Monday, March 10, 2014


Climate Science Consensus: Last 60 Years of Global Warming Below Earlier Periods, Experts Say



Scientists associated with the UN's IPCC predicted that the huge consumer/industrial emissions of the modern era would cause not only "unprecedented" global warming but also dangerous "runaway" warming, which would then produce "tipping point" climate change.

The climate science consensus today is that these speculative climate forecasts, based on flawed computer models, did not happen and expert analysis of the gold-standard of temperature datasets (the UK's global HadCRUT4) confirms it.

As this adjacent chart reveals, modern warming increases over the last 60 years don't even match the warming increases of the prior 60-year period, when earlier human emissions were just a fraction of contemporary amounts. (The vast difference of increases for atmospheric CO2 levels, between the two 60-year periods, is depicted on the chart - an 18ppm increase for the earlier period versus an 82ppm increase for the modern 60-year period.)

The climate science fact that huge modern CO2 emissions did not generate the expected runaway warming over the long-term, nor even over the shorter-term, now has the establishment science journals questioning the obvious - how was the IPCC so wrong?

And this empirical evidence refutation of conventional climate science has become so glaring, that even the traditional mainstream press is finally taking notice that something is truly amiss regarding the IPCC's climate science orthodoxy.

SOURCE




Changes in the Sun's activity may have led to natural climate change

Welsh researchers have found changes in the Sun's activity over the last thousand years may have led to marked natural climate change.

Scientists at Cardiff University studied the seabed to determine how the temperature of the North Atlantic had altered, with the results showing that changes in the sun's activity can have a considerable impact on the dynamics of the ocean, with potential effects on regional climate.

They say the study will allow them to better predict regional climate change.

Professor Ian Hall, from the University says this could lead to colder winters.

SOURCE



Democrat Climate Caucus Reveals Its Stupidity

By Alan Caruba

The nation seems to be passing through a period in which too many U.S. Senators have been elected without so much as a high school level understanding of what drives the Earth’s climate and it isn’t the 0.038% of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

On Monday, March 10, some twenty of them will stay up overnight on the Senate floor, according to The Hill, “to bring attention to the impacts of climate change.”  You don’t get more idiotic than that. Climate, measured in decades and centuries, is always in a state of change. Meanwhile, the weather anywhere in the nation, determined by the changing seasons and responsive only to short-range forecasts, has turned colder thanks to a cooling cycle that is now into its 17th year.

Giving speeches all night in the Senate will not change that, but Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has partnered with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to announce a new “climate change caucus” when you can ask any of the million unemployed Americans what the Senate’s real priority should be.

Sen. Whitehouse seems to think that a winter storm that causes “little summer cottages (be) washed into the sea” makes the non-existent issue of climate change “a bit personal.”  Does this moron take rain or snow storms personally? When the sun rises in the morning, does he think it does so just for him?

Democrats are so afraid of the political fallout from the devastation of Obamacare and the lies told to support it that they are desperate to divert voter’s attention to anything else and climate change rates higher than having to discuss why we are still in a major recession after one full term by President Obama and the first year of his second. So, between now and the midterm elections in November, they will engage in all manner of theatrics to stay in office.

Thank goodness we have men like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in office. For a long time know he has been on record calling climate change—formerly called global warming—“a hoax.”  When he takes a head count, he finds “fewer and fewer members of the United States Senate that are sympathetic to this whole cause.”

Behind the climate change “cause” falsehoods is the intention to impose fees on all aspects of American business and industry that emit carbon dioxide. Sen. Whitehouse wants to force up the cost of energy by making the larger emitters pay for doing what volcanoes do—emit CO2. In addition, all of the Earth’s living creatures do that as well. Congress has defeated 692 similar bills.

Sen. Whitehouse and his climate caucus are depending heavily on the 30% or so voters who still think that global warming is real. To some extent you can’t blame them. They were taught that in school and college. They read and hear that it is real in the news media every day. As of today, however, not one high school graduate has lived in a period of global warming.


