Some comments on the latest Warmist shriek from Norm Kalmanovich

A summary of the latest IPCC emission is here.  It claims that the climate change "fight" is affordable and that we must cut emissions to zero by 2100.  That would mean putting all gasoline and diesel-fueled vehicles off the road and closing around 95% of America's electricity generators so is basically off with the fairies.  Facts don't matter to the insane, of course, but Norm Kalmanovich points us to the the basic facts anyway:

This latest HadCRUT4 global temperature data shows that the increase in CO2 emissions since 1850 has not resulted in detectable increase in global temperature above the natural warming of 0.5°C /century as the world recovered from the Little Ice Age.



A total of 0.79°C in 164 years is just 0.48°C/century and below the accepted natural warming rate of 0.5°C/century.

In 1850 CO2 emissions were under 0.5 gigatonne and today emissions are in excess of 35 gigatonnes, so even if this 0.79°C of net global warming since 1850 was entirely due to human sourced CO2 emissions; at this rate we would only be at  1.58°C in year 2178 (2014 + 164)!




Two graphs showing the slight temperature decline since 2002

Origin of the graphs

Before any further global warming can take place the world first has to stop cooling. TSI data from the World Radiation Centre in Davos Switzerland shows that there has been a decrease in total solar irradiance (solar output) of 0.8W/m2 since 2002 and with all five global temperature datasets showing global cooling since 2002; someone would have to be rather ignorant to claim that we need to reduce emissions to stop global warming when reduced output from the sun is currently causing the Earth to cool (albeit very slightly). Since 2002 there has been a 34% increase in CO2 emissions but with the world cooling as these emissions continue to increase there is no amount of peer reviewed articles, not even the 30,000 which claim support for AGW, that can alter the fact that CO2 emissions are not causing global warming and won’t be able to any time in the future; so why would anyone in their right mind

Cripple the US economy by cutting back its fossil fuel energy supply!

Since we are only 0.79°C above the temperature prior to industrialization and with the world currently cooling; Obama needs to be challenged to first of all state when current global cooling will end and once (and if) it ends how is reducing emissions to zero going to be of any benefit in preventing the global temperature from warming a further 1.21°C when increased emissions over the past 164 years could only (and falsely) be attributed to just 0.79°C of warming!!

Via email





Historic snowfall buries a city that is no stranger to the cold

That global warming sure is pesky stuff!



For the hardy residents of Buffalo in northern New York state, digging out from deep snows dumped by biting winds sweeping across from Lake Erie is nothing new.

But even this industrial city near Niagara Falls was reeling after the largest one-day snowfall ever recorded in the United States more than a month before the official start of winter.

Some six feet of snow buried whole neighbourhoods in less than 24 hours, while drifts churned up by biting winds reached 20 feet high, crushing through doors and roofs and trapping motorists.

Dramatic walls of snow-clouds pummelled the city and “thunder snow” lit up the skies.

Across the US, temperatures plunged below zero in all 50 states, including Hawaii. The unseasonally early cold snap evoked bone-chilling memories of the “polar vortex” deep freeze that engulfed much of the country at the start of this year.

Buffalo bore the brunt as the monster snow-storm claimed at least five lives. A 46-year-old man was discovered dead in a car buried in snow, three victims suffered heart attacks while trying to shovel through the drifts and another was killed in a road crash.

Highway troopers rescued motorists and passengers from hundreds of stranded vehicles, including a women’s college basketball team who chronicled their 26 hours trapped inside a coach via social media after running out of food and water.

And a nurse delivered a baby in a fire station after her pregnant mother failed to make it to hospital, although the parents said they would spurn calls to name their child “Stormy”.

The southern side of Buffalo bore the brunt of the historic snowfall while districts just a few miles away experienced only a coating as the sun shone.

The cold blast across North America is the result of an extreme jet stream pattern funelling Arctic air directly into the US.

But Buffalo took a particular pounding as those cold winds moved across the warmer expanses of Lake Erie, picking up water vapour which froze and turned into walls of snow-clouds.

