Joe Romm assumes what he has to prove -- and his assumption is wrong

As we all know, ANY weather event proves global warming.  Global warming is unfalsifiable and is, as such, a religious faith, not a scientific finding. So it is no surprise that Joe Romm, the professional Warmist, has put up an argument  -- excerpt below -- to say that the recent winter storms in the N.E. USA are caused by global warming.  But how can they be?  There has been no statistically significant global warming for 18 years or thereabouts.  But Romm writes as if warming were happening.  He assumes what he has to prove. Clearly, all the events he describes are natural and nothing to do with our static climate

Warming-fueled sea surface temperatures provide a boost of moisture for the forecast New England blizzard, just as it has for previous monster East Coast snow storms. Via NOAA.

Another epic blizzard is bearing down on New England. There is a “big part” played by “human-induced climate change,” especially warming-fueled ocean temperatures, according to Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

I asked Dr. Trenberth to comment on the role climate change has on this latest storm, which is forecast to set records. He explained:

    "The number 1 cause of this is that it is winter. In winter it is cold over the continent. But it is warm over the oceans and the contrast between the cold continent and the warm Gulf Stream and surrounding waters is increasing. At present sea surface temperatures are more the 2F above normal over huge expanses (1000 miles) off the east coast and water vapor in the atmosphere is about 10% higher as a result. About half of this can be attributed to climate change".

Before this latest storm, we’ve seen a long-term pattern of more extreme precipitation, particularly in New England winters. Climate scientists had long predicted this would happen in a warming world.

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is “caused” by steroids. As Trenberth wrote in his must-read analysis, “How To Relate Climate Extremes to Climate Change,” the “answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”

One of the most robust scientific findings is the direct connection between global warming and more extreme precipitation or deluges. “Basic physics tells us that a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture — at a rate of approximately 7 per cent increase per degree [Celsius] warming,” as the U.K. Met Office explained in its 2014 update on climate science. “This is expected to lead to similar percentage increases in heavy rainfall, which has generally been borne out by models and observed changes in daily rainfall.”

This means that when it is cold enough to snow, snow storms will be fueled by more water vapor and thus be more intense themselves. So we expect fewer snowstorms in regions close to the rain-snow line, such as the central United States, though the snowstorms that do occur in those areas are still likely to be more intense. It also means we expect more intense snowstorms in generally cold regions. This may appear to be counterintuitive — and certainly climate science deniers like to play up big snowstorms for that reason. But the fact is that the warming to date is not close to that needed to end below-freezing temperatures during midwinter over parts of the globe like New England, while it is large enough to put measurably more water vapor into the air.

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No lamb cutlets for you!  Greenies really hate everything about us -- including our love of good food

The basic Greenie theory behind the assertions below is false.  There is no tendency for  trees to be chopped down to provide more farmland.  Energy-intensive farming methods in countries like the USA have provided huge gains in food production, allowing land to be returned to forest.  The area covered by forest in the USA INCREASED during the 20th century.  The characteristic state of food production in advanced countries is of course glut, not shortage  -- which is why food prices have come way down in real terms. Under capitalism, even China is now a net food exporter

Beef and lamb should be given the chop to help save the planet, the government has warned.

Cutting down on eating red meat in favour of more fruit and vegetables will free up land for forests to absorb greenhouse gases, a new study for the Department for Energy and Climate Change says.

People in Britain must curb their meat intake and travel less to meet emissions targets which would then allow them to have larger, warmer homes.

Ministers claim the report 'Prosperous living for the world in 2050' shows that limiting global temperatures to a 2°C rise can be achieved while improving living standards.

It looks at changes which can be easily made to lifestyles to reduce environmental impacts, allowing other behaviour which is less damaging.

It is claimed the Global Calculator tool will allow to world to 'eat well, travel more, live in more comfortable homes, and meet international carbon reduction commitments'.

But it urges people to reduce beef and lamb consumption, as a key way to prevent deforestation.

In the last decade almost 200 million hectares of native forest land has been cut down, the report says, partly driven by increased demand for agricultural land.

Demand for food around the world is expected to rise by up to 45 per cent by 2050, but forests need to expand by 5-15 per cent to absorb enough carbon dioxide from the atmoshphere.

The report suggests the number of cows grazing on grassland to increase from 0.6 per hectare today to up to 1 per hectare by 2050.

