Head of 40,000 parasites says being Green is a Christian obligation

Money donated to World Vision is supposed to support poor children but is used instead to pay 40,000 staff. Would you buy a used car from this man? Note that he doesn't quote a single Bible verse. Some Christian! Global Warming is clearly his religion

So let me tell this "whited sepulchre" what the Bible DOES say: "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28 NIV)

That sounds like the opposite of the Greenie agenda to me

And how do these texts preach concern for global anything? "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36) and "And the world and its desires are fading away, but the person who does God's will remains forever" (1 John 2:17 (ISV). I could go on but I think I have exposed this Pharisee for what he is

ALL Bible-reading Christians should be "greenies" because "creation carries the imprint of the maker", says the head of World Vision Australia, the Reverend Tim Costello.

Speaking at the start of a national day of prayer on climate change yesterday, Mr Costello said it was incumbent on Christians to take the problem of global warming seriously, and to battle cynicism and despair.

"World Vision has 40,000 staff around the world … they are saying the same thing: the droughts are longer, the monsoons when they come are floods, we used to get two crops a year, now … one. These stories seem to correlate with what the science is saying."

His remarks stand in stark contrast to a speech given a fortnight ago by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who told a Westminster audience that efforts to rein in global warming were a sign of "hubris" and would be as "misdirected" as the efforts of Babylonians to construct the ill-fated tower of Babel.

Slamming what he described as the "propaganda achievements of the climate extremists", Cardinal Pell said CO2 was not a pollutant but "part of the stuff of life" and that plants would "love" a doubling of CO2 levels.

Mr Costello argued that "creation care is a fundamental building block of Christian faith, so it is incumbent on all Christians to say we have to take this [global warming] seriously."

He was speaking as a new coalition, Hope for Creation, launched the national day of prayer, with thousands of Christians taking part nationally and joining those from 40 other countries.

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How to make our world a little less green, and a lot more expensive‏

Last Saturday I attended the open house at the new AES Laurel Mountain wind farm which straddles the border between Randolph and Barbour counties in West Virginia. Before a short tour of this windturbine facility that began generating electricity in July,there was welcoming talk by the wind farm’s general manager,John Arose, followed by a question and answer session.Frank O’Hara, from the watchdog citizen’s organization Allegheny Front Alliance, asked about a rumored bird kill of between 500 and 600 birds at the AES location.

Subsequent accounts have reported that 484 birds werekilled at the AES facility, apparently drawn in under foggy conditions by lights at the ridge top substation.

Mr. Arose confirmed that a bird kill had indeed occurred but didn’t share any other details except that AES Laurel Mountain was cooperatingwith the investigatingauthorities.Further inquiry indicates that,rather than the large raptors usually associated with birddeaths at wind farms, the birdskilled at Laurel Mountain were mainly blackpoll warblers ontheir fall migration to SouthAmerica. I believe that this mayqualify as the largestdocumented kill of its kind associated with a wind turbine facility. It would be another first for West Virginia which is nationally known for the thousands of bats killed at theTucker County, Mountaineer facility on Backbone Mountain.

With the Pinnacle wind farm nearly ready to begin spinning in Keyser, and the AES New Creek wind project beginning construction a few miles away, one wonderswhat unintended consequence will occur next?The Allegheny Highlands are not a suitable location for industrial wind power.Government wind maps show only the highest ridges in very few locations havingratings of #3 (fair) to #4 (good) on a scale that goes to #7(superior). Think of the blue sky/white turbine pictures you’ve seen in the ads. Those photos are never in mountains like ours for good reason. Observations of the operation of the windturbines at AES Laurel Mountain seem to illustrate the poorness of the wind resource.

Any one from Elkins can tell you that there are many days when several of the 61 turbines are still. Oddly, the case is often that three or four turbines in a rowwill be turning while others will have been randomly turned out of the wind. Somedays, by contrast, almost all may have been placed into service. Yesterday, on a drive to town, half the turbines were idle and the one, out my window at home, spun for three minutes around noon and again for an hour and fifty-five minutes before being turned off again at 5:51pm.

