Hansen's rhetoric gets really weird:  Now talking about "boiling" oceans

He sounds like he has flipped his lid.  Even the most extreme IPCC prediction goes nowhere near that.

But let's look at a couple of places where the oceans are warm anyway.  Below are plots of sea surface temperature at Fiji and the Cook Islands in the mid-Pacific.  Also on the graph is the sharply rising plot of atmospheric CO2.  So the sea-surface temperature must be rising like crazy too, right?





The facts speak for themselves

More HERE (See the original for links)





Turning Homeland Security into the Green Police

Just when you thought the federal government’s “greening” of America couldn’t get any more ridiculous, along comes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with its first-ever Environmental Justice Strategy. (link here)

Yes, that’s right. When determining how best to secure our nation against al-Qaeda, Iran, North Korea, China and other assorted threats, DHS must determine if its actions place “disproportionately high and adverse effects on the human health and environment of minority or low-income populations.”

Starting this year, DHS will prepare an Annual Implementation Progress Report to address the department’s efforts concerning: “(1) implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act; (2) implementation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended; (3) impacts from climate change; and (4) impacts from commercial transportation and supporting infrastructure (“goods movement”).”

In order to comply with the new strategy, senior leadership at DHS must ensure that “environmental justice is appropriately integrated into their specific mission: maritime safety, security, and stewardship; federal assistance authority; emergency management programs; border security; transportation security; immigration services; law enforcement training; science and technology research; and mission support and asset management.”

Further, “[a]s the Department’s capacities and mission areas evolve in response to improved understanding of emerging threats to safety and security, the concepts of this strategy will be extended to match the commitment to environmental justice in those new areas.”

There now, don’t you feel safer?

SOURCE





If Only the Romans had the EPA to Crucify the Dissenters

A recently surfaced video of an EPA official's rant confirms what many of us already knew about the Obama Administration: they imagine themselves to be the rulers of conquered territories populated by restless barbarians who must be subjugated at any cost, complete with indiscriminate and severe exemplary punishments.

Al Armendariz, Administrator for EPA's South Central Region (appointed by President Obama on November 5, 2009), thought he was among his cohorts when he said this:

"The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."

Considered to be one of the 25 most powerful Texans, Armendariz has used his government position to do just that - crucifying some oil companies on trumped-up charges in order to terrorize the others."

But his reference to a "Turkish town" gave me pause. Turkey didn't exist at the time the Romans conquered Asia Minor. At the time, it was inhabited mostly by Greeks.  Romans could only conquer a Turkish village if they were to take a time machine ten centuries into the future, given that Rome fell a thousand years prior to the Turks brutally invading Asia Minor and calling that land Turkey.

But random execution so as to terrorize conquered peoples into submission was exactly what the Muslim Turks later did in order to subjugate the non-Muslim natives in their own ever expanding empire, as the Ottoman Empire swept over much of the former extent of Rome's empire.

This Texan Young Turk's appalling knowledge of history makes me wonder about his knowledge of other fields, including environmental science and business management. Knowledge and the scientific method of inquiry have been replaced with the feeling of righteousness and superiority towards the "savages" - i.e., those of us who do not share his "progressive" worldview.

From my unprogressive "barbarian" perspective, however, if the Romans had today's EPA to crucify the dissenters, the Roman Empire would still be around today and the Turks would be in real trouble. And not just the Turks; the rest of us would also live under the fascist jackboot.

I would have liked to make a prediction that if fascism were to come to America, it would come wearing a friendly smile as a protector of the people and the planet. But such a prediction is too late: the friendly, smiling fascism is now here.



 SOURCE




Obama’s “None Of The Above” Energy Policy

Via Resouceful Earth we received news of a story on EE New’s Greenwire reports that the Obama Administration is actively working, one must assume, to “Keystone” the Pebble Mine project in Alaska under the auspices of the Clean Water Act.

U.S. EPA is defending its review of large-scale development in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed amid strong concerns from state leaders, including Attorney General Michael Geraghty.