This phenomenon of “lake-effect snow” created blizzards and white-outs conditions on the southern side of the city while neighbourhoods just a few miles away experienced only inches of show and blue sunny skies.

The city authorities deployed bulldozers owned by private businesses to scoop up snow as many their regular snow-ploughs were trapped inside compounds by the drifts.

Elsewhere, paramedics ditched their ambulances in favor of snowmobiles to reach emergencies.

Another heavy of night of snow was forecast on Wednesday evening.

The good and bad news is that temperatures in Buffalo are predicted to rise to 13C within a few days, delivering a thaw that could produce flooding and water damage.

SOURCE





Weather Channel Co-Founder Predicting Snowier, Bitterly Colder Winter Ahead

The pre-Thanksgiving cold snap and a monster storm forecast to dump five feet of snow on Buffalo, N.Y. Tuesday are just “a preview” of the coming winter, which will be much colder and snowier than normal,  predicts Joseph D’Aleo, co-founder and first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.

D’Aleo, now chief forecaster at WeatherBell Analytics, was one of the few meteorologists to accurately predict a colder-than-normal November.

He expects several major East Coast snowstorms and “widespread below-zero temperatures” that will plunge much of the nation into a deep freeze for as long as six weeks this winter.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it snows in Atlanta, Dallas, and Birmingham,” he told CNSNews.com.

“We’ve been talking about this being another one of those historic winters since the spring. The summer before last, we had seen last winter as being one that people near the Great Lakes would remember for a long time, and it turned out to be the coldest December to March on record in Chicago, and the snowiest in Detroit, and top five coldest in many places in the central [part of the U.S.]

“And we saw the same kind of extreme this winter, not exactly in the same place, but another winter that’s going to stress our electric grid and also the energy sources that we have, “D’Aleo told CNSNews.com.

“We were not surprised at the cold coming. We had a cold forecast in November even though all the tools that are used by forecasters to look ahead, even two weeks, right up to the end of October, [were] not seeing the cold. And then suddenly they caught on.

“But we use another approach where we look at all the factors globally: the oceans and the sun and winds in the upper atmosphere over the tropics, and we find years in the past when conditions were most similar. We call it an analog approach. Other people do analogs, too. And it was telling us that it would be a lot like last year in terms of cold. It told us November would be cold, so we were swimming against the strong current.”

D’Aleo noted that the unseasonably cold weather, which is being blamed for 17 deaths since Saturday, is just “a preview” of the coming months and years ahead, when he predicts that temperatures will be up to 20 degrees lower than normal.

“And then we think this winter will be another strong one. It may end early in some parts of the country, like the Northeast, but it will be very hard, especially in mid-winter. We’ll get a break after this [current] assault, it may ease a little bit, but we think there’ll be an extended period in mid-winter that will really be harsh all over the nation.”

The worst of the frigid winter weather will likely hit right around Christmas and last until the first week of February, he told CNSNews.com.

“Everything we look at suggest that January will be the hardest of the winter months. This is sort of a preview of that. Not to say there won’t be snow and cold in December. In February, it’ll be cold, but more from the snow on the ground than a continual feed of Arctic air.

“The snow will just make the cold worse,” he added. “It keeps temperatures in daytime down and makes it colder at night in between storms, so it’s going to be a very rough one for a lot of folks.”

“We might get a break next year,” the forecaster added on a hopeful note. “Often these cold winters come in two-year periods and then you get a break for a year as the oceans readjust. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a milder winter next year.”

CNSNews.com asked D’Aleo, who lives in New Hampshire and says he ran out of heating oil last winter due to the sub-normal temperatures, his reaction to last week’s agreement between President Obama  and Chinese President Xi Jinping to fight global warming by drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

“From the government’s own data, there has been no warming in winter for 25 years,” D’Aleo replied. “In fact, there’s been cooling for 20 years. All nine climate regions have cooled in winter for 20 years.”

”This decade is just four years old, and we’ve already had 12 major impact East Coast snowstorms out of close to 50 since the 1950s, which they call NESIS (Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale) storms,” he continued. “This is the most active [snowiest] decade on record. The last decade, the 2000s, had 10. The 1960s had 10. This decade has 12 and we’re only four years into it…. We could really be creating an historic decade when all is said and done.”