Why should we care, as precious little of the wind generated electricity is consumed in West Virginia and Western Maryland? It might be because a project like AES Laurel Mountain is enabled by your taxes. In this case 30% or $72 million of the cost of the wind farm was provided as a cash grant (not a loan) from the federal government. States contribute to this delinquency by setting "Renewable PortfolioStandards" with little more than good intentions as justification. Perhaps you mightwant to see a better return on such a large investment. As for me, I’m happy to see your dollars go to waste because when the air is still,the constant drone of the turbines, like a distant, endless freight train, is absent and the hills are, at least for a moment, quiet once more and the birds fly free in safety.

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The "Berkeley" data is full of errors

In a surprising number of records, the “seasonally adjusted” station data in the Berekely archive contains wildly incorrect data. Gary shows a number of cases, one of which, Longmont 2ESE, outside the nest of climate scientists in Boulder CO, is said to have temperatures below minus 50 deg C in the late fall as shown below:

This is not an isolated incident. Gary reports:

Of the 39028 sites listed in the data.txt file, arbitrarily counting only sites with 60 months of data or more, 34 had temperature blips of greater than +/- 50 degrees C, 215 greater than +/- 40 C, 592 greater than +/- 30 C, and 1404 greater than +/- 20 C. That is quite a large number of faulty temperature records, considering that this kind of error is something that is so easy to check for. A couple hours work is all it took to find these numbers.

In the engineering world, this kind of error is not acceptable. It is an indication of poor quality control. Statistical algorithms were run on the data without subsequent checks on the results. Coding errors obviously existed that would have been caught with just a cursory examination of a few site temperature plots. That the BEST team felt the quality of their work, though preliminary, was adequate for public display is disconcerting.

Gary also observed a strange ringing problem in the data.

I observed earlier that I had been unable to replicate the implied calculation of monthly anomalies that occurred somewhere in the BEST algorithm in several stations that I looked at (with less exotic results.) It seems likely that there is some sort of error in the BEST algorithm for calculating monthly anomalies as the problems are always in the same month. When I looked at this previously, I couldn’t see where the problem occurred. (There isn’t any master script or road map to the code and I wasn’t sufficiently interested in the issue to try to figure out where their problem occurred. That should be their responsibility.)

Locations

Even though GHCN data is the common building block of all the major temperature indices, its location information is inaccurate. Peter O’Neill see has spot checked a number of stations, locating numerous stations which are nowhere near their GHCN locations. Peter has notified GHCN of many of these errors. However, with the stubbornness that it is all too typical of the climate “community”, GHCN’s most recent edition (Aug 2011) perpetuated the location errors (see Peter’s account here.)

Unfortunately, BEST has directly used GHCN location data, apparently without any due diligence of their own on these locations, though this has been a known problem area. In a number of cases, the incorrect locations will be classified as “very rural” under MODIS. For example, the incorrect locations of Cherbourg stations in the English Channel or Limassol in the Mediterranean will obviously not be classified as urban. In a number of cases that I looked at, BEST had duplicate versions of stations with incorrect GHCN locations. In cases where the incorrect location was classified differently than the correct location, essentially the same data would be classified as both rural and urban.

I haven’t parsed the BEST station details, but did look up some of the erroneous locations already noted by Peter and report on the first few that I looked at.

Peter observed that Kzyl-Orda, Kazakhstan has a GHCN location of 49.82N 65.50E, which was over 5 degrees of separation from its true location near 44.71N 65.69E. BEST station 148338 Kzyl-Orda is also at GHCN 49.82N 65.50E. Other versions (124613 and 146861) are at 44.8233 65.530E and 44.8000 65.500E.

Peter observed that Isola Gorgona, Italy had GHCN location of 42.40N 9.90E more than one degree away from its true location of 43.43N, 9.910E. BEST station 148309 (ISOLA GORGONA) has the incorrect GHCN location of 42.4N 9.9E.

The same sort of errors can be observed in virtually all the stations in Peter’s listing.

I realize that the climate community is pretty stubborn about this sort of thing. (Early CA readers recall that the “rain in Maine falls mainly in the Seine” – an error stubbornly repeated in Mann et al 2007.) While BEST should have been alert to this sort of known problem, it’s hardly unreasonable for them to presume that GHCN had done some sort of quality control on station locations during the past 20 years, but this in fact was presuming too much.

