming from enhanced carbon dioxide are enormous.  The good news was published in the same issue of Nature that carried an article about the loss of slightly less than three trillion metric tons of Antarctic ice since 1992.

These things are best viewed in a larger perspective.  By itself, that ice loss would raise sea level by about a third of an inch, something probably impossible to detect with land-based tidal gauges.  But it was also likely somewhat balanced by the probability of enhanced snowfall over the continent thanks to a (very) slightly warmed surrounding ocean. But the melting of the EAIS would be apocalyptic, itself raising sea level by 175 feet.

Even though this seemed like a very remote possibility, we can now confidently say that human-induced climate change cannot make it happen.

Here’s why.

Global temperatures during the Pliocene averaged around 2-3?C higher than the 20th century average.  But the massive thermal inertia of Antarctica means it probably wasn’t that much warmer there.  Let’s be very conservative and say it was about one degree warmer.

The Pliocene heat load over the EAIS then becomes:

3,000,000 years X 1? = 3,000,000 degree-years.

Now let’s also be conservative about how long human-induced climate change might last, say, 1000 years.  But again, climate change is attenuated over the vast ice-covered continent, so let’s posit we induce a global warming of 5? (which is probably too large), and Antarctica warms half as much.

The maximum heat load over Antarctica then is:

1,000 years X2.5? = 2,500 degree-years.

The Pliocene heat load was 1,200 times what humans could possibly exert on the EAIS, and it still remained largely intact.  Because of that, fears about the ultimate climate catastrophe can no longer even be entertained.

SOURCE 






AP Claims That Global Warming ‘Is Making Us Dumb’, Gets Debunked

University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. called out a lengthy AP story claiming that global warming created “a different world” over the past 30 years — the time frame scientists typically use to account for natural climatic variations.

“We were warned,” is what the AP says about the supposed changes,”large and small,” that have happened in the last 30 years. The story is full of anecdotal evidence, official figures and alarming quotes from scientists.

“The statistics tracking climate change since 1988 are almost numbing,” the AP reported in its story.

Pielke points to the article’s illogical claim that climate “change has been so sweeping that it is easy to lose sight of effects large and small,” focusing on the AP’s citing of hurricane damage data to insinuate that storms were becoming more intense.

The AP’s article makes several claims that are misleading. The Daily Caller News Foundation has listed the three most misleading claims made in the AP’s article on “numbing” global warming statistics.


1. Hurricanes

The AP’s story notes that “[t]he 14 costliest hurricanes in American history, adjusted for inflation, have hit since 1988, reflecting both growing coastal development and a span that included the most intense Atlantic storms on record.”

Pielke, however, took issue with AP’s use of hurricane damage statistics to imply storms had become more intense in the last 30 years. Pielke noted that hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. have changed little over time, meaning increased damages come from inflation and economic growth.


2. Wildfires

The AP reports that “wildfires in the United States now consume more than twice the acreage they did 30 years ago.”

While this is true, the AP’s narrowing of its analysis to just the past 30 years leaves presents a misleading picture. Wildfires may be burning more acreage today than the 1980s, but that pales in comparison to the great fires of the early 20th Century.

The scale of U.S. wildfires has decreased dramatically since 1930, according to government estimates. That year, wildfires burned more than four times the amount of acreage burned in 2012.

In 1930, for example, wildfires consumed more than 50 million acres of land, but in 2012 wildfires only burnt up 9.2 million acres.


3. Record Heat

Again, the AP’s use of a 30-year timeline presents a skewed picture on heat records set across the U.S.

“[D]aily heat records have been broken more than 2.3 million times at weather stations across the nation, half a million times more than cold records were broken,” the AP reported, but a longer view of the century puts record heat in perspective.

“The Dust Bowl era of the 1930s remains the peak period for extreme heat,” reads the National Climate Assessment special report released in late 2017.

“In fact, all eastern regions experienced a net decrease, most notably the Midwest (about 2.2°F [1.2°C]) and the Southeast (roughly 1.5°F [0.8°C])” that are “mainly tied to the unprecedented summer heat of the 1930s Dust Bowl era,” according to the special report.

SOURCE 







Streamlining Infrastructure Environmental Review

ABSTRACT

Many roads, bridges, sewers, pipelines, and other infrastructure need repair. New facilities should also be built where economic and social conditions warrant. Yet even where money is not an obstacle, the reviews that are required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) can be a significant source of delay. The average time to complete a final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), for example, was 5.1 years in 2016. Only 16% of them were completed in two years or less.

Lengthy reviews introduce uncertainty, add to the costs, and threaten the viability of infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, existing facilities continue to deteriorate as proposed upgrades or replacements wind their way through federal and state regulatory bodies. The problem is long-standing, and Congress has taken a number of steps over the last several years to streamline the process.

This paper assesses their effectiveness and proposes some additional changes, including:

Updating rules and procedures at the agency level to exempt additional infrastructure projects from lengthy and complex review requirements.

Expanding eligibility and giving agencies more flexibility to make use of NEPA’s “categorical exclusion” provisions.

Assigning more environmental review duties to states. For more than a decade, a program called NEPA Assignment has allowed states to take the lead on shepherding certain highway and transit projects through environmental review. The states that have done so report reduced time required to complete environmental reviews. More states should be encouraged to participate. The federal government should expand the number of projects and actions that are eligible under existing authority, and Congress should expand the program to cover more kinds of infrastructure.

With the implementation of these recommendations, federal agency resources would be freed to deal with the complex projects that require more comprehensive review, reducing the time for projects that pass muster to begin.

SOURCE 






Dumb Energy

Wind and solar electricity are renewable energy.  How nice to pluck energy out of the air and the sky.

It's a scam.  Big money men and screwball dreamers, otherwise called environmentalists, are behind the scam.

Apparently, it has not dawned on the believers in the scam that solar does not work at night, and wind works only when the wind is blowing.  The core characteristic of wind and solar is that they are erratic sources of electricity.  The supply is randomly intermittent.  Who in Hell thinks this dumb energy is a good way to supply electricity?

The wind and solar promoters, in order to accommodate their dumb energy, demand that the electric grid be re-engineered to become a "smart" grid.  Perhaps the idea is that if the grid is smart enough, the dumb energy will be canceled by the smart grid.  That's actually what the smart grid people have in mind.  The smart grid is supposed to be agile enough to fill in the gaps when the wind or solar is playing hooky.

The intellectual mind values an elegant theory over a messy reality.  The result is tension between ivory tower thinkers and practical men working in the trenches of the economy.  The practical men easily see the weaknesses in abstract theories, weaknesses that are invisible to the ivory tower thinkers.  But the practical men are not equipped to assert or defend their reality in political, media, or academic circles.  If they try, they are patronized and ignored.  A seductive theory trumps pedestrian and annoying facts in the intellectual mind.  For this reason, ridiculously impracticable renewable energy finds wide support in academic, environmental, and government circles – circles populated by thinkers accustomed to mobilizing the power of the state to promote impractical ideas with the taxpayers' money.  For these thinkers, evidence that contradicts their beliefs must be bad evidence.

In the supposedly hard-headed Wall Street Journal, Russell Gold writes that "global investment in wind and solar energy is outshining fossil fuels."  He claims that Alberta is getting subsidy-free wind electricity for $37 a megawatt-hour.  That's $28 U.S.  Since real subsidy-free wind electricity costs about $10 Canadian, something is wrong here.  What's wrong is that the media have lost their minds.  Five minutes with Google is enough to discover that Albertan electricity is indeed subsidized.  What we have here is a mania and a suspension of critical judgment.  No lie about renewable energy is too big to be believed, even by the Wall Street Journal.  There are 600 comments to the Journal article.  The commentators, evidently practical men, point out the errors and fallacies in the article.

In the U.S., it is hard to keep track of all the subsidies for renewable energy.  I'd be surprised if it is very different in Canada.  Some subsidies are blatant, like a $24-per-megawatt-hour payment from the federal treasury for the production of wind electricity, or a 30% tax credit for the construction of a solar energy farm.  Some subsidies are buried in accounting complexities like rapid depreciation that allows for complicated tax gimmicks that effectively take money from the federal treasury and give it to renewable energy investors.  Then there are renewable portfolio laws in 30 states setting goals for renewable energy.  The result is that wind and solar installations get long-term guaranteed markets at high prices for their electricity.  Grid operators are required to accept all wind and solar electricity offered unless they, more or less, declare an emergency.

Assuming a windy or a sunny place, wind or solar electricity costs around $70 a megawatt-hour to produce.  Even though no fuel is used, the capital cost spread over the electricity produced makes the renewable energy more expensive than using fossil fuel.  With natural gas, you can produce electricity for around $50 per megawatt-hour.  Those numbers are the cost at the plant fence – not a fair comparison.  It's not a fair comparison because when you build a wind or solar plant, you don't get to take away the natural gas plant.  It's still there to back up the wind or solar.  Wind or solar is an add-on to the grid, not a real part of the grid.  All the wind or solar does that is useful is to save some fuel at the backup plant, usually a natural gas plant, during moments when the wind or solar is actually generating electricity.  That fuel for a gas plant costs about $20 per megawatt-hour.  So wind or solar costs $70 per megawatt-hour in order to save $20's worth of fuel per megawatt-hour.  The net loss to the economy is $70 minus $20, or $50 for every megawatt-hour of wind or solar electricity produced.  That $50 has to come from someplace.  That loss to the economy is a subsidy.  Someone has to pay for it.  It comes from blatant subsidies, sneaky subsidies, and higher prices for electricity.

Some advocates of renewable energy claim that the extra cost is worth it, because wind and solar don't emit CO2, thus helping in the fight against global warming.  There are numerous holes in that argument.  The bulk of the CO2 emissions are from Asia, where they burn an ever increasing amount of carbon-rich coal to generate electricity.  U.S. CO2 emissions have been declining due to the substitution of natural gas for coal.  Spending fantastic sums to decrease U.S. emissions will have a very minor effect unless something is done about Asia.  The bigger picture is that there has been little global warming during the last 20 years in the face of rapidly increasing CO2 emissions.  The obvious conclusion is that the global warming scare is more propaganda than substance.  Of course, the scientific organizations with huge budgets based on the scary prospect of global warming can't let it go because they would lose the justification for their big budgets.  Did you ever hear of a scientific organization shrinking because the problem it was formed to solve does not, after all, exist?  If you really want to seriously reduce CO2 emissions, the solution is nuclear power.  The sincerest believers in global warming, like James Hansen and Stewart Brand, are advocating nuclear power.

Environmental groups, particularly the Sierra Club, run scare campaigns against fossil fuels.  Everything they don't like either causes cancer or does something bad to children.  They don't like coal; they don't like nuclear.  They even don't like hydro if a dam is involved.  The environmental outfits relentlessly spread scare propaganda.  They promote the basically useless wind and solar.  They pretend and perhaps actually believe that wind and solar represent some sort of energy salvation.  They are modern-day crackpots and snake oil salesmen.

SOURCE 







Australia: renewables have beaten common sense

This may sound strange but the renewable energy industry — I prefer to call it the unreliable energy industry — is overjoyed by the public discussion about the need for new coal-fired electricity plants to be built here.

The rent-seekers — the owners of wind farms and solar installations — know there will be no investment in coal-fired electricity, certainly not in terms of new plants. Even investment in maintaining or extending the lives of existing coal-fired plants is rationed.

New coal-fired plants are unbankable, given the policy settings. They cost a lot, their economic lives are too long and the risks are too high.

The only scenario in which a new high-efficiency, low-emissions plant can be built — and plenty are overseas — is government ownership. Even then, the delay before commissioning would be three to five years. There are no circumstances under which the Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull will agree to the government building, owning and operating a HELE plant.

As for Labor, it doesn’t even know what a HELE plant is; its intention is to head in the nonsensical direction of 50 per cent renewables (globally, wind and solar account for 8 per cent of electricity generation) and a higher emissions reduction target.

So why are the renewables players so excited about the ongoing discussion of investment in new coal-fired plants that will never happen? It diverts attention from the main game, which is the definition of reliability that will apply in the new policy framework, the national energy ­guarantee.

They also are seeking to have other features of the final design favour renewable energy, including the restrictions on the use of carbon offsets, both local and international, to meet the emissions reduction target. There is even a possibility that there will be no allowance for offsets in the final version.

While Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg feels pleased with himself that he has secured reasonably broad support for the national energy guarantee — there are a few exceptions — everyone knows that it will come down to the detail. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the latest iteration of the guarantee was released last Friday at 5pm.

Let me outline three key weaknesses in it. They are: the lack of a defensible definition of reliability; the way the emissions reduction target is put into effect; and the use of offsets. (I apologise for the technical nature of some of this discussion — it’s unavoidable.)

The most appropriate way of defining reliability — supply meeting demand when and where it is required — is to map out scenarios in which renewable energy sources plus other sources will not be able to meet the needs of the market and to identify the back-up arrangements that can be relied on. It can’t be an averaging process; extremes must be considered.

Note, for example, that extended wind droughts can occur; witness Germany and Britain recently. It also can be cloudy for extended periods. These back-up options include battery, pumped hydro, gas peaking or even diesel generators.

They may be uncommon events, but because Australia’s electricity grid is self-contained (we can’t import electricity from other countries, as is the case in Europe) we must plan for them.

One of the papers released last Friday simply states that “a reliable system is one with enough energy (generation and demand side participation) and network capacity to supply consumers — this implies that there should be enough energy to meet demand, with a buffer known as reserves”. A key carve-out is “demand side participation”.

The game that the renewable energy sector is playing is to define the scenario for which back-up is required on terms that suit it. Instead of meeting demand when and where it is required, its preferred alternative is to assume that demand is managed down (all big industrial users are expected to reduce their use of power as well as some households) before there is any need to provide back-up.

In this way, the renewable energy industry will be able to point to a motley collection of diesel generators and a few batteries (which provide power for a few hours at most), which will allow the retailers to meet the reliability requirement under the terms of the national energy guarantee. It’s a neat trick because it avoids the expensive exercise of providing or contracting for true back-up

This sort of demand management is Third World stuff and the clear danger is that these big users will just power down forever, particularly as they are also being told they have to provide back-up themselves. They have made it very clear that they cannot rely on renewable energy. So when contracts expire, they will simply shut up shop and relocate overseas.

When it comes to how the national energy guarantee will work, demand forecasts will be made out to 2030. The renewable energy industry will seek to have these forecasts low-balled because this will accelerate the exit of older baseload coal-fired plants as well as reduce the need for back-up.

These demand forecasts will then translate into an abatement number by 2030 (the reduction in tonnes of CO2) and from this an emissions intensity target will be calculated. It will be of the order of 0.4 per megawatt hour, which knocks out all coal, and gas will be used only as a peaker. The national energy guarantee is effectively an emissions intensity scheme.

An abatement trajectory will have to be set for the decade, but the minister already has ruled out back-ending the emissions reduction task even though it would be very sensible to wait to see what the rest of the world does. Note that last year global emissions rose by 1.6 per cent. There may be some scope for small overs and unders from year to year, but this doesn’t really address the problem.

Having made our commitment to the Paris climate agreement and fallen into the trap of not subtracting the emissions of energy-intensive exporters as other nations have — the target would be 21 per cent to 23 per cent, rather than 26 per cent to 28 per cent, if we had done this — the best way forward is to allow retailers to acquit their emissions reduction requirements by buying carbon offsets.

These can be local — Australian carbon credit units (think local carbon farming) — and international. Either way, it is a far cheaper way of making our contribution to emissions reduction than through the labyrinthine national energy guarantee. (We will have to stop calling it the National Electricity Market; it simply won’t meet any definition of a market given the heavy-handed regulation, excessive direction and high penalties.)

The bottom line is the renewable energy industry has won. And this includes the big three vertically integrated players since they are heavily invested in renewables but will be able to milk their baseload assets in the ­interim.

Prices may be plateauing at the moment, but they will continue their upward path soon. Liddell will close in 2022, but it is in such a shocking state of disrepair its output will be unreliable in the meantime. The grid is regularly close to breaking point now. Large-scale, energy-intensive plants will close across time, leaving an economy dominated by the service sector and government. We will have thrown away one of our greatest sources of comparative advantage: cheap, reliable electricity.

SOURCE 

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

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

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19 June, 2018

Global warming may have ‘devastating’ effects on rice

This is a lulu of a study.  They didn't actually study warming at all.  They just studied CO2 levels.  They thus ignored that warming would produce more rice per acre.  In warm Indonesia, they get two crops a year. The extra CO2 also produced more rice, of course.  But the average nutrient content of the rice grains decreased -- which is what you would expect from  bigger crops using the same amount of land. 

So the only interesting question was the TOTAL amount of nutrients captured from the given acreage by the expanded crops.  It was most unlikely to be less and was probably more.  In summary, this eccentric study tells us nothing about the total amount of nutrients that would be provided by a crop under natural conditions


The change could be particularly dire in southeast Asia where rice is a major part of the daily diet, said the report in the journal Science Advances. “We are showing that global warming, climate change and particularly greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide — can have an impact on the nutrient content of plants we eat,” said co-author Adam Drewnowski, a professor at the University of Washington.

“This can have devastating effects on the rice-consuming countries where about 70% of the calories and most of the nutrients come from rice.” Protein and vitamin deficiencies can lead to growth-stunting, birth defects, diarrhoea, infections and early death.

Countries at most risk include those that consume the most rice and have the lowest gross domestic product (GDP), such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, Mr. Drewnowksi said.

The findings were based on field studies in Japan and China, simulating the amount of CO2 expected in the atmosphere by the second half of this century — 568 to 590 parts per million. Current levels are just over 400 ppm.

For the experiments, 18 different strains of rice were planted in open fields, surrounded in certain areas by 56-foot wide octagons of plastic piping that released extra CO2.

Researchers found that iron, zinc, protein, and vitamins B1, B2, B5, and B9 — which help the body convert food to energy — were all reduced in the rice grown under higher CO2 conditions. “Vitamin B1 (thiamine) levels decreased by 17.1%; average Vitamin B2 by 16.6%,” said the report.

SOURCE 






British reliance on French nuclear energy increases by more than quarter

The UK’s reliance on importing French power to keep the lights on has increased by almost a quarter this year in further evidence of Britain’s energy cost crunch.

Energy prices in Britain are now around a fifth higher than they were this time last year on the wholesale market.

Meanwhile, across the Channel, nuclear power plants have flooded France with cheap electricity which is being sold at a tidy profit to struggling British suppliers.

“French nuclear plants have been far more reliable this year to date than last year,” said Jamie Stewart, the ICIS Energy analyst, “which has kept a firm lid on French power prices.”

The stark fundamental differences between the UK and its biggest electricity trade partner have nudged British imports, via twin high-voltage sub-sea cables, to a total of 6.4 terawatt hours so far this year. Last year Britain imported less than 5TWh over the same period. Energy brokers at Marex Spectron told The Sunday Telegraph that the “anomalously strong” imports from France are closer in line with Britain’s winter appetite for foreign energy than typical summer trends. The trend has also re-energised industry debate over Britain’s energy trading future once it leaves the EU next year.

Even with the bumper imports of cheap French nuclear power, Britain’s energy prices remain around 20pc higher than last year in a major threat to energy companies braced for the Government’s price cap to descend on the market at the end of the year.

In response, suppliers have drawn the ire of ministers by raising the price of energy tariffs to survive the cost crunch. Many of the cheapest suppliers have shown signs of existential strain.

Iresa Energy, the energy minnow, slipped into default on the wholesale market for a third time last week, according to Elexon, the market administrator. Meanwhile, Bulb and First Utility, the Shell-owned supplier, have been forced to raise prices in the wake of tariff hikes from the “big six” suppliers.

UK power prices hit 10-year highs in March following the freezing temperatures brought by the “Beast from the East” and show no sign of returning to typical summer prices due to the strong price of gas. The Siberian storm drained gas from storage facilities across Europe in the final weeks of winter, making it more difficult for suppliers to replenish the stocks over the summer.

On the ICIS Power Index, a key benchmark for energy trends, the three-week rolling average price of wholesale power stands at £52.70/MWh after spending much of last year fluctuating between £42 and £48 per megawatt hour.

SOURCE 








Global Warming has Stopped And A Cooling Is Beginning”

Written by Henrik Svensmark

The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth.

If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.

Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.

But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.

It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.

The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result.

You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.

Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds.

When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then.

That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.

Ever since we put forward our theory in 1996, it has been subjected to very sharp criticism, which is normal in science.

First it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct, because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we completed experiments at DTU Space that demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic rays help to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.

Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory could not work in the real atmosphere, and therefore had no practical significance. We have just rejected that criticism emphatically.

It turns out that the Sun itself performs what might be called natural experiments. Giant solar eruptions can cause the cosmic ray intensity on earth to dive suddenly over a few days. In the days following an eruption, cloud cover can fall by about 4 per cent. And the amount of liquid water in cloud droplets is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Here is a very large effect – indeed so great that in popular terms the Earth’s clouds originate in space.

So we have watched the Sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern, since it began to wane in the mid-1990s.

That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that “we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.”

In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback.

The outcome may be that the Sun itself will demonstrate its importance for climate and so challenge the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable. A forecast saying it may be either warmer or colder for 50 years is not very useful, and science is not yet able to predict solar activity.

So in many ways we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting. I think it is important to accept that Nature pays no heed to what we humans think about it. Will the greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different from the greenhouse theory’s predictions. Perhaps it will become fashionable again to investigate the Sun’s impact on our climate.

SOURCE 







Stop Trying to Get Workers Out of Their Cars

"Smart growth" is dumb about commuting.

If you hate urban sprawl, you're probably familiar with the complaints of the "smart growth" movement: Roadways blight cities. Traffic congestion is the worst. Suburbanization harms the environment. Fortunately, say these smart growthers, there is an alternative: By piling on regulations and reallocating transportation-related tax money, we can "densify" our urban communities, allowing virtually everyone to live in a downtown area and forego driving in favor of walking or biking.

Smart growth proponents have been gaining influence for decades. They've implemented urban growth boundaries (which greatly restrict the development of land outside a defined area), up-zoning (which tries to increase densities in existing neighborhoods by replacing single-family homes with apartments), and "road diets" (which take away traffic lanes to make room for wider sidewalks and bike lanes).

Alas, there are inherent flaws in the "smart growth" approach—beginning with the idea that it makes sense for everyone to live and work in the same small area. In fact, that idea flies in the face of what economists call urban agglomeration.

Urban agglomeration is why there are more jobs in and around big cities. Job seekers have access to a large number of potential employers, which increases each person's likelihood of finding one that can make the best use of her unique talents and skills. The same is true for business owners, who have a much better chance of finding people in a large populous urban area who match their needs.

Transportation turns out to be a key factor in enabling these wealth-increasing transactions. Imagine drawing a circle around the location of your residence, defined by how far you are willing to commute to get to a satisfying job. The larger the radius of that circle, the more potential work opportunities you have. Likewise, a company's prospective-employee pool is defined by the number of people whose circles contain that company's location.

Most people measure that radius in time rather than distance; studies show they are generally unwilling to spend much more than 30 minutes commuting each way on a long-term basis. That means the size of their opportunity circle is critically dependent on how quickly they can get around.

Despite urban sprawl and ever-increasing congestion levels, economists Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson of the University of Southern California have documented, using census data, that average commute times in various metro areas have hardly changed at all over several decades. More recently, Alex Anas of the University of Buffalo modeled what would happen as a result of a projected 24 percent increase in Chicago's metro area population over three decades. He estimated that auto commute times would increase only 3 percent and transit trip times hardly at all. The reason is that people tend to change where they live or work in order to keep their travel times about the same. But this happy result comes about only if the transportation system expands accordingly.

A recent empirical study from the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University likewise found that, on average, the labor market of an urban area (defined as the number of jobs reachable within a one-hour commute) nearly doubles when the workforce of the metro area doubles. The commute time increases by an average of only about 7 percent, however—assuming an efficient region-wide transportation network. To achieve higher economic productivity, they recommend fostering speedier rather than slower commuting; more rather than less commuting; and longer rather than shorter commutes.

These policies would expand the opportunity circles of employers and employees, enabling a more productive urban economy. But these are exactly the opposite of the policy prescriptions of smart growth, which generally seek to confine people's economic activity to a small portion of a larger metro area.

One early manifestation of this was the attempt by urban and transportation planners in the '80s and '90s to promote "jobs-housing balance," where each county of a large metro area has comparable percentages of the region's jobs and of its housing. The rationale was that this would reduce "excessive" commuting by enabling people to find work close to their homes. But urban agglomeration theory makes it clear that that is a recipe for a low-productivity urban economy. Census data show that many suburban areas are now approaching jobs-housing balance on their own, but this does not necessarily reduce commute distances—to get to the jobs they want, many people still travel across boundaries.

A fascinating example is Arlington County, Virginia. Since 2000, the number of jobs and the number of working residents in the county have been approximately equal. But it turns out that only 52 percent of those working residents have jobs in the county. Out of 582,000 resident workers, 280,000 commute to adjacent counties or the District of Columbia. And out of 574,000 jobs in the county, 272,000 are filled by workers from other places.

A less extreme version of smart growth says that we should discourage car travel and shift resources heavily toward transit. People should be encouraged to live in high-density "villages" where they can easily obtain transit service to jobs elsewhere in the metro area. The problem with this vision is the inability of transit to effectively compete with the auto highway system.

Simply put, cars work better for workers. A 2012 Brookings study analyzing data from 371 transit providers in America's largest 100 metro areas found that over three-fourths of all jobs are in neighborhoods with transit service—but only about a quarter of those jobs can be reached by transit within 90 minutes. That's more than three times the national average commute time.

Another study, by Andrew Owen and David Levinson of the University of Minnesota, looked at job access via transit in 46 of the 50 largest metro areas. Their data combined actual in-vehicle time with estimated walking time at either end of the transit trip, to approximate total door-to-door travel time. Only five of the 46 metro areas have even a few percent of their jobs accessible by transit within half an hour. All the others have 1 percent or less. Within 60 minutes door-to-door, the best cities have 15–22 percent of jobs reachable by transit.

Meanwhile, Owen and Levinson found that in 31 of the 51 largest metro areas in 2010, 100 percent of jobs could be reached by car in 30 minutes or less. Within 40 minutes, all the jobs could be reached by car in 39 of the cities. Within an hour, essentially every job in all 51 places could be reached by car. The roadway network is ubiquitous, connecting every possible origin to every destination. The contrast with access via transit—let alone walking or biking—is profound.

SOURCE 






The darkness of the Green/Left

The new movie "First Reformed" is being lauded by critics and described as the magnum opus of director and screenwriter Paul Schrader. He found fame with his screenplay for the 1976 classic Taxi Driver, and his movies often feature alienated protagonists who grapple with the evil in society and in themselves. This film is one of Schrader’s most personal, and charts the disillusionment, despair and apostasy of a pastor from the Dutch Reformed tradition — the style of Protestantism in which Schrader was raised, but later abandoned.

The symbolism of First Reformed is complex and open to interpretation. But if comments made by Schrader are any indication, his latest work is a sobering testament to the dark, increasingly dangerous religion of leftist politics.

Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) lives in quiet agony, preaching to the smattering of parishioners who attend his church on Sunday morning. Throughout the week he gives tours of the austere 18th-century sanctuary, which is derided as “the museum” by the pastor (Cedric Kyles) of the local megachurch that funds him. Toller lives like a lonely monk in his unfurnished rectory, scribbling thoughts of hope and despair in his journal between shots of whiskey. At length we learn he had been a military chaplain, whose marriage collapsed when he lost a son in Iraq, and whose faith is likewise threatening to buckle. Often he wanders the church graveyard and repairs its fallen tombstones — the emblems of a dying faith in which he is losing hope.

“If only I could pray,” he laments to himself.

When a pregnant congregant named Mary (Amanda Seyfried) seeks counsel for her troubled husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), Toller finds an alternative to his decrepit traditional Christianity. Michael introduces him to the catechism of climate change — a faith that addresses the contemporary political issues Schrader cares about, and comes complete with its own prophets of doom, its own activist martyrs and its own unquestioned orthodoxy. Like Schrader, who has claimed he does not believe humanity will survive the century, Michael believes the end is nigh. The original sin incurring this looming judgment is corporate capitalism, which has merged with right-wing American evangelicalism to render them indistinguishable. Against these Schrader uses his film to issue a snarling indictment.

When Toller discovers that his own church is underwritten by a major polluter, he obtains an epiphany. Terminally ill from the pollution he has inflicted upon himself, he embraces the dogma of despair. His great dilemma becomes the choice between suicide and the mass killing of those he deems guilty. Having lost faith in the traditional Christian God, Toller dethrones Him and seeks to install himself as the judge and executioner of those heretics that transgress his new environmentalist gospel. “I have found another form of prayer,” he says, overlooking a ravaged landscape while strapped in a suicide vest. The movie’s cryptic, unsatisfying ending will leave many viewers scratching their heads, wondering if Schrader is actually saying what he seems to be saying.

Is Schrader hiding behind his art a radical political message? It may be telling that his protagonist shares his name with Ernst Toller, a Marxist revolutionary and playwright. Three days after the 2016 presidential election, Schrader posted on Facebook that Trump’s victory was a call to arms. “I felt the call to violence in the 60s and I feel it now again,” he wrote. “This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violence [sic] resistance. We should be willing to take arms.” Schrader closed his comments by commending to his readers the example of John Brown, the radical 19th-century abolitionist whose bloody solutions to social ills helped plunge the nation into civil war. (It is likely not a coincidence that Rev. Toller reflects upon his church’s abolitionist past when plotting his murderous vengeance.)

Further reflection led Schrader to delete his post and blame it on “a couple of cabernets and half an Ambien.” But the dark themes of First Reformed call into question his repentance. On the contrary, it is one of the clearest depictions yet that some on the progressive left have replaced Christianity with a new religion. Fueled by raging despair and an apocalyptic fear of climate change, this radical new faith possesses the same self-assured dogmatism exhibited by the severest strains of the one Schrader fled in his youth. But it is untempered by mercy, hope or the humble reluctance to cast the first stone.

At the very least, First Reformed acknowledges that the end of this new religion is madness and blood.

SOURCE 

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

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

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18 June, 2018

Rebellion in Canada: Ontario’s New Premier Announces End Of Cap-and-Trade Carbon Tax

Incoming government will use every power available to challenge federal government’s authority to impose a carbon tax on Ontario families, individuals and small businesses

TORONTO — Premier-designate Doug Ford today announced that his cabinet’s first act following the swearing-in of his government will be to cancel Ontario’s current cap-and-trade scheme, and challenge the federal government’s authority to impose a carbon tax on the people of Ontario.

“I made a promise to the people that we would take immediate action to scrap the cap-and-trade carbon tax and bring their gas prices down,” said Ford. “Today, I want to confirm that as a first step to lowering taxes in Ontario, the carbon tax’s days are numbered.”

Ford also announced that Ontario would be serving notice of its withdrawal from the joint agreement linking Ontario, Quebec and California’s cap-and-trade markets as well as the pro-carbon tax Western Climate Initiative. The Premier-designate confirmed that he has directed officials to immediately take steps to withdraw Ontario from future auctions for cap-and-trade credits. The government will provide clear rules for the orderly wind down of the cap-and-trade program.

Finally, Ford announced that he will be issuing specific directions to his incoming attorney general to use all available resources at the disposal of the government to challenge the federal government’s authority to arbitrarily impose a carbon tax on Ontario families.

“Eliminating the carbon tax and cap-and-trade is the right thing to do and is a key component in our plan to bring your gas prices down by 10 cents per litre,” said Ford. “It also sends a clear message that things are now different. No longer will Ontario’s government answer to insiders, special interests and elites. Instead, we will now have a government for the people. Help is here.”

SOURCE 






Zwally doubles down

Zwally appears to be a Warmist but he is standing by his research findings about Antarctica -- which are in stark contrast to the model-driven and assumptions-filled conclusions discussed here yesterday

Antarctica Not Losing Ice, NASA Researcher Finds.  NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally says his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.

Is Antarctica melting or is it gaining ice? A recent paper claims Antarctica’s net ice loss has dramatically increased in recent years, but forthcoming research will challenge that claim.

NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally first challenged the “consensus” on Antarctica in 2015 when he published a paper showing ice sheet growth in eastern Antarctica outweighed the losses in the western ice sheet.

Zwally will again challenge the prevailing narrative of how global warming is affecting the South Pole. Zwally said his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.

Much like in 2015, Zwally’s upcoming study will run up against the so-called “consensus,” including a paper published by a team of 80 scientists in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The paper estimates that Antarctic is losing, on net, more than 200 gigatons of ice a year, adding 0.02 inches to annual sea level rise.

“Basically, we agree about West Antarctica,” Zwally told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “East Antarctica is still gaining mass. That’s where we disagree.”

Reported ice melt mostly driven by instability in the western Antarctic ice sheet, which is being eaten away from below by warm ocean water. Scientists tend to agree ice loss has increased in western Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula has increased.

Measurements of the eastern ice sheet, however, are subject to high levels of uncertainty. That’s where disagreements are.

“In our study East Antarctic remains the least certain part of Antarctica for sure,” Andrew Shepherd, the study’s lead author and professor at the University of Leeds, told TheDCNF.

“Although there is relatively large variability over shorter periods, we don’t detect any significant long-term trend over 25 years,” Shepherd said.

However, Zwally’s working on a paper that will show the eastern ice sheet is expanding at a rate that’s enough to at least offset increased losses the west.

The ice sheets are “very close to balance right now,” Zwally said. He added that balance could change to net melting in the future with more warming.

So, why is there such a big difference between Zwally’s research and what 80 scientists recently published in the journal Nature?

There are several reasons for the disagreement, but the biggest is how researchers make what’s called a glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which takes into account the movement of the Earth under ice sheets.

Scientists use models to measure the movement of land mass in response to changes the ice sheet sitting on top. For example, Zwally said eastern Antarctica’s land mass has been going down in response to ice sheet mass gains.

That land movement effects ice sheet data, especially in Antarctica where small errors in GIA can yield big changes ice sheet mass balance — whether ice is growing or shrinking. There are also differences in how researchers model firn compaction and snowfall accumulation.

“It needs to be known accurately,” Zwally said. “It’s an error of being able to model. These are models that estimate the motions of the Earth under the ice.”

Zwally’s 2015 study said an isostatic adjustment of 1.6 millimeters was needed to bring satellite “gravimetry and altimetry” measurements into agreement with one another.