And what is the rest of the world supposed to think when both British Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences have just released a report, “Climate Change: Evidence & Causes” that is a rejection and abandonment of the most fundamental values of science.  The report asserts that “Continued emissions of these gases (CO2 and other greenhouse gases will cause further climate change, including substantial increases in global average surface temperatures and important changes in regional climate.”

Tom Harris, the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, responded saying the report “does a serious disservice to science and society.”  And that is an understatement. “This is not the language of science…it is appalling that two of the world’s foremost science bodies should engage in such unconditional rhetoric.” Not to mention that it is an outright lie.

So, while the twenty or so desperate Democrats gather all night, keep in mind that (1) there has been no global warming since 1997, (2) more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition saying humans are not causing global warming, (3) Arctic ice is up 50% since 2012, and (4) every one of the climate computer models predicting warmth has been wrong over and over again.

Find out if one of those Senators is from your State and is up for reelection in November. Then vote him or her out of office and replace them with a candidate who wants smaller government, less spending, and demonstrates a devotion to both the truth and the U.S. Constitution.

SOURCE




"Global-Warming / Climate Change POLICY, not the weather, is a threat to National Security in the UK and Europe

Miliband's claims are as deluded as the charge of the light brigade**"

"While Putin sabre-rattles in the Ukraine and Crimea UK and European political leaders dither and reel in terror at losing Russian gas supplies.

"YET it is they who made Britain and Europe impotent by adopting deranged so-called green energy policies which slashed home produced power of Coal and sacrificed British and European Energy independence to the Russian Bear in the name of 'Saving the Planet'.

"Ed Miliband's wailing outburst that so-called man-made climate change, which he claims caused the winter storms, is 'a threat to national security' IS AS DELUDED AS THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE**.
                                                                                                     
"The FACTS are:-

1. The storms were solar-driven and predicted by WeatherAction*;

2. The notion of man-made Climate change is an anti-scientific and baseless lie.

3. There is no evidence that changes in CO2 levels in the real world drive or have ever driven world temperatures or climate in the last hundred, thousand or million years;

4. The reality is the other way around and if Mr Miliband and other politicians believe  in the deluded CO2 theory we challenge them to come up with actual evidence and to organize a public TV debate on the matter between WeatherAction and others on one side and the Met Office charlatan's like Julia Slingo on the other.

5. The way to build energy independence and improve living standards in the UK is:

a) Bring back UK coal and any other cheap home-based energy sources

b) Support fracking in safe places

c) Scrap ALL CO2 handouts and green subsidies which are ALL driving up the cost of living.

d) Repeal the Climate Change Act and terminate all funding of green parasites in Govt, business and Councils who are guided by it.

e) Prepare for weather extremes through application of solar-based long-range forecasts which can be funded by the termination of the Met Offices failed Long Range ventures which have misled the public for a decade.

SOURCE





Greener than “green”

Fracking is friendly to protected species and mosquito-devouring bats

Deroy Murdock

A constant, mild hiss.  That was my chief observation when I returned to Anadarko Petroleum’s Landon Pad A, a natural-gas site in Lycoming County, PA. October’s quietude was totally unlike the cyclone of equipment, personnel and activity that had dominated this spot just four months before, when Anadarko and the American Petroleum Institute hosted journalists and policy analysts here.

Back then, engineers used a pressurized blend of 90% water, 9.5% sand, and 0.5% chemicals to crack subterranean shale deposits and awaken natural gas that has slumbered since the dinosaurs died. This hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” occurs some 6,000 feet underground. This is 5,000 feet beneath the water table – deep enough to bury three Empire State Buildings.

This spot now resembles the scene of a once-raging party that has been cleared out and cleaned up. The trucks have driven off. Dozens of workers have moved on. The cranes are gone. What remains are three acres of gravel-covered farmland, five completed wells, rising three to six feet above the soil, and a steady, low-volume whoosh.