These errors will affect the BEST urbanization paper (the amount of the effect is not known at present.)

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)





Obama Tightens Screw on America's Coal Supply

Weeks after the infamous BP oil spill in late-April 2010, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency that managed leasing and regulation, was split up into three parts.

Addressing the reorganization, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said: “We will be able to strengthen oversight of the companies that develop our nation’s energy resources.” He addressed a perceived conflict of interest between departments due to the leasing and regulatory functions being in one agency—one brings in revenue and one regulates (and perhaps punishes) the businesses generating the income.

His mid-May 2010 actions bring his new Secretarial Order to reorganize a different agency into question.

On October 26, 2011, Secretary Salazar signed Secretarial Order 3315 that will consolidate the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) within the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Order states that “fee collections” and “regulation, inspection and enforcement, and state program oversight” will now be integrated—the very tasks split out within the MMS reorganization.

Because this new order seems in direct contradiction to the 2010 SO 3299, it raises suspicion as to the true purpose of the agency reorganization—especially since the impacted industry is the administration’s favorite villain—coal.

SO 3315 was announced to the surprise of most in the industry. Charlie Boddy, a mining and government relations consultant with more than 40 years in the industry and former VP of government relations with Usibelli Coal Mine Inc., said when he first heard the announcement, he thought it was a joke. “It is,” he said, “without a doubt, the most bizarre proposal to come out of the Obama Administration.”

The fact that there was no consultation with the stakeholders, states, or Congress raises additional concerns. If there was a desire to work with the industry, the general belief is that they would have been involved. The order’s surprise element can’t mean good things for coal mining.

On November 4, as a part of a hearing on an investigation into a re-write of the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule, Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO) stated: “In addition, we will also discuss the recent Secretarial Order requiring the merger of the Office of Surface Mining with the Bureau of Land Management. A proposal I am deeply concerned about impacting the ability of the nation’s ability to access our vast coal resources. Furthermore there are clear statutory limitations prohibiting the OSM from leasing or promoting coal, which is a key responsibility of the BLM.”

Doc Hastings (R-WA), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, issued the following statement: “I have serious concerns about this Secretarial Order to suddenly and dramatically alter the management of coal mining and the multiple-use of Western BLM lands. The Obama Administration has not made secret its desire to put an end to America’s coal-mining industry, and this appears to be one more step in that direction.”

Because of the “bombshell” nature of the announcement, the administration’s attitude toward the coal industry, the totally different missions of the OSM and the BLM, and the fact that they operate under different specific provisions and acts of Congress, the proposed merger can only be considered suspect.

In an internal memo to the DOI team, Secretary Salazar states: “This integration reflects our ongoing commitment to good government” and claims that it is about “Doing more in a limited budget environment.”

The OSM is a little agency by comparison to the BLM. OSM's 2011 budget appropriation is about $160 million compared to more than $1.1 billion for BLM. OSM has about 500 employees, compared to 10,000 at BLM. “In the scheme of government fat, OSM is one of the tiniest little targets you can take aim at,” said Kathy Karpan, a former OSM director. “It's a little, tiny entity that would be lost at BLM.”

Industry sources fear that OSM will be lost inside the BLM and view the move as a way to make coal mining more difficult; to delay permitting. Normally a coal mine can be permitted through OSM in less than a year. Permitting of a hard rock mine through the BLM can take 7-10 years.

The OSM deals with mines on private or Indian lands—mostly in the east. They cooperate with the states. They do regulation.

The BLM deals with federal lands—mostly in the west. They have little experience with private lands or state agencies. The generate revenues.

Like last year’s SO 3310 that circumvented Congress’ unique ability to designate Wilderness Areas by creating a new “Wild Lands” designation, SO 3315 brings authority into question. Insiders believe that a reorganization of this magnitude requires congressional action.

Some industry groups are taking a wait-and-see approach: “It may be a good idea, but no one really knows.” Coal mining companies are still evaluating, but initial reactions are not supportive.