'For example, currently an area the size of a football pitch can be used to produce 250 kg of beef, 1,000 kg of poultry (both fed on grains and residues) or 15,000 kg of fruit and vegetables.

'Decreasing the amount of meat in the global average diet would also have benefits for our climate and human health.'

Swapping from beef and lamb for poultry and pork would require much less land to produce per kilogram.

'This change in the type of meat we eat could free up 290 million hectares of land, otherwise used for animal feed and pasture, to ultimately become land for forests, which acts a carbon sink and reduces the need for abatement elsewhere.'

The World Health Organisation's definition of a healthy diet includes 2,100 calories on average, of which 160 calories is meat.

If everyone stuck to these limits it could reduce emissions by the euiavalenet of a third of total global CO2 emissions in 2011.

'Smart use of our land could ensure we can protect or even expand our forests, produce all the food we need, and increase land for bioenergy from 98 million hectares today to up to 350 million hectares by 2050.'

Energy Secretary Ed Davey said: 'For the first time this Global Calculator shows that everyone in the world can prosper while limiting global temperature rises to 2°C, preventing the most serious impacts of climate change.

'Yet the calculator is also very clear that we must act now to change how we use and generate energy and how we use our land if we are going to achieve this green growth.

'The UK is leading on climate change both at home and abroad. Britain's global calculator can help the world's crucial climate debate this year. Along with the many country-based 2050 calculators we pioneered, we are working hard to demonstrate to the global family that climate action benefits people.'

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UK: Eco-warrior planted homemade 'stingers' that took out THREE police cars as they answered emergency calls on New Year's Eve

An environmental activist who used nail-filled pieces of plywood to put three police cars responding to emergency calls out of action is likely to be jailed.

Emma Sheppard positioned three of the homemade traps outside a police station near Bristol on New Year's Eve, which led to the police vehicles' tyres being punctured. The devices were similar to those used by police to stop suspect's cars.

The 33-year-old appeared at the Bristol Crown Court yesterday via video-link from Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire and admitted damaging the vehicles.

Judge Martin Piction told Sheppard she would inevitably be jailed and said he would consider public protection issues when sentencing her next month. He then remanded her in custody.

Sheppard, who is from Easton, in Bristol, is well known within green activist circles.

In 2009 she was among a group of 18 activists who were found guilty of trying to shut down the Ratcliffe power station in Nottinghamshire. Her conviction and those of her co-accused were later quashed following revelations the group had been infiltrated by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.

The court heard that Sheppard, of no fixed abode, put the devices outside a police divisional HQ in Emersons Green, Bristol.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Bevan said the 'stinger' devices rendered the police vehicles 'unusable on what is traditionally one of the busiest nights of the year'.

He said Sheppard placed the devices on the road, 'knowing full well what the consequences could be'.

Det. Insp. Bevan said: 'They posed a serious risk to our police officers as well as other road users and formed part of a reckless and dangerous plan.'

Sheppard’s conviction is the first by detectives from Avon and Somerset's police's Operation Rhone. A squad was formed in December after police linked more than 100 arson and vandalism attacks on establishment targets that had occurred in and around Bristol and Bath during the last four years.

The attacks, on police stations, banks and politician's cars, were suspected to have been carried out by anarchists.

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Seattle to Fine Residents for Throwing Food in the Garbage

In an attempt to shame residents of their city, a new Seattle law will levy a fine on homes that do not properly sort food out of their garbage.

Emblazoned with a red citation tag, violators will start to be fined anywhere from $1-$50 in July. For now, Seattle residents will be publicly shamed by the ‘Scarlet Letter’-like tags.

"I'm sure neighbors are going to see these on their other neighbors' cans," says Rodney Watkins, a lead driver for Recology CleanScapes, a waste contractor for the city. He's on the front lines of enforcing these rules.  The tags are part of, what the city calls, a “public education campaign.”

In an interview with NPR, Watkins details how he goes about enforcing the draconian statute:  "You can see all the oranges and coffee grounds," he says, raising one lid.” All that makes great compost. You can put that in your compost bin and buy it back next year in a bag and put it in your garden."

The ultimate goal of the law is to boost composting while reducing greenhouse gasses:

Food waste is both an economic and environmental burden. Transporting the waste, especially for distances as far as Seattle does, is costly. So too is allowing it to sit out in the open, where it produces methane, one of the most harmful greenhouses gases, as it rots. The second largest component of landfills in the United States is organic waste, and landfills are the single largest source of methane gas.