Shepherd’s paper cites Zwally’s 2015 study several times, but only estimates eastern Antarctic mass gains to be 5 gigatons a year — yet this estimate comes with a margin of error of 46 gigatons.

Zwally, on the other hand, claims ice sheet growth is anywhere from 50 gigatons to 200 gigatons a year.

SOURCE 






British fire disaster caused by Warmist rules

Though the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry has only just begun, a leaked interim report makes clear that one of the principle reasons for the fire was the use of flammable cladding added to the outside of the building by the contractors Rydon.

The cladding was there to shield insulation from weather damage. But, tragically, it carried the initial fire, which started in one flat, between the floors of the tower block.

Former housing secretary, now home secretary, Sajid Javid has claimed that the cladding that the developers used was in breach of fire regulations, because it was flammable. But he was trying to pass the buck. The fire regulations only state that the insulation should be fire resistant, not the cladding that protects it.

In hindsight, it is easy to see that Grenfell’s refurbishment made the building unsafe. But why was the building refurbished in this way in the first place?

The ‘policy context’ for the Grenfell Tower Regeneration Project, according to its ‘sustainability and energy statement’, is the Climate Change Act of 2008. ‘The council recognises the government’s targets to reduce national carbon dioxide emissions’, and ‘to deliver this, the council will’ carry out its plan for ‘conversions and refurbishments of 800m2 or more of residential developments’.

In its 2013-17 housing strategy, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea boasted that it had ‘agreed to clad a high-rise block in the north of the borough’ – Grenfell Tower – as part of the ‘greener housing’ strategy to ‘mitigate the causes of and adapt to the effects likely to occur due to climate change’.

The Climate Change Act was passed as part of the government’s commitment to meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, which came into effect in 2005, to reduce greenhouse gases.

The Kyoto targets and those of the Climate Change Act are ambitious. Even before 2008, developers and architects were worried about environmental impact. On his election to the presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Paul Hyett announced ‘a crusade through which British architects and the RIBA address both their obligations to future generations – with respect to the delivery of a truly sustainable environment’.

At first, climate campaigners looked at industry. But the evidence showed that homes were a major source of carbon emissions. ‘They’re responsible for 31 per cent of energy consumed here’, protested environmentalist George Monbiot in his 2006 book Heat, arguing that the answer was government-enforced refurbishment.

In 2010, environment secretary Ed Miliband published a report, Warm Homes, Greener Homes, which identified social-housing projects as key to saving energy and reducing carbon emissions. It identified social housing as having ‘the potential to make a big contribution in… reducing carbon emissions from homes’. Because social housing is generally ‘in large purpose-built blocks, or on large estates, where social tenants remain the majority tenure’, it offers ‘carbon-reduction measures at scale’, it argued.

Note that Miliband identified social tenants as being more likely to support such measures. That is not because they are necessarily more supportive of carbon reduction, but because they have fewer rights than homeowners, and so are more easy to direct. Miliband wanted to ‘kickstart the installation of more ambitious eco-upgrades, with social housing providing particular leadership to stimulate the industry and reduce costs’. Now that social housing was on the frontline of the carbon-reduction campaign, social tenants were targeted for refurbishment measures, including cladding insulation.

Overall, the trend in building was to put much greater stress on reducing carbon emissions. Part L of the Building Regulations covers energy and has been successively expanded to oblige developers to make savings. As a consequence, many more ‘new materials’, often different kinds of plastics, have been fixed to the exterior of buildings. At the same time, Part B of the Building Regulations, which deals with fire safety, has not kept pace – so that the kind of cladding that Rydon put around its insulation was not prohibited. The shift in the Building Regulations betrays official thinking regarding residents: reducing their carbon emissions is a priority, but their safety is not.

The Climate Change Act was taken on board by successive London mayors and integrated into London’s housing plan. The 2014 housing plan said, ‘the mayor is committed to a targeted programme of retrofitting and upgrading the capital’s existing housing stock’. Then mayor Boris Johnson promised to ‘work with partners towards the environmental retrofitting of all London’s affordable housing’, leading to reductions of ‘up to 600,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum’.

In its 2009 Carbon Management Plan, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea set out its commitment to the Climate Change Act: ‘The Act sets the UK’s domestic targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050… under the Act local authorities will have a duty to reduce their carbon emissions.’

The planning application for the Grenfell Tower Regeneration Project set out the borough’s goals, principally ‘the complete overcladding of the exterior’. The ‘overcladding works are an integral part of the upgrade of the heating of the building’ and its ‘energy efficiency’, it said.

Why overcladding, you might ask? Energy was at the forefront of the council’s thinking. In its consultations with the tenants, the council saw the cladding as offering ‘a dramatic improvement in heat loss’ that would ‘generate significant energy savings’. As the application explained, ‘this project targets the main environmental deficiency of Grenfell Tower at its root: it is hugely wasteful of energy’. ‘The improved envelope performance and proposed replacement heating system reflect current energy standards for new residential buildings’, it said.

Grenfell Tower was not the only London block that was refurbished to meet the ideals of reducing carbon emissions. In Newham, the 23-storey Ferrier Point was also refurbished by contractors Rydon. According to the council’s sustainability strategy, the refubishment was ‘proposed to adopt a target of 60 per cent carbon reductions… in line with the government’s emission-reduction target’. In Camden, the Chalcots estate was also refurbished by Rydon, ‘a refurbishment designed to improve the estate’s carbon footprint’.

Since the fire, the London mayor’s office has lost its enthusiasm for retrofitting: ‘The tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire has raised urgent and wide-ranging questions that must be answered over the safety of many older high-rise residential buildings, particularly those built in the 1960s and 70s that have been retrofitted’, reads the 2017 Housing Strategy.

The refurbishments at Ferrier Point and the Chalcots estate are under review, and will most likely be reversed, as will the three refurbishments at Mount Wise in Plymouth, and in all likelihood a great many more. Currently, the government has admitted that some 299 buildings have failed to meet fire standards. Refurbishment, it turns out, was a false economy.

Refurbishment, of course, does not have to make buildings dangerous. In the end, the use of flammable panels was the problem – whether or not the fault for that lies at the door of Rydon or with the government for permitting it. But extensive refurbishment was bound to introduce greater complexity and therefore greater risks. On the whole, it would be better to rebuild older estates from scratch. Refurbishment is the conservative option. On this point, we have to agree with mayor Sadiq Khan: ‘If it is not possible to safely retrofit existing buildings, the mayor believes government should ensure resources are made available to demolish them and replace the social housing like for like.’

But there are barriers to such an approach. First, councils’ spending and borrowing is capped, which makes it difficult for them to rebuild without involving private developers. Second, tenants – and leaseholders – do not trust rebuilding programmes, and with good reason. Their experience is that they are priced out of the new developments, either through much higher rents or, if they are leaseholders, because the compulsory purchase price is much less than the cost of a comparable flat on the newly built estate. Partnerships between councils and private developers generally lead to a substantial loss of original tenants, between the ‘decanting’ and the opening of the new block.

The country’s housing has for too long been dominated by excessive caution about building, coupled with indifference to safety.

SOURCE 






UK: Scandal of 'killer' wood burning stoves and the question - is the political class’s obsession with global warming rotting their brains?

Amazing backflips show they have no clue about what they are doing

The Government earned plaudits from the green lobby yesterday for its new plan to crack down on the craze for wood-burning stoves.

As the Mail reported on its front page, the stoves chuck out lethal pollution, particularly from wet wood, and contribute to thousands of early deaths from lung and heart disease.

But hang on! One reason Britain burns more wood than it has done for decades — a 2016 survey found 7.5 per cent of households in London burn wood — is that only recently, the Government and the greens told us burning wood to heat our homes was the best thing we could do for the environment.

Wood is ‘sustainable’, we were told. It gives off less CO2 than any other heating. It will help us save the planet and meet CO2 reduction targets under the Climate Change Act.

As a result of these persuasive arguments, about 1.5 million British homes have wood-burning stoves and 200,000 more are sold every year.

Now we learn that wood-burning is the single biggest source of tiny soot particles called PM2.5s — they are also emitted by burning coal and diesel — which go into our lungs and are said to be responsible for an estimated 37,800 premature deaths a year.

Given these horrific facts, why have governments in recent years made wood-burning such a core part of energy policy? For there is no doubt ministers have been desperate to encourage it.

There is just one issue. Health problems apart, the whole thing is an economic disaster.

Only last week we had a withering report from MPs on the Public Accounts Committee about the failings of something called the ‘Renewable Heat Incentive’, a scheme launched in 2011 by Chris Huhne when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

The idea was to offer lavish subsidies to businesses and homeowners to cut their ‘carbon emissions’, and save on energy bills, by centrally heating their premises by burning wood pellets. Participants could only qualify if they installed specific expensive renewable heating systems — as opposed to wood-burners bought by homeowners simply trying to be eco-friendly.

The MPs found that, although the scheme will cost taxpayers a staggering £23 billion in subsidies in the next 20 years, the high upfront costs meant take-up has been shamefully low.

Just 35,000 households have invested in it since its launch, while 6.2 million have installed very much cheaper gas heating over the same period.

The committee declared that the Government utterly failed to take account of the serious health risks posed by wood burning, while, thanks to the subsidies on offer, too many unscrupulous people had ‘gamed’ the system just to make money.

But last week’s report was far from the first time the Renewable Heat Incentive has given rise to a major scandal.

A version of the scheme — with even more lavish subsidies — ran so totally out of control in Northern Ireland in 2016 that it led to the downfall of the government there, sparking a political crisis that, 17 months later, is not resolved.

The crisis arose from the discovery that its subsidy bill had already hit £500 million and by 2020 was due to top £1 billion.

So generous was the Northern Irish scheme to businesses, offering £160 for every £100 they spent on wood chips, that firms used it to heat disused warehouses and long-empty offices, knowing the more they spent on wood chips the greater their profit would be.

Some users of the scheme kept heating systems running flat out night and day because they made such a profit from the subsidy scheme.

But even this disgracefully wasteful affair is dwarfed by what has become one of the most controversial green energy schemes of all: the conversion of boilers at the giant Drax power station in Yorkshire from coal to wood pellets, costing us all £800 million a year in subsidies.

Millions of tonnes of wood pellets are now needed by Drax every year, and since it is impossible to supply that quantity domestically, vast amounts of pellets are shipped 3,500 miles to Yorkshire from the U.S., where forests are destroyed to supply them.

As with the Government’s endorsement of wood-burning stoves and its Renewable Heat Incentive scheme, the idea behind Drax’s conversion to wood pellets is that burning trees or ‘biomass’ is ‘carbon neutral’ because eventually new, CO2-absorbing trees will grow to replace the ones that have been felled.

Yet a series of studies has confirmed what should have been obvious. It takes decades to grow a mature CO2-absorbing tree to replace a CO2-producing tree that can be cut down in seconds. Far from cutting Drax’s CO2 emissions, the largest power station in Britain gives off even more CO2 than when it just burnt coal.

Even the most ardent green activist groups have protested that chopping down millions of acres of forest in America to fuel a system that ends up chucking out more CO2 is an absurd ecological disaster.

This was even endorsed in a report last year by Duncan Brack, who had been a special adviser to Chris Huhne when this scheme was first being discussed.

The bitter truth is that these fiascos caused by our obsession with wood-burning are just a part of a larger disaster that taints almost every green scheme governments have foisted on Britain in the quest to reduce carbon emissions.

Remember why the Blair government in 2001 encouraged millions of motorists to switch to driving diesel cars through offering tax subsidies. It was because Blair’s chief scientific adviser Sir David King had decided that diesel gives off much less CO2 than petrol.

Eventually, it turned out that the pollution (in the form of those PM2.5 particles and toxic nitrogen oxides) emitted by diesels posed such a serious health risk it could be causing thousands of premature deaths in Britain every year.

And so, with a screeching U-turn, all the tax incentives encouraging us to buy diesel cars were reversed and diesel drivers were penalised. In this week’s latest proposed measures, the Government plans to clamp down not just on wood-burning stoves, but also even further on diesel vehicles.

The real question is why do our gullible politicians constantly deceive themselves and the rest of us with their endless, ever-more costly ‘green’ schemes which turn out to be nothing of the kind and actually increase pollution?

It is all very well MPs coming out with yet another report on yet another green energy fiasco. But why is it always only after the damage has been done? Why can’t they properly evaluate these green initiatives before they happen?

The fact is that not one of these schemes comes into being without having been nodded through Parliament.  In that sense our MPs are as much a party to these disasters as the ministers who propose them.

It’s as if the political class’s obsession with global warming rots their brains — for which the rest of us have to pay a very heavy price.

SOURCE 





Prominent Swiss Meteorologist Says Blaming Weather Events On Climate Change “Unscientific Idiocy”

No one understands the causes of weather better than highly experienced meteorologists. And so when it comes to questions about extreme weather events, there is no one better to ask than prominent Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann (or Joe Bastardi in the US).

Yesterday at Twitter the veteran, high-profile Swiss meteorologist Kachelmann tweeted about an interview he had given with Austrian online magazine profil.at on the topic of extreme weather in Europe, and how the interview was withdrawn before publication.

The main reason behind the withdrawal was Mr. Kachelmann taking issue with what he viewed as low-blow journalism by profil.at, who in the introduction needlessly brought up the phony rape charges lodged against Kachelmann 8 years ago by a scornful ex-girlfriend.

Though the former German flagship ARD television meteorologist was cleared of the charges and got through the legal ordeal, his reputation tragically did not survive the media feeding frenzy and gutter journalism.

To make a long story short, Kachelmann yesterday simply posted a draft of the unpublished profil.at interview at Twitter, before later taking it down.

But I managed to read it and so now report on its content.

In the interview, Profil.at questioned Kachelmann about the warmer European springs, weather extremes, serious scientists, and other issues.

On the subject of the recent warmer springs and more severe thunderstorm activity, Kachelmann responded that it has gotten warmer, but that the alleged higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events has more to do with hype coming from places like Facebook and click-hungry Internet sites.

Kachelmann added it’s normal for large weather patterns “to act up” and that it “has nothing to do with climate change”.

However he does attribute the warmer temperatures and higher humidity to climate change and that it is “statistically significant”, but then reminds that the statistics for weather extremes have yet to be shown as being significant.

When asked about climate denialism and why people like Donald Trump get votes with climate change denialism, the Swiss meteorologist says: “There’s a lack of scientific knowledge on both sides.”

Next he cited examples from on social media:

"Over the last weeks I’ve seen so many completely senseless tweets from Greenpeace and green politicians, who wish to blame without any doubt the daily weather on climate change, often with fake statistics, and so climate deniers are not alone. Serious scientists are working quietly between the embarrassing megaphones on both sides.”

Blame measurement instruments?

"As an example of just how absurd the media can be, in the interview profil.at unwittingly displayed a remarkable ignorance of climate (which all-too often prevails among the climate-ambulance-chasing-media) in posing the question: “Are there reliable instruments today that would allow us to determine if a weather event can be attributed to climate change, or indeed to the weather pattern at hand?”

Blaming weather on climate change “idiocy”

Kachelman answers by telling profil.at that weather events unfortunately don’t come with a certificate of origin, and any claim that they do needs to be viewed as “unscientific idiocy”.

SOURCE 

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

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

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17 June, 2018

Antarctica Still Doing Just Great, Shock!

In his article below James Delingpole has provided a good demolition of the latest scare story.  I dismissed the story rather peremptorily a couple of days ago so Delingpole adds some welcome mockery of the claims. I note from the journal abstract that a sea level rise of 3.7 mm (7.6 - 3.9)is within the range of their estimates of sea-level rise over the last 25 years.  That is just a small fraction of one inch, probably unnoticeable

This has been the global warming scare story of the week, heavily promoted by the usual suspects, including Time, CBS, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New York Timesand, inevitably, the BBC. Here is the BBC version:


"Antarctica is shedding ice at an accelerating rate.

Satellites monitoring the state of the White Continent indicate some 200 billion tonnes a year are now being lost to the ocean as a result of melting.

This is pushing up global sea levels by 0.6mm annually – a three-fold increase since 2012 when the last such assessment was undertaken.

Scientists report the new numbers in the journal Nature.

Governments will need to take account of the information and its accelerating trend as they plan future defences to protect low-lying coastal communities.

The researchers say the losses are occurring predominantly in the West of the continent, where warm waters are getting under and melting the fronts of glaciers that terminate in the ocean.

“We can’t say when it started – we didn’t collect measurements in the sea back then,” explained Prof Andrew Shepherd, who leads the Ice sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (Imbie).

“But what we can say is that it’s too warm for Antarctica today. It’s about half a degree Celsius warmer than the continent can withstand and it’s melting about five metres of ice from its base each year, and that’s what’s triggering the sea-level contribution that we’re seeing,” he told BBC News."


So it’s over, right? The Warmunists were right, the deniers were wrong and global warming is a super serial crisis we need to deal with NOW not the day after tomorrow…

Actually no.

The first thing to note is that the study is published in Nature, which is alarmist central and therefore to be treated with a degree of skepticism.

If you read the abstract, it’s actually pretty dry and unexciting.


"The Antarctic Ice Sheet is an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Here we combine satellite observations of its changing volume, flow and gravitational attraction with modelling of its surface mass balance to show that it lost 2,720?±?1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, which corresponds to an increase in mean sea level of 7.6?±?3.9 millimetres (errors are one standard deviation). Over this period, ocean-driven melting has caused rates of ice loss from West Antarctica to increase from 53?±?29 billion to 159?±?26 billion tonnes per year; ice-shelf collapse has increased the rate of ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula from 7?±?13 billion to 33?±?16 billion tonnes per year. We find large variations in and among model estimates of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment for East Antarctica, with its average rate of mass gain over the period 1992–2017 (5 ± 46 billion tonnes per year) being the least certain."


But such is the way of climate alarmism is that the scientists involved have to talk up their findings and make them sound scary. Then the mainstream media adds its spin to make them scarier still.

The reality is more prosaic. Those dramatic sea level rises, for example.

Despite the apocalyptic headline, ice loss has only been contributing about 0.3mm a year to sea level rise, about an inch per century. Given that sea levels have been rising at around 8 inches a century since the 19thC, there is no evidence that this is not a long term phenomenon we are seeing.

Then, again per Homewood, there’s the issue of reliability.

Then there is the question of the accuracy of measurements. A major study by NASA in 2015 discovered that Antarctic ice mass has actually been increasing since 1992, basically because of greater snowfall, and not decreasing as this new study claims.

In reality, measurements of ice mass are not exact and are subject to huge margins of error.

And it’s not as though scientists have records going back long enough (Antarctica is a big, inhospitable place: remember Captain Scott?) to get any proper historical perspective:

Indeed as Shephard himself is forced to admit, we did not start collecting data until 1992. This sort of melting could have been going on for centuries or longer. In fact, another paper published this month by Kingslake et al finds that there has been  extensive retreat and re-advance of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Holocene.

As Shephard also remarks, the melting in West Antarctica is due to the intrusion of warmer water, and therefore nothing at all to do with GHGs or “global warming”. It is highly unlikely that such changes in ocean currents have not happened many times before.

Just to repeat that key point: scientists only been collecting data since the year REM released Automatic for the People. Not really that long ago in the great scheme of things.

Finally, there’s the awkward matter – awkward if you’re a warmist trying to generate climate alarm, that is – of context.

“Antarctica loses three trillion tonnes of ice in 25 years” sounds like a serious problem.

Until you realize how big Antarctica is. As David Middleton has calculated at Watts Up With That? three trillion metric tons is something the Antarctic can lose quite comfortably.

In a story headlined ‘Good News! 99.989% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Didn’t Melt!’, Middleton reminds us that most of the Antarctic is still there.

One of his readers below has done the math on what three trillion metric tons of ice-melt-caused sea rise looks like.

3 Trillion Metric Tons of mass equates to 7.6mm Sea Level Rise. (2.54mm per inch is 7.62 for 3?)
3T Tons sounds like a lot but reality is, 1 trillion tons equates to 1? of sea level rise.

Not very much.

Big global warming scare story over. Until they come up with a new one next week.

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






Federal Judge Stumps Trial Lawyers Handling NYC’s Climate Lawsuit With One Question

A federal judge posed a question to lawyers representing New York City in its global warming lawsuit against five major oil companies — does the city invest in fossil fuels?

The answer is an unambiguous yes, but attorneys representing the city told U.S. District Court Judge John Keenan they “don’t know,” further arguing that fact was “beyond the scope of the pleadings” during a court hearing on Tuesday.

Keenan didn’t seem to buy it and pressed attorney Matthew Pawa on whether or not New York City was trying to relitigate failed attempts to get a monetary judgment on damages allegedly caused by man-made warming.

New York City filed its lawsuit against oil companies in January, demanding compensation for damages allegedly caused by global warming, including future damages. The city hired the firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP to handle its suit in exchange for a share of any winnings — potentially billions of dollars.

Keenan heard arguments on Tuesday on whether or not New York City’s lawsuit should be dismissed. Pawa argued carbon dioxide emissions from oil companies products constituted a “nuisance,” but Keenan didn’t seem to buy it.

“I don’t think it’s hard to take judicial notice of the fact the city police department has a lot of cars, that the firehouse has trucks,” Keenan said. “Isn’t the plaintiff using the product that is the subject of this lawsuit?”

Pawa admitted the city used fossil fuels, but said the question wasn’t pertinent to defendants’ — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell — motion to dismiss the case.

After huddling with co-counsel, Pawa also said: “We don’t know the answer to that your honor” when asked about the city’s fossil fuel investments.

Pawa’s answer was odd given New York City announced earlier this year it would divest from fossil fuel assets within five years. The announcement was made the same time Mayor Bill De Blasio announced their lawsuit against oil companies — the very case Pawa was arguing in court.

“In total, the City’s five pension funds hold roughly $5 billion in the securities of over 190 fossil fuel companies,” reads the city’s January news release on divestment. “The City’s move is among the most significant divestment efforts in the world to date.”

Pawa did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment on why he told Judge Keenan he did not know if the city was invested in fossil fuel companies.

Hagens Berman is handling lawsuits for at least three other local governments — San Francisco, Oakland and King County, Wa. All these suits are against the same five oil companies. The firm handles these cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning they get a percentage of any winnings.

The firm Seeger Weiss LLP is also handling New York City’s lawsuit, and the firm Sher Edling LLP is handling lawsuits for six California cities and counties against fossil fuel companies. These firms are also working for a percentage of any winnings.

The suits allege global warming violate state nuisance and trespassing laws, which have sometimes been applied to pollution. Trial lawyers also accused energy companies of trying to downplay the harms their products allegedly cause.

In March, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said plaintiff’s attempts to show oil companies conspired to cover up global warming science “shows nothing of the sort,” according to a journalist present at the hearing.

SOURCE




      
GM golden rice gets approval from food regulators in the US

GOLDEN rice, which has been genetically modified to prevent blindness in undernourished children, was judged safe to eat last week by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The rice contains extra genes that make a precursor to vitamin A, which is vital for preventing childhood blindness. A single helping can supply half the recommended daily intake of vitamin A, according to its developers at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. The genes also give it its distinctive golden hue.

The nod by the FDA makes the US the fourth country to approve the rice this year, behind Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Having the rice cleared in these countries means there would be no regulatory issues if they imported food containing small quantities of the rice.

But its developer says the most important approvals are still awaited in the Philippines and Bangladesh, where the rice could have the greatest impact. Applications were lodged there last year.

SOURCE




Natural gas pipelines key to U.S. energy policy

 Today we need a rational discussion on energy policy that isn’t run by a single group or agenda. There aren’t any perfect solutions, because we don’t live in a perfect world. We need to evaluate and manage the risks and rewards from different energy sources; and we need consumers, business owners, energy companies and environmentalists to let their voices be heard.

What form of energy is abundant, easy to transport and store and burns cleaner than oil or coal? Flummoxed? It’s natural gas. But because it’s not a “green” energy source, environmentalists have waged war against new natural gas pipelines across the country — especially in the Northeast. This opposition is misguided and harmful to individuals, business owners, the environment and our national security.

To maintain a first-world standard of living, a nation needs abundant, affordable and reliable sources of energy, and natural gas checks all boxes. It’s abundant, with U.S. natural gas production more than 28.8 million mcfs (million cubic feet), according to the Energy Information Administration. At less than $3/mcf, it’s affordable; and the United States had marketed production of 73.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2017. Production for 2018 and 2019 is forecast to be over 10 percent and 12 percent higher, respectively.

It’s also the cleanest burning fossil fuel. Natural gas produces almost 50 percent less CO2 than anthracite coal, and more than 25 percent less than diesel fuel and heating oil. Some utility companies are forced to use coal or heating oil as substitutes when there’s not enough available natural gas. When environmental activists stop construction of natural gas pipelines, this increases carbon emissions and air pollution — contrary to their stated goals.

While there are inherent risks with pipelines, it’s in a natural gas company’s best interest to make it as safe as possible. Energy companies don’t want to see a pipeline break and have to reimburse a property owner or individual for damages. They just want energy to flow from Point A to Point B with a minimum of expense.

The state of Massachusetts imports liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Yemen, instead of allowing pipelines to be built. Other Northeast states have similar anti-pipeline policies. This is why the cost of electricity is 19-20 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), compared to a national average of 12-13 cents/kWh, versus 9 cents/kWh in Texas. This keeps America more dependent on foreign energy and gives Middle Eastern nations and Russia an advantage in the world energy marketplace. In my opinion, it also compromises our national security.

Environmental activists who oppose natural gas pipelines because they blindly hate all fossil fuels, and/or President Donald Trump, are acting contrary to their stated interests of lower carbon emissions. And the unintended consequences are higher energy prices and a lower standard of living. However, there are some who understand the consequences of this misguided opposition. Patrick Moore, the co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace, said this:


“… I do not accept that the environmental movement should be given a veto over national energy or economic policy. That is for elected governments.

“My strong conviction on who should, and should not, have a veto on environmental issues stems from years of international sustainability work. I’ve had several meetings lately in India on issues around energy and agriculture. About 300 million people, mostly farmers, are without electricity in India. Yet environmental scientists have blocked virtually every hydroelectric project recently proposed to provide electricity, irrigation and flood control.

“As a result of this effective environmental veto, India has embarked on a massive build-out of coal-fired power plants that blacken the skies and provide no irrigation or flood control. This is what results from misguided campaigns led by ill-informed activists who do not think about the consequences of their wrong-headed positions, and demand veto power.

“Let’s avoid this notion of providing a single interest group with a veto over important aspects of energy policy, including pipelines. And while we’re at it, let’s avoid making decisions on crucial energy infrastructure on the basis of sensationalism, misinformation and fear.”


Today we need a rational discussion on energy policy that isn’t run by a single group or agenda. There aren’t any perfect solutions, because we don’t live in a perfect world. We need to evaluate and manage the risks and rewards from different energy sources; and we need consumers, business owners, energy companies and environmentalists to let their voices be heard. We should all work toward the goal to keep the United States economically strong and secure. Regardless of your political views or affiliations, on this we should all agree.

SOURCE





Antarctica’s Ice May Be More Durable Than We Thought

One of the biggest potential dangers of increasing climate change is sea level rise caused by the melting of the polar ice caps. As our planet heats up, large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt, potentially triggering several feet of increased sea level rise. If the entire Antarctic ice sheet melts into the ocean, it could lead to dozens of feet of sea level rise, likely enough to wipe out entire cities.

Of course, it’s important to remember that ice sheets are complex and predicting how they will react is difficult—there’s a wide range of possibilities. Perhaps the best way for scientists to predict how ice sheets will behave in the future is by learning how they behaved in the past, so one group of scientists traveled to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to learn its history.

Specifically, the researchers were interested in what happened to the ice sheet during the Pliocene epoch, the geologic period from about 5.4 million years ago to around 2.5 million. During the Pliocene, global temperatures were a few degrees warmer than they are today, which means this era is a good model for what our world might look like in a few decades if climate change remains unchecked.

To determine just what happened to the ice sheet during this period, the researchers drilled deep into the rock beneath it. The scientists were looking for samples of certain isotopes, beryllium-10 and aluminum-26. These particular isotopes are created from the impact of cosmic rays from space. When these cosmic rays hit the atoms in the soil, they trigger atomic reactions that produce these isotopes.

The key fact here is that cosmic rays can’t penetrate the ice. If there was ice over the ground during the Pliocene, the cosmic rays wouldn’t have reached the ground and these isotopes shouldn’t be present in the soil. But if the ice sheet melted significantly, the researchers would find higher levels of these isotopes.

This scientific task is not as easy as it sounds. “Isolating these rare isotopes from grains of ancient sand is like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack,” said study author Paul Bierman. “But measuring them gives us a powerful view of Antarctica’s past that has never been seen before.”

In the end, the researchers found only trace amounts of the isotopes, suggesting that the ice sheet was present throughout the entire Pliocene. This is good news for us because it means the ice sheet will also likely survive the next few decades of climate change as well.

“Based on this evidence from the Pliocene, today’s current carbon dioxide levels are not enough to destabilize the land-based ice on the Antarctic continent,” said study author Jeremy Shakun.

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

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

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15 June, 2018

Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble

This is just a compliation of guesses and contrary to many direct measurements

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.

The melt rate has tripled in the past decade, the study concluded. If the acceleration continues, some of scientists’ worst fears about rising oceans could be realized, leaving low-lying cities and communities with less time to prepare than they had hoped.

The result also reinforces that nations have a short window — perhaps no more than a decade — to cut greenhouse-gas emissions if they hope to avert some of the worst consequences of climate change.

Antarctica, the planet’s largest ice sheet, lost 219 billion tons of ice annually from 2012 through 2017 — approximately triple the 73 billion-ton melt rate of a decade ago, the scientists concluded. From 1992 through 1997, Antarctica lost 49 billion tons of ice annually.

The study is the product of a large group of Antarctic experts who collectively reviewed 24 recent measurements of Antarctic ice loss, reconciling their differences to produce the most definitive figures yet on changes in Antarctica. Their results — known formally as the “Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise” (IMBIE) — were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We took all the estimates across all the different techniques, and we got this consensus,” said Isabella Velicogna, an Antarctic expert at the University of California at Irvine and one of the many authors from institutions in 14 countries. The lead author was Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds in England.

“The detailed record shows an acceleration, starting around 2002,” Beata Csatho, one of the study authors and a glaciologist at the University at Buffalo, said in an email.

Csatho noted that comparing the first and last five-year periods in the record reveals an even steeper acceleration. “Actually, if you compare 1997-2002 to 2012-2017, the increase is even larger, a factor of more than 5!!” she wrote.

For the total period from 1992 through the present, the ice sheet has lost nearly 3 trillion tons of ice, equating to just less than 8 millimeters of sea-level rise. Forty percent of that loss has occurred in the past five years.

The rapid, recent changes are almost entirely driven by the West Antarctic ice sheet, which scientists have long viewed as an Achilles’ heel. It is known to be losing ice rapidly because it is being melted from below by warm ocean waters, a process that is rendering its largest glaciers unstable.

West Antarctica lost 159 billion tons of ice a year from 2012 through 2017, compared with 65 billion tons from 2002 through 2007.

The growth is largely attributable to just two huge glaciers: Pine Island and Thwaites. The latter is increasingly being viewed as posing a potential planetary emergency because of its enormous size and its role as a gateway that could allow the ocean to someday access the entirety of West Antarctica, turning the marine-based ice sheet into a new sea.

Pine Island is now losing about 45 billion tons per year, and Thwaites is losing 50 billion. Both numbers are higher than the annual losses for any other glacier in the world.

“The increasing mass loss that they’re finding is really worrying, particularly looking at the West Antarctic, the area that’s changing most rapidly,” said Christine Dow, a glaciologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who was not involved in the research. “And it’s the area that we’re most worried about, because it’s below sea level.”

“If you start removing mass from there, you can have a very large-scale evacuation of ice into the ocean and significant sea-level rise,” Dow said.

SOURCE 






Swedish Researchers Confirm 20th Century Warming “Does Not Stand Out” Over Past 2500 Years!

A very recent study by Swedish scientists appearing in the journal Climate of the Past examining bottom water temperature (BWT) off the coast of Western Sweden (Gullmar Fjord) going back 2500 years found that “the most recent warming of the 20th century does not stand out.”

Team of researchers led by Irina Polovodova Asteman, University of Gotheberg, produced a record of bottom water temperature off the coast of western Sweden and found 20th century warming “does not stand out.”

The 2500-year winter temperature record was of reconstructed by using a fjord sediment archive from the NE Atlantic and through analysis of oxygen isotopes and other methods. The study was based on an approximately 8-meter long sediment core extracted from the Gullmar Fjord (Sweden).

They found that the Gullmar Fjord d18O record mainly reflects variability of the winter bottom water temperatures with a minor salinity influence.

The researchers also pointed out that a comparison with instrumental winter temperature observations from Central England and Stockholm shows that the fjord record picks up the contemporary warming of the 20th century

According to the scientists, the Gullmar Fjord record shows a substantial and long-term warming during the Roman Warm Period (~350 BCE – 450 CE) which was followed by variable bottom water temperatures during the Dark Ages (~450 – 850 CE).

The Viking Age/Medieval Climate Anomaly (~850 – 1350 CE) is also indicated by positive bottom water temperature anomalies, while the Little Ice Age (~1350 – 1850 CE) is characterized by a long-term cooling with distinct multidecadal variability.

The team of Swedish scientists, led by Irina Polovodova Asteman, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, noted “the most recent warming of the 20th century does not stand out, but appears to be comparable to both the Roman Warm Period and the MCA (Medieval Climate Anomaly).”

SOURCE 






Blue state rejects free electricity to avoid seeing a wind farm

Put out the NIMBY alert for Maryland. This very blue state is, of course, largely onboard with the entire “keep it in the ground” movement to abandon fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy. Unless, of course, you want to generate any of that electricity within sight of the state’s tony coastal communities. In Ocean City, Maryland, an energy company called U.S. Wind has plans in place to develop the second largest wind farm in the country offshore there, taking advantage of the almost constant breezes which blow in off the Atlantic. The amount of renewable electricity it would generate would be impressive indeed.

There’s just one problem. The locals don’t want any wind turbines within thirty miles of the coast for fear that it might obstruct the view and cut into tourism. U.S. Wind tried to tempt them by offering to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into other community development projects as an incentive. The locals said no. The company offered to build in a guarantee that they would cover any unanticipated cost overruns so Ocean City wouldn’t be stuck with the tab. The natives still wouldn’t relent. The final offer was truly incredible. The developers offered to provide Ocean City with free electricity for the life of the wind farm.