History tells us that we do not need to “wait and see.” The longer there is silence, the harder it will be to reverse the order, which is scheduled to become effective December 1, 2011—following consultation with applicable congressional committees and will remain in effect until “amended, superseded, or revoked, whichever occurs first.”

While this may seem like a little issue in light of all the big problems we are facing in America, it is one more in a string of power grabs designed to take away authority from the states and move it to the federal government—meaning more centralized power. Don’t let them slip it in until “revoked.” Call Congress and stop SO 3315 before it starts.

Ultimately, less coal mining means job cuts, higher electricity prices, and a diminished America.

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Wasted ‘Climate Change’ Cash Could Save Lives Instead

Tomorrow’s theoretical problems have been trumping today’s urgent needs

When it comes to climate change, our leaders would do well to follow Buddhist advice: when struck by an arrow, first remove it before seeking out your assailant. Otherwise, you will die.

But most governments and charitable foundations today do exactly the opposite. They try so hard to appease climate activists — who seem more concerned about the possible plight of people yet to be born than those suffering today — that millions of people have been abandoned to misery and early death in the poorest parts of the world.

The Canadian government is providing what might appear to be a generous $142 million to help victims of drought and famine in East Africa. Australia has also committed over $103 million. That is certainly far more money than either China or Saudi Arabia — the latter situated just across the Red Sea from the disaster area — are contributing. But it pales in comparison with what Canada and Australia are paying to fulfill their entirely voluntary Copenhagen Accord climate change commitments. Australia committed $599 million and Canada $1.2 billion between 2010 and 2012.

Both nations have already donated the first third of this commitment, an amount that is almost exactly the current shortfall in the international Horn of Africa Drought fund, a deficit that may lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people if it is not rectified.

The Copenhagen Accord specified that contributions should be split 50-50 between helping people adapt to climate change and stopping (or “mitigating”) climate change. Australia is generally following this formula, but 90% of Canada’s first $400 million donation is dedicated entirely to mitigation.

This undue focus on mitigation of a hypothetical human-caused dangerous warming that has yet even to be measured comes at the expense of the urgent needs of the world’s most vulnerable peoples. For example, ClimateWorks Foundation — an American climate activist group that has donated millions to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection — received over $500 million from charitable foundations when they launched in 2008. This was twice as much as foundations contributed to the World Health Organization, and over seven times as much as they donated to UNICEF in that year.

Over the last two decades ending in 2009, the U.S. government spent a total of $68 billion for climate science research and climate-related technology development. Worldwide, it is estimated that Western countries alone are pouring at least $10 billion annually (2009) into global warming related research and policy formulation.

There are untold amounts being spent by corporations around the world on greenhouse gas reduction schemes, the costs of which are passed almost entirely on to consumers.

On October 27, the Climate Policy Initiative issued a report showing that at least $97 billion per year is being provided to “climate finance.” Tragically, just $4.4 billion — about 5% — of the total is going to help countries and communities adapt to climate change.

All the while, aid agencies remain drastically underfunded, even in the midst of East Africa’s worst famine in decades. Developing countries are pressured by eco-activists, media, and the UN to enable impractical “climate-friendly” energy policies that even developed nations cannot afford. At the same time, millions of the world’s poor lack access to electricity, running water, and basic sanitation.

And what is the world getting in return for this sacrifice? If the science being relied upon by the governments and the UN were correct, and all the countries of the world that have emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol actually met their targets, then 0.05 degrees Celsius of warming might end up being prevented by 2050. In other words, trillions of dollars of expenditure will be wasted for an impact on climate that is not even measurable.

Clearly, the time has long since passed to take an entirely different approach to the climate hazard issue. We need to pull out the arrow, address the real wound, and leave learning more about the possible assailant to another day.

Despite the demonstrated failure of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming, a very real climate problem does exist. It is the ongoing risk associated with natural climatic variations. This includes short-term events such as floods and cyclones, intermediate scale events such as drought, and longer-term warming and cooling trends.

That such climate change is natural does not imply it is benign or gentle. Coming out of the last glacial period, during which sea levels were over 100 meters lower than today and kilometer-thick ice sheets made Canada, the northern U.S., and northern Eurasia uninhabitable, warming and cooling many times faster than our 20th century changes occurred. Even as recently as the 1920s, the “average annual temperature” rose between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius (and by as much as 6 degrees C in winter) in less than ten years at weather stations in Greenland.