“The major drivers [of the cold weather] are the oceans and the sun. The Pacific has turned cold and the Atlantic is scheduled to go into its cold mode within five years. And the sun is heading into a 200-year minimum. The last time it was this quiet, and it will likely be this quiet for two decades or so, was the early 1800s. That was called the Dalton Minimum,” D’Aleo pointed out, which was a period of low temperatures that corresponded with low solar activity between 1780 and 1840.

“That was the time of [Charles] Dickens. If you remember Dickens’ novels, the children always played in the snow in London. That’s what they’re doing again… And there’ll be more winters like the Dickens years in the years to come [because] we’re headed into a colder period that will likely last decades…

“That doesn’t mean we won’t have a hot summer or that next winter won’t be warmer, but on average we will experience more and more extreme cold winters and cool summers. It’s part of a trend, and like I said, it’s been cooling for 20 years, erratically but down.”

SOURCE




EPA’s next regulatory tsunami

Trillions of dollars in ozone compliance and economic stagnation costs, for fabricated benefits

Paul Driessen

Looming Environmental Protection Agency ozone regulations personify the Obama administration’s secrecy, collusion, fraud, and disdain for concerns about the effects that its tsunami of regulations is having on the livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare of millions of American families.

Virtually every EPA announcement of new regulations asserts that they will improve human health. Draconian carbon dioxide standards, for example, won’t just prevent climate change, even if rapidly developing countries continue emitting vast volumes of this plant-fertilizing gas. The rules will somehow reduce the spread of ticks and Lyme disease, and protect “our most vulnerable citizens.” It’s hogwash.

But Americans naturally worry about pollution harming children and the poor. That makes it easy for EPA to promulgate regulations based on false assumptions and linkages, black-box computer models, secretive collusion with activist groups, outright deception, and supposedly “scientific” reports whose shady data and methodologies the agency refuses to share with industries, citizens or even Congress.

It was only in May 2012 that EPA decided which US counties met new 2008 ozone standards that cut allowable ground-level ozone levels from 80 parts per billion to 75 ppb. Now EPA wants to slash allowable levels even further: to 70 or even 60 ppb, equivalent to 70 or 60 seconds in 32 years.

The lower limits are essential, it claims, to reduce smog, human respiratory problems and damage to vegetation. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says a 600-page agency staff report strongly recommends this reduction, and her Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee agrees. They all say the lower limits are vital for protecting public health, especially “at-risk populations and life stages.” Her decision will ultimately involve “a scientific judgment” and will “keep people safe,” Ms. McCarthy assures us.

Under terms of a convenient federal court settlement, EPA must issue its proposed new standards by December 1 of this year, and make a final decision by October 2015. The process will be “open and transparent,” with “multiple opportunities” for public hearings and comment throughout, she promised.

EPA has offered little transparency, honesty or opportunity for fair hearings and input by impacted parties thus far, and we should expect none here. But other problems with this proposal are much more serious.

If the 60 ppb standard is adopted, 85% of all US counties would likely become “non-attainment” areas, making it difficult to establish new industrial facilities or expand existing plants. Even in Big Sky, clean-air Wyoming, Teton County could be out of compliance – mostly due to emissions from pine trees!

A Manufacturers’ Alliance/MAPI study calculated that a 60 ppb ozone standard would cost the US economy a whopping $1 trillion per year and kill 7.3 million jobs by 2020. A Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and National Association of Manufacturers study concluded that a 60 ppb rule would penalize the state $189 billion for compliance and $53 billion in lost gross domestic product between 2017 and 2040. That’s $10 billion per year in just one state.

But the standard would save lives, EPA predictably claimed, citing 2009 research directed by University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health Professor Michael Jerrett. The study purportedly tracked 448,000 people and claimed to find a connection between long-term ozone exposure and death.

Other researchers sharply criticized Jerrett’s work. His study made questionable assumptions about ozone concentrations, did not rely on clinical tests, ignored the findings of other studies that found no significant link between ground-level ozone and health effects, and failed to gather critically important information on the subjects’ smoking patterns, they pointed out. When they asked to examine his data, Jerrett refused.