The EPA has already begun a campaign to achieve laws similar to Seattle’s.

The outstanding question remains: what purview is it of government to act as people’s trash nanny?

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Drilling in the Atlantic? Not So Fast

The Obama administration announced Tuesday that, while it would move to block drilling in significant portions of Alaska, it would seek to open some of the Atlantic Coast to drilling. But lest you celebrate a sane policy shift, The Washington Post reports, “Any drilling would be at least a decade away and likely subject to intense political and legal battles between industry backers and environmentalists worried about the risk of oil spills.”

Furthermore, explained Amy Harder of the Wall Street Journal, “Secretary Sally Jewell of the Interior Department stressed that this is the broadest plan that they’re going to consider. When it goes final in the next couple of years, they may whittle it down to something smaller than what they proposed today. … So I think the plan can only get narrower and given the president’s commitment to climate change,

I wouldn’t be surprised if they ultimately took it out of the final plan, though at this point it’s far to early to say.” Indeed, the Left’s dedication to fighting climate change will derail many economically sound plans in the coming years.

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GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

How a garden pest is slowing Sydney’s progress: Projects stymied by green tape protecting frogs, bats and snails

GREEN tape protecting endangered plants and animals is delaying projects worth billions across the state, with contractors forced to search for snails, count bat colonies and protect pygmy fish.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal green tape delays will impact the north coast’s Pacific Hwy upgrade, while preparations of the Badgerys Creek airport site are likely to be affected by a list of 45 threatened species ranging from eastern bent-wing bat to the red crowned toadlet.

North West Rail Link contractors were told to search for the cumberland plain land snail before construction on the $8.3 billion rail link began.

The snail — which looks similar to the exotic garden snail — has already been identified as a “high risk” threatened species on the Badgerys airport site.

Endangered plants are also afforded high priority on major road and rail projects, with buffer zones put in place, while seeds are being collected on the North West Rail Link for replanting.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt last year slapped 26 conditions on the 155km Woolgoolga to Ballina Pacific Hwy upgrade that’s already four years behind schedule. Mr Hunt imposed strict conditions to protect the pygmy perch and giant barred frog.

He also ordered the RMS to implement a Ballina Koala Plan despite three separate reports already compiled by experts on fauna, fish and flora. Mr Hunt said the Abbott government was working with NSW to deliver a “one-stop shop for environmental approvals”.

Under the proposed new structure, duplication and red tape would be phased out, but as the months drag on and with no timeline on when the streamlined process will be in place, major projects are expected to be delayed under the old system.

Mr Hunt’s spokesman confirmed the Badgerys Creek Environmental Impact Statement would include threatened species such as birds and bats, which have already been identified as being vulnerable to plane strikes.

NSW Planning Minister Pru Goward said the government was frustrated efforts to “streamline approvals” had been blocked in the Senate.

National Roads & Motorists’ Association president Kyle Loades said the group was concerned the highway upgrade’s 2020 deadline would not be met.

Mr Loades said protecting the environment was important but there was a community “expectation that it is done within reason”. He highlighted the danger of delays to key road projects surrounding Badgerys Creek, saying while it was appropriate to investigate the impact the roads may have on “local colonies of bats and birds”, western Sydney residents should not have to experience the same delays that has slowed down the Pacific Hwy upgrade.

Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott said high environmental standards were important but should not “unnecessarily hold up major projects”.

“Governments at all levels need to redouble efforts to reduce overlap and inefficiency in planning approvals laws, including environmental approvals,” Ms Westacott said.

A Transport for NSW spokesman said three North West Rail Link environmental impact statements were approved between 2012 and 2014 and as part of that process there was no change to the route alignment and construction of the rail project was “ahead of schedule”.

A WestConnex spokeswoman said EIS documents for the M4 widening and M5 interchange pledged to conduct “pre-clearing surveys” prior to construction.

The WestConnex project had searched for threatened species including bats and the green and golden bell frog.

SOURCE

Greens slam conservative Qld government's  casino plan

One wonders what this has got to do with the environment.  Just another anti-people push

THE Newman government's decision to green-light three new casinos for Queensland reeks of backward thinking and a "third world" approach to development.  THAT'S according to the Greens, who have slammed the Liberal National Party on the scheme, two days out from Saturday's election.