At issue is the controversial Pebble Limited Partnership’s gold and copper mine in southwestern Alaska, which could become one of the largest in the world. Opponents worry the project could hurt tourism and a valuable salmon fishery.

In a recent letter, Geraghty questioned EPA’s legal authority to conduct the assessment, since the company has yet to submit permit applications (Greenwire, April 3).

But in another letter earlier this month, EPA Region 10 Administrator Dennis McLerran said the Clean Water Act gave him the authority to establish programs and conduct research for pollution prevention. He also offered the state an olive branch by agreeing to meet to discuss concerns.

Remember that last month the EPA was roundly smacked down by the Supreme Court for their fine first, investigate later use of the Clean Water Act. That rebuke has not dissuaded them from trying to use the Act to shut down the Pebble project before it has even formally been proposed. More from the Greenwire article:

Groups, including Alaska Native tribes, have been at odds over EPA intervention and a possible pre-emptive Clean Water Act permit veto of the project.

“In order to give due consideration to these conflicting requests,” McLerran wrote, “the EPA decided to collect and evaluate available scientific information on Bristol Bay fisheries and their vulnerability to large-scale mining development.”
With the draft watershed assessment scheduled for release next month and peer review and public meetings planned in its wake, both opponents and supporters of the mine have intensified their lobbying efforts.

The Pebble Partnership has touted the attorney general’s letter and said EPA’s assessment might lead to a veto of the project, which state and company officials call illegal and unprecedented (Greenwire, Feb. 9). The agency is not discounting the possibility of such an action.

The Pebble project, like Keystone before it, is just one large example of the trend under this president. While publically saying that they are pursuing an “all of the above” energy and resource strategy, down in the trenches (out of public view for the most part) what is really happening is that administratively and bureaucratically they are ensuring that “none of the above” ever see the light of day.

Marita Noon at Townhall shows that Obama’s reelection could well depend on preemptively shutting down Pebble and other similar projects to appease his green constituency. The environmentalists want total government control of all natural resources and want bureaucrats to determine what air, land, and ocean uses are acceptable.

Yet another thing that is at stake in this election…

SOURCE



Royal Society Hammered in Latest Plug of Post Normal Science

Britain’s once illustrious Royal Society is exposed again selling out to an elitist agenda promoting de-population and eco-evangelism

Latest whistleblower on this disturbing trend is Ben Pile of Climate Resistance. Pile pens a punishing new piece exposing the sinister rise of Malthusianism cloaked in post-normal platitudes. With his article. ‘The Royal Society Takes Another Step Away from Science ‘ Pile hammers the RS hard declaring:

“The scientific academy has sensed that it in today’s world, it wields political power. As the call for evidence suggests, the Royal Society has already decided that population is a problem, and the size of the population ought to be managed by political power, not by the individuals it consists of.”

The Royal Society is shown abandoning its faltering campaign to trumpet man-made global warming alarm to switch to alarm about so-called over population; all in the same anti-science Malthusian vein that humans are inherently “bad.”

Back in October 2010, the same author had written an article for Spiked that first identified the sinister politicization of this once venerable institution:

“It is no coincidence that, as it was preparing to moderate its statements on climate change, the Society has been seeking to intervene in the debate about population. In July this year, it announced that it would be ‘undertaking a major study to investigate how population variables will affect and be affected by economies, environments, societies and cultures’.”

If ever there was a compelling argument made for the need of a truly independent and non-political forum for science voices here it is.

A new forum for non-politicization of science is Principia Scientific International. It takes much the same hard-hitting line as Pile to denounce national academies such as the Royal Society that expound political dogma in place of scientific fact. The Royal Society has skewed science itself by abandoning it’s legitimate role as a powerful mode of inquiry to promote a pretence of science by exploiting a position of political authority.

As such we now live in an age where creeping rise of junk “post-normal” science threatens the traditional norms of evidence-based research.

SOURCE




Green "failures" are not failures if you understand their true purpose

With the Solyndra, First Solar, Sunpower, Fisker, and related Obama administration Department of Energy scandals, President Obama is following a trail blazed by Vice President Al Gore in the mid-1990s.  Similar scandals -- failed (or failing) green technology companies intertwined with Democratic Party fundraising -- will continue to arise until we understand their genesis.