Michael Honeycutt, chief toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, says Jerrett and EPA exaggerate health risks from ozone. The Texas Public Policy Foundation told EPA the agency needs to consider “the totality of studies on this issue, rather than giving exclusive weight to a single study,” the foundation emphasized. Unfortunately, EPA almost always focuses on one or two analyses that support its regulatory agenda – and ignores any that might slow or derail its onrushing freight train.

Even worse, those lost jobs and GDP result in major impacts on the lives, livelihoods, liberties, living standards, health, welfare and life spans of millions of Americans. And yet, EPA steadfastly refuses to consider these regulatory impacts: for ozone, carbon dioxide, soot, mercury and other rules.

Then there is the matter of outright deception, collusion and fraud at EPA, via these and other tactics.

One such tactic is sue-and-settle lawsuits. Agitator groups meet with EPA officials behind closed doors and agree on new rules or standards. The agency then conveniently misses a deadline, “forcing” the activists to sue. That leads to a court hearing (from which impacted parties are excluded), and a judgment “forcing” the agency to issue new regulations – and even pay the agitators’ attorney fees! American Lung Association, NRDC, Sierra Club and EPA sue-and-settle collusion resulted in the new ozone proposal.

This clever sue-and-settle tactic was devised by none other than John Beale – the con artist who’s now in prison for bilking taxpayers out of $1 million in salary and travel expenses for his mythical second job as a CIA agent. It defies belief to assume his fraudulent propensities did not extend to his official EPA duties as senior policy advisor with his boss and buddy Robert Brenner, helping Ms. McCarthy and her Office of Air and Radiation develop and implement oppressive regulations. Indeed, his own attorney says he had a “dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior” and “manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives.” A US Senate report details the sleazy practice.

As to the “experts” who claim lower ozone limits are vital for protecting public health, there’s this.

The American Lung Association supports the EPA health claims – but neglects to mention that EPA has given the ALA $24.7 million over the past 15 years. Overall, during this period, the ALA received $43 million via 591 federal grants, and Big Green foundations bankrolled it with an additional $76 million. But no one is supposed to question the ALA’s credibility, integrity or support for EPA “science.”

EPA also channels vast sums to its “independent” Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which likewise rubberstamps the agency’s pollution claims and regulations. Fifteen CASAC members received over $181 million since 2000. CASAC excludes from its ranks industry and other experts who might question EPA findings. Both EPA and CASAC stonewall and slow-walk FOIA requests and deny requests for correction and reconsideration. Even congressional committees get nowhere.

As Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House on Science, Space and Technology Committee, noted in a letter, 16 of the 20 CASAC members who “peer-reviewed” the ozone studies also helped to write the studies. That makes it even less likely that their reviews were “independent.”

That Senate report, The Chains of Environmental Command, also notes that the Obama EPA has been deliberately packed with far-left environmental activists who work with their former Big Green colleagues to shape policy. They give radical groups critical insider access and also funnel millions of taxpayer dollars through grants to their former organizations, often in violation of agency ethics rules.

These arrogant, unelected, unaccountable, deceitful, dictatorial elites think they have a right to impose ozone, carbon dioxide, ObamaCare and other diktats on us, “for our own good.” They are a primary reason American businesses and families are already paying $1.9 trillion per year to comply with mountains of federal regulations – $353 billion of these costs from EPA alone. The damage to jobs, livelihoods, liberties, living standards, health and welfare is incalculable.

The next Congress should review all EPA data, documents and decisions, root out the fraud and collusion, and defund and ultimately reverse all regulations that do not pass muster. The principle is simple: No data, honesty, transparency or integrity – no regulation, and no taxpayer money to impose it.

Via email




Time is up for wind production tax credits

“The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D,” testimony before the House of Representatives Subcommittees on Energy and Commerce offered by the American Wind Energy Association and others.

A reasonable statement of belief that wind energy just needs a little help to get off the ground and become financially viable.  And it was reasonable, in 1983, when it was made.