The state government is fielding expressions of interest from parties interested in securing approval for one of three new integrated resort developments.  One site is slated for the Queen's Wharf precinct in Brisbane, with two more proposed for regional Queensland.  The government announced last year these approvals would come with casino licences.

Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters said extra casinos would turn Queensland into "the problem gambling state" of Australia, and instead the government should look at creating jobs in fields like renewable energy and eco-tourism. "Let's actually invest in Queensland's brains and capitalise on our natural beauty," Ms Waters said.

She says if Queenslanders want to gamble they are more than welcome to do so at the state's four existing venues.

Ms Waters' federal colleague Richard Di Natale says the Newman government's commitment to casinos and coal industries, rather than new sectors and technologies, has hallmarks of a "third-world dictatorship".

Local candidate Kirsten Lovejoy says art shows, festivals and new parklands - not poker machines - should be brought in to revamp the Queens Wharf entertainment zone.

Expressions of interest for the Integrated Resort Developments close on March 31.

SOURCE

Peer-reviewed study shatters claims that wind turbines are “safe”

Australia’s leading acoustical engineer Steven Cooper found that a unique infrasound pattern, which he had labelled “Wind Turbine Signature” in previous studies, correlates (through a “trend line”) with the occurrence and severity of symptoms of residents who had complained of often-unbearable “sensations”.

These include sleep disturbance, headaches, heart racing, pressure in the head, ears or chest, etc. as described by the residents (symptoms generally known as Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), or the euphemism “noise annoyance” – ed). (1)

The acoustician also identified “discrete low frequency amplitude modulated signals” emitted by wind turbines, and found the windfarm victims were also reacting to those.

The Wind Turbine Signature cannot be detected using traditional measuring indexes such as dB(A) or dB(C) and 1/3 Octave bands, concludes his study. Narrowband analysis must be used instead, with results expressed in dB(WTS).

He suggests medical studies be conducted using infrasound measurements in dB(WTS) in order to determine the threshold of what is unacceptable in terms of sound pressure level.

The findings are consistent with the official Kelley studies published in the US more than 30 years ago, which showed that infrasound emitted by early, downwind turbines caused sleep disturbance and other WTS symptoms (2). These studies were shelved, upwind turbines were designed, and the regulatory authorities simply trusted the wind industry’s assertion that the new models did not emit dangerous infrasound. The Cooper study now proves they were wrong.

Another conclusion of his study is that the Danish method used for measuring low-frequency “noise annoyance” near wind farms is inadequate. So are the wind turbine noise standards applied to wind farms in Victoria, Australia and New Zealand, known as New Zealand Standard 6808. Just as inadequate are all other standards regulating “annoyance” near wind farms around the world. They simply don’t take infrasound into account.

The Waubra Foundation, Dr Sarah Laurie, Dr Nina Pierpont, Dr Robert McMurtry, Ms Carmen Krogh, Dr Michael Nissenbaum, Dr Chris Hanning, Dr Jay Tibbetts, Dr Sandy Reider, Dr David Iser, Dr Amanda Harry and scores of other medical practitioners and researchers from around the world are vindicated by this benchmark study, as are the residents reporting WTS symptoms themselves, many of whom have had to regularly or permanently abandon their homes.

Regarding the future, Steven Cooper recommends that further studies be conducted in order to establish “a threshold to protect against adverse impacts.” (1)

He also writes: “the vibration surges described by some residents as disturbance during the shutdown could be attributed to wind gusts exciting resonances of the blades/towers and requires further investigation“. (1)

This is a turning point. The wind industry can no longer claim that their machines do not emit enough infrasound to affect residents, nor that health professionals publicising the problems and calling for further research are causing the suffering, nor that wind farm victims are causing their own woes (the often-used argument that “it’s all in their heads” – i.e. the “nocebo effect”). Yet the wind industry and its abettors had clung to that straw despite the numerous accounts of ill-effects on animals. (3)

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

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

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Obama Administration Moves to Block Drilling in Parts of Alaska

Interior Department Plans to Designate Nearly 13 Million Acres in Refuge as Wilderness

The Obama administration is moving this week to designate areas of Alaska off limits to oil and natural gas drilling in its latest effort to bolster its environmental legacy.