Ocean City officials say they don’t want offshore wind turbines to be built within 30 miles of the resort town’s beaches under any circumstances — not even in exchange for free electricity.

That was among the offers energy developer U.S. Wind recently made to appease concerns that its planned wind farm off Maryland’s coast will harm tourism.

The company also dangled other community investments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and volunteered to alter its plans if Ocean City agreed to cover any new costs.

None of that was adequate to allay fears that tourists will abandon Ocean City and flock to other beaches if Maryland’s horizon is dotted with towering wind turbines, though. Town leaders rejected the offer, Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan said.

The major problem that Ocean City has here is that the final decision really isn’t up to them. The Maryland Public Service Commission already signed off on the project and the final authority for such offshore developments usually lies with the federal government. All they can do is fight it in court and attempt to bog down the process while they look for a sympathetic judge to take their side. In the end, they may wind up losing out and seeing the wind farm built anyway without collecting any of the goodies that the developer was offering.

This is a classic case of NIMBYism taken to its extremes. Maryland’s liberal elites are all in favor of punishing fossil fuel companies and lecturing everyone on the need for cleaner, more “responsible” energy policies. But when the time comes to actually start generating all of the clean electricity, they don’t want those nasty turbines cluttering the few from the coast.

Maryland isn’t the only place this is happening. In Vermont, one of the greenest of the green refuges, there is a state mandate to shift almost entirely to wind energy over the next decade. But at the same time, outraged residents have convinced their state legislators to enact some of the most restrictive laws on wind turbines in the nation. The machines must be “as quiet as a public library” and have to be set back from residences and roads by at least ten times the height of the tower. Since most of the towers in use are at least 500 feet tall, that means they have to find places to install them that are literally a mile away from anything. Wind energy developers have described themselves as being “ready to give up on Vermont.”

And all the while, American continues to expand their lead as the dominant global force in petroleum and natural gas production. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?

SOURCE 






Banning Plastic Straws Harms Real People

SPOTLIGHT: Banning plastic straws is the latest trend.

BIG PICTURE: Here in Canada, the city of Vancouver has outlawed disposable drinking straws as of June 2019.

The European Union is talking about doing the same. Greenpeace thinks they should be curtailed in Australia.

As I’ve previously explained, these measures have no hope of cleaning up the ocean since the vast majority of trash polluting it comes from impoverished countries in Asia and Africa with no waste management systems.

Ten-year-olds may believe they’re saving turtles and seabirds by banning straws, but that’s wishful thinking. Nothing will seriously change until the garbage disposal problems of the third world are addressed.

If the litter is a concern along our coastlines, let’s do a better job of addressing littering. But let us not insult each other’s intelligence by pretending that banning straws will significantly reduce the total trash ending up in landfills.

Straws are small and weigh nothing. As a percentage of the overall refuse we produce each year, they’re trivial. Less than a rounding error.

The problem with these kinds of environmental crusades is that the crusaders believe they’re on the side of the angels. It doesn’t occur to them that their campaign might have unintended consequences – that real people might get hurt.

Vancouver was recently described as “the most ‘Asian’ city outside Asia.” Its ban will adversely affect the numerous small businesses who sell wildly popular Asian bubble tea, as well as thick milkshakes.

“Change like this can be costly,” says the president of a Restaurant and Food Services Association. Why increase costs for no discernible benefit? Why interfere with private businesses (be they successful or marginal) minus a compelling reason?

Then there are the sick and the disabled. Near the end of her long battle with breast cancer, the only way my mother could manage to drink was through a straw.

People with a range of disabilities also need them. One woman who is incapable of holding a cup told a newspaper that no straws were available in three establishments she visited recently, and that the staff was decidedly non-apologetic. From her perspective, her already difficult life is being made more so:

We’re really kind of viliyfing [sic] people who need straws or forgetting about them completely – let’s be honest –  in encouraging shaming people who are asking for them.

Another woman, confined to a wheelchair, suffers from a disease that affects her ability to swallow. The same newspaper article reads:

“Are straws then going to be something you buy at a medical supply store? And as soon as you do that they become more expensive and they become less accessible,” says [Vancouver’s Gabrielle] Peters, on a fixed income of disability benefits she estimates at $1,100 per month. “You’re just adding that cost to me.”

TOP TAKEAWAY: Banning plastic straws in affluent countries has no realistic chance of improving the state of the ocean. But these bans are making life worse for small business people, sick people, and the disabled.

SOURCE 





Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

Rubbish!  They are just obfuscating below. It's not complicated at all.  Rainfall in Australia regularly oscillates between the North and South of the continent. If there is drought in Victoria, there will be extra rain in Queensland, and vice versa. 

And the present pattern is a confirmation of that.  While there is reduced rainfall down South we in Brisbane are getting a lot of rain.  Autumn and winter here are normally dry but this month  there seems to be rain a couple of times a week.  And in March it rained nearly every day, with some big falls among that. Statewide it was much the same.  Hence the headline in March: "Queensland's wet weather breaks dozens of records as rain still falls" and "Far North Queensland residents urged to be vigilant in floodwaters across the region" 


Cairns in March

And the trees and plants are showing the effects of all the rain.  This year, my cumquat tree has really leapt for the sky. It's put on at least a foot of growth recently.  It seems to know more than the meteorologists do.

We do have some of those splendid fine clear days at the moment that Brisbane winters are known for but we have just as many cloudy days.

How come a humble social scientist like me knows all that while there is no hint of that knowledge from the climate mavens below? They know bupkis but as long as they can drag in some mention of climate change they are in clover


Much of southern Australia is experiencing severe drought after a very dry and warm autumn across the southern half of the continent. Australia is no stranger to drought, but this recent dry spell, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s visit to drought-stricken parts of the country, has prompted discussion of the role of climate change in this event.

Turnbull said that farmers need to “build resilience” as rainfall “appears to be getting more variable”. This prompted former Nationals leader John Anderson to warn against “politicising” the drought by invoking climate change. This in turn was followed by speculation from numerous commentators about the links between climate change and drought.

So are droughts getting worse, and can they be attributed to climate change? Drought is a complex beast and can be measured in a variety of ways. Some aspects of drought are linked with climate change; others are not.

In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology uses rainfall deficiencies to identify regions that are under drought conditions.

Droughts are also exacerbated by low humidity, higher wind speeds, warmer temperatures, and greater amounts of sunshine. All of these factors increase water loss from soils and plants. This means that other metrics are often used to describe drought which go beyond rainfall deficiencies alone. These include the Palmer Drought Severity Index and the Standardised Precipitation Evaporation Index, for example.

This means that there are hundreds of metrics which together can provide a more detailed representation of a drought. But this also means that droughts are less well understood and described than simpler phenomena such as temperature and rainfall.

So is climate change affecting Australian droughts?

As we have so many ways of looking at droughts, this is a more complex question than it might first sound. Climate change may affect these drought metrics and types of drought differently, so it is hard to make general statements about the links between human-induced climate change and drought.

We know that over southern Australia, and in particular the southwest, there has been a rapid decline in winter rainfall, and that this has been linked to climate change. In the southeast there has also been a decline but the trend is harder to distinguish from the year-to-year variability.

For recent short-term droughts in southern Australia, analyses have found an increased likelihood of rainfall deficits related to human-caused climate change. Also, it has been suggested that the character of droughts is changing as a result of the human-induced warming trend.

There is some evidence to suggest that widespread and prolonged droughts, like the Millennium Drought, are worse than other droughts in recent centuries, and may have been exacerbated by climate change. But the role of climate change in extended drought periods is difficult to discern from background climate variability. This is particularly true in Australia, which has a much more variable climate than many other parts of the world.

SOURCE 

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

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

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14 June, 2018

Africa's oldest baobab trees are dying at an unprecedented rate, and climate change may be to blame

Of course the oldest trees are dying, that's normal for all species.  And why are they dying now?  Because Africa is in a prolonged and widespread drought.  Remember those reports about Capetown running out of water?

Baobab trees — an icon of the African continent and the heart of many traditional African remedies and folklore — are dying across the continent, and scientists are trying to understand why.

A study published Monday found eight of the 13 oldest trees in Africa have died over the past decade, and the authors suggest climate change may affect the ability of the baobab to survive.

"The deaths of the majority of the oldest and largest African baobabs over the past 12 years is an event of an unprecedented magnitude," the study authors said. "These deaths were not caused by an epidemic, and there has also been a rapid increase in the apparently natural deaths of many other mature baobabs."

Baobabs — also known as "dead-rat" trees after the shape of their fruit — are among the most distinctive plants in the world, featuring stout, massive, branchless trunks that can look like pillars.

The study's lead author, Adrian Patrut, a chemist at Romania's Babe?-Bolyai University, told NPR that "such a disastrous decline is very unexpected. It's a strange feeling, because these are trees which may live for 2,000 years or more, and we see that they're dying one after another during our lifetime. It's statistically very unlikely."

Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers analyzed more than 60 of the largest and potentially oldest baobab trees in Africa from 2005 to 2017. They were surprised that most of the oldest and biggest died within those 12 years.

Overall, five of the six largest baobabs either died or their oldest parts significantly deteriorated.

Man-made climate change is a likely suspect, scientists said. Increased temperature and drought are the primary threats, Patrut told BBC News. Researchers said further research is necessary to support or refute that idea.

Thomas Lovejoy, an environmental scientist at George Mason University, who was not involved in the study, told The Washington Post that "something obviously is going on in almost selectively affecting the largest and oldest. I do think climate is a likely culprit, but they don’t actually present any evidence of how climate is changing where these ancient trees occur.”

Whatever the cause, these mysterious deaths will have a big impact on the southern African landscape. In addition to shade, the tree’s bark, roots, seeds and fruit are food sources for many animals, according to Science magazine.

SOURCE 







Australian coal prices hit 6-year high as Asia demand soars

What happened to all those "renewables"

Australian thermal coal prices have risen to their highest level since 2012 as hot weather across North Asia spurs buying ahead of the peak summer demand season.

Spot prices for thermal coal cargoes for export from Australia’s Newcastle terminal last closed at $115.25 per tonne, the highest level since February 2012.

Thermal coal, the world’s most used fuel for electricity generation, has surged by 130 percent since its record lows below $50 per tonne in 2016 following a years-long decline.

Prices have been driven up by economic growth, especially in Asia, along with constraints on supply due to earlier mine closures and high hurdles to developing new mines amid concerns about pollution and global warming.

In recent weeks, a heat-wave in North Asia and restocking ahead of the hottest summer months in July and August have led to soaring demand for both residential and industrial cooling, traders said.

SOURCE 






Coal Use To Explode By 43% Worldwide! …German Energy Expert: ‘Paris Accord Has Collapsed’

Yesterday German energy expert and scientist Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt commented at his monthly column at Die kalte Sonne site here on solar activity, CO2 and coal power in Germany.

Sun factor grossly underestimated

Lately, the sun’s activity has been very quiet as the star at the center of our solar system transitions over to a new solar cycle. April sunspot activity was very low in May.

Vahrenholt then cites a recent study by Lewis and Curry showing that climate sensitivity to CO2 is in fact “up to 45% less than what the IPCC and the mainstream of climate science would like to have us believe.” Vahrenholt comments:

So with CO2 not being at the factor, it was made out to be, and because the Paris Accord is based on the spectacle of a rapidly warming planet, Vahrenholt writes that the “foundation of the Paris Accord has collapsed.”

Only Europe and Canada exiting coal

Another reason the Paris Accord is collapsing is that it’s not going to do anything we were promised it would.

When it comes to coal, Vahrenholt notes, so far only Europe and Canada have expressed some sort of a commitment to exit coal, and then he reminds us China, India and all developing countries will still be permitted to continue “massively” expanding their use of coal. He writes:

"In other words, Angela Merkel and her green punch drinkers think the climate is going to be saved if Germany shuts down 1/20 of what China and India are going to add. No wonder Trump dumped the idiotic Accord."

Coal to expand 43% worldwide

And to illustrate what a farce the Paris Accord has become, the German energy expert adds: “In total, coal power plant capacity will expand by 43% worldwide.”

Germany to lay out the blueprint for its own demise

Currently, Germany is gradually growing obsessed with the idea of a coal exit and is setting up a Coal Commission to launch the endeavor. The Commission “however will not be made up of energy, power grid, and technology experts, but rather with Greenpeace, BUND and local citizens initiatives who are against brown coal,” writes Vahrenholt.

“The idea of including critics of alternative energy, which has become the largest destroyer of nature since WWII, never dawned on any politician.”

Green state fundamentalism

The Coal Commission of course should include Prof. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, former director of the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute and architect of the Great Transformation masterplan, which calls for an immediate end to the economic model that is based on “fossil industrial metabolism”, making climate protection the “fundamental target of the state by which the legislative, executive and judicial branches are to align themselves.”

Paris absurdity

According to Vahrenholt, the phase-out of coal will mean the decarbonization of Germany, which in turn will mean its deindustrialization. This, according to Vahrenholt, all coming to the great delight of the Chinese.

A dismayed Vahrenholt sums up: “Trump was clever enough to exit the Paris absurdity early enough.”

SOURCE 







People have the right to defend themselves against bad science

And EPA science under Obama was so bad that they kept it under wraps

The Greens have launched a massive and coordinated attack on EPA’s proposed regulation to end the use of “secret science” in Agency rule making. Secret science here simply means research that is not available for public inspection. The proposal is called the Transparency Rule and it is available for public comment here.

The basic principle is that if EPA proposes to regulate the public, then the public has a right to inspect the research used to justify that regulation. This seems obviously fair and just but the Greens do not see it that way. They think EPA should be able to do whatever it wants, behind a veil of scientific secrecy.

So the Greens are flooding the EPA comment system with mindless negative comments. At the time of this writing the Agency lists over 150,000 comments, the vast majority of which simply attack EPA for daring to propose transparency. Given that the comment period has been extended to mid-August this number is likely to get much bigger.

This attack is being coordinated by several Green Groups, especially the so-called Environmental Defense Fund. The idea behind regulatory notice and comment is to help the agency gets the rules right. It is not a referendum on the proposal, but that is how EDF sees it. They just want to generate 100,000 or more identical Green comments denouncing this proposal. There is nothing useful here, just the usual loud noises from the left.

EPA says on their comment website that they will only post substantive comments. It is then no wonder that less that 2% of the comments have been publicly posted. Even these are mostly worthless negative attacks.

There is also a green press campaign, in parallel with the personal attacks on EPA Administrator Pruitt. Here the ever-green New York Times has the lead. They have run a series of articles and op-eds attacking both Pruitt and the Transparency Rule.

One particularly silly NYT piece is titled: “Scott Pruitt’s Attack on Science Would Paralyze the E.P.A.” It begins by complaining that the Rule allows the EPA Administrator to exempt and use secret science if it is especially important. The Greens should like this provision, since it is just what they want. Instead the op-ed says that Pruitt is a lawyer, not a scientist, so he is not qualified to make such a decision. In reality this is standard exemption language, so the decision would be made by the regulatory office, including their scientists.

They then go on to say that the peer review of the journal article reporting the research should somehow be enough transparency. This is simply ridiculous, since peer review of an article does not include data analysis, attempted replication, etc., which the Transparency Rule is designed make available. Peer review is not quality control.

Thanks to what is called the “reproducibility crisis” we now know that there is a lot of shaky peer reviewed science out there. The US National Academy of Sciences now has a standing Committee on Reproducibility and Replication. This ongoing crisis is not really surprising, given that globally there are millions of scientists burning hundreds of billions of dollars a year in research funding and judged by how many articles they publish. Publishing in a peer reviewed journal does not separate good science from bad science.

The Transparency Rule speaks directly to the reproducibility crisis. I have yet to see an attack piece that even mentions, much less addresses, the fairness principle behind this Transparency Rule. Most of the attacks are nothing more that simple minded anti-Trump diatribes.

The critical few that are thoughtful worry about important research being excluded. This is a genuine concern which the final Rule needs to deal with. But in any case jamming the comment system with hundreds of thousands of worthless attacks is a stupid thing to do.

People have the right to defend themselves against regulations based on bad science.

SOURCE 






Climate ‘Science’ Is Anti-Science; How Do You Disprove A Consensus?

Reasserting the scientific method

One of the most difficult concepts for people to understand is that science doesn’t prove theories, science is the process that disproves theories.

In real science, the null hypothesis is the consensus, and conclusion of the peer group. Under normal circumstances, the peer group consensus is based upon the results of reproducible experimentation.

In real science, people aren’t running around trying to convince people what has already been accepted as the scientific truth.

For instance, we no longer have people running around trying to prove that the earth is round…well, almost no one (click here).

Real science states the null and sets out to reject it.

Science rejects what people believe, it doesn’t reinforce it. Real science rejects the null.

Real science disproves what people believe. It never proves that things are what people think they are, that is an impossible task and would require an infinite number of experiments.

Real science is the “belief in the ignorance of the experts.”

Real science takes what is accepted, and proves that it is wrong. The accepted position is the status quo (the consensus) and real science attempts to prove everyone that believes what everyone knows to be true to be gullible fools.

Real science is about claiming “I’m right and the world is wrong, and I have the experiment to back it up.”

That isn’t how Climate Anti-Science is done. There is no scientific method in climate anti-science, there is no scientific process in climate anti-science, there is no experimentation and reproducibility in climate anti-science.

Climate anti-science shuns classical scientific methods and instead turns to science by authority, science by dictate, science by consensus, science by peer review, and science by computer models.

Why is that so wrong? Because you can’t reject a consensus, you can’t reject a peer group study. Just how does this anti-science even work?

You simply can’t ever be wrong if you have enough political power and reach and a likeminded computer programmer.

If I claim that the population of unicorns has been rapidly growing, and I get a few well-placed “experts” to agree with me, and I get published in a few like-minded “Peer Review Journals,” my claim that the unicorn population is growing simply becomes scientific fact.

How do you possibly reject a consensus? How do you reject a peer-reviewed conclusion? Science suddenly becomes more like a political campaign, a popularity contest, a public opinion poll.

I could even back up my claims with a computer model showing that the increase in CO2 has increased crop yields, which should increase the birth rate of unicorns.

This computer model based upon a theory void of any actual physical evidence would be then used a proof that the theory is in fact correct.

Anyone that disagreed with the computer model would be attacked as a “skeptic” or “denier” and have their careers ruined.

That is literally how climate anti-science works.

BTW, the entire foundation of science is skepticism, so the very fact that climate alarmists call people “skeptics” pretty much proves they don’t understand science.

Deniers, as in Holocaust Deniers make claims of disbelief without providing any evidence. That is the exact opposite of CAGW deniers who are eager to debate and provide their scientific arguments that are soundly based on facts.

SOURCE 

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

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

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


13 June, 2018

Global warming is expected to make vegetables significantly scarcer around the world

Brainless Warmist rubbish. You can grow vegetables almost anywhere and a hotter climate would open up big lots of land in Canada and Siberia for farming

Global warming is expected to make vegetables significantly scarcer around the world, unless new growing practices and resilient crop varieties are adopted, researchers warned on Monday (June 11).

By the end of this century, less water and hotter air will combine to cut average yields of vegetables - which are crucial to a healthy diet - by nearly one-third, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A 7.2 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) increase in temperature, which scientists expect by 2100 if global warming continues on its current trajectory, reduces average yields by 31.5 per cent, said the report.

"Our study shows that environmental changes such as increased temperature and water scarcity may pose a real threat to global agricultural production, with likely further impacts on food security and population health," said lead author Pauline Scheelbeek of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Southern Europe, large parts of Africa and South Asia may be particularly affected.

The findings are based on a systematic review of 174 studies examining the impact of environmental exposures on yield and nutritional content of vegetables and legumes since 1975.

Some previous research has pointed to a likely increase in crop yields as carbon dioxide rises, but the current review found that any such boost would be cancelled out by higher greenhouse gases, reduced water availability for irrigation and rising temperatures.

"We have brought together all the available evidence on the impact of environmental change on yields and quality of vegetables and legumes for the first time," said senior author Alan Dangour, also of LSHTM.

"Our analysis suggests that if we take a 'business as usual' approach, environmental changes will substantially reduce the global availability of these important foods," he added.

"Urgent action needs to be taken, including working to support the agriculture sector to increase its resilience to environmental changes and this must be a priority for governments across the world."

A second study in PNAS found that rising temperatures will increase the volatility of corn, the most widely grown crop on the planet.

Researchers confirmed prior studies that showed global warming would likely cut back on corn growth.

They also showed that heat waves may boost inconsistency and volatility across various regions from year to year, leading to price hikes and global shortages.

"Previous studies have often focused on just climate and plants, but here we look at climate, food and international markets," said lead author Michelle Tigchelaar, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in atmospheric sciences.

"We find that as the planet warms, it becomes more likely for different countries to simultaneously experience major crop losses, which has big implications for food prices and food security."

The vast majority of the global corn exports come from the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine.

"Under 4 degrees Celsius warming, which the world is on track to reach by the end of the century if current greenhouse gas emissions rates continue, there's an 86 percent chance that all four maize-exporting countries would simultaneously suffer a bad year," said the report.

SOURCE 






A 145-year Continent-wide Increase in Mountain-top Species Richness
    
Paper Reviewed: Steinbauer, M.J., Grytnes, J.-A., Jurasinski, G., Kulonen, A., Lenoir, J., Pauli, H., Rixen, C., Winkler, M., Bardy-Durchhalter, M., Barni, E., Bjorkman, A.D., Breiner, F.T., Burg, S., Czortek, P., Dawes, M.A., Delimat, A., Dullinger, S., Erschbamer, B., Felde, V.A., Fernández-Arberas, O., Fossheim, K.F., Gómez-García, D., Georges, D., Grindrud, E.T., Haider, S., Haugum, S.V., Henriksen, H., Herreros, M.J., Jaroszewicz, B., Jaroszynska, F., Kanka, R., Kapfer, J., Klanderud, K., Kühn, I., Lamprecht, A., Matteodo, M., Morra di Cella, U., Normand, S., Odland, A., Olsen, S.L., Palacio, S., Petey, M., Piscová, V., Sedlakova, B., Steinbauer, K., Stöckli, V., Svenning, J.-C., Teppa, G., Theurillat, J.-P., Vittoz, P., Woodin, S.J., Zimmermann, N.E. and Wipf, S. 2018. "Accelerated increase in plant species richness on mountain summits is linked to warming". Nature 556: 231-234.

One of the great horror stories associated with predictions of CO2-induced global warming is that the warming (if it occurs) will be so fast and furious that many species of plants will not be able to migrate towards cooler regions -- poleward in latitude, or upward in elevation -- at rates that are rapid enough to avoid extinction.

Over the past two decades we have (1) reviewed several papers (see Extinction (Migrating Plants) and Extinction (Stationary Plants)), (2) published a major report and (3) produced a video documentary examining this claim.

Through these efforts we have learned that it is easy to make long-term predictions; but to substantiate them with facts is an entirely different matter. And even when the facts are largely in hand, one can still be blinded by preconceived ideas that make it difficult to comprehend the real meaning of what has been discovered. So it is with the specter of species extinction that hovers over the global warming debate. The vast majority of people who have studied the subject have not understood some of the issue's most basic elements; and they have consequently drawn conclusions that are not aligned with reality.

Proponents of what we shall call the CO2-induced global warming extinction hypothesis seem to be totally unaware of the fact that atmospheric CO2 enrichment tends to ameliorate the deleterious effects of rising temperatures on earth's vegetation. They appear not to know that more CO2 in the air enables plants to grow better at nearly all temperatures, but especially at higher temperatures. They feign ignorance of the knowledge (or truly do not know) that elevated CO2 boosts the optimum temperature at which plants grow best, and that it raises the upper-limiting temperature above which they experience death, making them much more resistant to heat stress.

The end result of these facts is that if the atmosphere's temperature and CO2 concentration rise together, plants are able to successfully adapt to the rising temperature, and they experience no ill effects of the warming. Under such conditions, plants living near the heat-limited boundaries of their ranges do not experience an impetus to migrate poleward or upward towards cooler regions of the globe. At the other end of the temperature spectrum, however, plants living near the cold-limited boundaries of their ranges are empowered to extend their ranges into areas where the temperature was previously too low for them to survive. And as they move into those once-forbidden areas, they actually expand their ranges, overlapping the similarly-expanding ranges of other plants and thereby increasing local plant biodiversity.

Vindication of our thesis has been gaining momentum year by year, as scientists have published papers examining this topic using real world data (see the many reviews we have archived in our Subject Index under the following headings: Alpine Ecosystems, Extinction and Range Expansion).

The latest such work comes from the 53-member research team of Steinbauer et al. (2018). Publishing in the journal Nature, this new group of scientists analyzed a massive continent-wide dataset of repeated plant surveys from 302 mountain summits across Europe dating all the way back to 1871 in an effort to "assess the temporal trajectory of mountain biodiversity changes." Vegetation surveys were conducted predominately on the uppermost 10 m of elevation on each summit during the summer, with each summit being resurveyed between one to six times between 1871 and 2016, for a total of 698 surveys over the period of study. Such surveys, in the words of the authors, were "optimal … for detecting changes in plant species richness over time."

So what did the records show? Has the global warming of the past century and a half driven plants in such mountain top ecosystems toward extinction?

In a word, no!

Contrary to climate alarmist contentions and model-based predictions, Steinbauer et al. report there has been "a continent-wide acceleration in the rate of increase in plant species richness, with five times as much species enrichment between 2007 and 2016 as fifty years ago, between 1957 and 1966" (see Figure 1 below). What is more, they note that this incredible trend of increasing biodiversity was "consistent across all [continental regions], with no single region showing the opposite pattern."

Nevertheless, despite such good news rooted in real-world observations, the team of researchers just can't seem to bring themselves to reject the CO2-induced global warming extinction hypothesis. Appearing to be still blinded by their preconceived ideas, they opine that "accelerating plant species richness increases are expected to be a transient phenomenon that hides the accumulation of a so-called extinction debt," where "a rapid loss of alpine-nival species may occur under accelerated global warming."

So sad!

SOURCE 







Why Britain can never rely on wind power

For the last ten days or more the UK has been becalmed. In theory, our windmill fleet should be able to generate 20 gigawatts of power, more than 50 percent of peak demand at this time of year, but with barely a puff of wind this month, it has been generating next to nothing. If the weather forecasters are right, the lull will not end for a few more days yet. We should be thanking our lucky stars that we still have fossil fuels and nuclear to keep the lights on.

It’s hard to think of a better demonstration of the absurdity of windmills as a way of powering a modern economy. Despite this, Lord Deben, the former John Selwyn Gummer and current chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, has taken to the pages of the Guardian today to argue for more wind power, and in particular, onshore wind power.

Nevertheless, there are at least hints though that the government is finally “getting it” on the parlous state into which environmentalism has plunged the UK’s electricity grid: a planned new nuclear power station on Anglesey received a boost last week when it was announced that negotiations between the developer and the government were underway and that the state was looking to take a substantial stake in the project.

As low-carbon technologies go, nuclear of course has the great advantage of not being at the mercy of the weather, but as the debacle of Hinkley Point has shown, it is now so expensive as to make a nuclear strategy almost as mad as a renewables one.

Or is it? Another announcement last week received much less attention, but intriguingly suggests that nuclear could soon be a genuine competitor even to fossil fuels. Nuscale Energy is a US-based startup that is trying to develop small nuclear reactors that can be built in a modular fashion, allowing most of the construction to take place in a factory, before final assembly on site. The company has been riding a wave of optimism this year, after regulators gave approval to key safety elements of its design. With the major hurdle to full regulatory approval completed a few weeks later, the company now expects to be producing electricity at its first site, in Utah, by 2025.

Nuscale has previously suggested that its technology, once mature, might produce electricity at a cost of $85 per megawatt hour: cheaper than offshore wind and biomass, but more expensive than onshore wind or natural gas (although without the reliability issues of wind, which makes direct cost comparison difficult, and also without the carbon emissions of gas or biomass). However, a couple of days ago the company announced that optimisation of the design had allowed them to increase power output by 20 percent without materially affecting costs. That means that its cost per megawatt hour should fall by a similar proportion.

If Nuscale’s design changes meet with regulatory approval, and if the design performs as advertised, then the market could be upturned. Offshore wind and large-scale nuclear would probably become a thing of the past and any small price advantage of onshore wind would not compensate for its intermittency. The choice would be between cheap reliable fossil fuels and somewhat more expensive, but still reliable, modular nuclear reactors.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Even if the design proves itself in Utah, there is no guarantee that anything will change here in the UK, where the formidable obstacle of the Whitehall machine must be overcome. And with the bureaucracy dominated by card-carrying members of the green fraternity – who oppose nuclear power despite it being carbon-free – that could be a long process indeed. Let’s hope the lull in the wind comes to an end soon.

SOURCE 






Epic Renewables Fail as Solar Crashes and Wind Refuses to Blow

Don’t laugh too hard but this has been a terrible week for the renewable energy dream. Across the world solar energy share prices have crashed. This was caused by a sudden and unexpected decision by China, the world’s biggest solar manufacturer and user, to rein in subsidies.

According to Caixin Global: China has abruptly put the brakes on solar power subsidies, seeking to stem overcapacity in a sector that has benefited for years from government incentives.

The move caught many in the industry off guard.

The government won’t grant subsidies to any new ordinary solar projects this year. For those that are being built, the incentives will be cut by 0.05 yuan (0.8 U.S. cents) per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

Solar stocks have fallen across the board by double digits. It’s uncertain when they will recover.

It hasn’t been a good week for wind energy either. In Britain, the industry has become a national joke because for seven days its wind turbines stood still and produced no electricity. Great news for all the birds and bats they would otherwise have sliced and diced; no problem for the renewables industry troughers who still get their rich subsidies whether the wind blows or not. But definitely unfortunate PR for an industry which would prefer everyone not to notice one of wind energy’s main problems: it’s intermittent – which means that a) it’s not always there when you need it and so b) it requires constant back up from more reliable fossil fuel on standby.

We shouldn’t laugh, except actually we must. Otherwise guys like this will win the day.

Liebreich – founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance – has done extremely well out of the climate change scare industry. That’s why he can afford to jet freely around the world (not first class, he insists in a subsequent tweet: just economy to Dublin to catch Gorillaz on Skype – as you do…)

Here he is having his cake and eating it. That is, he is virtue-signalling his environmental purity by railing swearily against “plastic pollution” – the fashionable cause du jour. Simultaneously, he is racking up the air miles and extending his carbon footprint like an Al Gore-style boss.

The global warming industry – the Climate Industrial Complex – has been estimated as being worth an annual $1.5 trillion, but that was three years ago and no doubt it’s a lot more valuable now. Like a lot of renewables advocates, Liebreich has made of a heck of a lot more money than he would had he been, say, a skeptical journalist writing about what a huge con the global warming industry is. But at the price, of course, of his soul…

He gives the game away in this rather elegant piece he wrote recently about the future of global energy industry. It concerns the dilemma that he claims oil companies face: do they give up on fossil fuel and move rapidly into renewables; or do they ride out fossil fuels slowly into the sunset, knowing that they are doomed, but extracting the last remaining value they can?

This is, of course, the purest green propaganda masquerading as dispassionate business advice.

Yes, it’s perfectly true that most Big Oil companies have now been hijacked by squishy sell-out globalists who can’t apologize often enough for the terribleness of their sticky black produce and who would dearly love all their profits to come from wind alone.

But against that there’s the reality that renewables still provide a tiny percentage of global energy consumption and that even by 2040 – if you believe BP’s projections, which I don’t: I think they’re heroically optimistically pro-renewables – fossil fuels are still going to provide well over half global energy consumption.

Anyway, I said earlier that Liebreich gives the game away in his piece. Here is the key moment:

There is no inherent dishonor or immorality in pursuing a Sunset Ride. Even the most ardent climate activist is going to be a user of fossil fuels and petrochemical products for many more decades, and no one with integrity can demonize products whose demand they themselves drive. Dishonor and immorality lie only in attempts to obfuscate or delay the global transition to clean energy and transport, either through lobbying and misinformation or through a failure to strive for the highest standards within one’s own operations. Oil and gas companies need to lead on eliminating fugitive emissions and flaring, and to act with transparency and honor around the world.

The entire renewables industry is an act of faith. The ONLY reason it can survive is through subsidies. And those subsidies can ONLY continue if renewables true believers can persuade enough gullible people to accept being fleeced by their gullible governments to pay over the odds for wind and solar in the name of the environment.

Once people start to lose that faith all bets are off.

That’s what’s so great about the collapse of the global solar markets and the ridicule heaped this week on the UK wind industry.

It really couldn’t happen to more deserving people.

SOURCE 






Technology-forcing is great for fossil fuels

Technology-forcing policies have already redirected trillions of dollars against natural market forces, while technology-neutral policies are still struggling to get off the ground.

If I was the CEO of a fossil fuel company today, I’d be very happy with the current policy landscape. Everyone knows that fossil fuel use must start declining in the medium-term future, but wind/solar/BEV technology-forcing policies will ensure that this inevitable decline is delayed as long as possible.

While green advocates celebrated solar PV’s first 100 GW year, fossil fuels quietly accounted for 70% of energy growth in 2017

As an example, current BEV technology-forcing policies in the US cover the entire cost of a Chevy Bolt or Tesla Model 3 battery pack. As a result, about 0.1% of passenger cars are now BEVs, displacing about 0.03% of oil consumption. But the very low US gasoline taxes (lack of technology-neutral policies) means that the recent oil price crash caused a large relative reduction in gasoline prices, prompting people to buy large trucks and SUVs and drive more. As a result, US oil consumption has jumped a full 5% since the oil price crash, dwarfing the small reduction from BEV technology-forcing.

Indeed, after a single year of pain in a golden decade for oil & gas companies, the fossil fuel profit machine is again leaving clean energy companies behind. As shown below, the billions in profits from the two largest US oil & gas companies is matched only by the similarly large losses from prominent US clean energy players, both of which have benefited enormously from over a decade of strong technology-forcing policies and very generous capital markets.

Oil and gas both made significant gains, with even much maligned coal registering a significant uptick. Over the next decade or two, even a full commitment to all clean technology-forcing plans will not stop fossil fuel growth, leading to rapidly widening emissions gaps.