Doubtless there are sincere entrepreneurs and enthusiasts in the green technology industry.  Nonetheless, I suspect that these green ventures fail so frequently because their political backers have about as much stake in their success as did Bialystock and Bloom in the success of Springtime for Hitler.

Perhaps these ill-starred ventures appear so often with substantial DOE funding precisely because they are successful in their primary surreptitious purpose of providing a Wall Street "pump and dump" vehicle for channeling cash to Democratic Party insiders.  Considering that until recently insider trading was actually legal for congressmen, the insidious nature of such scandals is particularly compelling.

To begin to understand these phenomena, it is illuminating to review the record of the original, the prototypical failed green technology scandal.  It began in 1995 when Vice President Al Gore visited Fall River, Massachusetts to offer an Earth Day speech touting Molten Metals Inc.  This company failed soon thereafter.
[T]he stock plunged from $28 to $14 in a single day in October 1996 when the company lost Department of Energy funding for a research contract. Doubts were raised about the commercial viability of Molten Metal's waste disposal system.

In the aftermath of this collapse, there was a congressional investigation.  However, House Republicans could not prove that Peter Knight -- who was Al Gore's senatorial aide and chairman of the Clinton-Gore election campaign -- had used his connections to the vice president when lobbying very successfully on behalf of MMT.  In addition, there was a suspicious grant of stock to Mr. Knight's son -- perhaps an inept attempt to conceal the ownership of these shares.  One can only wonder whether other "insiders" successfully concealed their ownership in MMT.  According to a lengthy article in the New York Times, Nov. 4, 1997:

The Republicans want to know why Zachary Knight, the son of a lobbyist, Peter S. Knight, was given nearly $20,000 in stock by William M. Haney 3d, the chairman of Molten Metal Technology Inc., a Massachusettes [sic] environmental-technology company. The gift from Mr. Haney and his wife came just two weeks after Mr. Knight was named chairman of the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign in May 1996.

Republican investigators say they believe the gift was a form of payment to Mr. Knight, who had worked as a $7,000-a-month lobbyist for Molten Metal before becoming campaign chairman. Before voluntarily giving up his job as a lobbyist, Mr. Knight had helped the company win $32 million in Federal grants while urging its executives to contribute and raise $132,000 for the Democrats and President Clinton's re-election effort.
[...]

The Republicans plan to argue that Molten Metal won most of its grants because Mr. Knight used his ties to Mr. Gore and because the firm and its employees contributed heavily to the Democratic Party. Mr. Haney is a longtime supporter of Mr. Gore.
[...]

Indeed, the Republicans will try to show that Mr. Knight helped arrange for Mr. Gore to visit Molten Metal's plant in Fall River, Mass., to commemorate Earth Day in April 1995. At the ceremony, Mr. Gore described the company's hazardous waste cleanup technology as "a shining example of American ingenuity, hard work and business know-how."

We see here the outlines of what is driving these cynical scandals. It is the opportunity for insiders to be given shares in these companies prior to (vice) presidential speeches touting their DOE-funded technologies.  According to a Forbes April 21, 1997 account of the scandal:

Al Gore helped send the stock flying when he called Molten Metal "a shining example of American ingenuity."  Sound familiar?  Who can forget President Obama's iconic May 2010 speech touting Solyndra?  He uses language nearly identical to Gore's.  I'm led to the conclusion that Al Gore perfected a 7-step fundraising formula that has been repeated by Democrats ever since:

Al Gore's Formula for DOE Green Technology-Scandal

Form a political partnership with insiders at Company A developing "Green Technology."

Distribute cheap stock in Company A to political insiders -- with ownership concealed.

Shower Company A with insider-directed DOE grants, contracts, and loans to artificially pump up its financials and Potemkin-prospects for success.

Tout the ingenuity of Company A in major political speeches -- even if you have to manufacture a global warming "crisis" to justify the company's product.