The Interior Department announced on Sunday that it was proposing to preserve as wilderness nearly 13 million acres of land in the 19.8 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including 1.5 million acres of coastal plains that is believed to have rich oil and natural gas resources.

Later this week, the department also is slated to propose a draft offshore leasing plan that is expected to include more limits on future oil and gas production in Alaska.

The efforts are drawing a strong rebuke from congressional Republicans.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) vowed to fight the administration’s moves from her positions heading both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the Interior Department.

“It’s clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory,” Ms. Murkowski said in a statement Sunday after speaking by phone with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Friday. “But we will not be run over like this. We will fight back with every resource at our disposal.”

While setting aside lands as wilderness requires congressional approval—something this administration is unlikely to get with both chambers controlled by Republicans—the proposed move puts the area into a state of de facto designation as wilderness and would prevent drilling, an Interior Department spokeswoman said.

Alaska’s oil and gas production has dropped nearly 75% since its peak in the 1980s. North Dakota surpassed Alaska two years ago as the nation’s second-largest oil producer, behind Texas.

The Interior Department is expected to block parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the coast of Alaska for oil and gas development as part of the offshore leasing plan it releases every five years, said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Ms. Murkowski.

This proposal, to be presented this week, isn’t expected to affect current plans to drill in the region by Statoil , Shell Oil Co. and ConocoPhillips , though the long-term impacts are unclear, Mr. Dillon said.

According to the Interior Department, more than seven million acres of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are listed as wilderness, which is the federal government’s highest designation of protection. Oil and gas drilling is prohibited in the refuge based on a law passed in 1980, and Sunday’s announcement would provide another layer of protection.

“Pristine, undisturbed, it supports caribou and polar bears, all matter of marine life, countless species of birds and fish,” President Barack Obama said in a video message Sunday. ”And for centuries it’s supported many Alaskan native communities, but it’s very fragile.”

Sunday’s announcement is the latest in a series of steps the Obama administration has taken in the last couple of months to protect the environment, address climate change and regulate the nation’s oil and natural gas industry, particularly in and around Alaska.

In another video message posted in December, Mr. Obama said he was indefinitely blocking any oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay, in Southwestern Alaska. That announcement was relatively noncontroversial compared with the news this week. Companies aren’t currently drilling in the 32.5-million acre region and don’t have a lot of interest in doing so.

The Interior Department also is expected to propose in the coming weeks new drilling regulations tailored to the harsh weather conditions of the Arctic.

On a broader front, the Interior Department’s five-year plan is expected to offer a window into how supportive the Obama administration will be of new offshore drilling.

The last time the administration issued such a plan, the onshore boom of shale oil and natural gas hadn’t yet fully developed. Experts and lobbyists following the proposal say the administration could open up areas along the East Coast because policy makers from those states, such as Virginia, support such a move.

Also, earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to regulate for the first time methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

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Al Gore: Spend $90 Trillion To Ban Cars From Every Major City In The World

Former Vice President Al Gore and former Mexican President Felipe Calderon are pushing for $90 trillion in spending to ban cars from every major city in the world and make them more dense.

Gore and Calderon presented a report from the Global Commission on the Economy & Climate (GCEC) and argued that fighting global warming will require making cities more compact and wholly reliant on public transit. This is the only way to make sure urban areas don’t contribute to global warming, the two politicians argued.

Calderon and Gore argued that $90 trillion is going to be spent anyways in the coming decades upgrading cities around the world. They argue that it should be spent on making cities more climate friendly.

“The mistake we made in Mexico was to let cities develop however they want, and it’s a mess,” Calderon told Business Insider.

GCEC’s study says that “more compact, better-connected cities with strong mass transit systems will help policy-makers tackle these pressing challenges. Such cities are more productive, socially inclusive, resilient, cleaner, quieter and safer.”

The study says that 70 percent of the world’s energy-use and greenhouse-gas emissions come from cities. Reducing emissions from ever-growing urban areas will show “that the goals of economic growth and climate change can work together,” according to GCEC.

Calderon and Gore made their presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where, ironically (or maybe not, at this point), some 1,700 private jets — which use petroleum — were used to shuttle in conference participants and others to discuss global warming and other pressing global issues.

There was such a big influx of air traffic, reports Newsweek, that the Swiss military had to open an air base for the private jets to land. At last year’s meeting in Davos, some 200 helicopters were used to bring in conference-goers.