No amount of technology-forcing can change the fact that fossil fuels are perfect for industrialization (simple, low up-front costs, and directly applicable to all sectors of the economy), or that most of the world still needs to industrialize. No amount of technology-forcing will change the fact that some OPEC nations make 500% operating profit at a moderate oil price of $60/bbl.

Most sustainability advocates are totally distracted by the emotionally charged wind/solar power and BEV growth story. .. fossil fuel interests simply need to sit back and allow them to do their work for them

And no amount of technology-forcing will change our wasteful and unhealthy consumerist culture. (In fact, a significant part of the appeal of companies like Tesla is the false promise that exponential material consumption growth can continue uninterrupted without fossil fuels, that excessive consumption can be guilt-free.)

Displacing unabated fossil fuel combustion at the rate recommended by climate science will require the absolute maximum out of every one of the sustainable development pathways discussed in the previous article. And this can only be done through technology-neutral policies.

Technology-forcing is a great distraction

If humans were rational creatures, we would have had technology-neutral policies addressing all major externalized costs long ago. Almost everyone agrees that such policies are the most efficient way to address undesired effects that are not directly accounted for in current price signals. In addition, the scientific literature has already quantified these externalized costs to a sufficient degree of accuracy to initiate meaningful policies.

SOURCE 

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

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

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12 June, 2018

BIG GREEN

Half a trillion dollars!  Does that seem enough? That's what "Green" donors have spent since 2010 on pushing their invariably destructive causes.  You wouldn't think there would be so much money sloshing around among American charitable sources but there is.  It has been used to fund advertising and to "buy" activists, journalists and politicians. Substantial contributions to a politician's election campaign tend to be very warmly received by the politician.

So there is a vast mechanism trying to influence American public policy towards self-destruction. Freud's warning about "Thanatos", the death instinct that is in us all to varying degrees, does spring to mind. Global Warming is a lot of hokum so they need to be spending all that money to drown out those of us who simply mention the climate facts.

So how do we know about all that spending?  It's in a vast new academic journal article by Nisbet that goes through all the "philanthropic" spending line by line.  It's a very thorough and authoritative article.

It is way too long for most people to read so I have just reproduced below the beginning and the end of it.  Those excerpts tell you plenty, however. I have just done a rough download into text from a PDF so the formatting and word-separation is pretty scrappy but that's all I had time for. If you are a masochist you can go back to the original and read the whole thing.

A small personal note:  Being Green is to be in the gravy so have we skeptics missed out?  Not really.  Most of us are scientists or professionals and most of us are retired.  So I don't think we have missed many good dinners.  Actually, in my experience, the dinners you get at conferences are of the rubber chicken variety and even dinners at expensive restaurants are often less than hearty.  Ethnic cuisine beats both by a mile.  Try a genuine Parsee Dhansak, some Korean egg-rolled pork or Vietnamese lemon chicken (Totally different from Chinese lemon chicken), for both novelty and taste.  If you can't get such things in your neighborhood, I have recipes ...


Strategic philanthropy in the post-Cap -and-Trade years:Reviewing U.S. climate and energy foundation funding

Matthew C.Nisbet

Abstract

 For several decades, philanthropists in the United States have played a behind-the-scenes role in framing climate change as a social problem. These foundations havedefined climate change primarily as a pollution problem solvable by enacting aprice on carbon and by shifting markets in the direction of renewable energy tech-nologies and energy efficiency practices. Funding has favored "insider" groups thatpush for policy action by way of negotiation, coalition building, and compromise,rather than "outsider" groups that specialize in grassroots organizing. Philanthro-pists have also placed less priority on funding for other low-carbon energy sourcessuch as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, or natural gas, nor have theyinvested in actions intended to boost societal resilience, protect public health, or toaddress questions of equity and justice.

 But in the years following the failure of the2010 Federal cap and trade bill, a review of available grants from 19 major founda-tions indicates that philanthropists responded to calls for new directions. Funding shifted to focus on state- or municipal-level mitigation and adaptation actions and to the needs of low-income/minority communities. Significant funding was alsodevoted to mobilizing public opinion and to opposing the fossil fuel industry.Nearly a quarter of all funding, however, remained dedicated to promoting renew-able energy and efficiency-related actions with comparatively little funding devotedto other low-carbon energy technolog ies.

INTRODUCTION

The defeat in 2010 of U.S. cap and trade legislation prompted widespread discussion among climate advoc ates and philanthro-pists about what had gone wrong, and the need for new directions in funding and stra tegy. The demise of the bill, whichwould have put an economy wide cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions came just months after the wo rld's political leadersat a United Nations summit in Copenhagen, Denmark had failed to reach a binding agreement to curb emissions. Followingthese political setbacks, several analysts called for investing more significantly in building a grassroots political movement that would directly pressure U.S. political leaders and the fossil fuel industry to take aggressive steps to reduce emissions.Some urged a stronger focus on state and municipal policies, including prioritizing climate adaptation and resilience effortsand the needs of low-income populations. Others raised questions about a philanthropic strategy th at pooled vast resources onbehalf of a few strategies, energy technologies, and organizations, rather than spreading grants across a diversity ofapproaches, technologies, and groups.

Far from being passive supporters of actions to address climate change, major U.S. foundations for several decades haveplayed an active role in defining a common roadmap for their grantees and partners. By framing the challenges, defining thepriorities, and promoting specific ideas, philanthropists have actively shaped common ways of thinking that have boundtogether otherwise disconnected organizations and leaders into shared approaches and strategies (Bartley, 2007; Horvath &Powell, 2016; Morena, 2016; Nisbet, 2014). During an era of political dysfunction and polarization across levels ofU.S. government, philanthropists are able to mobilize vast financial resources to alter the public conversation relative to com-plex problems like climate change. In doing so, they serve as an "outsize megaphone, both actively shaping how people viewsocial problems and championing specific methods through which these problems can be addressed" (Horvath & Powell,2016, p. 90). For some critics, however, such influence has also led to forms of group think that overlook important alternativestrategies needed to substantially reduce GHG emissions and/or to overcome political opposition (Bartosiewicz & Miley,2013; Dowie, 2002; Nordhaus & Shellenberger, 2007).................


Finally, the findings provide valuable insights on the role of climate philanthropy in shaping public opinion, mobilizing activists, and influencing national elections in an effort to shape climate and energy policy decisions. In th e post cap-and-tradeyears, the $151 million devoted by funders to climate change-, fossil fuel industry- and renewable energy-related communica-tion activities were complemented by a combined $150 million spent by the billionaire Tom Steyer in successive elections tomobilize climate voters on behalf of Democratic candidates (Hamburger, 2014; McCormick & Allison, 2017). Yet in 2016,despite the stark differences on climate change between Trump and his rival Hillary Clinton, Trump won a majority of theMidwest battleground states. Nationally, Republicans retained control of Congress and strengthened their hold on state gov-ernments, controlling 69 of 99 state legislative chambers and 33 out of 50 governorships (Philips, 2016).

Promote actions to limit/oppose fossil fuel industry

$69,448,046  Fossil fuel industry-relatedcommunication, media and mobilization

$3,508,000   Natural gas "fracking"-relatedcommunication, media and mobilization

$8,981,000 Renewable energy-relatedcommunication, media & mobilization

$46,582,289 Climate change-relatedcommunication,media & mobilization

$92,405,423  Promote sustainabletransportation/clean vehicles

$20,965,823  Promote sustainableagriculture, land use, protect ecosystems

$72,611,452   Promote climate mitigation &adaptation actions

$91,360,804  Promote/evaluate otherlow carbon energy technologies

*$10,513,713  Promote renewableenergy & efficiency-related policy actions &practices

$140,301,919  Other

Total funding $556,678,469.00

It remains unclear how much impact philanthropists and environmenta lists can have on the outcome ofupcoming national elections, given that climate change still ranks as a relatively low public priority in comparison to otherissues (Pew Research Center, 2018). Where climate advocates and their funders have had a clear influence is in shaping thedirection of the Democratic Party on climate change, intensifying commitment to a variety of policy actions among partyleaders, donors, and activists. In states like California, Washington, and New York where Democratic-leaning donors, activ-ists, and voters dominate, environmentalists have been able to pass major climate policies, restrict fossil fuel development,and win other commitments from governors and mayors (Tabuchi & Fountaion, 2017).

 In rallying activists against the Trump administration, to broaden their traditional environmental appeals, the Sierra Club, 350.org, and other organizations have also actively embraced an "intersectional" strategy, connecting climate change to identity-based causes rel ated to racial justice,gender equality, and GLBTQ rights (Hestres & Nisbet, 2018).

Yet related to these strategies, campaigns opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline and natural gas fracking along with newcauses related to racial, gender, and identity-based justice have also likely contributed to deepening political polarization, serving as potent symbols for Republican donors and activists to rally voters around. These issues also divide liberal and centristDemocrats, and were a major point of contention during the Democratic primaries (Hestres & Nisbet, 2018; Nisbet, 2015). A carbon tax and dividend proposal coauthored in 2017 by two former Republican U.S. Secretaries of State and supported bythe Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Michael Bloomberg, leading economists, and major oil companies is notable for its assignment of blame for past divisions.

"Some advocates of renewable energy oppose nuclear power, even though both may be needed to combat climate change. Many environmentalists tend to be anti-corporate, even though any via-ble mitigation plan must rest in part on business leadership" declares the proposal. "The message of fear and austerity espoused by some on the green-left tends to alienate those at the opposite end of the political spectrum, who see climate poli-cies as a Trojan horse for a bigger and more intrusive government. Many GOP leaders, meanwhile, deny basic science and failto offer concrete solutions. We need fresh approaches able to bridge these divides"

More HERE 





Californians May Have to Choose Between Showers and Laundry with New 55-Gallon Water Limit

Late last week California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two bills aimed at conserving water in the drought-stricken state. Unfortunately for California residents, the draconian measures will severely curtail their ability to complete acts of daily living that people in the rest of the U.S. take for granted—things like laundry, showers, and bathing.

On the Senate side, Bill 606 requires the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt "long-term standards for the efficient use of water and would establish specified standards for per capita daily indoor residential water use" in order to comply with another state law that requires California to reduce its per capita water usage by 20 percent by the year 2020.

The board would have authority over all water suppliers, imposing onerous reporting requirements on them to ensure they're complying with the 20 percent reduction mandate, and imposing fines if they don't.

Bill 1668, which passed in the Assembly and was signed into law by Brown, goes even further, severely limiting the amount of water Californians can use:

The bill, until January 1, 2025, would establish 55 gallons per capita daily as the standard for indoor residential water use, beginning January 1, 2025, would establish the greater of 52.5 gallons per capita daily or a standard recommended by the department and the board as the standard for indoor residential water use, and beginning January 1, 2030, would establish the greater of 50 gallons per capita daily or a standard recommended by the department and the board as the standard for indoor residential water use. The bill would impose civil liability for a violation of an order or regulation issued pursuant to these provisions, as specified.

Note that this language gives the State Water Resources Control Board—appointed by the governnor—to increase the limits on residential water usage at their discretion over the next 12 years.

Urban water suppliers will monitor water usage by California residents, with the law stipulating that they "shall use satellite imagery, site visits, or other best available technology to develop an accurate estimate of landscaped areas." Note the use of the word "shall," which means they must do it.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the average American uses 80-100 gallons of water per day. According to the USGS website:

A bath uses around 36 gallons of water

A 10-minute shower uses 50 gallons

Washing clothes takes 25-40 gallons of water, depending on the machine's efficiency

Toilets normally use 1.6 gallons per flush (if you're using a low-flow model)

Shaving, brushing your teeth, and washing your face take a gallon each

As you can see, it's not difficult to use 55 gallons of water in the course of a normal day. California residents who opt for a shower will only be left with enough water to brush their teeth and perhaps flush the toilet a couple of times before they run afoul of the new state law.

Water providers face hefty fines if they're found to be in violation of the law:

1) If the violation occurs in a critically dry year immediately preceded by two or more consecutive below normal, dry, or critically dry years or during a period for which the Governor has issued a proclamation of a state of emergency under the California Emergency Services Act (Chapter 7 (commencing with Section 8550) of Division 1 of Title 2 of the Government Code) based on drought conditions,  ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for each day in which the violation occurs.

(2) For all violations other than those described in paragraph (1), one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each day in which the violation occurs.

Wealthy California residents, however, got a special dispensation from the legislature. There are to be special provisions for swimming pools, spas, "and other water features" that use a lot of water.

Victor Davis Hanson, writing for City-Journal in 2016, explained the genesis of the California water crisis, writing that Governor Jerry Brown and other Democratic leaders opposed state and federal water projects in the 1970s, leaving "no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people."

"Those who did the most to cancel water projects and divert reservoir water to pursue their reactionary nineteenth-century dreams of a scenic, depopulated, and fish-friendly environment enjoy lifestyles predicated entirely on the fragile early twentieth-century water projects of the sort they now condemn," he said.

Hanson noted at National Review last year that "Over some 50 consecutive months of drought, California did not start work on a single major reservoir — though many had long ago been planned and designed." Instead, he said, "tens of millions of acre-feet of precious runoff water last year were simply let out to the ocean" due to environmental diversions.

Hanson warned lawmakers to "fix premodern problems before dreaming about postmodern solutions."

Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, author of AB 1668, dismissed warnings about the new water rules as "pure fiction." She told the Sacramento Bee, "I wish people would stop scaring people with this sort of thing."

But unfortunately, instead of making adequate preparations for an eventual water crisis, lawmakers dropped the ball, focusing instead on pet projects like a high-speed rail and virtue-signaling sanctuary city policies. Now California residents are paying the price for their incompetence.

SOURCE 






Renewable Energy Use In Europe Didn’t Stop CO2 Levels From Rising

The proliferation of renewable energy in the European Union in 2017 did not stop the majority of member states from increasing their carbon footprint.

The European Union had a 25 percent growth in wind power and a six percent increase in solar, however, carbon emissions rose by 1.8 percent in 2017, according to a report from Greentech Media. Malta experienced the highest increase, with a 12.8 percent rise. Estonia and Bulgaria came next, with an 11.3 and 8.3 percent increase, respectively.

Altogether, 20 EU member countries saw their carbon dioxide rates go up, while seven were able to cut their rates.

The numbers indicate that, despite massive investments in the renewable energy sector, reducing emissions is a tough task while undergoing job and population growth. Wind and solar have not been able to keep pace with the higher number of electricity consumers. Market expansion is making it all the more difficult for EU leaders who plan to slash carbon to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

“This worrying rise in emissions shows that while renewables continue to grow, the most polluting energy sources are not being eliminated quickly enough,” said Molly Walsh, a renewables campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. The numbers reveal the EU Emissions Trading System — the largest greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme around the world — is not doing a satisfactory job, Walsh stated, according to Greentech Media.

The emissions increase is also surprising considering the amount of money European leaders have spent in recent years to prop up the renewable energy sector and fight climate change.

Germany has paid a fortune to become an international leader in wind energy, but that hasn’t stopped the country from remaining Europe’s largest polluter. Germany has burned an estimated 189 billion euros — around $222 billion — on subsidies for renewable energy since 2000. Emissions have mostly remained at 2009 levels, despite the big financial commitment. The country managed a negligible 0.2 percent improvement from their 2016 carbon dioxide levels.

France established strong renewable energy targets. However, the country witnessed a 3.2 percent carbon emissions rise in 2017. Italy experienced the same rate increase. Spain enjoys robust wind, solar and hydro reserves, yet the country still saw its emissions rise by 7.4 percent, accounting for a 7.7 percent share of Europe’s total output in 2017.

The situation in Europe will likely get worse as the population continues to climb and a slate of nuclear plants begin to phase out.

SOURCE 






The U.S. Clean Air Success Story

REAL air pollution -- particles in the air -- has dropped, regardless of what CO2 has done

Have you heard the good news about the excellent state of U.S. air quality? Chances are, you haven’t. In fact, it is much more likely that you’ve heard the opposite—glum stories of smoggy skies and unhealthy air constantly under threat from industrial pollution and SUVs.

Reality begs to differ. As we celebrate Earth Day, it’s worth acknowledging that by many key metrics, the U.S. has some of the cleanest air in the world, and steady improvements are continuing over the long-term.  

Last year, we highlighted a report by a coalition of state regulators detailing the troubling disconnect between Americans’ pessimistic views on air quality and reality on the ground—or rather, up in the air. We wrote:

The report noted trends in Gallup’s annual polling on environmental issues, which in 1997 found that 42 percent of Americans worried “a great deal” about air pollution while another 34 percent worried “a fair amount.” Incredibly, 20 years later, Gallup’s 2017 survey found Americans more concerned about air pollution, with 47 percent worried “a great deal” and 31 percent worried “a fair amount.”

As the chart below shows, during this period of continual public angst on the subject of air quality, pollutant emissions fell significantly even as population, energy use, and the economy steadily grew.    

So what explains this disconnect? As the report noted, “With media more likely to report bad news combined with often apocalyptic framing by advocates and limited understanding of technical air quality information, it is no wonder that the public is often confused about air quality in their city, county, state, and nation.”

That’s a gentle way of saying that Americans have been misled by the media and agenda-driven groups. This has led to a remarkable situation in which Americans are more concerned about the air they breathe than people in countries with off-the-charts air pollution.

For example, the report notes that “The U.S. ranks behind countries like Bangladesh and Nepal in air quality satisfaction despite average fine particulate matter levels roughly 90 percent lower than these countries.”

This year, we decided to dig a little deeper, and examine some of these same trends on the local level. Using information from EPA’s air quality statistics database, we compiled data on ambient concentrations of several key pollutants (referred to as “criteria pollutants” by EPA) in a handful of major cities since 2001, and compared them to population and economic indicators (obtained from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis, respectively).

The results are equally impressive:[1] In each case, these cities were able to build upon the dramatic air quality improvements of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s with continued gains, all while experiencing steady economic growth. Such progress is always a challenge, but doing it while a growing population adds housing, vehicles, and industrial activity is a remarkable feat that deserves far more recognition and appreciation.

This good news story isn’t an accident, and it isn’t just the result of a few fortunate policies or innovations. These achievements are the product of a truly cooperative system involving EPA, states, industry, and environmental advocates working together on countless issues to advance technology and policy in a manner that fosters economic growth.

Of course, there is still more work to be done, but don’t be fooled the next time you see a gloomy headline painting U.S. air quality with a broad and disparaging brush

The WHO data shows that most major global cities—including iconic European cities such as London, Berlin, Rome, and Paris—can’t hold a candle to the U.S., and in fact are at levels well above what EPA considers safe and protective of public health (PM 2.5 in major Chinese cities is quite literally off the chart)

SOURCE 







Australian activists push for COFFEE CUPS to be plastered with grotesque cigarette-packaging warnings to highlight environmental damage

There's a lot of nonsense in this.  It is mainly takeaway cups that are disposable-- usually for people who want good coffee in their workplace.  So it's an important convenience that would be pesky to replace. And it's hard to imagine any cups in Western countries not going to the tip.  Waste in the oceans comes from backward people using their rivers as a dump.  It's not our fault

Activists are calling for cigarette packet-style labels on disposable coffee cups to remind people they are harming the environment when they buy them.

Anna Warren, a communications officer for North Sydney Council, has started a petition to make coffee cups 'uncool.' She wants drinkers to keep a plastic cup on them at all times and re-use it to save the environment.

The paper cups are not recyclable due to their waterproof plastic lining and are the second biggest filler of landfill space after plastic bags with 2.6billion thrown away every year.

Ms Warren is encouraging the big coffee brands to introduce labels reminding drinkers that the cups go to landfill, similar to the 'smoking kills' reminders on cigarettes. She also wants more cafes to have a bin where the cups can be sent to a specialist recycling centre. Convenience store 7/11 already does this.

Ms Warren's petition to the environment minister, which has more than 23,000 signatures, reads: 'Coffee cups are the second largest source of landfill in Australia and most of the cups that don’t make it into landfill, end up in our environment.

'Landfill’s greenhouse gases are one of the major factors for climate change and global warming.

'Coffee cups which don’t make it to landfill end up in our oceans, killing fragile marine life like turtles, dolphins and even whales - washing up on shore dead with stomachs full of plastic waste.

'Our waste situation is in crisis and if we don’t do anything about it, it’s only going to get worse.

'The trouble is that most coffee cups are not recyclable due to a plastic waterproof lining and no one knows what to do with them.

'The first option is to avoid this altogether by bringing our own keep cups. Many cafes have signed up to responsiblecafes.org offering a discount if you bring your own cup but takeaway coffee cups still persist everywhere.

'We need clear warnings on these disposable cups. Warning of the danger to the environment, like you see on cigarette packets about cigarettes endangering our health.

'Warnings on cigarette packaging have worked very well in reducing the rate of smoking which is not considered cool any more. We need the same for takeaway coffee cups.

'Please, let's have appropriate labelling on takeaway coffee cups now, to inform our behaviour before it’s too late!'

SOURCE 

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

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

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11 June, 2018

What was and what might be

by Viv Forbes

Famine has haunted humans for most of their history. In the days of the Pharaohs, whenever the Nile River failed to flood, Egypt starved. Joseph was called in and he organised stockpiling of grain for famine relief.

Even mighty Rome suffered famines – in 436 BC thousands of starving people threw themselves into the Tiber.

The cold Middle Ages in Europe were haunted by famines. In the 11th and 12th century, famines averaged one in 14 years. Even in England there were 22 recorded famines in the 13th century. In 1235, 20,000 people died in London and people ate horse flesh, bark and grass. There were great famines in India, Bengal, France, China and Russia.

In more recent times, man-made famines were more common in the Comrade Societies – some wit once remarked that “Soviet agriculture has just suffered its 23rd consecutive year of unseasonal weather”.

Some famines were deliberate policy such as Stalin’s liquidation of the Kulaks in 1918 and his starvation of Ukraine in the 1932-33, while other dictators like Mao in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia caused famine with destructive collectivist farm policies.

Famines eased in Europe and North America from about 1860, partly because crops improved with warmer weather and also because of the great increases in land opened up in the Americas for farming and grazing.

But the biggest expansion in food production started with the invention of the coal-powered steam engine – the iron and steel smelted with coal, and the engines, generators and machines powered by coal and then oil, created a food and population explosion.

First were the steam-powered traction engines which pumped water and pulled iron ploughs, planters, harvesters, freight wagons and forest logs. Millions of crop-eating draught horses and oxen went to the butchers and no longer consumed half of the farm crops produced.

Then hunters armed with carbon-powered gunpowder decimated the wild herds of bison, antelope and deer grazing the prairies of the Americas, replacing them with barbed wire and beef cattle. (Most people today probably disapprove of such species slaughter; but it happened, and the food produced on that land now supports farmers, towns and millions of people.)

The cumbersome steam tractors were replaced by internal combustion engines burning kerosene, petrol and diesel.

The model T utility and Fordson tractors created another farming revolution with more food produced with fewer food-consuming draft animals and farm labourers.

Coal-powered trains and petrol-powered trucks and buses moved food, and motorised artillery, cavalry, baggage trains and ambulances moved armies. Millions of ever-hungry and ever-thirsty horses, mules and oxen were removed from the food and water queues.

The vast crop-lands which had been used to produce food for draft animals now produced meat, eggs, milk, butter and grains for humans.

Galvanised iron, steel and concrete (all made using two carbon emitting raw materials, coal and limestone) became invaluable for hay sheds, dairies, cold rooms and silos allowing farmers to store farm produce for droughts and winters.

Engines were soon powering refrigerated trucks, road trains, trains and ships that moved food quickly from farms, factories, abattoirs and mills to refrigerated storage in distant cities, thus greatly reducing the amount of food wasted.

The next revolution in food production was the discovery and manufacture of nitrate fertilisers and urea using the natural gases nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. These fertilisers, assisted by vast irrigation schemes, gave a huge boost to crop growth.

This stunning food revolution based on combustion engines, hydro-carbon fuels, natural gas fertilisers, irrigation and refrigeration has banished famine from the first world.

But every system has its limits. Famine is always just a season or two away. It bides its time, waiting for a failure in the complex carbon-fuelled agricultural, transport and storage network that supports every city.

When hunter-gatherers experienced food shortages, they followed the rains, scavenged for food and largely survived. When farmers and fences replaced hunter-gathers they cultivated large areas of land to grow grasses and grains for poultry, cattle, goats, sheep and pigs. This created a huge increase in food production, but it also tied the farmers to the land – when drought struck, they could not follow the storms.

As farming grew, so too did the dependent cities of factory workers, merchants, tax collectors, rulers, bureaucrats, policemen and soldiers, none of whom produced food. More recently this hungry overhead has been joined by a growing army of welfare and aid recipients, political immigrants and refugees. However, when drought or severe cold threatens the food supply, the cities cannot move away.

Just one thing is now required to create a modern famine – widespread crop failure.

What causes crop failures? Unsuitable conditions in one or more of just three key atmospheric conditions: temperature (unseasonal frost, snow or heat); moisture (extreme floods or droughts); and carbon dioxide (too little to sustain healthy plant growth).

The Little Ice Age ended around the start of the 20th century. Today’s warm climate is very farm-friendly and tends to have most effect on the cold lands of the northern hemisphere, thus increasing the acreage and productivity of the vast crop lands there.

Warmth also drives moisture and carbon dioxide plant food out of the oceans into the atmosphere, creating a much more crop-friendly environment. The extra moisture shows up as more precipitation and the extra carbon dioxide we see today makes plants grow faster and stronger. Extra warmth, moisture and carbon dioxide help greatly to increase crop yields and banish famine.

However, Earth’s climate is always changing, and there is significant evidence that we are past the warm peak of this climate cycle and are on the road to the next advance of the ice.

All we hear from the climate industry and the dark green media are the claimed dangers of global warming. However it is global cooling that poses a dire threat to world food supplies.

First the frosts and snow come earlier and stay later – the growing season gets shorter. Then winter snow persists into summer, ice sheets and glaciers advance and boreal forests and tundra invade grasslands - the great northern crop lands are forced to move south. The cold also reduces evaporation from oceans, lakes and streams, thus reducing rainfall. Growing ice sheets cause falling sea levels, dewatering coastal fish farms and breeding grounds. And, in the final blow, cold oceans and lakes absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, further reducing plant growth. Icy eras reinforce all three crop destroyers: cold, drought and carbon-dioxide starvation.

In addition to climate dangers, foolish green zealots in the comfortable western democracies are also nibbling away at the area of land and sea allowed for harvesting food. They also reduce the land devoted to growing food by subsidising crops for ethanol and biodiesel production.

They are also seeking global powers in an anti-life campaign to encourage global cooling by reducing the carbon dioxide content of Earth’s atmosphere. Luckily their costly anti-carbon goals will have no effect on the grand cycles of global climate, but they will harm the cost, capacity and reliability of our complex energy-dependent food production storage and distribution system.

The Green energy they idolise is intermittent and unreliable – it breeds network instability and power failures.

The fierce dog of famine is tethered outside the city gate. Our abundant supplies of reliable energy for the production, harvesting, transport, processing, storage and distribution of food have kept him at bay. But still he waits patiently for foolish politicians or dreadful weather to let him loose.

A natural disaster affecting key Asian oil refineries or a naval blockade of the fleet of tankers carrying petroleum products to Australia would stop road transport of food to Australian cities in a few days.

Just one decent regional blackout would empty supermarket shelves and create long queues at every service station; two frigid winters would see food prices soar; and a return of the Little Ice Age or worse will see starvation stalking the cities.

SOURCE 






How the Obama EPA Fudged Regulatory Evaluation

Estimating "social costs" and "social benefits," the EPA put a big price tag on doing nothing

It isn’t necessarily news to say the Obama administration used the Environmental Protection Agency treacherously, employing deceitful methods to enact a burdensome environmental agenda. But a recent report sheds some light on one way this was accomplished — “by gaming cost-benefit analysis to downplay the consequences of its major environmental rules,” The Wall Street Journal reveals.

The Obama EPA produced an annualized average of 565 directives, “imposing the highest regulatory costs of any agency,” according to the Journal. Legally, the EPA is generally required to submit these proposals to a cost-benefit analysis. The caveat is that the agency is also afforded considerable leeway in the process. The Obama administration considered this an opportunity and proceeded to exploit the system by estimating a cost for not enacting regulations.

The Journal explains, “By introducing ‘social costs’ and ‘social benefits,’ the EPA began factoring in speculation about how regulatory inaction would affect everything from rising sea levels to pediatric asthma. EPA optimists even included their guesses about how domestic regulations could have a global impact. Meanwhile, the agency ignored best practices from the Office of Management and Budget, juking the numbers to raise the cost of carbon emissions.”

To illustrate, in the run-up to the superfluous and extremely costly Clean Power Plan, the Journal says “the EPA suddenly raised the social cost of a ton of carbon emissions to an average of $36 from $21. Before it embarked on new oil and gas regulations, the EPA put the social cost of methane at an average of $1,100 per ton.” After reexamining the claims using verifiable criteria, Scott Pruitt’s EPA came up with vastly different numbers. The result? “While the Obama Administration claimed the Clean Power Plan would yield up to $43 billion in net benefits by 2030, the Trump EPA concluded it would carry a $13 billion net cost,” the Journal notes.

Thankfully, Pruitt intends to ameliorate the cost-benefit analysis process. Earlier this year, “secret science” was banned, to which Pruitt explained, “We need to make sure [the] data and methodology are published as part of the record. Otherwise, it’s not transparent.” His rationalization to the cost-benefit analysis change is exactly the same. As the Journal concludes, “If Mr. Pruitt succeeds, future cost-benefit analyses will be more consistent and transparent.” Pruitt is both reining in the EPA and demonstrating the extent to which his predecessors went rogue.

SOURCE 







Blame California’s Crazy Green/Left Politics for Water Rationing

California suffers from droughts, but the state’s government is an endless well of bad ideas. The latest absurd legislation, which Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed into law, places onerous restrictions on water usage.

California citizens will be limited to using 55 gallons of water a day now and just 50 per day by 2030.

According to the San Jose  Mercury News, the new laws will “require cities, water districts and large agricultural water districts to set strict annual water budgets, face fines of $1,000 per day if they don’t meet them, and $10,000 a day during drought emergencies.”

As some have noted, the restriction could make it difficult for some California citizens to do laundry and take a shower on the same day without going over the limit.

A Snopes fact check said that this fine is placed on the water provider, not the consumer as some have claimed. This misses the fact that the cost of the fines likely will be passed on to the customer, either directly for violations, indirectly through increased cost of water, or worse, by threatening to shut off household water consumption to avoid fines.

Even some left-leaning outlets admitted the impact on consumers is unknown and the 55-gallon limit is much lower than the average summer usage for the typical Californian. Taking a shower and doing laundry could exceed that amount for some.

According to The Sacramento Bee, the State Water Resources Control Board estimates California residents used an average of 90 gallons of indoor and outdoor water per day in 2017, down from 109 gallons in 2013.

Californians will pay for this law one way or another, making it just a little harder for the middle class to thrive.

The problem also threatens the state’s enormous and important agricultural industry, which is where most of the state’s water goes.

In addition to this legislation, the state is also considering a new tax on drinking water to pay for new infrastructure projects.

The question is: Are these kinds of laws necessary?

Regardless of how punitive the water usage laws end up being, debate over the details obscures the fact California is always quick to crack down on the individual behavior of citizens with obnoxious regulations before it works to efficiently manage its resources.

Instead of promoting efficient, pro-growth policies, state leaders are in thrall to environmentalist ideology and utopian spending schemes that have created poverty and, yes, economic inequality, even as the state goes through an economic boom.

That California, the richest state in the union and one which in no way suffers for lack of tax revenue, cannot find a way to manage its water resources without cracking down with burdensome regulation is telling.

Droughts are nothing new in California, especially in the desert south, but the increasing inability to deal with them is.

California wastes enormous sums of money on a bullet train to nowhere and other excessive spending priorities, but it has neglected to strengthen its water management infrastructure, leaving it susceptible to shortages and rationing.

As Joel Kotkin, fellow in urban studies at Chapman University, explained in a 2015 interview with Reason, the problem goes beyond water.

“The water situation in California is pretty bad,” he said. “You have to understand that we haven’t built any new infrastructure for the last 20 years. This, by the way, is not unique to water. It’s roads, it’s schools, it’s an unwillingness to invest in the future because we spend all our money in government paying the pensions of employees.”

And through this crisis, California has spent enormous resources to protect the delta smelt, a 3-inch fish that appears to be going extinct despite enormously wasteful environmental projects.

“To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008,” according to a 2015 report in The Wall Street Journal. “That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years. Yet a survey of young adult smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta last fall yielded just eight fish, the lowest level since 1967.”

California must find a way to deal with its water shortages. The state may be recovering from a drought, but more are sure to come.

Instead of nickel-and-diming taxpayers and creating onerous restrictions, the state should focus on getting its finances in order and prioritizing basic infrastructure needs over fruitless left-wing welfare schemes.

SOURCE 







Freeze, reduce or eliminate CAFÉ fuel standards

Too many small, lightweight cars cause too many deaths and injuries to justify tighter mpg rule

Paul Driessen

Saying the air traffic controller work force was “too white,” the Obama Federal Aviation Administration allegedly replaced hiring standards based on science, math and ability to handle intense pressure with rules designed to increase racial diversity. It’s hard to find a more flagrant example of bureaucrats putting people’s safety and lives so low on their list of priorities. Difficult but not impossible.

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards also play with people’s lives. Enacted in the 1970s amid fears of imminent oil depletion, the rules require that cars and light trucks on average across each manufacturer’s entire smorgasbord of vehicles must get better and better mileage over a period of years.

For the first few years, improving gasoline mileage was relatively easy. But as the standards tightened, car makers had to make vehicles smaller and use less steel and more aluminum and plastic to achieve the arbitrary mileage demands. That poses a serious problem that the Trump Administration wants to fix.

Bigger, heavier vehicles are safer, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has said for decades. Smaller, lighter vehicles are less crashworthy, less safe. Drivers and passengers in cars and light trucks are many times more likely to die in a crash – and far more likely to maimed, disfigured, disabled or paralyzed – beyond what would have occurred if the CAFÉ standards did not exist or had been relaxed.

Even with side air bags and other expensive vehicle modifications, smaller, lighter vehicles have less “armor” to protect occupants, and less space between them and any car, truck, bus, tree or other obstacle they might collide with. So they are less safe and more expensive – less affordable for poor families.

As Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study estimated that CAFÉ rules had contributed to as many as 2,600 extra fatalities in 1993 – at a relatively lenient standard of 27.5 miles per gallon. Studies by the Brookings Institution, Harvard School of Public Health, National Academy of Sciences and USA Today all reached similar conclusions.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) covered all this up. Grizzly facts would not be allowed to get in the way of a well-intentioned government program.

Thankfully, the mileage standards stayed around 27.5 mpg throughout the 1990s and beyond. But then, in 2012, the Obama Administration began ratcheting the standards upward, with the goal of hitting 54.5 mpg by 2025. The Environmental Protection Agency had begun helping to manage the NHTSA mileage program in 2009, and it became the driving force for doubling the mpg requirements. It became equally complicit in hiding the death and injury tolls associated with CAFÉ.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), other new technologies, and the discovery of new oil and gas deposits mean we will not run out of oil or natural gas for another century or more. So the Obama Administration asserted that mandating far tighter mileage rules would have the co-benefit of reducing tailpipe emissions of “greenhouse gases” associated with dangerous manmade climate change.

Scary headlines, data manipulation, computer models and well-orchestrated campaigns to link nearly every extreme weather event to rising atmospheric levels of (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide enabled the climate scare to get as far as it has. But the climate cataclysm movement is running out of gas.

People no longer accept claims that Earth’s climate was stable until the 1970s. They remember that it was a global cooling and global warming scare, before it became a climate change and extreme weather scare. They realize global temperatures have been stable for nearly 20 years, complying with Paris treaty and other climate edicts would cost trillions of dollars, and emerging economic powerhouses like China and India are not obligated or likely to reduce their use of fossil fuels or emission of greenhouse gases.

Despite $557 million in quiet funding by rich liberal foundations to wealthy alarmist groups, people are also figuring out that the Paris treaty actually has little or nothing to do with the climate or environment. “Climate change” is now used to justify replacing the capitalist economic model with a global governance system – and redistributing the world’s resources and wealth. The treaty itself says climate action must include an emphasis on “gender equality,” “empowerment of women,” “intergenerational equity” and “climate justice.” These are the “climate dangers” that supposedly justify lethal CAFÉ rules.

Thankfully, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt recently proposed to re-examine the 54.5-mpg-by-2025 Obama EPA-NHTSA standards – and possibly freeze them at the pending 2020 level of 39 mpg. Mr. Pruitt noted that the standards had been implemented after years of lobbying by environmental pressure groups, and that assertions of climate and weather benefits do not reflect scientific or historical reality.

There has also been talk of revoking California’s unique right to set tougher standards than are applicable to the rest of the USA, and preventing the state from applying its more stringent mileage rules beyond its borders. EPA and Transportation Department officials say they have held “productive” discussions with California air quality regulators and others – but it’s hard to say where the talks might be headed.

The proposals drew predictable howls of outrage from environmentalists and California legislators and regulators, who are sticking to their claims that tougher mpg rules will somehow avoid climate chaos. An automobile manufacturers lobbying group insists that mileage standards should increase every year.

Auto makers would understandably prefer to have a single national mileage standard, rather than two: ultra tough rules for California and a less stringent mpg requirement for the rest of America. But the injury and death tolls dictate that any standard must be held well below 54.5 mpg or even 39 or 30 mpg.

Pruitt did not mention the injury and death tolls that result from these mileage standards. He should have, and his new plan to implement comprehensive cost-benefit reforms would compel his regulators to fairly, honestly and accurately assess the social and environmental costs and benefits of proposed mileage rules.

That would stand in stark contrast to the way EPA handled its arbitrary social cost of carbon analyses. The Obama agency looked only at alleged and exaggerated worldwide costs of United States carbon dioxide emissions – while totally ignoring the immense and obvious benefits of using fossil fuels. To compound the insanity, EPA claimed it could make reliable predictions three centuries into the future!

To support its various pollution control measures, the Obama EPA raised its “value of a statistical life” presumably saved by a proposed regulation from $7.9 million in 2011 to $9.7 million in 2013. The VSL estimates how much money people are willing to spend to reduce a risk enough to save one life. There is no evidence that EPA employed VSL to estimate the human cost of doubling the 1993 27.5 mpg standard.

The agency should certainly do so now. Using a $10-million VSL, $2 million per serious injury or paralysis – and 4,000 deaths and 50,000 serious injuries per year from a 54.5 mpg standard – would mean the average fuel efficiency demanded by California and radical greens would cost the United States $50 billion a year. In return, we would get small, purely speculative climate and weather benefits from burning less gasoline in the USA, assuming that tailpipe emissions play a major role in climate change.

(Applying similar cost-benefit analyses to electric cars would raise serious questions about the generous state and federal tax rebates, free access to toll and HOV lanes, free charging stations and other subsidies for pricey vehicles that only wealthy families can afford.)

Volkswagen’s deceit about diesel emissions defrauded consumers but didn’t kill anyone. And yet VW has generated far more regulatory, judicial, legislative and media outrage than lethal mileage standards.

As Ralph Nader might say, CAFÉ standards make cars unsafe at any speed – not by faulty car design, but by government decree. It’s time to reduce, eliminate or at least freeze these killer standards (and do the same thing with the ethanol mandates and gravy train).

Via email





Recycling: A stupid, expensive and ineffective fad

If labor costs are included it is doubtful if any municipal recycling scheme ever ran at a profit

In an era when concern for the environment is widely viewed as the truest form of “spiritual” and moral living, it has become anathema to question the validity of the tenets of this secular religion. This public attitude largely explains why many dubious practices that have been wrapped up in the altruistic guise of “saving the environment” receive little critical analysis. One prime example of this phenomenon is the recycling movement. The obvious moral principle of stewardship underlying the concept of recycling is indeed commendable. But a book should not be judged by its cover, and recycling in practice is neither economically nor environmentally all that it’s cracked up to be.

Much of the energy and time families and individuals put into separating their garbage is often for naught, as much of the separated recyclables actually end up in the same landfill as other garbage. There are several reasons for this.

First, until recently China imported large quantities of America’s recyclables. This year, China has essentially shut down most recycling imports, which has had a huge impact as the U.S. exported nearly a third of all recyclables. Second, not all plastics, which make up the bulk of items separated for recycling, are recyclable. Third, lower oil prices over the last few years have effectively priced out the economic value of recycling. It’s just not cost effective. And finally, the impact of recycling may actually prove to have an overall negative impact on the environment.

John Tierney points out in a New York Times article that the impact of washing plastics before recycling, coupled with trucking emissions for moving to recycling facilities, could end up adding to green house gasses. Tierney further notes that “all the trash generated by Americans for the next 1,000 years would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the land available for grazing.” He adds, “And any tiny amount of land wouldn’t be lost forever, because landfills are typically covered with grass and converted to parkland, like the Freshkills Park being created on Staten Island. The United States Open tennis tournament is played on the site of an old landfill — and one that never had the linings and other environmental safeguards required today.”

In short, like much “settled science” these days, the justification for recycling is just being, well, recycled.

SOURCE 

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

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

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10 June, 2018

Turncoat NASA chief says he changed mind about climate change because he 'read a lot’



This is a good example of regulatory capture -- when the people being regulated win over their supervisor to their viewpoint.  It happens all the time.  He looks a bit of a Shlemiel anyway so was probably not hard to capture

Another reason why he was quickly captured probably is that he knows nothing about science.  In justifying himself, Bridenstine referred to "The Science" as having convinced him. Whenever anybody  talks vaguely about "The Science" as his justification for believing in global warming that is a sure sign that he in fact knows nothing about the issues involved.  He is just appealing to authority, which is almost always a dumb thing to do.

So it is no surprise that his only postgrad degree is an MBA, a singularly useless piece of paper.  There is no MBA science.  An MBA is just a grab bag of ideas from other disciplines and 40 Years Of Data Show The MBA Effectively Does Nothing -- It Has No Impact.  Success in business is all about handling people and you have either got that or you haven't

I have read a number of comments from skeptics about Bridenstine's poorly articulated views and their consensus is that Bridenstine wanted to be captured. He is a relatively young 42 and he wants to be accepted by the Green/Left establishment with a view to his future career when Trump has left the scene.  We have a term for that in Australia:  He is a "crawler".  To Australians, a crawler is the lowest of the low
  

NASA chief says he changed mind about climate change because he 'read a lot’

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says he changed his mind on the existence of man-made climate change because he “read a lot.”

“I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot,” Bridenstine told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we've put a lot of it into the atmosphere and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we've seen. And we've done it in really significant ways.”

The former congressman from Oklahoma had long denied the scientific consensus on climate change and said in a 2013 speech on the House floor that "global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago."

In May, Bridenstine first announced publicly that he now believes human activity is the main cause of climate change.

“The National Climate Assessment that includes NASA, and it includes the Department of Energy and it includes NOAA, has clearly stated it is extremely likely — is the language they use — that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming,” he said at a Senate Appropriations Committee subpanel's hearing last month.

President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have not made similar pronouncements, however.

SOURCE 






The Neurobiology of Climate Change Denial

This is a fun article so has already been widely noted.  So I don't think I will be letting the cat out of the bag if I report that as soon as I saw the reference to the work of Lewandowsky in the first paragraph I smelt a rat.  Lewandoski would be in the running to get first prize for the worst bit of survey research ever done.  I don't have enough information to diagnose what his problem is but it is clearly a big one.

But do read the whole of the article linked below  It is VERY reminiscent of a lot of brain-function studies coming from Leftist psychologists (e.g. Hibbing)


Much work has already been undertaken to establish the cognitive foundation for the irrationality of climate change denial. Of particular note are the studies undertaken by Lewandowsky, Kahneman, Shapiro and O’Conner, identifying the many cognitive biases that invalidate arguments put forward by those who profess scepticism in the face of the scientific evidence. However, it is not until recently that neuroscientists have turned their attention to the subject of climate change science denial in order to determine whether there are any fundamental neurological indicators that may be used as predictors of such pathological thinking strategies.......

More HERE 





Vegans spreading the word about their lifestyle damage endangered PLANTS with their graffiti

Environmentalists have accused vegans of killing endangered cress in a row over an anti-meat graffiti stunt.

Meat-free campaigners daubed the words 'Go Vegan' in huge letters on a rock face in the Avon Gorge near Bristol this week.

But the move has been slammed by conservation experts at the National Trust, who say the rock is home to rare plants, including rock cress, which may have been killed or damaged by the thick masonry paint.

The 'Go Vegan' message is clearly visible from across the gorge on Bridge Valley Road and appears to be either signed or a message to a 'Ned', 'Ryan' and 'Ash'.

The National Trust's local countryside manager Lisa Topham hit out at the irresponsible move.

She said: 'The cracks in that rock are home to the exceptionally rare Bristol Rock Cress which grows in crevices of exposed rock faces.

'The people who climbed the rock face are bound to have trampled the plants and even painted them. What they have done there isn't green in any way.'

Ms Topham added: 'We can't risk causing damage ourselves, so we can't use chemicals to remove the paint.

'Using a blaster to remove it still risks the paint filling the crevices where these rare plants live.

'The only other option is painting over it - but that creates a blank canvas and we'd still rather not have anybody up on the rock face for any reason.'

The area is a National Nature Reserve, Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation.

Ms Topham said: 'The woods and the edge of the gorge are terribly important. They are home to several species which are not found anywhere else in the world - including the rock cress.

'It is probably the richest site for Whitebeams in the world with some very rare trees only found in Leigh Woods.

'We want people to feel it is their woods and come and enjoy it - but we also need people to understand it is fragile and to help us look after the place.'

SOURCE 







Cost-Benefit Reform at the EPA

Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency jammed through an average of 565 new rules each year during the Obama Presidency, imposing the highest regulatory costs of any agency. It pulled off this regulatory spree in part by gaming cost-benefit analysis to downplay the consequences of its major environmental rules. The Trump Administration has already rolled back some of this overregulation, and now Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to stop the EPA’s numerical shenanigans, too.

On Thursday the EPA will take the first step toward a comprehensive cost-benefit reform by issuing an advance notice of proposed rule-making. After weighing public input, EPA will propose a rule establishing an agency-wide standard for how regulations are assessed. The reform would make it easier for Americans and their elected representatives to see whether more regulation is truly justifiable.

The EPA has a statutory obligation to look at the costs and benefits of many proposed rules. That responsibility has been reinforced by executive orders and court rulings. But while all three branches of government have supported such assessments, they leave the EPA broad discretion. Enter the Obama Administration, which saw the chance to add additional considerations to the cost-benefit equation.

By introducing “social costs” and “social benefits,” the EPA began factoring in speculation about how regulatory inaction would affect everything from rising sea levels to pediatric asthma. EPA optimists even included their guesses about how domestic regulations could have a global impact. Meanwhile, the agency ignored best practices from the Office of Management and Budget, juking the numbers to raise the cost of carbon emissions.

This proved as politically useful as it was scientifically imprecise. Months before introducing the Clean Power Plan, the EPA suddenly raised the social cost of a ton of carbon emissions to an average of $36 from $21. Before it embarked on new oil and gas regulations, the EPA put the social cost of methane at an average of $1,100 per ton.

At White House direction, the Trump EPA recalculated those figures last year to include only demonstrable domestic benefits. The social cost estimates dropped to an average of $5 per ton of carbon and $150 per ton of methane. That made a big difference in the cost-benefit analysis. While the Obama Administration claimed the Clean Power Plan would yield up to $43 billion in net benefits by 2030, the Trump EPA concluded it would carry a $13 billion net cost.

Another statistical sleight of hand involves the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The regulation’s stated purpose was to reduce mercury pollution, but the EPA added the rule’s potential to decrease dust. That was irrelevant to the central question of whether it was worthwhile to regulate mercury as proposed. But without the erroneous co-benefits, EPA would find such regulations tougher to justify.

On his first day in office, Mr. Pruitt said his goal was to protect the environment and the economy, and that “we don’t have to choose between the two.” His many ethics controversies have distracted from that mission, but this cost-benefit reform is a welcome return.

The regulatory specifics will be hashed out in the coming months, but there’s real potential here to curb the distortions that mask bad policy. If Mr. Pruitt succeeds, future cost-benefit analyses will be more consistent and transparent. The reform would help to ensure regulation is based on sound scientific analysis instead of wishful bureaucratic thinking.

SOURCE 







Energy policy as shameful as the Soviet’s

“I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city.’’

Communist General Yevgraf Zhivago, Dr Zhivago, (film), 1965

One of my favourite movies of all time is the classic Dr Zhivago set against the backdrop of the turmoil of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

And I’ve always been haunted by the scene where Yuri – played by Omar Sharif – returns home from work early and admonishes his wife for not keeping the heating on. His wife then breaks down in tears telling Yuri they have no fuel to keep it alight.

Later that evening Yuri sneaks out into the night scavenging for wood to take home and burn to heat his home and keep his family warm. In the darkness of night, Yuri rips off a few wooden planks from a fence which he hides under his heavy overcoat, while his half-brother, Communist General Yevgraf Zhivago watches from the shadows.

However, not being able to heat one’s home in winter, and scavenging the streets looking for a few pieces of wood to burn for a little warmth is not something restricted to chaos and confusion of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

Here in modern-day Australia, one of most energy-rich nations in the world, last financial year a total of 109,000 households had their electricity disconnected, unable to afford their electricity bills inflated by over $3 billion in subsidies for Chinese made solar panels and wind turbines.

And add to those 109,000 homes where the electricity was cut-off, a further 100,000 plus more homes are on electricity hardship programs, plus the millions of Australians that this winter won’t turn their heaters on for fear of being unable to afford what is now almost the most expensive electricity in the world — and we to have many people scavenging the streets looking for pieces of wood to burn to try and keep their homes warm.

Recently, I’ve heard stories of people stealing wooden pallets from industrial areas to take home to burn for a little warmth. I also constantly hear stories people going in bushland to fill the boot of their car with firewood because they can’t afford electricity. And we’ve even had examples of people resorting to burning barbecue heat beads indoors to try and heat their homes – only to be poisoned by noxious gasses emitted.

But to the climate change zealots, having hundreds of thousands of their fellow Australians unable to heat their homes in winter is simply a necessary sacrifice in their virtue-signalling against “global warming’’.

As Yuri Zhivago says to Bolshevik commander upon finding an old Russian peasant suffering from starvation and lack of warmth; “It would give me satisfaction for to hear them admit it”.

SOURCE 

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

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

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8 June, 2018

NOAA Scientist To Media: Don’t Link Hurricanes To Global Warming

The news media should be cautious about linking hurricane activity to global warming, according to National Hurricane Center Science and Operations Officer Chris Landsea.

In an interview with NBC News reporters, Landsea said he is concerned when hurricanes are used “as a poster child” for global warming.

“There are periods where it’s busy and quiet and busy and quiet, but no trend,” said Landsea, “There’s no statistical change over a 130-year period. Since 1970, the number of hurricanes globally is flat. I haven’t seen anything that suggests that the hurricane intensity is going to change dramatically.

“It looks like a pretty tiny change to how strong hurricanes will be. It’s not zero, but it’s in the noise level. It’s very small.”

Responding to assertions that hurricanes are stronger now or retain their strength longer than was the case several decades ago, Landsea questioned whether that perception is due to modern technology.

Today’s technology is able to immediately detect the full strength of a hurricane even when it is far out at sea.

Global tropical cyclone data, presented by meteorologist Ryan Maue at http://wx.graphics/tropical/, show fluctuations from year to year but little if any long-term trend.

2017 was an active hurricane season in the North Atlantic, prompting the media to link hurricane activity to global warming.

However, the 12 years before 2017 marked the longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane (category 3 or higher) striking the United States.

SOURCE 






Wind Disappears in Britain Leaving Turbines at a Standstill

Britain’s gone seven days with almost no wind generation and forecasts show the calm conditions persisting until the middle of the month.

The wind drought has pushed up day-ahead power prices to the highest levels for the time of year for at least a decade.

U.K. turbines can produce about as much power as 12 nuclear reactors when conditions are right. During the “Beast from the East” storm that hit Britain in March, they generated record levels of power and at times provided the biggest share of the nation’s electricity.

Low wind power isn’t a threat to supplies in June when demand is low, but on a dull, dark day in winter, this could be a different story.

The government has to make sure that there is enough back up generation for times when the wind isn’t blowing. Greg Clark, secretary of state for business energy and industrial strategy announced Monday that the U.K. will take the next step toward agreeing to help Hitachi Ltd. finance a new nuclear reactor.

SOURCE 






Ehrlich’s Guide To Being An Intrusive Arsehole

SPOTLIGHT: The venomous, judgmental tone of public discourse can’t be blamed on Twitter. It was already in full swing 50 years ago.

BIG PICTURE: Convinced that overpopulation threatened civilization, scientist Paul Ehrlich urged readers of his monster 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, to harangue their friends and acquaintances.

The question of how many children to bring into the world wasn’t a supremely private matter. Ehrlich insisted it was everybody’s business.

His book says someone who already has eight kids should have it pointed out to them that they “surely would not behave that way today.”

Childless individuals, he said, should be praised for their “selfless devotion to mankind” even, he said, in instances in which “you suspect [they are] sterile.”

People with two children should be told that “two is plenty,” and advised that any additional offspring would make it clear they were “doing it for personal satisfaction, not out of love of children.”

Conservatives should be reminded that “overpopulation breeds conditions in which communism and ‘big government’ thrive.”

Liberals should be told that “as long as population continues to grow” the rich will get richer and the poor poorer. (Global poverty has actually fallen sharply in recent decades, despite ongoing population increases.)

Those encountering a university professor must convince the professor that he should immediately use his influence in every way possible within and outside of the university…The population crisis must be an integral part of his teaching – it is pertinent to everysubject…

In this context, Ehrlich the censor is once again on full display. Someone in the physical sciences, he says, should “write to the Scientific American and similar journals to ask the editors to stop accepting advertisements that imply that a technology for mining or farming the sea can save humanity.”

Such a scientist should also “write strong letters to his narrow-minded colleagues who are proposing idiotic panaceas to solve the food problem.”

A man who dismissed others as narrow-minded had the chutzpah to insist it was his way or the highway. Multiple analyses weren’t permitted.

Other people had no legitimate contributions to make. Magazine readers shouldn’t even be exposed to ads that implied a different perspective.

TOP TAKEAWAY:  Supercilious arrogance. Scorn, contempt, and disrespect for other people. This has been the Paul Ehrlich playbook for half a century.

SOURCE 





Cooling Ocean Air Temps

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The May update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for May. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

The anomalies have reached the same levels as 2015.  Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Since last October all oceans have cooled, with upward bumps in Feb. 2018, now erased.

As of May 2018, global ocean temps are slightly lower than April and below the average since 1995.  NH remains higher, but not enough to offset much lower temps in SH and Tropics (between 20N and 20S latitudes).  Global ocean air temps are now the lowest since April 2015, and SH the lowest since May 2013.

The details of UAH ocean temps are provided below.  The monthly data make for a noisy picture, but seasonal fluxes between January and July are important.


Big fall from 2016 ElNino peak evident

The greater volatility of the Tropics is evident, leading the oceans through three major El Nino events during this period.  Note also the flat period between 7/1999 and 7/2009.  The 2010 El Nino was erased by La Nina in 2011 and 2012.  Then the record shows a fairly steady rise peaking in 2016, with strong support from warmer NH anomalies, before returning to the 22-year average.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  They started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

SOURCE 






NEW Rebel Book Makes ‘The Case Against David Suzuki’

The smiling avuncular deceiver

Tomorrow the University of Alberta will give David Suzukian honorary degree. That’s a disgrace. David Suzuki despises Alberta — he boycotts it, insults it, encourages lawbreaking against it.

Imagine inviting in such a man, to bestow upon him the university’s highest honour. And not just at any time.

Right when the debate over the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is at its apex; when the lack of a pipeline is causing a bottleneck that costs tens of millions of dollars a day, not just to workers, but to government coffers too.

For the unemployed men and women in the oil patch, the U of A has no time. But for their tormentor, David Suzuki, they’ve got an honorary degree.

There was a backlash — protests, petitions, donors cancelling their money. But the U of A dug in.

The thing about Suzuki is, opposition to him is dissident. It’s underground. Because who would dare contradict him? No-one at the CBC, the largest media company in Canada, for forty years.

They’ve been Suzuki’s PR machine, pumping him out not only over the airwaves, but also into classrooms and the popular culture. He’s ubiquitous. But he’s never been properly vetted.

At his events, at his speeches, for which he charges $30,000 a pop, he rarely takes questions, and if he does, they’re almost always pre-screened.

David Suzuki lives a double life:

Someone who condemns capitalism — but has literally five homes. Someone who condemns fossil fuels — but travels globally, non-stop, and even has a business deal with an oil company. Someone who claims to be progressive, but treats young women as sexual objects.

Now our own Sheila Gunn Reid has published the authoritative guide to Suzuki — it’s called The Case Against David Suzuki: The Unauthorized Biography.

It’s a quick read — less than 100 pages. But meticulously footnoted. So you can check all the facts for yourself.

And we’re giving it away, absolutely FREE, as an ebook at SuzukiBook.com

The idea being: have as many people as possible get the truth about Suzuki. Do the kind of research that the U of A didn’t do — and then refused to do, when they were called on it.

SOURCE 

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

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

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






7 June, 2018

Berkeley Scholar: Climate Change Is Officially Dead. But Blame Activists, Not Trump

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal Monday, Steven F. Hayward, senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, declared that climate change as a pre-eminent policy issue has officially "run its course." And if you're looking for someone to blame, he suggests, don't look at President Trump, look instead at left-wing activists who've let their social justice and "green utopian vision" sabotage viable solutions.

"All that remains" of the climate change political movement, writes Hayward, "is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers." Most national governments, he explains, have been steadily "backing away from forced-marched decarbonization." The arc of climate change as a policy priority, he declares, can officially be dated from 1988 to 2018.

But while the issue has run its course in the early years of Trump's presidency, he notes, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement "merely ratified a trend long becoming evident." No, Trump isn't to blame for the demise of the issue; in the end, the self-defeating ideological agenda of social justice and climate activists have finally buried it.

"The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out," writes Hayward. And this collapse of the movement, he explains, was utterly "predictable."

Citing political scientist Anthony Downs' 1972 article for the Public Interest, “Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle,’" Hayward lays out the five stages of a political movement, with which climate change has tracked perfectly. It's now suffering the inglorious fifth stage:

Stage 1: Experts and activists call attention to a public problem.

Stage 2: The "alarmed media and political class discover the issue" and often stir up "euphoric enthusiasm ... as activists conceive the issue in terms of global peril and salvation."

Stage 3: The "hinge," characterized by "a gradually spreading realization that the cost of ‘solving’ the problem is very high indeed."

Stage 4: The "gradual decline in the intensity of public interest in the problem."

Stage 5: A "prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest," which often involves "painful trade-offs" that activists simply aren't willing to make.

Climate change is clearly in this fifth and final stage, he explains, where activists are blocking viable solutions as a result of their ideology, including social justice activism and their "utopian" environmental vision:

A case in point is climate campaigners’ push for clean energy, whereas they write off nuclear power because it doesn’t fit their green utopian vision. A new study of climate-related philanthropy by Matthew Nisbet found that of the $556.7 million green-leaning foundations spent from 2011-15, “not a single grant supported work on promoting or reducing the cost of nuclear energy.” The major emphasis of green giving was “devoted to mobilizing public opinion and to opposing the fossil fuel industry.”

If scientists want to be angry with anyone, he writes, they should direct that anger at the Left for politicizing the issue and the international policy community for narrowing what it deems to be acceptable responses.

"Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers," he concludes. "Causes that live by politics, die by politics."

SOURCE 







Recycling nonsense hits a rock in New England

Once labor costs are included, it is doubtful if any municipal recycling scheme has been profitable.  Sending everything straight to the landfill would save a lot of money

Buried in the mountains of refuse at Casella’s recycling plant in Charlestown are tons of material that should have gone straight to the landfill — from tires and pots to lobster buoys and garden hoses — items that can gum up the machines and taint the byproducts ultimately sold as commodities.

The increasing amount of such non-recyclable waste entering processing plants has sparked a backlash in the countries that convert the material into useful products, most notably China, which used to process the vast majority of US recyclables before it cracked down on what materials it would accept this year.

The result is a backup at some recycling plants in Massachusetts and across the United States, driving up costs and disrupting the industry and local municipalities’ refuse efforts. Towns that used to earn money from recycled waste are now forced to pay as much as $70 a ton to have it hauled to landfills or incinerators.

“These new policies have made it much harder for every recycler,” said Austin Mc-knight, general manager of the Charlestown plant, which processes about 230,000 tons of paper, plastic, glass, and other material every year, more than any similar facility in New England. “Everyone’s struggling now.”

The problems began last summer, when Chinese officials announced as part of a major antipollution campaign that they would no longer import 24 materials, including mixed paper and a range of plastics.

The Chinese also vowed to accept far less cardboard and scrap metal, limiting the items to those with impurities of just 0.5 percent. They previously took material that was far more tainted by food scraps and other non-recyclables.

Since the new policy went into effect on Jan. 1, US exports of recyclable material to China have plunged. Facilities such as the one in Charlestown have slowed their sorting process to reduce the amount of impurities in the bales of material they ship abroad, but plant owners say their equipment can’t reach such levels of purity.

At E.L. Harvey & Sons, a recycling company in Westborough, the plant’s parking lot has been overtaken by about 5,000 tons of paper and cardboard that it hasn’t been able to discard. Usually, the company would have a few hundred tons stockpiled until it received a decent price for the material.

Now, with 400 tons of new material coming in every day — only about half of which they can recycle — the company has been paying to send as much of the refuse away as possible, taking a significant loss.

“This really impacts the bottom line,” said Ben Harvey, the company’s president, adding that revenue has plummeted by about a quarter since January. “We’re feeling it right now, but the municipalities we collect from are going to feel the impact well into the future.”

Many of them are already feeling it. In Rockland, for example, residents were paying $3 a ton to have their recyclables collected and hauled away; now they’re paying $70. Abington is now paying $62 a ton, up from zero.

In Plymouth, the costs spiked so much that town officials last week eliminated its curbside recycling program.

“It’s a very bad situation, all around,” said Claire Galkowski, executive director of the South Shore Recycling Cooperative, which oversees programs in 15 communities. “All of them have experienced cost increases to a various extent.”

The problem, she and others said, is that US sorting facilities have been sending too many bales of tainted material abroad, particularly to China, India, and Vietnam.

With the rise of single-stream recycling, many residents have become less conscientious about what they deposit in recycling bins, with everything from bowling balls to Christmas lights fouling up the machines at sorting plants, she said.

In Braintree, where the cost of recycling has risen from about $4 a ton last year to $47, local officials are worried about what will happen in the coming months.

“It’s already having a big impact, but it keeps going up,” said Rosemary Nolan, the town’s solid waste and recycling coordinator. “We’ve been told it could go up to $200 a ton.”

If the costs continue to rise, she worries the town may have to cut other services, such as education or transportation projects.  “The runaway escalation isn’t sustainable,” she said.

Boston officials didn’t respond to questions about the impact of China’s new policies on the city.

Some local officials and recycling companies have been urging the state to take action to help defray the costs. State officials declined to answer questions, but in a statement said they are seeking to mitigate local costs with a variety of programs and efforts.

For example, they said, they are working with municipalities to create a common list of acceptable recyclables for residents and have been encouraging new glass recycling businesses to move to Massachusetts, since glass constitutes about 20 percent of the state’s recycling stream.

The state Department of Environmental Protection “will continue to work with neighboring states and companies to ensure responsible recycling continues,” said Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the agency.

The crisis has also sparked tensions between municipalities and the companies that collect their recycling.

Last month, New Bedford filed a lawsuit against ABC Disposal Service, after the New Bedford-based company threatened to stop collecting recyclables there, as well as in Fairhaven, Mattapoisett, Rochester, and Plymouth. The company had increased rates in response to the rising costs.

In a letter to the company, local officials acknowledged that ABC Disposal’s costs had risen as a result of China’s new policies but asked to review the company’s financial records before agreeing to modify their contacts to allow higher rates.

“ABC’s mere assertions that it needs contract increases in order to survive are an insufficient basis on which to impose an additional burden on taxpayers,” they wrote.

After the company refused, New Bedford filed the lawsuit, claiming the company was breaching its contracts.

“The company’s repeated refusals to share its financial information with the city, as well as its recent conflicting statements about whether it will comply with its contract, have left the city no choice but to seek a court order that will protect taxpayers,” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said in a statement.

Michael Camara, the company’s chief executive, said his costs have surged and he has no choice but to pass them on to customers.

ABC Disposal used to earn as much as $45 a ton for the recyclables his employees collected; now the company is paying $100 a ton, he said. Moreover, his company now has to deliver the material to plants as far away as Stamford, Conn., costing it far more in gas and time.

He also lamented the environmental consequences, noting that the recyclables are taking up precious space in landfills in Massachusetts.

“It’s insane what has happened,” he said. “This is an international crisis. We just can’t absorb these costs.”

SOURCE 






Doomsday Climate Models Wrong Again! Hurricanes Declining …European Floods Not More Frequent

Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue pointed out here at Twitter that hurricane activity has not lived up to the climate model projections and that major hurricanes in the 1970s and 80s were “likely underestimated.” The hurricane expert tweeted:

Over the past 4-decades, number of global HURRICANE strength tropical cyclones (about 48/year) have actually DECREASED, while MAJOR hurricane strength tropical cyclones (about 25/year) have slightly (insignificant) trended upward.”

And:

Over the past 10-years (120-months) there have been 232 major hurricane strength tropical cyclones globally. In the 10-years prior, there were 252 majors. And the 10-years before that 258 majors. We likely underestimated majors in 1970s & early 1980s prior to Hi-Res satellites.”

No trend in flooding in Europe

And at the Die kalte Sonne site here, geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt report in Europe that floods and storms In Europe have not been more frequent, despite all the unending claims by the media.

Over the past week, the German media hyped up some local, severe thunderstorms that had hit in parts of the country, causing heavy downpours and local flooding.

The media injected their usual Biblical tones in their reports.

Lüning and Vahrenholt first cite a recent study, which was even featured in detail by German DLF public radio, which tells us that the frequency and severity of heavy rain events and flooding have not increased in Europe over the past 150 years:

Severe weather in Europe: Flooding not more than in the past
When it comes to torrential rainfall and flooding, many people agree: Such things never happened in the past. But that is not true Dominik Paprotny of the University of Technology in Delft analyzed. Historical sources show that large floods are not more frequent today.”

And DLF Nova reported:

Danger of flooding is the same as it was 150 years ago
High water and flooding in Europe has not become more frequent at all, a team of scientists in the Netherlands show. The scientists have put together a databank that looks at storms and floods back to 1870. Most international databanks go back to only to 1970.”

Read more at DLF Nova.

The study by Paprotny et al. 2018 appeared in Nature Communications and it can be downloaded free of charge as a pdf file. In the abstract:

Trends in flood losses in Europe over the past 150 years

[…] Here we utilize a gridded reconstruction of flood exposure in 37 European countries and a new database of damaging floods since 1870. Our results indicate that, after correcting for changes in flood exposure, there has been an increase in annually inundated area and number of persons affected since 1870, contrasted by a substantial decrease in flood fatalities. For more recent decades we also found a considerable decline in financial losses per year.”

The recent flare-up in honesty in media “remarkable”!

Lüning and Vahrenholt then go on to express their surprise that the DLF would present the scientific results so “honestly and without climate alarmist undertones.” and that “it is remarkable for today’s mainstream journalism”, which over the years tended to link every summer thunderstorm to Co2 emitted by man.

Flooding was worse during Little Ice Age

Next Lüning and Vahrenholt present studies showing that flooding in Central Europe and in the Alps region was even worse during the Little Ice Age than it is today, see here, here, here, and here.

Potsdam Institute contradicted:

Lüning and Vahrenholt next dismiss earlier claims by the climate alarmist Potsdam Institute, which earlier claimed “robust trends” concerning “summertime dry periods and greater occurrence of flooding” in the German state of Saxony Anhalt (pdf here).

The two German skeptic scientists examined the official data from the German DWD national weather service for Saxony Anhalt, and found the following:


Summer precipitation in Sachsen Anhalt since 1880. Data source: DWD.

Lüning and Vahrenholt summarize with four main points:

The linear trend for precipitation since 1881 is zero.
Summer weather in Central Europe is controlled by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), i.e. natural ocean cycles.
The weather is not getting more extreme. The year-to-year differences in summertime precipitation are, in fact, showing a slight downward trend.
In Saxony Anhalt, despite all the alarmist claims, there is no anthropogenic signal.