Advise political insiders to discreetly dump their overpriced stock a little at a time to avoid a run in the market but well before the inevitable collapse.  This gradual insider-trading will not trigger alarm in the market or scrutiny from the SEC, which is normally on the hunt for large stock-trades suspiciously timed to specific events.|

Collect campaign contributions from gratified and newly enriched political insiders.

Wash, rinse, and repeat the fleecing cycle with Company B.
The deviousness of this formula is that Treasury funds are not stolen directly.  Such stealing is very difficult to conceal because Treasury funds are closely tracked and subject to audit precisely to avoid massive misappropriation.  For example, today's GSA scandal is marked by not only brazenness, but also stupidity, since there is doubtless a paper-trail leading directly to the perpetrators.

Instead, with Gore-style green scandals, ostensibly legitimate but actually politically (mis)directed flows of government "investment" are suborned to puff up companies; the actual payoff is taken from untraceable Wall Street capital transactions unconnected to the Treasury.

OWS-types take note: such scandals are particularly cynical since the victims of the fraud (in addition to taxpayers) are the very Gaia-worshiping, Earth Day-celebrating Trustafarians (i.e., Al Gore's fawning base) who actually buy into the confidence-game concerning our future "Green Economy" and who then invest their trust funds in these hoax green companies.  Many of these folks would, I'm sure, further emulate Max Bialystock's little old lady investors and forgive their prince even if they became aware of his fraudulent conduct.

Al Gore was rewarded by the Democrats for inventing this winning fundraising formula by being nominated as their presidential candidate.  If not for the election of 2000, we would not have had to wait until 2010 to see so many repeats of the MMT scandal scenario.  As it turned out, Al Gore landed at Kleiner Perkins, one of the leading Silicon Valley venture-capital firms, where he is perfectly positioned to carry out steps 1 and 2 of the formula above.

Concealing political-insider ownership of shareholdings is the work of but a moment if you can rely on investment services from someone in your "crew" like Jon Corzine of  Goldman-Sachs, who, it is worth noting, is still a reliable "campaign bundler" for President Obama even amid the unfolding MF Global scandal.

Am I being hyperbolic in detailing Step 4 above with the phrase "even if you have to manufacture a global warming 'crisis' to justify the company's product"?  Perhaps not, if you consider that Al Gore's close confidant, Maurice Strong, was on the MMT board of corporate directors.  Forbes has this note from Jan. 12, 1998:

A member of Molten's board, Strong sold some shares at around $31 apiece a month prior to the stock's October 1996 collapse. Today the stock is at 13 cents a share and Strong is being sued by San Diego class-action shark Milberg Weiss.

What was Strong's reward for his part in the MMT fiasco?  During the Bush interregnum, the Democrats decided that he was eminently well-qualified to be bumped upstairs to the U.N., where he eventually founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Connecting the dots from the green technology scandals of the Clinton-Gore administration to those of today may help illuminate the Obama era.  Not only are the DOE and other government agencies corrupting science with grants to buy academic "research" that supports the "scientific consensus" over global warming hysteria, and not only is the DOE using the false "crisis" to block commonsense energy initiatives like the Keystone Pipeline, but the DOE is also using the "crisis" to justify vast "investments" of taxpayer funds, a gigantic green thumb on the financial scales that distorts Wall Street's normal ability to finance economically sustainable new enterprises instead of this era's continuing series of politically correct yet rapid failures.  No wonder we're in a prolonged depression.

One begins to understand the scope of the problem.  With vast tranches of Wall Street cash being manipulated very profitably by well-connected greens, the enormous financial interests propelling the continuing "global warming" hoax will fund continued political resistance to any reform effort targeting enactment of a traditional American common-sense approach to energy and investment.

These greens will whip up their eco-fanatic storm-troopers and OWS types if there is any attempt at reform.  Wall Street wins regardless, so there is no help to be expected from that quarter, although it explains the growing divide between the financial industry and Main Street.  While understanding the problem can be the first step in solving it, Tea Party patriots and other reformers have our work cut out for us.

SOURCE

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