Gore also used the conference to announce a massive concert to raise awareness about global warming. He and pop star Pharrell Williams are calling it “Live Earth” and it will be staged in six cities across the globe — not exactly a small carbon footprint.

The concert is supposed to build up support for an international climate treaty ahead of the United Nations summit in Paris later this year. Pharrell says he wants to “have humanity harmonize all at once.”

“It is absolutely crucial that we build public will for an agreement,” Gore told World Economic Forum participants. “The purpose is to have a billion voices with one message, to demand climate action now.”

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The EPA's Newest Strategy to Sneakily Restrict Fracking, Drilling

Recently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a “potent” pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn’t surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air.

However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on their own, because they want to sell it, not spill it.

How much of a menace is methane from the oil and gas industry? The amount of leakage into the atmosphere is minuscule, says Dan Kish of the Energy Research Institute. “Cows emit more methane when they pass gas than the natural gas industry,” he notes. Look for the EPA to start regulating cattle.

Green groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund warn that emissions will increase through 2018 and have been claiming that drillers spew more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, that it is “84 times more potent” a pollutant than carbon dioxide, and new regulations are overdue.

Actually, these claims are blatantly false. Not only is methane nontoxic (propaganda notwithstanding), but methane emissions are way down over the last seven years without these new regulations. Furthermore, the reductions correspond with a major increase in oil and gas drilling and increased use of fracking technologies.

The EPA’s own data confirm this. From 2005 to 2012, methane emissions from natural gas systems have fallen by 15 percent while natural gas marketed production from drilling is up by more than 33 percent.

An analysis of EPA data from the energy analytic group Energy In Depth found that in virtually all of the major drilling locations, including the Marcellus Shale and the Permian Basin, emissions continued to fall in 2013, the last year for which solid data is available.

Let me say that again: More fracking has meant lower methane emissions. The methane alarm is a false alarm.

So why is the methane scare so elevated now by Big Green? One reason might be that almost all of the major air pollutants have declined markedly over the last several decades, so environmental groups need to invent new scare tactics to fill up their coffers.

The emissions of lead, sulfur and smog have all fallen by at least half since 1970. The air in major American cities such as Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Chicago are as clean as they’ve been in many decades. Big Green is running out of things to complain about.

A few years ago they decided that carbon dioxide was going to roast the world in heat. But carbon dioxide emissions, as President Obama recently acknowledged, have been falling in the United States and much more than anyone predicted. The U.S. has also reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other nation, despite that we haven’t passed a carbon tax or enacted cap-and-trade policies.

I pointed out this inconvenient truth in recent testimony in one of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s last hearings as chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. I noted that, “The green protesters have it all wrong on fracking and horizontal drilling. These technologies greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make climate change, less, not more probable in the future.” Especially if one considers reducing greenhouse gas emissions a worthy goal, these new regulations are off-base. Still, the liberals on the panel changed the subject to methane emissions — the new bogeyman.

The hidden agenda here is to restrict shale oil and gas drilling, and fracking. This anti-fracking obsession is strange because even EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy acknowledged that natural gas is a clean substitute for coal and thus lowers greenhouse gases. The Obama administration’s regulatory assault on methane natural gas — at a time when the industry is already struggling with thin profit margins due to the collapse in the global petroleum price — will harm the environment, not save it.

The shale oil and gas revolution imperils the renewable energy industry. Over the last seven years, the price for natural gas has fallen to $4 per thousand cubic feet, down from $12 only a few years ago. Electric cars, solar paneling on rooftops, and windmills have taken a pounding as oil and gas prices have plummeted. Spending $75,000 for a Tesla may have made sense when the price of gas was nearly $4 a gallon, but at close to $2 a gallon in many markets, all of the alternative fads are financially gone with the wind.

The only way that liberal financier Tom Steyer of California can possibly prevent green energy projects from going the way of Solyndra is by pumping back up the price of gas at the pump. The new methane regulations, which may force oil and gas producers to purchase methane credits, are designed to achieve that goal.

Meanwhile, domestic drillers in Texas, Alaska and North Dakota are already starting to lay off workers as the world price of oil falls. The methane regulations — under the guise of averting climate change rather than addressing any direct adverse health effects — will be imposed on these American producers, but not OPEC, Iran or Russia. It’s a policy that empowers our enemies abroad, costs Americans jobs, raises gas prices, and has almost no impact on the quality of the air we breathe. The White House actions remind me of the classic line by Harry in “Dumb and Dumber”: “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this.”