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






Q&A: The Politically Incorrect Book That Debunks Climate Change Myths

Marc Morano, founding editor of the award-winning website ClimateDepot.com, recently authored “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.” He spoke to Daily Signal Editor-in-Chief Rob Bluey about climate change myths and other facts you probably haven’t heard reported by the media. An edited transcript of their interview is below. You can also listen to it on The Daily Signal podcast.

Rob Bluey: What prompted your interest in the issue of climate change? There’s a great photo of you in the book next to a wanted poster. How did you become such a villain to the left?

Marc Morano: I always said I was a Republican, except when it came to environmental issues. I remember not liking James Watt, the former interior secretary. I remember not liking President Ronald Reagan’s environmental policies. I always wanted to be a forest ranger as a kid growing up. I got heavily involved emotionally in watching all the documentaries about the Amazon rainforest back in the 1980s and 1990s.

It wasn’t until I started reading Dixy Lee Ray and actually hearing her talk, it was actually on Rush Limbaugh’s show, the coverage of the Rio Earth Summit, that I started to look deeper into environmental issues. What I remember her specifically saying, as a nuclear physicist, Dixy Lee Ray, that the Amazon was one of the most intact forests and this idea that it’s about to disappear was complete exaggeration and hype. I started investigating that. It actually culminated in a documentary on the Amazon rainforest.

Global warming, when I started focusing on it, I actually started with a skeptical view and I was only able to get more and more skeptical, because I saw the same tactics being used.

The way I ended up in the wanted poster in Paris—that was the movie premier of my film “Climate Hustle” from 2015 at a Paris cinema. The environmental groups put out wanted posters of me the day of the premier. All over the city, this was literally on the main streets of Paris. So I posed with one of them in the book and you can see the picture. They called me a “climate criminal wanted for climate crimes.” This is the kind of intimidation they like to do.

Marc Morano, author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” in Paris. (Photo Courtesy of Marc Morano)
Bluey: Despite that intimidation, you’ve still gone on to write this book. So what prompted you to do that and what’s your goal when a reader picks it up? What do you want them to walk away with?

Morano: My goal here was to help conservatives and Republicans articulate the issue. During my time on Capitol Hill, I worked for the Senate Environment of Public Works Committee. I can’t tell you the horror stories, Rob, of being in high-level meetings, during the height of the cap-and-trade debate 2007, 2008, 2009; back when President Barack Obama was pushing this through all the way to 2010.

The staffers of very conservative Republican senators would be like, “Well, we don’t want to touch the science on this because we don’t want to be seen as against the Earth or against the environment. Let’s just solely focus on the economics.”

I remember arguing passionately. If people think we face the climate catastrophe, we’re Americans! They’re going to say we will bear any cost and overcome it. They never wanted to challenge it. So I’m trying to, and working for Sen. James Inhofe, we tried to challenge the science.

What I tried to do with this book is say it’s OK to espouse climate skepticism. The book is done for anyone from, I would say, sixth grade through highest levels of education to educate them with the top voices in science, the basic concepts, and to make it fun, informative in a talking point form.

This is a needed book because in order to fulfill President Trump’s policies, you need the scientific justification, and this book fills that gap in, as well as talks about the policy.

Bluey: The other thing the book has is a lot of great facts that I think counter what you so often hear in the media and from liberal politicians. Could you share some of them? I know you have examples right on the cover. For instance, let’s take hurricanes because we’re in the midst right now of another hurricane story. You hear this all the time—that these hurricanes are more intense, they’re happening more often because of climate change. You say, “No.”

Morano: Not only do I say “no,” but the peer-reviewed scientific literature clearly and overwhelmingly says “no.”

There is nothing unusual, particularly on extreme weather. It’s not just hurricanes. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, on the entire spectrum of extreme weather, we are either at stable or declining trends. And that includes droughts.

California droughts in previous centuries blew away anything we’re talking about now. Floods, no trends on 100-year, 85-year time scales. Hurricanes were much worse, many more powerful hurricanes in the 1940s and ’50s. In fact, we were in the longest period of no major hurricane category three or larger before last year’s big hurricanes hit. And even though there is this alleged record rains, in the 1960s hurricanes that hit Cuba had many more times rain and flooding events than that.

“They make it seem like extreme weather is everywhere. But taken as a whole, and in the peer-reviewed literature, it’s actually on a declining trend.”

I go into that in the book about these so-called 1,000-year floods and I explain that all these extreme weather events they claim, it’s kind of like a lottery promotion scam. Where they say, “Oh, this is a 1,000-year storm hit this city, and a 1,000-year storm hit that, this is unusual.” No, there are going to be very few lottery winners. But the lottery winners there are, they highlight them. “Look, there’s a lottery winner and there’s a lottery, look the lottery winners are everywhere.” They make it seem like extreme weather is everywhere. But taken as a whole, and in the peer-reviewed literature, it’s actually on a declining trend.

Interestingly enough, cold weather is actually more extreme than warm weather. In the 1970s, they blamed tornadoes, floods, even the threat of war and increased violence on global cooling at the time. So there’s just not the science there at all, when it comes to that. And also I go through all the other myths you’ve heard about from the hottest year on record, the hottest decade.

Bluey: Let’s tackle that one because we hear this one it seems month after month—another record-breaking month. At the same time, I love the chart that The Daily Signal published of the temperature throughout history. You see the lines going up and down. Tell us what we need to know.

Morano: First of all, in the book, I interviewed geologists, I have Nobel Prize-winning scientists endorse the book. They explain that in the geologic history of the Earth, we are in the coldest 10 percent of the geologic history of the Earth. In other words, 90 percent of our Earth’s history was too warm to have ice at either pole. So we are in the 10 percent coldest. That’s No. 1.

No. 2, if you go back to the Roman warming periods during the time that Jesus Christ walked the Earth—and I show this in the peer-reviewed studies in the book, in a very reader-friendly way—we are actually now cooler than we were. So we’ve cooled since the time Jesus Christ walked the Earth. We’re actually about the same temperature or cooler since the medieval warm period, since about 900 to 1300.

First of all, you say hottest year, what time scale? Then, you jump ahead to about 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age, where the New York river, New York Harbor froze over, the Thames river was frozen, it was a brutal period, coinciding with low sun spot activity and bunch of other factors.

Suddenly, we get thermometer data. So the thermometer data comes online right at the end of the Little Ice Age. It’s very cold. All these things you hear about the glaciers retreating, most of that glacier retreat happened by 1900. Now, 80 percent of the carbon dioxide came after 1940, or after World War II in 1945. We had a huge warm spell from the 1920s into the ’30s and then, we had a cooling period from the ’50s all the way up to about the late 1970s. I go into the whole global cooling scare.

“The so-called claims of the hottest year fall easily within the margin of error. That’s why it’s a political statement. It is utter nonsense from beginning to end.”

They now claim, “Oh, that never happened.” They have studies out, they claim that that was overblown, there’s only a couple scientists. I show in the book it was National Academy of Sciences, CIA, some of the same scientists warning of global cooling in the ’70s who then flipped and became global warming.

I actually feature in the book an article from the 1977 and ’78 in The New York Times, two articles. During this time, the scientists were battling it out when global cooling was morphing into a climate change, global warming.

To answer the question on the hottest year, we warm from the late ’70s to the late ’90s. Then essentially we flatlined. Essentially, there’s no statistically significant global warming. We had a thing called “the pause.” They didn’t like that, so they actually went back in the records and erased the pause. They changed the data.

Besides, even doing all that, the hottest year claims are within hundredths of a degree and that margin of error is tenths of a degree and they adjust the temperatures to within tenths of a degree without explanations. The so-called claims of the hottest year fall easily within the margin of error. That’s why it’s a political statement. It is utter nonsense from beginning to end.

It’s a fancy way of saying the temperature hasn’t changed since the ’90s. That’s where they get hottest decade on record. On record just means since the Little Ice Age ended, when we put thermometer data out and that’s what that means. If you go back further, we’ve cooled, Middle Ages, Roman warming period, and even further.

Bluey: Thank you for setting the record straight on that. One of the other things that you argue is that the left has abandoned this fact-based science and instead resorted to just dramatic fear-mongering. What do you mean?

Morano: Go back to the 19th century, Rob, to explain this. Every storm is allegedly unprecedented, we’ve never seen it, this is the new normal, so to speak. This hurricane has a name, it’s Hurricane Katrina. This hurricane has a name, it’s Hurricane Harvey. The same lines over and over. Everything is done as a tactic of fear in order to get action. This started in the 1960s with the modern environmental movement.

Particularly, I go into a little bit about Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb.” I actually show, Rob, that they use this hysteria for the different environmental scares in the 1970s, whether it’s resource scarcity, over-population, rainforest clearing, et cetera.

They will say, “We need a global solution; we need global governance; we need wealth redistribution; we need sovereignty threatening treaty, or some kind of economic activity limiting.” No matter what environmental scare in the past that they tried to scare people with, it was the same solutions they’re proposing now.

In the book, I go back and show over and over that global warming is merely the latest scare they’re using to get their agenda. I show Naomi Klein, who’s an adviser to Pope Francis, who wrote “Capitalism vs. the Climate.” I interviewed her for the book. She actually says that they would be seeking the same solutions even if there was no global warming and that essentially, capitalism is incompatible with a livable climate. She actually urges people, “We need to jump on this because solving global warming will solve what we’ve been trying to achieve all along.”

They’re open about it. They use the climate scare tactics to achieve their ends. And in order to get those ends achieved, they have to hype and scare. It’s been a very effective strategy because they’ve bullied Republican politicians, who should know better, into at least submissiveness and silence and/or activism, when you come to the case with John McCain and even Mitt Romney.

Climate change activists want to have it both ways to advance their agenda, argues author Marc Morano. (Photo: Erik Mcgregor/ZUMA Press/Newscom)
Bluey: What are some of the strangest things that you’ve seen the left blame climate change on?

Morano: There’s a whole series of things. One of the things they do is they make opposite predictions. Global warming will cause more snow, less snow. More hurricanes, less hurricanes. More fog, less fog. More malaria, less malaria. I go through it all.

It’s as if you bet on the Super Bowl, and you bet both teams to win. You can go to the office the next day and say, “I did it! I won! I bet on the winning team.” First of all, they’re never wrong because they literally have opposite predictions.

The second thing is they come up with everything. Global warming will cause an increase in prostitution, bar room brawls, vehicle thefts. These are by United Nations scientists who did these studies, funded by major universities. These aren’t just some wacky claim, or some professor talking off the top of his head. They actually get funded studies to do this.

“They actually blame the rise of Hitler on global warming. … There are so many wacky things that they’ll blame on global warming.”

One of my favorites was in 1941, a University of Cincinnati professor said that the warmer weather we were having in the 1930s and ’40s created more docile people, which led to them being more susceptible to Hitler, Mussolini, and dictators. They actually blame the rise of Hitler on global warming at that time. Oddly enough, Hitler was saved in the bunker when Von Stauffenberg tried to kill him. Because it was a very hot day, they had to move the location of that meeting when the assassination attempt happened. They moved it to a room with a heavy table that saved Hitler. Global warming created Hitler, global warming saved Hitler.

There are so many wacky things that they’ll blame on global warming. My favorite quote is probably Michael Oppenheimer, U.N. lead scientist, former Environmental Defense Fund activist, “Anybody who eats is under threat from climate change.” That’s his summation. So there you go. It’s that combination of just about everything. If you eat, then you’re under threat of climate change, you should be worried. If you don’t eat, then you’re fine.

Even when you’re dead, you won’t escape the clutches of global warming. In the book, I show multiple examples. In one case, Peruvian mummies are decaying faster because of the humidity caused by climate change. Also, they’re worried that dead bodies in the permafrost in Siberia are melting and are going to release new pathogens. The dead walk among us because of global warming. So, even the dead are now to blame for exacerbating the problem of global warming.

Bluey: We’ve used these terms interchangeably: climate change and global warming. Can the left make up its mind on what to call it?

Morano: No, in fact, in the book, I have a lot of fun. “Global climate disruption” was John Holdren, Obama’s former science czar. He wanted to call it that. “Global weirding” is what Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist, wants to call it. They’ve come up with all these different names. “Global heating.”

Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, when I was in the Senate Environment Public Works Committee, she actually called the hearing “global warming” one time. This was when they were really trying to push climate change. Temperatures hit their peak in the late 1990s from the cooling of the 1970s. They’ve tried to push climate change because they didn’t think without that constant increase in temperature, they weren’t getting anywhere. It was getting harder to sell.

“[C]limate change had to be the new moniker because global warming was too focused on temperature.”

Climate change includes the extreme weather. I remember very vividly, I was in Bali, Indonesia—a $15,000 roundtrip business class flight for the U.S. Senate at a global warming hearing for the United Nations—arguing with a John McCain climate staffer about how the new argument in global warming was all going to be about extreme weather.

Therefore, climate change had to be the new moniker because global warming was too focused on temperature. They wanted to go out on every limb and this way they could blame everything from cows and transportation, airlines.

They’re trying to get every aspect of our society under global warming regulation and not just focus on temperature. Because now if you have a bad crop, if you have vehicle crash—the Department of Transportation got us funding to study how global warming could increase fatal car accidents—that’s why it has to be “climate change,” because they’re trying to go in every direction.

Bluey: How have the left’s policies, as you argue in the book, hurt the world’s poor?

Morano: That is one of the most insidious things. In the book, I feature Al Gore at a Bill Gates function, saying that Africa’s projected to have more people than China and India combined in the next century and that we need “ubiquitous fertility management.”

This is a white, wealthy Western politician saying essentially there are too many black Africans. Let’s be blunt about it. I actually quote a former Harvard professor just excoriating Al Gore for essentially racist comments. Basically singling out Africa and saying, “They’ve got to have better fertility management because we have too many Africans and we’ve got to control their population.” Now Al Gore would just say, “No, I’m thinking of only the Earth.” But what conservative politician could get away with that?

“Fossil fuels are the most abundant, cheaply available, and fastest way out of energy poverty, which means they’re the lifeline for lowering infant mortality, longer life expectancy, modern dentistry.”

When you look at third-world development—and by the way, “third world” is a politically incorrect term; we’re supposed to say the “developing world”—they have about 1.1 billion people without running water and electricity. Essentially, what they’re trying to do with climate policy is prevent them from developing through fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels are the most abundant, cheaply available, and fastest way out of energy poverty, which means they’re the lifeline for lowering infant mortality, longer life expectancy, modern dentistry.

If you’re living in a poor nation, you’re burning dung, you’re living in a hut made of dung, you’re breathing in horrible air, the rivers are polluted from sewage. The second you get modern sewage, the second you get coal plants even or oil or even nuclear, if you’re lucky enough, everything gets radically cleaner. They’re trying to prevent it. Even the World Bank won’t allow coal plant development in countries that are in dire poverty.

These environmentalists I interviewed, one in South Africa, they travel the world from Minnesota and other places—wealthy, white Western college kids—go to Africa and essentially say, “You’re doing it right by living this primitive existence. You’re living it right. You’re Earth-friendly.”

I interviewed Jerry Brown, the California governor, at an Earth Summit in South Africa. He actually says the Earth can’t allow the rest of the world to develop like the United States and Europe because we’d need 20 more Earths to do it. In other words, they have to be managed. It’s a new form of colonialism. It’s the most insidious things. That’s a very intense chapter in the book because it’s an eye-opener for people who haven’t been following this. They are trying to limit their development.

The environmental activists—climate activists—they even have something called the U.N. Climate Fund. I interviewed a South African development activist, Leon Lowe, who’s very articulate. He just says, “The developing world needs to tell the first world to essentially go to hell if they’re going to tell them how to develop, what resources they can use of their own.”

He says, “Until London, Rotterdam, Paris, and Washington level their cities, return them to swamps and wetlands and jungles, they have no business telling the developing world how they can use the natural resources, how they can develop, what energy they can use.”

That’s the dilemma we’re facing now. They’re trying to control and manage people and keep them at a subsistence level of life. It’s the most anti-human movement of today. It’s why former Czech President Václav Klaus has said, the greatest threat we face today for human freedom is, what he says, “ambitions environmentalism from the climate movement.”

Bluey: In addition to writing the book, you run a website called ClimateDepot.com. What’s your mission? What do you strive to do there?

What I’m trying to do there is have a daily one-stop shop of all the latest climate, energy, and environmental news. In other words, I link to all the mainstream sources, but I’ll try to pick out some of the best tidbits and actually try to do reality checks all the time. I do special reports.

It’s a way for you to get your energy, climate, environment news without just having to hear the mantra of nonsense, of 97 percent of all scientists agree the Earth is doomed, we’re facing a catastrophe, we need the Paris Agreement.

I have user guides. I have special reports and I have a lot of humor to try to bring people in—to say this is not an intimidating topic. Don’t be afraid to stand up because the whole movement is designed—the environmental left has designed this to intimidate everyone into silence on this issue. If you’re against climate change, belief in climate change, catastrophic climate change, you are a dumb person. You are an idiot. You’re a rube. You’re not welcome in polite society. Even the impolite don’t want you.

Bluey: Marc, thanks so much. Again, the book is called “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.” Thanks for writing it.

Morano: Thank you, Rob. Appreciate it, enjoyed it.

SOURCE 






Germany’s Wind Energy Mess: As Subsidies Expire, Thousands Of Turbines To Shut Down … Environmental Nightmare!

The Swiss national daily Baseler Zeitung here recently reported how Germany’s wind industry is facing a potential “abandonment”.

Over the years Germany has made approvals for new wind parks more difficult as the country reels from an unstable power grid and growing protests against the blighted landscapes and health hazards.

Now that the wind energy boom has ended, the Baseler Zeitung reports that “the shutdown of numerous wind turbines could soon lead to a drop in production” after having seen years of ruddy growth.

Today a large number of Germany’s 29,000 total turbines nationwide are approaching 20 years old and for the most part they are outdated.

Worse: the generous subsidies granted at the time of their installation are slated to expire soon and thus make them unprofitable. After 2020, thousands of these turbines will lose their subsidies with each passing year, which means they will be taken offline and mothballed.

The Baseler Zeitung writes: “In many cases the earnings will not be able to cover the continued operation costs of the turbines. After 20 years of operation, the turbines require more maintenance and some expensive repairs.”

The Baseler Zeitung adds that some 5700 turbines with an installed capacity of 45 MW will see their subsidies run out by 2020. The Swiss daily reports further:

“The German Windenergie federal association estimates that approximately 14,000 megawatts of installed capacity will lose their subsidies by 2023, which is more than a quarter of the German wind energy capacity.”

So with new turbines coming online only slowly, it’s entirely possible that wind energy output in Germany will recede in the coming years, thus making the country appear even less serious about climate protection.

Wind turbine dump in Africa?

So what happens to the old turbines that will get taken offline?

Windpark owners hope to send their scrapped wind turbine clunkers to third world buyers, Africa for example. But if these buyers instead opt for new energy systems, then German wind park operators will be forced to dismantle and recycle them – a costly endeavor, the Baseler Zeitung reports.

Impossible to recycle composite materials

The problem here are the large blades, which are made of fiberglass composite materials and whose components cannot be separated from each other. Burning the blades is extremely difficult, toxic and energy-intensive. So naturally there’s a huge incentive for German wind park operators to dump the old contraptions onto third world countries, and to let them deal later with the garbage.

Sweeping garbage under the rug

Next the Baseler Zeitung brings up the disposal of the massive 3000-tonne reinforced concrete turbine base, which according to German law must be removed.

Some of these concrete bases reach depths of 20 meters and penetrate multiple ground layers, the Baseler Zeitung reports, adding:

“The complete removal of the concrete base can quickly run up to several hundreds of thousands of euros. Many wind park operators have not made the corresponding provisions for this expense.”

Already wind park operators are circumventing this huge expense by only removing the top two meters of the concrete and steel base, and then hiding the rest with a layer of soil, the Baseler writes.

In the end most of the concrete base will remain as garbage buried in the ground, and the above-ground turbine litter will likely get shipped to third world countries.

That’s Germany’s Energiewende and contribution to protecting the environment and climate!

SOURCE 

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

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6 June, 2018

Trump calls for 'immediate action' to prevent coal, nuclear power plants from closing

In a rare move, the Trump administration confirmed Friday that it will take "immediate steps" to prevent coal and nuclear power facilities in the U.S. from closing.

A statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not say specifically what steps the administration would take but said that "keeping America’s energy grid and infrastructure strong and secure protects our national security, public safety, and economy from intentional attacks and natural disasters."

"Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our Nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid," Sanders said in a statement.

So what could that look like?

The National Security Council reportedly discussed a draft memo on Friday, reported by Bloomberg News, that would direct electrical grid operators to purchase electricity from coal, nuclear, or oil-fueled facilities at risk of closing.

The draft memo laying out the directive doesn't give a specific amount operators would have to spend but says it will be enough to keep the facilities open for the next two years, saying that U.S. national security "relies on a robust U.S. domestic industrial base, of which the coal, nuclear, and oil and natural gas industries are critical strategic components."

The administration says the move will prevent coal and nuclear power plants critical to the electrical grid from closing, but opponents say the requirement is essentially a bailout for a dying industry that the president promised to save and will cause Americans' electricity bills to get more expensive.

According to data from the Energy Information Administration, coal consumption has fallen about 20 percent compared to last year, from about 149,200,000 short tons in the first two months of 2017 to just under 119,600,000 short tons in the first two months of 2018.

The EIA also reports that nearly all power plants that retired between 2008 and 2017 were fossil fuel plants and that most plants that plan to close before 2020 use coal or natural gas. But the agency said that most of the coal powered plants that closed were "relatively old and small."

Several industry groups call federal intervention 'misguided'

Groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity have told the Energy Department that retiring coal facilities could threaten the electrical grid. The National Coal Council said in a statement Friday that existing coal facilities provide "direct economic benefits, energy and price stability, job-creating opportunities and environmental benefits."

Perry previously said the department was considering this approach in a hearing with the House Science Committee earlier this month.

"It's about the national security of our country. Of keeping our plants, all of them, online, being able to deliver energy, no matter whether it's a natural disaster that we might see from a polar vortex, or it's something more nefarious, as a cyber attack from a terrorist state or some entity with bad intent for the United States," Perry said in the hearing on May 9.

But some groups that study the U.S. electric grid say that it isn't at risk of breaking down in the way the directive describes. One independent group that manages the electricity grid that serves more than 65 million people said that it could be bad for consumers if the federal government intervenes in the market.

"Any federal intervention in the market to order customers to buy electricity from specific power plants would be damaging to the markets and therefore costly to consumers," that group PJM Interconnection said in a statement. "There is no need for any such drastic action."

Another coalition of energy industry groups representing the oil, natural gas, solar, and wind industries issued joint statements saying the administration's plan is "misguided," "unwarranted," and "an exercise in crony capitalism."

The American Council on Renewable Energy, a nonprofit that represents various groups that want to emphasize renewable energy sources, said in a statement that the administration is intervening to bail out coal and nuclear power plants "that are no longer competitive on their own."

"Arbitrary market interventions of this sort have no place in the electricity structure that has kept American electric power reliable and affordable," the group's President and CEO Gregory Wetstone said in a statement.

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have been pushing campaigns to phase out coal as part of the U.S. energy grid and they say that even a "bailout" will not keep coal and nuclear plants open as the global market focuses more on natural gas and renewable energy sources.

“This is an outrageous ploy to force American taxpayers to bail out coal and nuclear executives who have made bad decisions by investing in dirty and dangerous energy resources, and it will be soundly defeated both in the courts and in the court of public opinion. Trump will clearly," Mary Anne Hitt, the director of the Sierra Club's campaign to close coal facilities, said in a statement.

SOURCE 






Wind power INCREASES dependence on fossil fuel power plants

The advocates of alternative energy often cite wind turbines as a means of reducing dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear energy. However, a new study has shown that wind power has not delivered the level of fossil fuel independence predicted in the European Union. Appearing in the academic journal Energy Policy, the study looked at data from 1990 to 2014. It found that installing more wind turbines has merely preserved dependence on fossil fuels because intermittent renewable sources (as opposed to hydro, which is far more dependable) means the energy infrastructure must maintain, and sometimes increase, the number of fossil-fuel power plants generating power when there is insufficient or too much wind.

The study found that increasing the number of power plants (whether wind or fossil-fuel) has also increased the idled power plant capacity, thus making the entire energy system less efficient and costly. This comes when wind turbines are idle because of insufficient wind speed or when fossil fuel plants are idle because the wind is blowing.

Some power companies in the U.S. appear undeterred by scientific data about the efficacy of wind turbines.  In Michigan's lower peninsula, in the area directly north of Detroit known as the "Thumb," Consumers Energy recently built another 19 wind turbines in Tuscola County. More are to come and add to the more than 100 wind turbines already in the area. The Cross Winds Energy Park, slated for completion in 2019 with a $345 million CMS Energy Corp. investment, will establish a total of 81 turbines providing electric power for 60,000 residents. Approximately 150 jobs were created by the project, which is garnering increasing opposition from local voters who object to the noise generated by the wind turbines.

The conclusion of the study states:

“In short, the results indicate that the European Union’s domestic electricity production systems have preserved fossil fuel generation, and include several economic inefficiencies and inefficiencies in resource allocation. On the one hand, as renewable energy sources (RES) deployment increases, the idle capacity of RES increases by the same amount. This generates idle capacity and electricity production systems have to maintain or increase the installed capacity of fossil fuels in order to back up the RES, thus generating installed overcapacity in fossil fuels too. On the other hand, both the electrification of the residential, industrial and services sectors and consumption peaks also require fossil fuels, because RES are unable to satisfy them without resorting to fossil fuels.”

“In fact, RES cannot satisfy electricity consumption without resorting to fossil fuel electricity generation. This has hindered the shift from fossil fuels to RES, and has cancelled out the advantage of the shift to electrification, because of the need to burn fossil fuels”

The paper is titled: “Have fossil fuels been substituted by renewables? An empirical assessment for 10 European countries.” António Cardoso Marques, José Alberto Fuinhas, Diogo André Pereira of the University of Beira Interior and NECE-UBI Management and Economics Department in Portugal are the authors.

The abstract of the study states:

“The electricity mix worldwide has become diversified mainly by exploiting endogenous and green resources. This trend has been spurred on so as to reduce both carbon dioxide emissions and external energy dependency. One would expect the larger penetration of renewable energies to provoke a substitution effect of fossil fuels by renewable sources, in the electricity generation mix. However, this effect is far from evident in the literature.

"This paper thus contributes to clarifying whether the effect exists and, if so, the characteristics of the effect by source. Three approaches, generation, capacity and demand, were analysed jointly to accomplish the main aim of this study. An autoregressive distributed lag model was estimated using the Driscoll and Kraay estimator with fixed effects, to analyse ten European countries in a time-span from 1990 until 2014. The paper provides evidence for the substitution effect in solar PV and hydropower, but not in wind power sources. Indeed, the generation approach highlights the necessity for flexible and controllable electricity production from natural gas and hydropower to back up renewable sources. Moreover, the results prove that peaks of electricity have been an obstacle to the accommodation of intermittent renewable sources."

SOURCE 







Paul Ehrlich, a false prophet and people-hater but still an ecofascist hero

SPOTLIGHT: Whether the predictions in Paul Ehrlich’s 50-year-old bestseller, The Population Bomb, were right or wrong matters. Because scientists and environmentalists continue to follow in his footsteps.

BIG PICTURE: Ehrlich is an important case study. His conviction that humanity is a blight on the planet is shared by many ordinary people, as well as by many influential ones.

In Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway, journalist Dan Gardiner describes how Ehrlich became a “rock star” after his book appeared in 1968.

By 1970, thousands were being turned away from his speaking events. He “was invited to talk with [late-night television host] Johnny Carson and his millions of viewers more than twenty times.”

Let us be clear about one thing. If it had been within Ehrlich’s power to take the steps he insisted were necessary, the human rights abuses would have been horrendous.

I’ve explained that he advocated the deployment of US helicopters to forcibly sterilize Indian peasants. I’ve highlighted his declaration that “we can no longer tolerate” television shows that present large families in a positive light.

Coercion and censorship are the tools of fascism. They lead to mass murder. Ehrlich displayed enthusiasm for these tools.

His book urged political leaders to be “relentless,” to “take whatever steps are necessary.” He urged them to support “any program” and “any policies” that would reduce global population (pp. 138, 166, 210, 211).

A world in which Ehrlich was in charge would be neither democratic nor free. Instead, bureaucrats would decide how many children were allowed to be born.

Toward the end, he posed the question: “What if I’m wrong?” But this was mere lip-service, a cavalier dismissal:

If I’m right, we will save the world. If I’m wrong, people will still be better fed, better housed, and happier, thanks to our efforts. (p. 198)

How could this be remotely true when, 33 pages earlier, he admitted that stemming overpopulation in developing countries would require “many apparently brutal and heartless decisions” that would cause intense pain?

Gardiner labels Ehrlich’s above rationalization “glib nonsense.” Had the authorities taken his advice and denied food aid to nations that declined to pursue barbarous anti-population measures, famines would have been caused rather than averted. Many human beings would have died. Large numbers of them would have been children (see the front cover of Ehrlich’s book).

There’s a huge problem when scientists who advocate coercive, anti-democratic behavior are celebrated rather than shunned. Here’s Gardiner again:

It was clear by the 1990s that the dire forecasts Ehrlich had made in the 1970s had come to nothing but that didn’t slow the shower of awards Ehrlich enjoyed that decade.

There was the Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International; the John Muir Award of the Sierra Club; the Volvo Environmental Prize; the Blue Planet Prize of the Asahi Glass Foundation; the Tyler Prize from the University of Southern California; the Heinz Award…the Sasakawa Prize from the United Nations; and the MacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the “Genius Award.”

Ehrlich also won the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is widely considered the Nobel of environmentalism.”

More recently, Ehrlich was honored with membership in the UK’s Royal Society, the world’s most prestigious science academy.

TOP TAKEAWAY: It’s OK to make wildly erroneous predictions about the future. It’s OK to embrace fascism by another name. The Paul Ehrlich case demonstrates that scientific bodies and environmental organizations will sing your praises anyway.

SOURCE 






If all plastic were banned from supermarket offerings, food waste would skyrocket

IT SOUNDS great in theory, but getting rid of plastic bags comes with a “trade-off” — and Australian Woolworths’ boss says he didn’t realise “what a headache” it would be

SHOPPERS must be willing to sacrifice convenience for the environment in giving up harmful single-use plastic items such as plastic bags, but they should also be careful not to “demonise” plastic.

That was the message delivered by industry leaders and experts during sustainability event at the Woolworths Bella Vista headquarters on Monday, which came as the supermarket giant announced it would phase out the sale of plastic straws by the end of the year.

Woolworths group chief executive Brad Banducci said the four main issues customers cared about were food waste, reducing plastic, a sustainable supply chain and energy efficiency.

“Very important for us is the journey of taking plastic out of fruit and veg,” he said. “We know our customers don’t like it; we do however know that there’s a complex trade-off between keeping the product fresh and [reducing] plastic.

“If we end up throwing things away because we’ve taken plastic out, that is a very false economy given only 10 per cent of the energy to grow a fruit and veg product on average is plastic.

“It’s quite a complex balance but we are working on it, and we have taken plastic out of a number of products already. We’re working through it product by product.”

With supermarkets around the country preparing to phase out single-use plastic bags later this month, Mr Banducci said he didn’t know if he “would have been quite as brave” in making the decision last July had he known “what a headache” it was to take 3.4 billion plastic bags out of the business.

“One of the things that actually upset me a little bit at the time was there was sort of an innuendo that we will profiteer, because we will be charging for a 15c or 99c bag,” he said.

“Actually [with] the incremental amount of time in store to actually service the customer, certainly it is not a profit driver and we never did it as a profit driver. We did it to do the right thing.”

Harris Farm Markets CEO Angus Harris said now that most states and major retailers had banned plastic bags, it was time for the federal government to follow up with legislation.

“We went to paper bags, our consumers all really got behind it — sorry, most of our consumers got behind it,” he said.

“A lot of people now take boxes rather than bags. We’ve gone from using two-and-a-half plastic bags per customer to half a paper bag per customer.

“I still think paper bags is a bad idea. It’s one of those things you just don’t need. You can bring your own recycled bags. Consumers, they’re funny — they like convenience and we’re trying to tell them you’ve got to do something that’s less convenient.”

Peter Skelton from not-for-profit sustainability organisation Wrap UK said there was a complex dynamic between food waste and packaging.

In the UK, 50 per cent more food waste is thrown away than packaging, but 67 per cent of packaging is recycled or recovered, compared with less than 20 per cent of food waste.

“The environmental impact of food waste is far, far higher than the average carbon impact of a tonne of packaging,” Mr Skelton said.

“We need to get the balance right. We need less plastic. We need to make sure the plastic doesn’t go into the oceans, but actually what we mustn’t do is cause more food waste by the unintended consequences of maybe a knee-jerk reaction on plastic.”

Mr Skelton said the UK Plastics Pact, a pledge last month by businesses to ban single-use plastics, was “about saying, we need to tackle plastic but in a way that we don’t demonise it”.

“We need to prevent those unnecessary single-use items such as straws,” he said. “What are those items we actually don’t need? Let’s get rid of them, let’s find those alternatives.

“We want a world where plastic is valued, but doesn’t pollute the environment. Valued from a consumer’s point of view so they see why we use plastics, valued from an economic point of view so they’re seen as a resource, not just as a waste.”

Mr Skelton said for every two tonnes of food consumed, another tonne of food was wasted. In the UK, 53 per cent of all food waste occurs in households, compared with 19 per cent in the supply chain and 17 per cent in-store.

“This is actually more complex than the packaging challenge because the packaging issue is less about the consumer,” he said. “It’s down to millions and millions of small actions — planning your shopping trip, knowing how to store food properly.”

To that end, Woolworths has done a bit of in-house recycling of its own, repurposing Jamie Oliver — whose Created with Jamie range has shown signs of struggling — to be its food waste ambassador, offering tips on cooking up leftovers.

“We’re working a lot with our marketing team on food savers, teaching customers how to use leftovers,” Mr Banducci said. “In fact, you’ll see the repositioning we’ve done with Jamie Oliver on the topic of leftovers and it really does resonate with our customers.”

Meanwhile, billionaire Anthony Pratt, executive chairman of cardboard box giant Visy, said China’s so-called “Green Sword” ban on foreign waste could actually benefit Australia in the long run.