This is the sound of natural gas being captured; counted by a “cash register” gauge that measures output and thus royalties; and conveyed via yellow pipes into the broader natural-gas market. The result? Warm bedrooms on crisp nights and hot showers on cold mornings.

Despite the shrill complaints of fracking foes, this productive but tranquil patch demonstrates how much greener fracking is than other power sources – even “green” ones.

* Fracking should soothe those who fret about CO2.

Since 2002, carbon dioxide output has grown 32 percent globally, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote for Bloomberg View in September. “In the U.S., meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions were 8 percent lower in 2012 than they were in 2002, largely due to a surge in shale gas production, which has reduced coal use.” Indeed, fracking has helped America keep its unratified Kyoto Protocol commitments while other countries decry so-called global warming and yet continue boosting CO2.

New York City, home of über-frackophobe Yoko Ono, is benefiting enormously from fracking.

“New York has the cleanest air now of any major American city,” Gotham mayor Michael Bloomberg told journalists on September 26. Thanks to both purer heating oil in local buildings and the conversion of others to natural gas fracked along the Marcellus Shale, New York’s air has not been this clear in 50 years, officials say.

As the Associated Press’s Deepti Hajela reported, decreases in sulfur dioxide, soot and other pollutants are preventing 2,000 emergency-room visits and 800 deaths annually. This concrete positive vastly outweighs the theoretical risk that fracking someday, somewhere possibly might taint someone’s drinking water – maybe.

* Water is a precious resource. So, conservationists should smile at how little water fracking requires – compared to other energy sources. According to the U.S. Energy Department and the Ground Water Protection Council, it typically takes three gallons of water to produce 1 million British thermal units of energy from deep-shale natural gas/fracking.

Atomic energy requires 11 gallons per million BTUs. Coal: 23 gallons. Corn ethanol? A whopping 15,800 gallons. And soy biodiesel requires nearly triple that amount: 44,500 gallons per million BTUs. That’s 14,833 times the water needed for fracking.

But what about groundwater pollution? The hysteria that fracking poisons drinking water lacks one key ingredient: evidence.

As former EPA EPA chief Lisa Jackson testified before Congress  in May 2011: “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.” Even New York State’s politically frackophobic Andrew Cuomo administration concluded that “no significant adverse impact to water resources is likely to occur due to underground vertical migration of fracturing fluids through the shale formations.” A December 2011 Department of Environmental Conservation draft report added that “there is no likelihood of significant adverse impacts from the underground migration of fracturing fluids.”

* Protecting habitat is another key eco-priority. Fracking succeeds here, too. An SAIC/RW Beck study found that natural-gas companies use 0.4 acres of land to generate a year’s supply of electricity for 1,000 households. Nuclear power requires 0.7 acres. Coal consumes 0.75 acres. Wind power needs six acres. And solar cells require 8.4 acres to fuel 1,000 households annually. This is 21 times the habitat impact of natural gas. So, if you are a Gila monster or a Joshua tree, cheer fracking and hiss solar.

* What about wildlife?

Anadarko’s Brad Milliken says rattlesnakes are protected in Pennsylvania, unlike his home state of Texas. The company, Milliken says, retains “what I would call a rattlesnake wrangler. If we see a snake, we call him up, and they relocate the snake temporarily,” until work has been completed. “All of our contractors understand not to disturb the snakes.”

Before installing a new pipeline, Anadarko checks for Indiana bats, as they migrate in May and June. Obstructing their flight paths “changes their way of life and can be detrimental to their health,” Milliken explains. In such cases, he says, Anadarko would reroute a pipeline rather than threaten these bats.

In contrast, the “Earth friendly,” taxpayer-subsidized wind industry slaughters thousands, perhaps millions of bats (including Indiana bats) unlucky enough to fly into the giant Cuisinarts that are their turbines. (My friend Paul Driessen of the Center For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) has documented this carnage with tragic eloquence.)