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Methane deceptions

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?

Paul Driessen

First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would benefit them.

In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50 million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.

Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate change that he tried to finger for the damages “Superstorm” Sandy inflicted on his city.

Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH4) emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.

But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissions falling 17% even as gas production increased by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to 2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few benefits.

The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says. Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission spectrum are also important.

More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over the previous 100 years.

Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18 years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States. If CO2 and CH4 are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.

We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The question is, How much of an effect?  Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO2 and CH4 emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?

Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was “the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive, fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got extensive front-page coverage.

Let me make another fact perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38% confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.

In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire. They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.

Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the “mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly surrender the political influence and billions of dollars that CAGW claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.

Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the “energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to eat their homes properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity, higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.

But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and “progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane, because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)

The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations and lay people off.

President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle, pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no one left to speak out.

SOURCE




Australia: Wild speculation masquerading as research

No regard for the facts  at all below

AUSTRALIA’s two biggest science and weather bodies, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have released new climate change data and information on how it will affect Australia.

“There is very high confidence that hot days will become more frequent and hotter,” CSIRO principal research scientist, Kevin Hennessy said.

“We also have very high confidence that sea levels will rise, oceans will become more acidic, and snow depths will decline.

“We expect that extreme rainfall events across the nation are likely to become more intense, even where annual-average rainfall is projected to decline.”

According to the CSIRO report, in Australia specifically, oceans will become much warmer and more acidic [Impossible.  It's one or the other]. Cyclones will decrease, but when they do occur they will be significantly fiercer and occur further south.  Droughts will become more intense and ‘severe’ bushfire ratings will become more common.

Water temperatures will also continue to rise, which means storms can suck up more moisture resulting in heavier rain and snow fall.

Dr Karl believes there are also two lesser-known phenomenons that we should all get our heads around because of their impact on the future: permafrost and arctic meltdown.

“Permafrost is defined as any ground that has been frozen for at least two years, with one quarter of all the land mass in the northern hemisphere being permafrost,” he says.

The problem with permafrost is that with temperatures rising and more permafrost thawing, enormous amounts of harmful [??] carbon contained within the ice are being released into the atmosphere. About 1.7 trillion tonnes of organic carbon, or four times the amount humans have dumped in modern times, could be released, says Dr Karl.

Since 1980, 80 per cent of the Arctic summer ice has been lost which is resulting in more extreme weather across the world and new areas for oil and gas companies to drill.

How will this affect us?  Homes will be destroyed, food will become more expensive and lives will be lost.

According to the National Climate Council, hundreds of thousands of coastal homes are at risk, with 80 per cent of the Victorian coast and 62 per cent of the Queensland coast at risk of being wiped out by 2100.

One of the hardest hit areas could be the Gold Coast, a massive tourist drawcard and an economy worth $1.5 billion per year.

With droughts intensified, farmers will struggle to grow crops, resulting in them losing their livelihoods. But on top of that, our food will become much more expensive, for everything from meat to Weet-Bix.

The government’s Australian Climate Change Program warns that an increased number of bushfire days could result in more homes and lives lost as they become harder to fight.

Dr Karl points out that in Australia, our biggest issue will come from heatwaves caused by rising temperatures.  “Heatwaves have killed more Australians than all other natural hazards combined,” he says.

“In the European heatwave of 2003, some 70,000 people died. The Russian heatwave of 2010 killed around 55,000 people.”

“Back in 1961, heatwaves with temperatures significantly above average covered 1 per cent of our planet’s land area. By 2010, this had risen to about 5 per cent. By 2020, it’s expected to rise to 10 per cent — and for 2040, to 20 per cent.”

What can we do about it?

“We have to move to a 100% renewable energy based country,” says Matthew Wright, the Executive Director of Zero Carbon Australia and 2010’s Young Environmentalist of the Year.

“We need more resilience on our buildings so they consume energy more efficiently and also move towards using electricity in its place.”

Our government also has more work to do. “We need to make sure governments put in legislation that make sure energy companies don’t block people from installing solar panels,” says Mr Wright.

“It’s also risky for the Australian people that our government has clearly steered towards an economy for coal producers.”