“We recently made a $2 billion pledge to invest in recycling infrastructure in Australia,” he said. “The China situation, whilst it’s very surprising and sudden, the short-term pain is probably a blessing in disguise. It will force people to use more of the recycled materials here. It’s not really recycling until you turn it back into something.”

Mr Pratt also called for landfill fees to increase. “The NSW government receives $700 million a year from landfill fees and they only spend about $200 million of it back into recycling infrastructure,” he said.

SOURCE 






Australian gasoline servo condemned after banning reusable coffee cups over food safety concerns

ADELAIDE petrol station chain On the Run has come under fire on World Environment Day for banning environmentally friendly reusable coffee cups due to the “food safety risk”.

In an internal memo, On the Run told staff that if a customer brought a reusable cup they should “politely explain that we are required to use our disposable cups and disposable packaging for food safety reasons”.

“We cannot control contaminants (bacteria, mould, viruses, foreign objects, etc.) which might be present,” the memo said. “Foreign containers present a high risk of cross-contamination when they come into contact with food preparation areas and equipment.”

Environmental campaigner Jon Dee from the DoSomething Foundation said the Adelaide service station, which has more than 100 locations, was the first chain in the country to ban environmentally friendly coffee cups.

“Australians use an estimated 1.2 billion disposable coffee cups every year,” he said. “Most of those end up as litter or landfill. Reducing that problem is the key reason why On the Run should reverse their ban on refillable cups.”

He said the move was “surprising” as many service stations and cafes were moving away from disposable coffee cups. “They’re going strongly against the tide of what the rest of the industry is doing,” he said.

Many cafes now offer discounts of up to 50 cents to customers who bring their own cup, and Mr Dee said one coffee chain had reduced its use of disposable cups by 46 per cent as a result.

“SA Health has confirmed that it has no policy or regulation that impacts on reusable cups,” he said. “Plus there are no health authorities anywhere in Australia that have a policy or regulation that tells companies not to use reusable cups. OTR’s claim that they are doing this for food safety reasons does not stack up.”

Mr Dee said what made the decision “even more bizarre” was that OTR had been selling reusable cups until recently. “The question has to be asked whether the people who bought those refillable cups will be getting a refund from OTR,” he said.

“South Australia is the state that’s known for doing the right thing by the environment. With this ban, OTR are not just doing the wrong thing by the environment. They’re doing the wrong thing by South Australia as well.”

A spokesman for OTR said the company had been researched reusable cups “for many years”. “We’ve had entire projects searching for the best reusable coffee flasks, and have sold them in store,” he said. “As we — along with many of our customers — have become aware of the problem of disposable coffee cups on the environment.

“We care about this problem, so it was not easy to decide that our food-grade (but disposable) coffee cups were the only ones we feel sure about serving our coffee and tea in.

“We have had many incidents of customers bringing in dirty, unhygienic, contaminated cups, more recently we had an incident where a customer brought a cup in that was contaminated with a heavy metal.

“We realised that there are other more common potential health risks in us serving coffee into cups that we can’t guarantee are clean and ready to use.

“Some people are particularly sensitive to this kind of risk, and they are our customers too. It is difficult for us to accommodate washing cups. There are bound to be solutions to this, but for now we have decided to serve coffee in our cups only.

“It’s heartening that so many people feel strongly about this. We will continue investigating better solutions to a sustainable, high-quality offer.”

SOURCE 

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

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

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5 June, 2018

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt: Trump put America first when he withdrew from Paris Accord one year ago

One year ago, on June 1, 2017, President Trump boldly and courageously announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

This was a historic moment that upheld the president’s campaign promise and demonstrated to the world that he puts the American people first. The president’s decision, together with his decisive actions through regulatory reforms and tax relief, is unleashing the American economy.

The unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9 percent – a low not seen since 2000. Since Election Day, the economy has added 3.3 million new jobs and wages are rising.

The president’s actions rejected the misguided narrative that we must choose between protecting the environment and growing the economy. That is a false choice. And it is inconsistent with America’s environmental track record. We can do both, and we have done both – better than any other nation, in fact.

The president’s actions rejected the misguided narrative that we must choose between protecting the environment and growing the economy. That is a false choice. And it is inconsistent with America’s environmental track record.

From 2000 to 2014, we reduced our carbon dioxide footprint by more than 7 percent. More recently, the Energy Information Administration projects that from 2010 to 2018 total U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are falling by nearly 7 percent. In contrast, global emissions are increasing by 10 percent.

We have also made incredible strides improving air quality throughout the nation over the past several decades. Since 1970, total emissions of the six criteria air pollutants regulated under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards established through the Clean Air Act have dropped 73 percent.

These achievements are attributed largely to American innovation, such as highly effective pollution-control equipment, advanced production technologies, and increasingly efficient practices across all sectors of our economy.

It is the genius of the free market, not burdensome government mandates, that has delivered this unrivaled accomplishment.

The previous administration threatened to derail this progress through regulatory overreach. But President Trump’s actions ensure that we will continue to promote America’s energy independence and economic growth, while also protecting the environment.

Under the commitments made by the prior administration, the Paris Agreement was estimated to put at risk as many as 2.7 million American jobs by 2025, according to NERA Economic Consulting.

At the same time, the Paris Agreement imposed no serious emissions reduction obligations on China or India for many years. On top of this, the Paris Agreement would also require the United States to contribute billions of American taxpayer dollars in the coming years, with no clear benefit to hardworking Americans.

President Trump understood that this was a bad deal for the American people.

The president’s actions declared to the world that this administration will put the American people first. The days of Washington prioritizing the interests of other countries over the interests of the American people are over.

Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency has refocused on its core responsibilities of protecting human health and the environment.

We are making tremendous progress on these fronts, including working cooperatively with states to improve air quality throughout the country, accelerating the cleanup of contaminated lands in the Superfund program, and incentivizing repairs to the nation’s water infrastructure.

Our booming economy and improved environment are a uniquely American success story that should be recognized, celebrated, and replicated around the world. We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement was one of the earliest indications of his commitment to put America first. From regulatory reforms to tax relief, the president continues to take decisive action on behalf of hardworking Americans. America is stronger today because of President Trump’s actions.

SOURCE 





British Offshore Windfarm Will Cost £2.5 Billion In Subsidies

A single offshore wind farm is set to cost £2.5 billion in subsidies over its 20 year life-span, shocking figures reveal.

Newly constructed Rampion wind farm, off the Sussex coast, consists of 116 turbines.

The project’s HQ was opened this week by hard-hat-toting Maria Caulfield MP.

Guido wonders whether she is aware the project is a black hole for bill payer’s money…

According to analysis by the Global Warming Policy Forum, the project will qualify for about £126 million a year in public subsidies over two decades (under legacy arrangements made before the cancellation of the Renewables Obligation).

Furthermore:

“The wholesale price of the electricity will only add about another £60 million a year, so roughly two thirds of the annual income of the project will be non-market public support.”

The return on the huge investments involved will mostly come from the public purse, not from selling electricity…

Moreover, an equivalent investment in gas-fired power plants could generate three times as much energy, subsidy-free. And they work all the time, on demand…

SOURCE 






BMW, Daimler Struggle As Europe’s CO2 Plans At Risk Of Coming Undone

European plans to tackle vehicle emissions that cause climate change are at risk of coming undone, sending car manufacturers such as Daimler and BMW back to the drawing board to avoid potential fines.

A series of events over the past weeks have highlighted the region’s struggle to contain greenhouse gases and air pollution, wrong-footing automakers including BMW and Volkswagen Group that remain reliant on engines running on diesel.

“It’s safe to say our original premises and plans to meet fleet emissions goals are good for the bin,” said Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Daimler. “We think we can meet them still, but it’s not totally up to us but depends on how the customer decides to act.”

Policies to lower emissions were clouded by the revelation last month by the EU that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by new cars rose last year, reversing at least seven years of steady decline of the greenhouse gas in many countries. A further sign of cracks in the system was the bloc’s decision to resort to suing Germany and five other member states for exceeding air pollution limits.

Finally, in a direct blow to automakers, Hamburg became the first German city to impose driving restrictions on some cars running on diesel — a fuel that produces less CO2 than gasoline but more harmful air pollutants.

If manufacturers fail to comply with emissions rules, they are at risk of projected fines of 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion), according to study by PA Consulting.

The root of the European problem over emissions can mostly be traced to Volkswagen’s diesel cheating scandal that erupted in 2015 and caused consumers to shun vehicles running on the fuel partly because of fears they would be outlawed.

A landmark German court decision in February allowed bans in principle, causing people to give up diesel even faster despite offers from automakers to clean up older models and take back cars in the event of restrictions.

Diesel’s collapse has upended a core plank in the EU’s strategy to lower greenhouse gases: namely to encourage, at least in the short-term, use of the engine technology because it burns hydrocarbons more efficiently than gasoline, thereby cutting carbon emissions.

That policy stemmed from a successful lobbying effort by automakers in Europe for incentives to make diesel cheaper after the 1997 signing of the global Kyoto protocol climate change agreement, which required signatories to commit to cutting CO2. Manufacturers like BMW, VW and Daimler sought to capitalize on their engineering prowess in diesel technology, while other countries, like Japan, backed research into hybrid and electric cars.

SOURCE 





New Scientific Evidence Robustly Affirms Scandinavian Temperatures Were 3-4°C Warmer 9000 Years Ago

Because trees may only grow within narrowly-defined temperature ranges and elevations above sea level, perhaps the most reliable means of assessing the air temperatures of past climates is to collect ancient treeline evidence.  In a new paper, Kullman (2018) found tree remnants at mountain sites 600 to 700 meters higher than where the modern treeline ends, strongly implying Early Holocene air temperatures in northern Sweden were 3-4°C warmer than recent decades.

Kullman, 2018:

“The present paper reports results from an extensive project aiming at improved understanding of postglacial subalpine/alpine vegetation, treeline, glacier and climate history in the Scandes of northern Sweden. The main methodology is analyses of mega fossil tree remnants, i.e. trunks, roots and cones, recently exposed at the fringe of receding glaciers and snow/ice patches. This approach has a spatial resolution and accuracy, which exceeds any other option for tree cover reconstruction in high-altitude mountain landscapes.”

“All recovered tree specimens originate from exceptionally high elevations, about 600-700 m atop of modern treeline positions.”
“Conservatively drawing on the latter figure and a summer temperature lapse rate of 0.6 °C per 100 m elevation (Laaksonen 1976), could a priori mean that, summer temperatures were at least 4.2 °C warmer than present around 9500 year before present.

However, glacio-isostatic land uplift by at least 100 m since that time (Möller 1987; Påsse & Anderson 2005) implies that this figure has to be reduced to 3.6 °C higher than present-day levels, i.e. first decades of the 21st century. Evidently, this was the warmth peak of the Holocene, hitherto.”

“This inference concurs with paleoclimatic reconstructions from Europe and Greenland (Korhola et al. 2002; Bigler et al. 2003; Paus 2013; Luoto et al. 2014; Väliranta et al. 2015).”

SOURCE 





Retiring more nuclear plants could hurt Mass. climate goals

A reality check: Last year, solar panels and wind turbines generated less than 5 percent of the utility-scale electricity generated in Massachusetts. That’s despite consistent state support for renewable power for the last two decades, and the amazing growth of renewables in windier and sunnier states. Most of the state’s zero-carbon electricity instead comes from nuclear power — specifically, the aging Pilgrim and Seabrook nuclear power plants.

Nuclear’s role in meeting New England’s greenhouse gas goals is underappreciated, but the numbers are sobering: When the 680 megawatt Pilgrim reactor closes next year, it will remove in one day more zero-emission electricity production than all the new windmills and solar panels Massachusetts has added over the last 20 years. That big offshore wind farm that the state wants built in the waters off Southeastern Massachusetts? The $2 billion project could have made inroads against fossil fuels. Instead, those turbines will just be filling, on windy days, the hole that will be left after Pilgrim’s closure.

Massachusetts has anointed itself a leader on tackling climate change. But other states, including Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey, have set the pace when it comes to the politically difficult steps needed to save the nuclear industry, which is still the source of most of the country’s zero-emission electricity. Massachusetts needs to catch up. Pilgrim may be a lost cause, but by adjusting its policies now, the state could help prevent the larger 1,250 megawatt reactor at Seabrook in New Hampshire from meeting the same fate.

The existing support for low-emission sources, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, has shown that it’s too modest to do the job. The multistate cap-and-trade program is designed to reduce emissions by putting a price on carbon dioxide, effectively giving nonemitting sources a competitive advantage. But it wasn’t enough to save Pilgrim, and it hasn’t been enough to stop planned or previous nuclear closures in other member states, including Vermont and New York.

Another way to backstop nuclear is via an expansion of the state’s new clean energy standard, a new policy that requires utilities to obtain a more of their electricity from low-emission sources in Massachusetts or nearby jurisdictions. The utilities would be required to buy credits from low-emission electricity producers. Right now, those sources must have started operating after 2010 to qualify. But the Baker administration is considering pushing the requirement back to 1990, the year that Seabrook opened. That would allow the plant to make money by selling those credits.

That might be a tough sell — partly because of decades of fearmongering about nuclear power, and partly because state officials fear making ratepayers pay for a source that might stay in business anyway. Seabrook’s owners have not indicated any plans to close the plant, and its larger size should make it more economically viable than Pilgrim.

But without intervention, the writing is on the wall for nuclear power. Five nuclear plants have closed over the last few years, hammered by competition from cheap natural gas. More closures are planned. Natural gas is expected to remain at rock-bottom prices for decades. That’s been good for consumers and the environment, since the low prices have also pushed many coal and oil-burning plants out of business, but it does call for a policy solution to help nuclear survive.

To some environmental groups, nothing short of 100 percent renewable power will ever be acceptable. But that’s putting ideology ahead of emissions. If the state were to rule out supporting nuclear — or other low-emission options, like fossil fuel plants with carbon capture, a technology that has already been proven in Massachusetts — that choice would commit the state to an expensive future and a real risk of failure.

Massachusetts doesn’t have favorable onshore wind and sun conditions; offshore wind has more potential, but is years away. Importing ever-increasing amounts of hydropower from Canada is an option, and the state is also pursuing a power line through Maine in a separate procurement, but the northern New England states seem to be running out of patience with Massachusetts’ transmission demands.

So why make the state’s reduction goals harder to reach than they already are? To keep the region’s climate goals achievable, policy makers should ensure that Pilgrim is the last nuclear power plant that New England loses.

SOURCE 

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

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

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4 June, 2018

Since Mr Trump walked out of the Paris agreement one year ago, it has been fascinating to watch the decline of media interest in “saving the planet”.

Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on steel imports exactly a year after he announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. The two decisions are unrelated, except that both reflect the character of his presidency.

President Trump looks at any international arrangement on any subject – Iran, North Korea, trade, climate – and asks himself whether it is a good deal for America. If he thinks it is not, he starts making trouble. He loves a deal but, unlike some politicians on this side of the water, he sees no point in a bad deal.

When President Trump starts the trouble, he does not necessarily know where it will end. He is, if you like, open-minded; or, if you don’t like, irresponsible. He just wants a result, and will pull back if he thinks he won’t get the right one. In the case of his trade war, he will succeed if his action exposes unfair practices by trade rivals and forces them to change. He will fail if all he does is put up everyone’s prices, including, of course, America’s.

In the case of the Paris process, he has succeeded almost without trying. The answer to the question, “Which major country in the world has most successfully reduced its CO2 emissions?” is, “The United States of America”. US emissions hit a 25-year low last year. This success has nothing to do with the UN caravan, which has rolled on for 30 years, or, indeed, with Mr Trump. It has everything to do with the shale revolution – the triumph of much cleaner fossil fuels. Energy prices are falling.

By contrast, the greenest of the great economic powers, Germany and Japan, have poured money into renewables. They are consuming more coal than before, however, with Japan planning 36 new coal-fired power stations over the next 10 years. Since renewables are not reliable (because of intermittency), Germany must have more coal or lie prostrate before Mr Putin and his gas. Both Germany and Japan are increasing their carbon footprint because they have run away from nuclear. Energy prices are rising. China, after a slowdown, is increasing its CO2 emissions fast once again.

As for “Paris”, this is failing, chiefly for the reason that poorer countries won’t decarbonise unless richer ones pay them stupendous sums. The amount supposedly required to do this, agreed at the Copenhagen conference in 2009, was $100 billion a year, every year, from 2020; but no mechanism could be devised to compel the poor countries to restrict their emissions. At yet another conference in the process, in Bonn last month, the parties broke up without agreement on handing the money across. It is almost impossible to imagine real agreement, because it would be unenforceable.

If you look back, you can see that Copenhagen was the first ebbing of climate panic. Gordon Brown, then prime minister, told us that we had “50 days” to avoid catastrophe. Prince Charles warned delegates that “our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control”. President Barack Obama, burnished by his freshly awarded Nobel Peace Prize, flew in. Yet all these great men failed to persuade the wretched of the earth to abandon their right to economic growth. “With your pens, you can write our future,” said HRH. The developing countries had the wit not to sign all the same.

Perhaps if Copenhagen had taken place before the global credit crunch of 2008, the world would have swallowed anything. The great paradox of greenery is that it is a boom phenomenon: only when a society is awash with dosh does it start believing it wouldn’t mind getting poorer. By December 2009, however, the dosh had evaporated.

The Paris conference of 2015 put a brave face on the failure of Copenhagen, by parading an agreement. But as the agreement was non-binding, and permitted countries to determine their progress on CO2 reductions unilaterally, it did not alter the reality. The whole UN process originated in the belief that global warming could be prevented only by a global solution. It never found that solution, and so, at Paris, was hoist with its own petard.

The Prince of Wales was proved wrong in 2016, when the “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse” that he had predicted did not show up. Yet he spoke truer than he knew when he made that warning about losing the levers of control. The global warmists lost those levers – if they ever had them – after Paris.

Mr Trump noticed this and felt free to walk away. US participation in the Paris arrangements formally ends the day after the next US presidential election. It will be a brave Democrat who campaigns for the White House on a “Let’s stay in” ticket. What’s in it, after all, for America?

Since Mr Trump walked out, it has been fascinating to watch the decline of media interest in “saving the planet”. There was the most tremendous rumpus when he made his announcement, but the End-Of-The-World-Is-Nigh-Unless feeling that made headlines before Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Paris, and numerous other gatherings, has gone. This feeling was essential to achieve the “Everybody’s doing it, so we must do it” effect the organisers sought.

The media barely noticed the recent Bonn meeting. I doubt if they will get apocalyptic about the next big show, “COP24” in Katowice, Poland, this December. The Poles are among the nations emerging as “climate realists” – people with their own coal and a very strong wish not to depend on the Russians. Climate-change zealotry is looking like CND after the installation of cruise and Pershing missiles in the 1980s – a bit beside the point.

None of this means that activism will disappear. There will be strong anti-American campaigns and moves to impose ESG (environmental, social and governance) investment principles to make the lives of fossil-fuel companies a misery. In Britain, energy bill levies to subsidise renewables will probably continue to ensure that Theresa May’s famous “just about managing” people are just about screwed simply because they want light and heat in their homes…

SOURCE 





No, We Are Not Running Out of Forests

Once nations hit around $4,500 GDP per capita, forest areas begin to increase

Recently on the BBC, Deborah Tabart from the Australian Koala Foundation noted that “85 per cent of the world’s forests are now gone.” Luckily this statement is incorrect.

Moreover, due to afforestation in the developed world, net deforestation has almost ceased. I’m sure that Tabart had nothing but good intentions in raising environmental concerns, but far-fetched claims about the current state of the world’s forests do not help anyone. The record needs setting straight.

After searching for evidence to support Tabart’s claim, the closest source I could find is an article from GreenActionNews, which claims that 80 per cent of the earth’s forests have been destroyed. The problem with that claim is that according to the United Nations there are 4 billion hectares of forest remaining worldwide. To put that in perspective, the entire world has 14.8 billion hectares of land.

For 80 per cent of the forest area to have already been destroyed and for 4 billion hectares to remain, 135 per cent of the planet’s surface must have once been covered in forests. GreenActionNews’ claim not only implies that 5.2 billion hectares of deforestation occurred at sea, but that every bit of land on earth was once forested. Ancient deserts, swamps, tundra and grasslands make mockery of that claim.

Amusingly, GreenActionNews’ claims that “forest is unevenly distributed: the five most forest rich countries are the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China.” Country size and forest area do not always correlate, but it is hardly “uneven” that the five largest countries also hold the world’s largest forest areas.

Anyhow, slightly more than 31 per cent of the world is covered in forest. The world does continue to lose forest area, but consider the rate and location of this loss. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the annual rate of deforestation has more than halved since the 1990s. Between 2010 and 2015, the world has gained 4.3 million hectares of forest per year, while losing 7.6 million hectares of forest per year. That accounts for a net decrease of 0.08 percent of forest area each year.

Some argue this data is faulty, because the FAO defines forest area as including natural forests and tree plantations. But that criticism is illegitimate. The FAO makes it clear that “93 per cent of global forest area, or 3.7 billion hectares in 2015,” was natural forest. Natural forest area decreased at an average rate of 6.5 million hectares per year over the last five years, a reduction from 10.6 million hectares per year in the 1990s. Put differently, natural forest loss is declining by 0.059 percent per year and is heading towards zero.

The reason why most people labor under a misapprehension about the state of the world’s forests is that news stories often ignore afforestation. In about half of the world, there is net reforestation and, as Matt Ridley puts it, this isn’t happening despite economic development, but because of it.

The world’s richest regions, such as North America and Europe, are not only increasing their forest area. They have more forests than they did prior to industrialization. The United Kingdom, for example, has more than tripled its forest area since 1919. The UK will soon reach forest levels equal to those registered in the Domesday Book, almost a thousand years ago.

It is not just rich nations that are experiencing net reforestation. The “Environmental Kuznets curve” is an economic notion that suggests that economic development initially leads to environmental deterioration, but after a period of economic growth that degradation begins to reverse.

Once nations hit, what Ridley dubs the “forest transition,” or approximately $4,500 GDP per capita, forest areas begin to increase. China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh are just some of the nations that have hit this forest transition phase and are experiencing net afforestation.

Poor people can’t afford to care about the environment very much, because other priorities – such as survival – are more important. If that means that a rare animal must be killed and eaten, so be it. “The environment is a luxury good,” says Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute, “it’s something we spend more of our income upon, as incomes rise.”

A recent study from the University of Helsinki highlights that between 1990 and 2015, annual forest area grew in high and mid-income nations by 1.31 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively, while decreasing by 0.72 per cent in 22 low income countries.

The Kuznets curve not only applies to forest area, but also biodiversity. Ridley gives the example of three apex predators: wolves that live in developed countries of Europe and North America, tigers who mainly inhabit mid-income India, Russia and Bangladesh, and lions, which live in poor Sub-Saharan Africa. Following the Kuznets curve, wolf numbers are rapidly increasing, tiger numbers have been steady for the last 20 years (and have just began to increase), while lion numbers continue to fall.

To encourage reforestation and environmental protection, the answer is a simple one – adopt economic policies that encourage rapid development and urbanisation. As people grow rich and move to the cities, more money becomes available for environmental protection and more land can be returned to nature.

Thankfully Tabart’s claim was wrong and historically unprecedented poverty alleviation that has occurred in the last 50 years means that more countries are increasing their forest area. Yearly net deforestation is fast approaching zero and according to current trends, within the next couple of decades net afforestation will be the norm. This tremendous news is something to truly shout from the treetops.

SOURCE 





Japanese Meteorological Agency Corrects Antarctic’s Long-Term Sea Ice Growth Trend Upwards

The Global Environment and Marine Department of the Japanese Meteorological Agency recently corrected the long term trend in the annual mean sea ice extent in the Antarctic area: from 0.015 x 106 km2 per year to 0.019 x 106 km2 per year on 11 May 2018.

That’s more than a 25% adjustment (15,000 sq. km to 19,000 sq km). So while chunks the size of Manhattans may break off from time to time, about 300 Manhattans of new ice gets added annually.

The report notes that in the Antarctic Ocean: “the annual maximum and annual mean sea ice extents have shown a long-term trend of increase since 1979”.

The Japanese weather and climate site provided the following 2 charts showing sea ice extent for both the Arctic and Antarctic respectively since 1979. From them we see some interesting developments.

Arctic downward trend halted

Although the Arctic has seen a downward trend over the past 4 decades, we note that the mean Arctic sea ice cover has remained mostly steady over the past 11 years (since 2007). Moreover, Arctic and Greenland ice volume have piled up recently.

SOURCE 







The Reason Liberal Lawmakers Are to Blame for High Gas Prices

With consumer confidence at a 17-year high and economic prospects looking relatively strong, congressional Democrats have taken to grousing about the gas pump as a midterm strategy.

“These higher oil prices are translating directly to soaring gas prices,” declared Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “something we know disproportionately hurts middle- and lower-income people.”

If this is true, then why have Democrats spent the past two decades advocating policies that artificially spike fossil fuel prices? If higher energy costs hurt Americans—and thank you, senator, for conceding this point—why have liberals favored increasing gas taxes, inhibiting exploration for fossil fuels (including a ban on fracking for less environmentally damaging gas in a number of places), and capping imports?

If higher gas prices disproportionately impact the working class and poor, then why do Democrats push for national schemes designed to create false demand through a fabricated marketplace?

Not a single reporter asked the Democrats who were performing at a press conference in front of an Exxon filling station the other day if higher gas prices might incentivize Americans to switch to subsidized “alternative” energy sources—even though this happens to be the prevailing theory driving much of their energy policy. Shouldn’t Democrats be celebrating the fact that fewer Americans were driving on Memorial Day? I thought we were facing an apocalyptic situation here.

Schumer conveniently blamed the United States’ exiting of the Iran nuclear deal for the spike—an agreement he supposedly opposed. Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, a self-styled “climate hawk,” claimed, “There’s a straight line between [President Donald] Trump’s policies and the price of gasoline.” We can only now assume he believes the prevalence of cheap fossil fuels is imperative in the effort to alleviate poverty and create wealth. I concur. But don’t worry about Iran, senator; there’s plenty of oil elsewhere.

Politico maintains that Democrats have stolen a page from the “GOP playbook to attack Trump,” which is true, though the difference is that Republicans generally support proposals that make gas more affordable.

The Obama administration, for example, benefited greatly from a recalcitrant GOP Congress’ committed obstruction of an untold number of terrible initiatives. We should recall that the energy secretary openly wrestled with ways “to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

When Obama was asked in 2008 if the $4-a-gallon gas prices at the time were beneficial for the American economy, the presidential candidate prevaricated, saying, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.”

What is the gradual adjustment Democrats prefer today? A slow and steady move to $7? Right now U.S. gas prices are only a fraction of those in European nations, and yet Democrats acted as if Trump had triggered Armageddon when he decided to leave the Paris climate agreement. Do you want us to follow Norway’s lead or not?

Democrats had opposed the opening of pipeline projects, of new drilling, and allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to transform from a regulatory agency that was protecting the environment to a place where the administration could implement backdoor legislation that American voters had rejected. If Democrats hadn’t lost power in 2010, we might be living with those $4-per-gallon prices today.

To understand how this policy manifests, just look at California, where gas prices are consistently among the highest in the nation—despite the fact that there are no constraining geographic or economic impediments to cheap energy. Last year, the legislature pushed through another gas tax (and an even larger one on diesel) and extra “fees” to help make one of the most regressive energy policies in the country even more onerous and expensive.

Now, obviously the entire spectacle is for show. Schumer says, “It’s time for the president to buck his oil executive buddies,” because lots of ignorant voters probably believe that the price of crude oil can be controlled by a few nefarious CEOs. The only question I have is: Why don’t these profitmongering oligarchs keep prices high all the time?

Of course, in the real world, summertime typically brings a spike in prices—and despite Schumer’s forecast of “soaring gas prices,” prices are already dropping again.

Given the fungibility of commodities and the track record of the Middle East, we’ll likely always have to deal with some painful fluctuations in the price of energy, regardless of what we do at home. But relying on market forces has, by every conceivable measurement, had a better track record than price controls.

So while Democrats have learned to be less open with their intentions, the policies speak for themselves. What do they plan on doing about oil prices when they win the election? Yell at some executives? Why doesn’t anyone with access ask these concerned senators if they believe cheap fossil fuels are preferable? Or do they still support policies that spike energy prices on purpose?

SOURCE 





Speculative climate chaos v. indisputable fossil fuel benefits

Federal judge tells climate litigants to tally the numerous blessings from fossil fuels since 1859

Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

Judge William Alsup has a BS in engineering, has written computer programs for his ham radio hobby, delves deeply into the technical aspects of numerous cases before him, and even studied other programming languages for a complex Oracle v. Google lawsuit.

As presiding judge in People of the State of California v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell, he insisted that the litigants present their best scientific evidence for and against the state’s assertion that fossil fuel emissions are causing dangerous climate change. Now he wants to see, not just the alleged damages from burning oil, natural gas and coal – but also the immense benefits to humanity and the people of California from using those fuels for the past 150 years and more.

Environmental and climate activists, including cities pursuing climate lawsuits against oil companies, almost never acknowledge those benefits, which are far-reaching and indisputable. We can only hope attorneys Anne Champion, Philip Curtis, Diehl Kemper, et al. and friends of the court will do justice to the many blessings attributable to our use of these once unimaginable energy resources.

For countless millennia, our ancestors struggled to survive amid deprivation and backbreaking dusk-to-dawn labor, often on the brink of starvation – with the bulk of humanity living little better than their domesticated animals. Average nasty, brutish and short life expectancy hovered in the low thirties.

But then, suddenly and miraculously, in barely two centuries, health, prosperity and longevity began to climb. First coal, then oil, then natural gas paved the way, providing the fuels for transportation, communication, refrigeration, electricity and other incredible technologies that improve, enhance, safeguard and save lives. Incomes increased eleven-fold. Mass die-offs so confidently predicted by Malthus and Ehrlich never materialized. In fact, global life spans more than doubled, and today billions of people enjoy living standards that even kings and queens could not dream of 120 years ago.

Sadly, equal numbers of people still struggle on the edge of survival. A billion and a half are still without electricity, two billion still exist on a few dollars a day, and millions still die every year from insect-borne, lung and intestinal diseases – largely because they still burn wood and dung, instead of fossil fuels.

In 1900, New York City’s 3.4 million people relied on 100,000 horses whose “tailpipes” emitted 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine every day. Sanitation crews cleaned it up, dumped it mostly in local rivers, and hauled dead horses to rendering plants. Farmers devoted thousands of acres just to growing horse feed. Imagine what today’s 8.6 million NYC residents would require and emit.

Today, far more powerful, far less polluting, trucks, cars, buses, trains, subways and airplanes move people, food and products far more quickly and efficiently. They take us to work, school and worship services; to the grocery, bank, drug store, doctor and restaurant; to movies, picnics and sporting events. Fire trucks help us battle devastating conflagrations, and ambulances take our injured to hospitals.

All these vehicles (internal combustion and electric) exist because of, are fueled by – and travel on roadways made with fossil fuels: asphalt from oil, metal and concrete manufactured using fossil fuels.

Even electric cars require oil, gas and coal for manufacturing and recharging. Indeed, the earth-moving machines, drilling rigs and production platforms, pipelines, foundries, factories and other technologies needed to extract, process and fabricate raw materials into the world around us exist because of fossil fuels. Every bit of metal, plastic, concrete, wood, fabric and food we see results from fossil fuels. Even wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels are impossible without the fuels that California so loves to hate.

Medical devices, computers, cell phones, radios and televisions, kitchen appliances, household and office heating and air conditioning, millions of other products of every description require fossil fuels for their components, manufacturing and daily operation. The schools and research laboratories that made our amazing technologies and other advancements possible are themselves made possible by fossil fuels.

The modern agricultural equipment and practices that feed the world share the same ancestry: tractor and harvester fuel, ammonia fertilizer from natural gas, pesticides and herbicides from petrochemicals. Carbon dioxide from burning these fuels helps crop, forage, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, with less water and better resistance to droughts and diseases. Our bounteous grain and other crops mean fewer famines, except where forced starvation is used to subdue and eliminate enemies.

Indeed, between 1961 and 2011, the total monetary value of CO2 enhancement for 45 crops reached an estimated cumulative value of $3.2 trillion! Carbon dioxide’s annual enrichment value rose from $19 billion in 1961 to $140 billion in 2010. Between 2012 and 2050, these benefits will total $9.8 trillion!

Pharmaceutical and cosmetic products all have their roots in petrochemicals – as do paints, synthetic fibers and plastics. Hockey and football players are dressed head to toe in fossil-fuel-sourced materials.

High-rise office and residential buildings made possible by steel and concrete allow our cities to grow upward, instead of just outward, preserving millions of acres of wildlife habitats and scenic areas.

Then there’s electricity. Look around you, and try to imagine your life without this wondrous, pervasive energy source. Electricity was properly ranked humanity’s second most significant innovation of the past 6,000 years, after the printing press! It has created, shaped, defined and powered the modern world, and facilitated virtually every technological achievement of the past century. Electrification of nations is undeniably the world’s most significant engineering and life-enhancing achievement of the past century.

Economic growth, quality of life and longevity are directly correlated to sufficient, reliable, affordable electricity. In today’s world, nothing happens without it: communication, transportation and research; the operation of every home, office, hospital, factory and airport; refrigeration to preserve food and medicine; heating and air conditioning to save lives and enable people to survive and prosper in any climate.

Electrification will be increasingly important in the 21st century, and world electricity consumption is forecast to double within four decades, as electricity supplies an increasing share of the world’s ever-increasing energy demand. Fossil fuels will continue generating at least 75% of electricity, even in 2050.

Hydroelectric and nuclear (which radical environmentalists also despise and oppose), a bit of geothermal, and a smattering of unreliable, weather-determined wind and solar power will supply the rest. The land, resource and environmental impacts of building and operating wind and solar must also be considered.

Social media and internet search engines (to run biased searches for alarmist climate news) also depend on electricity – 91.4% of which was generated by fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro in 2016 in the USA.

Increased productivity generated by all these technologies creates the leisure time and wealth that enable everyone to enjoy evenings, weekends and holidays – and the fossil fuel transportation to go places (including to faraway, exotic locales and 5-star hotels for IPCC climate change confabs).

Finally, aside from nuclear-powered ships, our highly mechanized military gets there “the fastest with the mostest” thanks to fossil fuels, to combat terrorism and provide for our national defense.