Nearly a century of horror movies have equated bats with Dracula. Too bad. These hideous creatures do a beautiful thing: Gobble mosquitoes. By one estimate, a brown bat devours nearly 8,700 such insects annually. So, ironically, fracking protects bats, while “ecologically sensitive” wind turbines are butchering bats.

This is great news for mosquitoes, which do suck human blood. It’s not such great news for people who fall victim to West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne diseases.

Could gas producers frack even more cleanly? Innovation could and gradually will yield still safer and more Earth-friendly production methods. Cal Cooper of the Apache Corporation wisely proposed at a Manhattan Institute energy policy conference that gas companies “could transport fracking chemicals in powder form and mix them with water at production sites, rather than ship them around in liquid form, which risks a spill in transit.”

Rather than blindly decry fracking, environmentalists should encourage more ideas like Cooper’s. Beyond that, they should embrace fracking for being easy on the air, water, land and wildlife – in most cases far easier than the “sustainable” energy sources that ecologists adore.

Via email





Australian PM says Greens are toxic

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has labelled the Greens as “toxic” in his first salvo for next month’s WA senate election.

Ahead of a visit to Perth this week, Mr Abbott fired back at a vicious attack by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in federal parliament, in which he labelled the Prime Minister as “homophobic” and “racist”.

The Prime Minister yesterday labelled the Greens and other minor parties who were contesting the fresh election as toothless tigers, whose major contribution to the Australian Parliament was to “attract media attention”.

He said Mr Ludlam’s attack was water off a duck’s back.

“I am defamed every day in parliament, and I have learnt to be fairly oblivious to it I have got to say,” Mr Abbott said.

“I think West Australians are fairly resistant to the kinds of toxins which emanate from the Greens.”

Laughing he retorted: “I might have to have an extra half glass of good Margaret River wine tonight to console myself.’’

WA Greens Senator launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister during his final parliamentary speech ahead of the April 5 senate vote.

Senator Ludlam invited Mr Abbott to visit WA, but urged him to leave his “excruciatingly boring three-word slogans at home”.

The speech concludes with Senator Ludlam telling the Prime Minister to take his “heartless racist exploitation of people’s fears and ram it as far from Western Australia as your taxpayer funded travel entitlements can take you”.

“Western Australians are a generous and welcoming lot, but if you show up waving your homophobia in people’s faces and start boasting about your ever more insidious attacks on the trade union movement and all working people, you can expect a very different kind of welcome.”

WA will vote for six senators on April 5, after the bungled poll in September saw that result quashed.

West Australians have to go back to the polls after 1370 votes were lost.

After securing three senate positions at the September election, the Liberals are now in danger of losing one of those positions, which would make it even more difficult for Mr Abbott to pass legislation in the senate.

He currently holds 33 seats in the senate, but needs 39 to pass laws.

Mr Abbott said losing another Liberal senate position would make it more difficult to scrap the mining and carbon taxes.

“The election is important because the result will make it easier or harder to get rid of anti WA taxes like the carbon or mining taxes,” he said.

In a pot shot at the Greens and minor parties, Mr Abbott said: “Ask yourself: What do minor parties actually get done, other than make it harder for government to do its job?

“Minor parties are much better at attracting media attention rather than getting things done.  “Don’t vote for a minor party and in particular don’t vote for a minor party that is going to be constantly with the Opposition.  “The Greens are really the second wing faction of the Labor Party – that’s what they are.

“I think people want a strong voice in the federal parliament, rather than people who just make a noise. To do that, you need to vote for people who are part of government.”

Mr Abbott said West Australians had every right to be angry about having to vote again.

“It is monumental incompetence,’’ he said.  “I am annoyed. I think everyone is annoyed.  “I can’t imagine they (Australian Electoral Commission) would make the same mistake twice.”

Mr Abbott is expected to arrive in Perth late Monday.

SOURCE

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