Now, thirty one years later, the powerful Big Wind lobbyists are at the trough once again asking for another extension of tax breaks.  Wind Production Tax Credits that distort the electricity market harming the ability of their competitors to invest profitably in alternative, competing electric generation sources.

Yet, those who promote this 21st century upgrade of 15th century technology continue to claim that if Congress just gives them one more fix they will be able to compete.

In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, the lame duck Congress should just say no.

They should say no, because investment in wind energy production needs to stand on its own feet with the best technology emerging, and those that lag being left behind.  The natural selection of the marketplace needs to hone the industry so the most efficient, productive technologies can thrive and help meet our nation’s energy needs.

The lazy way is to get the government to provide the competitive difference allowing even poor performers to thrive.

Wind, and every other energy source, should compete on the level field of the marketplace without the corrosive effects of government tainting the game.

While others worry about the dangers that expanded wind energy pose to bird life as subsidized projects are being placed in some of nature’s most important flyways, and others express concern about the decimation of the bat population in some agriculture dependent areas, ultimately the question for Congress has to be – Is wind energy sustainable, or is it a permanent government dependent?

After more than 30 years living in Uncle Sam’s basement playing video games and eating Cheetos, its time for this industry to be kicked out of the nest.  It’s time for wind to fly.

Congress will be deciding whether to extend Wind Production Tax Credits in the weeks ahead, and for wind’s own sake, it is time allow them to die.  It is time for this industry to compete, for better or worse.

It’s time for Congress to mercifully end the Wind Production Tax Credit once and for all.

SOURCE





Severe bird population declines in Europe.  Windfarms the probable culprit

In an article published in The Guardian on November 7th, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) is quoted saying that since 1980, across 25 European countries, house sparrow numbers have declined by 147 million, a 62% drop to 90 million. wind turbine bird kill According to the same report, starlings have fallen by 45 million, down to 40 million. As for Skylarks, their population went down by 37 million, to 43 million today. Says the author of the article, “It’s principally agricultural intensification that is behind the crisis.” (1)

Populations ranging from 40 to 90 million birds, for the most common of passerine species, are surprisingly small, spread as they are over 25 countries. Thus, if the researchers quoted by the RSPB are correct in their estimates, we are entitled to conclude that wind turbines and their power lines will have a significant impact on the number of all passerines flying our skies, eating our insects etc. Indeed, we know for instance that, in Spain alone, wind turbines kill 6 to 18 million birds and bats a year (2). Supposing that Europe has about 5 times as many wind turbines as Spain, the death toll for Europe would be 30 to 90 million birds and bats per annum – i.e. roughly 10 to 30 million birds a year, given that bats are attracted to wind turbines and killed about twice as often as birds. Comparing the numbers, and all things being equal, it is obvious that bird populations will erode further on account of wind farms, much faster than previously thought.

But no mention is made of this in the article. It’s not surprising, as both the RSPB and The Guardian are promoting the installation of ever more wind farms across Europe.

We also learn from The Guardian that the population of some raptors “is on the up in Britain”.  This assertion sounds suspicious to us at Save the Eagles International, for two main reasons:

A) - the article quotes no figures, no studies and no dates, and

B) - we know that raptors are attracted to windfarms (2), and killed in significant numbers (3).

The truth is that raptors have been recuperating in the UK since a very low point reached after two centuries of persecution.  Some species were wiped out. Then, a law was enacted to protect birds of prey, and reintroduction programmes were launched, e.g. for the Red Kite and the White-tailed Eagle.

Protection and reintroduction caused raptors' numbers to go up. But the question is: until when? We suspect that the recuperation of raptors in Britain has stopped with the advent of wind turbines, which attract and kill them. Actually, judging from the high mortality of raptors in other countries' windfarms, their UK population is most likely to be on the decline as well. But Britons are not being kept informed of these things.  To wit: in 2013 came due the decadal census of golden eagles. But nothing happened, and to those who inquired it was replied that the interval between these surveys had been changed from 10 years to 12. This does nothing to allay our fears that Scottish golden eagles are being decimated by wind turbines, many of which are spinning their deadly blades in their habitat.

SOURCE

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