Judge Alsup’s case is thus really about highly speculative manmade climate disasters versus indisputable fossil fuel benefits – as further documented here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere. Indeed, today’s undeniable fossil fuel benefits outweigh any hypothesized climate, sea level and other costs by literally orders of magnitude: at least 50:1 to more than 200:1.

Barring major efficiency, battery storage and other technology improvements, renewable energy cannot possibly replace fossil fuels. Judge Alsup has no choice but to rule in favor of the oil company defendants … and all who rely on oil, gas and coal for the countless, life-enhancing benefits barely touched on here.

Via email

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

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3 June, 2018

UK weather: May 2018 hottest since records began in UK

You have to be alert to catch slippery Warmists out.  Just one word gives the game away below.  The con is that the figure quoted is the daily average MAXIMUM temperature which does not make "May 2018 hottest since records began". You need to know the MINIMUM daily figures as well to calculate the MEAN daily temperature.  Without knowing the minima, May could in fact have been unusually cool!

The provisional daily average maximum temperature for May 2018 was 17C. Last month was the warmest May since records began more than 100 years ago, the Met Office has said.

According to provisional figures, May 2018 saw an average daily maximum temperature of 17C (63F). It would beat the previous May record of 16.9C set in 1992.

The Met Office said spring 2018, which ran from March to May, had been "very dynamic with many fluctuations". But the period was 0.3C higher than the average between 1981 and 2010.

Across the UK, the average May temperature was 1.5C above the long-term 1981-2010 average at 11.9C.

SOURCE 







Congress helped create the domestic rare earth minerals shortage—and now it can fix it

Last week an unknown Chinese phone company, ZTE, was thrust into the spotlight because of ongoing trade negations and sanctions talk. Members of the Senate and House were up in arms because President Trump was in discussions to lift or modify the sanctions on the Chinese government-linked company. There is no doubt the company’s equipment poses a national security threat, but no one is asking the question how.

Last week, the Senate Banking Committee approved legislation 23-2 blocking the Trump administration from easing sanctions on ZTE, the aforementioned Chinese phone company, for national security reasons.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) stated, “Most members of Congress have come to understand the threat China poses. There’s a growing commitment in Congress to do something about what China is trying to do to the United States. And this is a good place to start.”

When asked about President Trump possibly making a deal with China and ZTE, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated, “This seems to be an area where Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate are coming together and telling the president, you’ve got to be tough on China, you have to have your actions match your rhetoric.”

What the Senate is ignoring or doesn’t know, is it played a rather large part in creating the problem with ZTE.

Not a peep about the reason China dominates the technology manufacturing industry from either side of the aisle in the Senate. It seems both Senators forget the core problem. Yes, communications equipment made in China is probably being used as spying devices and should not be trusted, but environmentalist regulators have made it next to impossible to mine the rare earth elements (REEs) needed to make the equipment in the U.S.

REEs are a group of 15 elements between atomic numbers 57 and 71 that have unusual physical and chemical properties, giving them multiple applications in the defense industry and civilian market.

The U.S. military is wholly dependent on rare earth minerals for a large assortment of weapons systems. The smart weapons that allow the military to use one bomb for one target while reducing collateral damage use guidance systems. The motors and fin actuators that steer the weapons use rare earth elements, specifically neodymium magnets.

Not only do REEs play a key role in national defense, but they also play an irreplaceable role in the modern communications industry. A single iPhone contains eight different rare-earth metals. The speakers, screen, and vibration feature would not work without rare earth elements. The elements are also used in televisions, computers, light bulbs, and catalytic converters. It is not a stretch to say rare earth elements are the foundation of our modern society.

China has used excessively harsh regulations in the U.S. to corner the rare earth market. China refuses to export the material, forcing the companies to relocate to the mainland for manufacture. This is how China came to dominate the electronics manufacturing market. The market for rare earth elements is only expected to reach $10.9 billion in 2020, and China turned it into a technology manufacturing industry valued at $4.8 trillion.

As the Senate rushes to the nearest TV crew to complain about something the President is doing, House of Representatives isn’t just standing by. There are several bills in the House dealing with the rare earth element issue, including Rep. Amoedi’s amendment to the recently passed House NDAA, H.Amdt. 647 to H.R. 5515.

Thankfully for the security and economic power of the nation, the Amodei amendment passed the NDAA in the House. The amendment tackles the rare earth problem by:

Requiring federal agencies to more efficiently develop domestic sources of strategic and critical minerals and mineral materials on federal lands;

Facilitating a timely permitting process for mineral exploration and mine development projects by clearly defining the responsibilities of a lead agency and reducing duplicative processes without compromising existing environmental standards; and

Streamlining the total review process for issuing permits to 30 months unless signatories to the permitting timeline agree to an extension.

The amendment passed with bipartisan support showing the House understands the problem. Now if the camera hogging Senate wanted to show it was truly serious about the danger of Chinese telecommunications equipment, it should easily pass the same amendment in the Senate version of the NDAA.

SOURCE 






Claim: London could run out of WATER in decades thanks to climate change and population rise

The basic point is that warming oceans would give off MORE rain -- so London should pray for global warming to happen.  There is no way that warming could produce more droughts

Another day, another climate scare. This time it’s not enough rain, or – believe it or not – ‘climate change’ bringing the wrong kind of rain, to London as the Evening Standard reports.

Millions of extra litres of drinking water must be sourced to stop parts of London running dry over the coming decades, Thames Water has warned.

It said that unless we change our consumption habits, some 250 million more litres will need to be pumped into the capital each day.

With London’s 8.8 million population due to hit 11 million by 2050, customers are being asked to “consider different ways they can reduce demand”, such as using water-reducing shower heads.

Thames Water said that without changing our lifestyles “there would be shortages, low pressure and more instances of people having no water”.

Climate change is predicted to bring shorter, heavier bursts of rain, which run off from the ground and are not as reliable for filling up rivers. Climate change is also expected to cause more droughts.

SOURCE 





Some Of The Loudest Backers Of Paris Climate Accords Are Bucking The Agreement

June 1 marks the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s having begun the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord.

Foreign leaders immediately criticized the decision. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the decision to leave “extremely regrettable,” while the prime minister of Denmark, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, called the move “a sad day for the world.”

Most nations that signed the Paris climate accords will soon fail to meet their agreement-defined deadlines for fossil fuel reduction. (Photo: baona/Getty Images)

Trump justified the withdrawal by calling the situation “the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”

Trump was wrong. The climate accord is not just a bad deal for the U.S., but for all of the developed countries that have committed to higher energy prices for minimal climate benefit.

It’s a bad deal for the developing world if these countries choose to deny their citizens affordable, reliable energy sources. Sure, some of these countries may receive money to build new renewable-energy generation, but mandating a shift away from natural resources that power 80 percent of the world is going to make them worse off.

Despite arguments to the contrary, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is not about prioritizing the economy over the planet. Rather, the administration recognized that the climate accord is a costly non-solution, regardless of one’s position on climate change.

It’s no surprise that many countries are talking the climate talk, but not walking the walk. The true nature of the agreement has been revealed by the contradictory actions of other nations.

The wishful platitudes and ambitious goals of the Paris climate agreement have begun to meet the realities of a complex, energy-dependent world.

The stark reality is that healthier economies mean more energy use, and consequently, rising emissions (though not always).  When economies were in a slump, it was easier to commit to emissions reductions. When countries’ economies began to grow, many saw emissions rise.

Overall, global coal demand rose about 1 percent in 2017, largely because of Asian countries building more coal-fired electricity generation.

In fact, the Berlin-based organization Urgewald projects that 1,600 new coal-fired generating plants under construction or planned will result in 840,000 megawatts of new capacity.

Smaller, less developed countries have not been the only countries that have struggled to meet their emissions goals. Some nations, such as Turkey and Indonesia, have even expanded their use of coal power to satisfy growing energy needs.

Pakistan, in its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, quite bluntly stated, “Given the future economic growth and associated growth in the energy sector, the peaking of emissions in Pakistan is expected to take place much beyond the year 2030. An exponential increase of [greenhouse gas] emissions for many decades is likely to occur before any decrease in emissions can be expected.”

Even some of the most climate progressive nations on earth have struggled as well.

Germany, a world leader on climate action, has failed to cut emissions and has actually seen emissions rise during the past two years. Germany may even have to buy its way out of a binding European Union agreement to lower emissions in the coming years.

In Brazil, emissions in most sectors are expected to rise at least until 2030. In Japan, political issues with nuclear energy will likely cause the use of coal for energy to increase by 2030. Poland and South Korea also have plans for coal expansions.

Compliance with the Paris Agreement globally has been nothing short of dismal. In fact, most nations will soon fail to meet their agreement-defined deadlines.

Without enforcement, however, the agreement and any promises made by countries are meaningless. This is not a new revelation. While the Paris talks were first occurring in 2015, former NASA scientist and prominent climate activist James Hansen called the talks “a fraud,” contending: “There is no action, just promises.”

Many argue that Paris is just the first step. It seems as though much of the developed and developing worlds can’t even get the first step right.

The supposition that countries will stick with their respective targets leading up to 2030 and that post-Paris negotiations will lead to deep global de-carbonization of energy is a rather large and very generous assumption, if not purely wishful thinking.

The reality is that the Paris climate agreement is fundamentally flawed. This global commitment is nothing more than broken and empty promises.

SOURCE 






Chevron Wins $38M From Enviros Behaving Badly: Extortion, Fraud, Corruption

Score 1 for Chevron

In 2011, environmentalists won the world’s largest judgment against Chevron (holy moly $18 billion), but it turned out it was all based on fraud, fake witnesses and telling lies.

Who would think people who say they like trees and human rights would be so self-serving? The award has since been overturned — indeed the tables have turned, and last week Chevron was awarded $38 million in damages.

Strangely, bad behavior of planet-saving-people doesn’t appear to rate highly in the news. Hands up who thinks the BBC/ABC/CBC would fail to mention it if environmentalists won a $38m suit against a money-laundering-witness-tampering oil company?

Gibraltar Supreme Court Awards Chevron $38 Million Against Ecuadorian Conspirators:

The Supreme Court of Gibraltar has issued a judgment against Pablo Fajardo, Luis Yanza, Ermel Chavez, Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia (the “Front”) and Servicios Fromboliere for their role in a conspiracy to procure and attempt to enforce a fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron.

The court awarded Chevron Corporation$38 million in damages and interest and issued a permanent injunction against the defendants, preventing them from assisting or supporting the case against Chevron in any way.

Donziger and Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer, were found by a U.S. Federal Court to have engaged in extortion, money laundering, wire fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The Front, which has long been involved in peddling a dishonest public relations campaign against Chevron aimed at extorting a settlement from the company, and Servicios Fromboliere, an Ecuadorian law firm established by Fajardo, are both shareholders in Amazonia and part of the extensive web of obscure entities established by the participants in the fraud against Chevron to attempt to hide their misconduct and profit from it.

The backstory –thanks to The Daily Caller, and Tim Pearce

An Ecuador court issued an $18 billion judgement against Chevron in February 2011 for environmental and social harm the company allegedly caused to the Amazon. The amount was later reduced to $9.5 billion, but a U.S. district court in New York nullified the judgement due to fraudulent and illegal activities by Steven Donziger, the lead American lawyer behind the lawsuit, according to the district court ruling.

The New York district court found that while Donziger had initiated the case with good intentions, he corrupted the process through telling half-truths, outright lies, and using fake evidence and witnesses.

“If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it,” the district court ruling said.

SOURCE 

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

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

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1 June, 2018

2018 TORNADO ACTIVITY NEAR RECORD LOW…Hurricane Season Looks Weaker…

These are tough times for the US climate-ambulance chasers, who like to use every extreme-weather event as a God-sent sign the climate is going to hell in a handbasket.

Tornadoes AWOL, models contradicted

But even weather extremes aren’t cooperating with the climate predictions and models. For instance, yesterday meteorologist Joe Bastardi at Weatherbell noted that US tornado activity is near a record low so far this year.

And despite claims by some US alarmist agencies of record high global temperatures occurring year after year, tornado activity over the past decades has in fact been trending downward, and so stands in stark contrast to the media and climate alarmism hysteria of greater and more frequent weather extremes.

Moreover, a number of meteorologists are also hinting that the 2018 hurricane season could be weaker than normal, due to unusually cool tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures – especially off the west coast of Africa where many hurricanes are spawned.

For example, at Twitter Levi Cowan of Tropical Tidbits recently commented how the sea surface temperature anomaly off the coast of West Africa was “brutal”.

Tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are extremely low off the coast of Africa, which may dampen the hurricane formation.

Joe Bastardi also noted in his most recent Saturday Summary that the current pattern has been seen off and on before in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and adds that “most of those seasons aren’t big hurricane seasons”.

When the Madden-Julian Oscillation enters phase 5 and 6 in June with cold sea surface temperatures off western Africa, it is indicative of lower accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) for the upcoming season, Bastardi suggests.

Currently, Bastardi has his ACE projection at 65 to 85% of normal. The veteran meteorologist does warn, however, of “in-close” development, where storms can form not far off US coast.

Indeed, it’ll be interesting to see how the upcoming hurricane season pans out in comparison to last year’s when conditions in the Atlantic were quite different.

Arctic “death spiral” in its death throes

And there’s more bad news for the climate ambulance chasers – at their beloved Arctic.

Japanese skeptic climate blogger Kirye  at Twitter recently tweeted that Arctic sea ice volume late this spring is at the 2nd highest level in 11 years!

As the Arctic has seen very warm surface temperatures over the past winter, the current elevated sea ice volume tells us that there’s much more behind the ice than surface temperatures. This is something we’ve been trying to tell alarmists for years.

Greenland adds 600 billion tonnes

Moreover, Greenland has added 600 billion tonnes of ice, Kirye shows.

So in summary, for the time-being climate alarmists will have to content themselves with insignificant weather anecdotes to keep their alarmism and climate quackery alive.

SOURCE 





At last a victory for Martha Boneta

A husband-and-wife real estate team accused of teaming up with environmental activists and government officials to interfere with a Virginia farmer’s business have reached a legal settlement with the farmer, according to court records.

Martha Boneta, who owns and operates the 64-acre Liberty Farm at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Paris, Virginia, sought damages from the real estate agents, her neighbors, in a lawsuit filed in Fauquier County Circuit Court.

Under the terms of the legal agreement, Boneta is not permitted to disclose the amount of money attached to the settlement. She sued the neighbors, Phillip and Patricia Thomas, for $2 million, court papers show.

Phillip Thomas owns Thomas & Talbot Real Estate, based in Middleburg, Virginia, and used to own Boneta’s Liberty Farm. His wife, Patricia, also is a lawyer admitted to the bar in Virginia. Their farm, Liberty Hall, is across the road from Liberty Farm.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

The Thomases are members of Piedmont Environmental Council, a nonprofit land trust headquartered in Warrenton, Virginia, that also was named in Boneta’s litigation. Their real estate company’s website identifies at least four other Thomas & Talbot agents associated with the land trust.

Council Said to Overstep Authority

Phillip Thomas did not reply to a request for comment.

Boneta, who spoke with The Daily Signal before the settlement was reached, had sued the Thomases for what she described as “malicious interference with her business” and “harassment.”

The lawsuit accused Piedmont Environmental Council of violating the terms of a conservation easement on Liberty Farm. Phillip and Patricia Thomas had entered into a joint agreement with the land trust related to the litigation.

Related: Farmer Turned Property Rights Activist Presses Court Fight With Green Group, Realtors

The idea behind conservation easements is for property owners to receive tax breaks in exchange for agreeing to restrict future development on a portion of their land.

As co-holders, Boneta’s easement lists the environmental council and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which the state General Assembly chartered in 1966 to monitor easements and promote land conservation.

In her litigation, Boneta claimed the environmental council overstepped its authority under state law in monitoring and inspecting her property. She also said she never received tax breaks through the easement.

Boneta’s case against the environmental council, dismissed in January 2017 by the county’s circuit court, could still be heard on appeal before the Virginia Supreme Court.

In response to an inquiry from The Daily Signal, Diana Norris, the in-house attorney for Piedmont Environmental Council, said in an email that the land trust will continue to fight Boneta’s accusations.

The county court dismissed Boneta’s 2015 case in January 2017, Norris noted, while the state Supreme Court denied her appeal in July 2017. The county court on April 24 also dismissed Boneta’s 2016 lawsuit against the environmental council, she said, though Boneta filed a notice of appeal.

“PEC will continue to vigorously defend itself from the false allegations,” Norris said.

Boneta told The Daily Signal that her lawyers “made a technical error” in the appeal to the state Supreme Court and she is “weighing her options,” which include an appeal based on the merits.

Litigation ‘Exposed Collusion’

Boneta filed a separate but related suit against the Piedmont Environmental Council, arguing that the group knowingly and falsely said while selling the property to her that Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson once camped on land that is now part of  Liberty Farm. That litigation remains active at the circuit court.

Related: Did ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Sleep Here? Farmer Sues Green Group Over Claim

Phillip Thomas, a fifth-generation landowner, previously owned Liberty Farm, which is across the street from his 20-acre farm called Liberty Hall.

Thomas transferred ownership of Liberty Farm to the Piedmont Environmental Council in December 2000 while maintaining ownership of Liberty Hall.

Boneta purchased Liberty Farm, also known as Paris Farm, from the environmental council for $425,000 in June 2006. The conservation easement was put in place simultaneously.

Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, said he views the settlement as a major turning point in the long, protracted legal battle.

“Martha Boneta’s yearslong litigation, undertaken at a huge financial and emotional cost, has exposed collusion involving public officials, radical environmentalists, and well-connected Realtors,” Cohen said in an email, adding:

For all the venality that has come to light, the whole exercise appears to have served the simple purpose of driving her off her land. By standing up to her well-heeled tormentors, she has shown how David can bring down Goliath. The lesson for farmers and other landowners is clear: Steer clear of conservation easements, because once you start surrendering your property rights, you are entrusting your future to people who don’t necessarily have your best interest at heart.

Boneta told The Daily Signal that her settlement with the Thomases could have reverberations across state lines.

“The lesson here is that you will pay a steep price for colluding with special interests to violate the property rights of average Americans,” Boneta said in a phone interview. “I want every American to never give up and to fight back against this type of abuse, no matter how long it takes. Stand your ground and justice will be served. We need land trust reform that will stop the corruption that is destroying property rights and hurting farmers.”

SOURCE 





Environmental red tape stalls border agents trying to fill drug-smuggler tunnels

Environmental laws delay filling of illicit border tunnels
Why some lawmakers and border patrol agents are frustrated over environmental laws that are delaying the filling of illicit border tunnels.

Environmental red tape is causing “long delays” for border agents as they try to fill tunnels used to smuggle people and dangerous drugs into the U.S. from Mexico, according to border officials and Republican lawmakers who have discussed the problem with agents.

Frustrated agents complain the lengthy federal review process can stall critical tunnel-plugging efforts for months after passageways are first discovered. 

The tunnels are being used to move people, illegal drugs and even fake pharmaceuticals. But regulations stemming from laws like the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act are putting "remediation" on hold.

“I heard firsthand accounts from our Border Patrol agents that environmental red tape is hindering their ability to secure the border,” Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, told Fox News this week.

Tunnel Split

In February of 2015, agents discovered a sophisticated border tunnel the length of three football fields in the town of Naco, Arizona. The tunnel was outfitted with wooden supports and a cement shaft with a hydraulic lift.

Bishop, along with Arkansas GOP Rep. Bruce Westerman, traveled to the Arizona border in February to meet with border agents and discuss how environmental laws and regulations are impacting security. Bishop, who has legislation aimed at addressing these issues, said they learned of the "significant delay in remediating illicit tunnels," a process where they are filled with gravel and concrete.

A Customs and Border Protection official confirmed to Fox News they've encountered “long delays” in remediating tunnels, acknowledging environmental regulations make up a “good portion of the delay.”

The official said other delays come with “clearing out a tunnel, mapping out the tunnel underground to know where to remediate from above, getting funding for the remediation and fulfilling a contract to a construction company to carry out the remediation.”

One particularly protracted response revolved around a sophisticated border tunnel -- the length of three football fields -- discovered in the town of Naco, Ariz., in February 2015. Photos show the tunnel complete with wooden supports and a cement shaft with a hydraulic lift.

Fox News learned it took between nine months and a year before it was fully remediated. Agents were told it was because of environmental concerns.

While this played out during the Obama administration, officials say agents are still encountering these kinds of delays under the current administration.

“Border security should never take a backseat to the EPA, when you consider the dangerous drugs that come into this country, such as fentanyl," Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in an interview. "That tunnel was assuredly used to bring fentanyl into this country, and other dangerous drugs. They don’t use tunnels like that simply to bring in illegal immigrants. They use those for their high-dollar products, such as illicit drugs.”

The tug-of-war over access to federal land has gone on for decades and flared frequently under the Obama administration. While border agents need to patrol that territory, several other agencies are tasked with protecting that land from human interference. Everything from moving surveillance equipment to improving a road can take months.

While Judd mentioned the EPA, the process actually involves a range of agencies – especially those within the Interior and Agriculture departments. A 2006 agreement with those departments gave border agents access to federal land under certain conditions. When Bishop raised this issue during the prior administration, the Interior Department stressed that the agencies work closely together – and that they have to balance security needs with environmental protection.

But delays in filling tunnels have become a source of frustration.

Judd said agents are frustrated when they have to "babysit" a tunnel during an environmental review because it takes up resources that could be used elsewhere.

Tunnels are most common in the San Diego sector, according to the Natural Resources Committee. But even the most seemingly simple tunnels to fix can take several months.

In 2014, according to the committee, San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents discovered a small tunnel that used a rail system to move items under the border into the United States.

The tunnel itself was nearly 4 feet, 6 inches high and 2 feet wide. It ran 2,500 feet in length and ran about 1,000 feet into the United States.

The area contained a small wetland. It took about four months to complete a bird study and fill in the tunnel.

The committee has cited that example as a “best-case scenario,” in comparison with other tunnels, where remediation has taken longer because of various regulations.

Other border tunnels discovered in the San Diego area have made news before. Last August, border agents arrested 30 illegal immigrants, including 23 Chinese nationals, outside a smuggling tunnel. The tunnel was near a border fence line, but was hidden by dry brush and branches. It's unclear whether there were any delays in filling that passageway.

Bishop is now pushing legislation to make the remediation of tunnels on federal lands -- and a range of other CBP activities -- exempt from the requirements of environmental laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Bishop’s proposal, tucked into two border security bills, would specifically limit the power of the Interior and Agriculture departments to hinder border agents on the job. Neither department has responded to a request for comment from Fox News. 

“Our border patrol agents need the tools and authority to secure our Southern border, and without streamlining the bureaucracy, that won’t happen,” Bishop said.

SOURCE 





‘This Is a Job-Killing Regulation That Will Put Our Company Out of Business’: Some Push EPA to Reverse Obama-Era Regulation

When is a glider not a glider?  When it's a truck

Trucking industry interests successfully lobbied the Environmental Protection Agency to impose “job-killing” regulations on remanufactured vehicles known as gliders that are cheaper to purchase than new trucks, an energy policy analyst and a maker of the vehicles say.

Gliders range in size from medium to heavy trucks. They are constructed from “glider kits” that include new truck parts, such as the tractor chassis, with a frame, front axle, cab, and brakes. The glider is manufactured by combining the glider kit with a powertrain from a used vehicle.

While gliders include new truck parts, they should not be considered new trucks, since the engine and other parts are used, industry representatives have argued. Yet, the EPA under President Barack Obama issued a new rule reclassifying gliders as new trucks in October 2016.

This distinction matters because the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions only from new trucks, not old ones. Most glider trucks cannot meet the emissions standards the Obama EPA imposed for new vehicles.

“This is a job-killing regulation that will put our company out of business,” Jon Toomey, director of government affairs for the Tennessee-based Fitzgerald Glider Kits, said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

“Based on the business we do with parts suppliers and family-run businesses, we estimate this Obama-era rule could cost 900 jobs in Tennessee and possibly 22,000 jobs across the country. We hope the rule can be reversed,” he said.

Toomey and Steve Milloy, a member of President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, have identified the Volvo Group as the company that most aggressively lobbied the EPA to impose the new emissions standards against glider trucks.

In May 2016, Volvo Group submitted comments to the EPA expressing support for the imposition of new greenhouse gas regulations on glider trucks.

In testimony delivered before an EPA hearing last December, a Volvo public affairs official told agency officials that glider trucks had been permitted to “skirt” both emissions and safety regulations. The official also made the point that some glider kits are manufactured in Mexico, while every truck manufactured by Mack Trucks and Volvo is built in the U.S.

The glider market represents a very small percentage of the trucking industry, with between 5,000 and 7,000 sold annually, compared with 300,000 new trucks sold annually, Toomey estimates.

He also notes that gliders sell for about 25 percent less than what it costs to buy a new truck.

“We serve a vital interest for small, independent trucking operations,” Toomey said. “The EPA regulation would be devastating.”

Fitzgerald has joined with other glider truck manufacturers to call on the Trump administration to reverse the Obama rule.

While he’s concerned about the actions of “careerists” inside the EPA, Toomey says he is encouraged by steps taken by Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA administrator.

Pruitt issued a statement in November that said he would be working to “undo the regulatory overreach of the prior administration.” Because of the “unique way gliders are manufactured,” the EPA is now proposing that gliders not be regulated as new vehicles, Pruitt explained in his statement.

“The previous administration attempted to bend the rule of law and expand the reach of the federal government in a way that threatened to put an entire industry of specialized truck manufacturers out of business,” Pruitt said in his statement. “ … Gliders not only provide a more affordable option for smaller owners and operators, but also serve as a key economic driver to numerous rural communities.”

Tommy Fitzgerald, the owner and founder of Fitzgerald Glider Kits, expressed his gratitude toward the Trump administration for moving forward with regulatory reforms that he said would enable small businesses to continue to innovate and create new jobs.

“The Trump administration and Administrator Pruitt are walking back the blatant regulatory overreach of their predecessors,” Fitzgerald said in an email.

“In this case, the Obama EPA, at the urging of a few corporate elites, sought to regulate gliders out of existence. We cannot thank President Trump enough for his relentless work to save small businesses and promote American industry first,” he said.

“Fitzgerald USA is a family-run business, and I am pleased that we have been able to create good-paying jobs and other opportunities in rural communities. Our mission is to bring jobs back to the proud, hardworking people left behind by manufacturers who offshored jobs just to save a few bucks.”

The comment period for the rule Pruitt proposed to reverse the Obama EPA regulations on glider trucks ended on Jan. 5 and is expected to move up to the Office of Management and Budget for interagency review within the next few weeks.

“Administrator Pruitt is doing a great job protecting the environment while adhering to the rule of law,” Toomey told The Daily Signal in an email.

“His opponents believe that they can make enough noise to have him removed. President Trump is far too smart to fall for such a scam by the liberal elitists and Volvo, a foreign truck manufacturer.”

Critics of glider trucks are “being disingenuous” when they claim those trucks exceed emissions standards, Toomey explained, because they fail to point out that glider trucks actually emit less carbon dioxide than newer ones.

The challenge with emissions for glider trucks relates to particulate matter, not carbon dioxide, he said.

The EPA defines particulate matter as “a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets that get into the air” and “cause serious health effects” if inhaled. The Clean Air Act requires the agency to set national air quality standards for particulate matter.

An EPA laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, performed tests in October on two glider trucks and found they exceeded emissions standards for particulate matter. But Milloy, who is also the editor of JunkScience.com, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that the tests were performed under questionable circumstances—without Pruitt’s knowledge and with no peer review process.

Moreover, what he called the “renegade report” was not printed on an official EPA letterhead and did not receive an internal EPA document number, he said.

“This was an easy layup for Volvo and the new truck industry at the Obama EPA,” Milloy said. “This was classic rent-seeking. With more stringent air standards, Volvo gets to sell more expensive items.

“The fact that this would happen with the Obama administration is not surprising. But what is surprising and disturbing is to have these bogus tests take place in the new administration without Pruitt’s knowledge,” he said.

With regard to some of the environmental concerns that have been raised about glider trucks, Fitzgerald pushed back on what he described as “false narratives” Volvo has circulated to environmental groups. He also explained why glider trucks might have some environmental benefits.

Environmental groups have been misled by the Volvo Trucks of the world that have actively sought to kill off the glider industry for years.

They were given misleading and unfounded data points about glider emissions, and they were encouraged to repeat false narratives about the carbon footprint and efficiency of gliders. In reality, gliders are the best example of ‘upcycling’ that the truck industry has.

Upcycling is the process of transforming products into new materials or products of better quality for better environmental value. It is a concept that is very familiar to environmental groups.

Every glider assembled accounts for approximately 4,000 pounds of upcycled cast steel that would otherwise be junked and tossed in a landfill. Glider assemblers are developing ways to make trucks that are more fuel-efficient and emit less carbon dioxide than new trucks, all without adding to our nation’s landfills.

The Daily Signal contacted Volvo and asked why the company saw fit to lobby for regulatory changes on emissions that would impact the glider truck industry. John Mies, a communications official with Volvo Group of North America, responded in an email and said, “We are seeking a level playing field. All manufacturers, whether of original equipment or gliders, should have to abide by the same emissions regulations.”

He also sent testimony from Susan Alt, Volvo’s senior vice president of public affairs, that was delivered as part of an EPA hearing on Dec. 5.

Her remarks read in part:

We are here today to voice opposition to EPA’s proposal to repeal the emissions standards for heavy-duty glider vehicles. A glider vehicle is essentially a new truck that’s been equipped with a used engine.

Their original purpose was to allow truck owners to salvage working powertrains after severe accidents by installing the wrecked truck’s engine and transmission into new cab-and-chassis assemblies.

The glider vehicle market was just a few hundred per year for decades, and Volvo has never objected to gliders used for the aforementioned purpose.

In fact, the Phase 2 rule as finalized provides for production of a volume of glider vehicles to meet this market need. In 2010, a significant emission reduction was required for newly manufactured diesel engines.

Not coincidentally, we’ve watched the glider-vehicle market grow more than tenfold since 2010, now reaching ‘significantly over 10,000 gliders in 2015,’ according to EPA records.

Why did the volume grow so dramatically? Because some companies exploited the opportunity to offer glider vehicles with older ‘pre-emissions’ engines to customers seeking to avoid modern emissions-control systems.

Today, almost no glider vehicles use 2 of 3 donor components from the same truck to be installed into his new truck. Most glider vehicles today are mass produced, custom-built new trucks with donor components that come from any possible source.

Most glider vehicle buyers today are not small operators trying to salvage their truck after an accident or unable to afford new trucks. The glider buyers today are small, medium, and even large fleets buying new replacement trucks, equipped with noncompliant engines, to haul for-hire loads on America’s highways.

These glider vehicles not only skirt current emission regulations, but they also skirt safety regulations, such as electronic stability control—technologies that help keep both the driver of the truck and the cars safer.

But Nick Loris, an energy policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, sees an effort at work to put small business at a disadvantage.

“These onerous regulations are the epitome of the federal government crushing small business,” he said in an email. “In many cases, it is a single individual who owns a truck or a small fleet of trucks. The businesses that have and use gliders passionately defended them, because the gliders often have better gas mileage and break down less.

“Regulating them out of existence would also likely backfire environmentally, by forcing companies to hold onto their older trucks longer, rather than buy new ones,” he said.

In her testimony, Alt insisted that the proposed rule change “will hurt a much larger number of small businesses who are not selling glider vehicles.”

She also warns that glider vehicles will undercut new-vehicle sales and that that would directly affect the “livelihoods of the more than 14,000 Americans” these dealers employ.

Where the interests of small business are concerned, Fitzgerald anticipates that the Trump EPA’s planned regulatory relief will help to level competition between larger and small companies while providing smaller trucking fleets with affordable options.

“The vast majority of our customers are small fleet owners and owner-operators who cannot afford to buy or maintain new trucks, but nonetheless want the latest safety features, amenities, and styling,” he said in an email.

“Small fleet owners and owner-operators buy gliders because the alternatives—sticking with their old, unsafe truck or buying another used truck that likely lacks the latest safety features—are not viable, long-term business strategies.”

Fitzgerald added: “Consolidation in the trucking industry is making life increasingly difficult for independent owner-operators and small fleets. Gliders—which are more reliable, cost less to buy and maintain, and are more fuel-efficient than new trucks—help them keep the lights on and the doors open.

“Gliders allow the small fleets and owner-operators to stay competitive with the big corporate fleets that want to eat their lunch. Destroying the glider industry would put tens of thousands of people out of business, and the impact on small businesses and rural communities throughout the country would be profound,” he said.

SOURCE 






DOT Repeals Rule Forcing States To Monitor Tailpipe GHG Emissions

President Donald Trump’s administration repealed a rule forcing states to comply with a policy monitoring greenhouse gas levels from tailpipes of American automobiles.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) signed a final rule May 22 that eliminates a mandate requiring state agencies to establish emission targets, calculate their progress toward those targets, and determine a plan of action if they failed to make progress during a performance period.

The rule repealed the performance management measure assessing the percent change in tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions on the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) measure. It also measured total annual tons of carbon emissions from all on-road mobile sources.

States and other locals across the country can still pursue similar actions locally. The repeal of the GHG measure does not affect implementation of the other national performance management measures states are responsible for administering.

This is one of several regulations Trump’s administration has sought to rollback.

Trump announced in April preparations to scrap an Obama-era rule that would have dramatically ratcheted up fuel efficiency guidelines over the course of a decade. The plan would also target California’s ability to set its own vehicle efficiency standards.

California’s high standards have forced automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles, which ultimately effects national efficiency standards. Former President Barack Obama aimed to raise the average fuel economy of automobiles to more than 50 miles per gallon within 10 years.

The Golden State got permissions from the Obama administration to issue its own, higher emissions standards.

They require cars get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The rules would cut 540 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions and save consumers money, officials estimated.

SOURCE 

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

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

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Home (Index page)


This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.



I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.


Context for the minute average temperature change recorded in the graph above: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.



Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion



Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The Obama EPA did everything it could get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below


WISDOM:

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.


ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.


SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

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

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead


How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.




DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral Reef Compendium.
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Bank of Queensland blues


There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)






Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
Basic home page
Pictorial Home Page.
Selected pictures from blogs
Another picture page (Best with broadband. Rarely updated)



Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.comuv.com/

OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/