Such natural changes have serious impact on human societies. From the demise of the robust Greenland Vikings to the sudden disappearance of the powerful pre-Incan civilizations of the Moche and the Tiwanaku, history is littered with examples of what happens when societies are unprepared for or unable to adapt to climate change.

Even when civilizations do not completely collapse due to extreme climate and weather changes, great calamities often ensue. Witness the extreme hardship and famine in Europe during the most severe phases of the 1250-1875 Little Ice Age, and similarly in the 1930s Dust Bowl event in America. Or how about the 1998 ice storm that paralyzed much of Eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States?

We need to prepare for such events by hardening society’s infrastructure through activities such as burying electricity transmission lines underground. Had this been the norm, the freak October snowstorm that just hit the northeast U.S. would not have caused widespread power outages.

Similarly there is a need to “waterproof” southeastern Australia, which can be expected to experience irregular drought periods in the future naturally — quite irrespective of speculative human causation. This could be accomplished through pumping fresh water into the Murray Darling Basin from northern rivers, by recycling of waste water, by the construction of new dam reservoirs or desalinization plants, and by the prevention of water waste through evaporation and leakage from irrigation systems.

There is no question that climate change adaptation measures can be expensive. But unlike today’s completely futile and even more expensive attempts to stop the world’s climate from changing, expenditure on preparation for and adaptation to dangerous climatic events will pass on a more robust and wealthy society to future generations.

And perhaps some of the billions of dollars that we choose not to squander on futile mitigation measures can instead be committed to helping populations already living at the edge of survival.

For the cast-iron reality is that all countries need to have available to them the financial resources to cope with the natural climatic hazards that nature will inevitably continue to throw at us all.

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Australia Chemical company's $1b expansion 'threatened by carbon tax'

With production shifting to much more polluting facilities in China

A CHEMICAL company that operates in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's electorate says it will shelve a $1 billion world-class expansion because of the carbon tax.

With the Senate set to approve the historic climate change policy tomorrow, Coogee Chemicals says it also threatens the long-term sustainability and jobs at the nation's only methanol factory in Laverton North.

Coogee Chemicals chairman Gordon Martin told the Herald Sun the company had been planning a new $1 billion plant in country Victoria, southern Queensland or in NSW around the seat held by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

It would have created 150 high-skilled jobs and export earnings of $14 billion, but Mr Martin said the carbon tax made it "uncompetitive and unviable". "The carbon tax will stop a significant Australian project that would value-add to Australia's abundant gas resource and jeopardise the long-term sustainability of the existing methanol plant at Laverton," he said.

The existing plant is in Ms Gillard's western suburbs seat of Lalor, where she will host Community Cabinet on Wednesday. The Laverton factory takes natural gas from Bass Strait and turns it into clear, colourless liquid called methanol.

Plant manager Grant Lukey said "every home will have something that includes methanol".

It is a critical ingredient for items such as particle board for building, table tops, aerosols, windshield wiper fluid, plastic soft drink bottles, paint, cycling tights and mattress foam.

Overseas it is an alternative to ethanol for car fuel, particularly in China.

Dr Lukey said the Laverton factory had the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per tonne of any methanol plant in the world. He said emissions were four-times greater at coal-based plants in China where 11 were built this year. "We've spent 16 years developing the best technology and now a world-scale project is going to go belly-up," Dr Lukey said.

Opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt blamed the Government. "There couldn't be a plainer example of the stupidity of the carbon tax than losing a $1 billion investment with all of the associated jobs while sending global emissions up rather than down," Mr Hunt said.

Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan said when the Senate passed the carbon tax it would be "a historic day for Australia". "As well as a cleaner environment, it will deliver better jobs for our children and grandchildren and a more secure economic future," Mr Swan said. "It's not an easy reform but it's the type of responsible, forward-looking policy that this Government is committed to delivering."

A tax of $23 a tonne will be paid by the top 500 polluters from July 1. Industry gets $3 billion a year in compensation and households $5 billion in tax cuts and welfare.

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