SOURCE





British Greens are crazy Leftists

Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Green Party plan for Britain

They are on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough - and an examination of Green Party policy reveals a extraordinary list of demands

Six months ago, they were on the very edges of British politics. Now, they are within touching distance of dictating terms to the future government.

A surge in support has seen the Green Party overtake the Liberal Democrats in the polls, with support at 11 per cent. Membership is now greater than Ukip's.

And, with hopes of winning three seats in the general election, Natalie Bennett believes her party will take part in a "confidence and supply" arrangement, propping up a fragile minority administration in exchange for key policies.

What might they demand?

The party is often dubbed the "Ukip of the left". But an examination of the party's core priorities - in a document called Policies for a Sustainable Society, set at the party's annual conference - reveals they are far more radical in their aims than Nigel Farage's outfit.

In the short term, a Green administration would impose a string of new taxes, ramp up public spending to unprecedented levels and decriminalise drugs, brothels and membership of terrorist groups.

In the long term, they want to fundamentally change life as we know it.

ZERO GROWTH ECONOMY

Critics call the party's adherents "watermelons" - green on the outside, deepest red on the inside.

It's not quite right. Karl Marx and his pupils championed economic growth and personal consumption: five year plans, tractor factories and fridges for all. The row, for them, was whether the planned economy was a stronger engine than the free market.

The Greens want something very different.  Caroline Lucas and colleagues regard economic growth as incompatible with protecting the planet and a fulfilling personal life.

While their rivals recognise more trade, more innovation, more competition and more globalisation as an engine for prosperity for everyone on the planet, the Greens argue it is nothing more than a race to the bottom that has made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and pillaged the environment.

The party's manifesto argues for zero, or even negative growth and falling levels of personal consumption. Britain would be in permanent recession; families would become materially poorer each year. After centuries of growing global connectivity, the Greens want to see greater national self-reliance.

Cottage industries, allotments and co-operatives are good. Banks, supermarkets, multi-national companies and resource extraction are very, very bad.

And while Labour and the Tories compete on job creation, the Greens argue that government policy should make paid work "less necessary", with people making their living from the home-based "informal economy".

THE CITIZENS' INCOME

The flagship policy is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income of £71 a week for everyone living in Britain "as a right of citizenship", regardless of wealth or whether they are seeking work.

Benefits and the tax-free personal allowance will be abolished, and top-ups given for people with children or disabilities, or to pay rent and mortgages. No-one will see a reduction in benefits, and most will see a substantial increase. Parents will be entitled to two years' paid leave from work.

The policy will enable people to "choose their own types and patterns of work", and will allow people to take up "personally satisfying and socially useful work".

It will cost somewhere between £240-280 billion a year - more than double the current health budget, and ten times the defence budget. Those costs will be off-set by some reduction to the welfare bill, through the replacement of jobseekers' allowance.

TAX ON PRESENTS

Under Green plans, inheritance tax - "to prevent the accumulation of wealth and power by a privileged class" - will no longer just tax the dead.

Under radical reforms, it will cover gifts made while the giver is still alive - raising the prospect of levies on cars, jewellery or furniture given by parents to their children. There will be exemptions for some large gifts, "such as those received on marriage".

There will be a threshold for the tax, with receipts calculated over five years - but the party does not set out at what point the levy kicks in. New, higher rates of income tax will be imposed.

GREEN TAXES

VAT will be abolished - and replaced with new levies based on how much environmental damage a product causes. New resource taxes would apply to wood, metal and minerals, and steeper levies imposed on cars.

Crucially, import taxes will be levied on goods brought to Britain reflecting the "ecological impact" of making them - with tariffs reintroduced for trade between Britain and the rest of Europe, ending the free trade bloc.

DRUGS AND BROTHELS

The trade and cultivation of cannabis will be decriminalised under Green policy, along with possession of Class A and B drugs for personal use. Anti-rave laws would be scrapped.

Higher taxes will be brought in on alcohol and tobacco, and a complete alcohol advertising ban imposed.

All elements of the sex industry will be decriminalised, and prostitutes could no longer be discriminated against in child custody cases.

The Greens also want to see "significantly reduced" levels of imprisonment, with jail only used when there is a "substantial risk of a further grave crime" or in cases where offences are so horrific that offenders would be at risk of vigilantes. Prisoners will be given the vote.

ETON MESS

Large schools will be broken up, to have no more than 700 pupils. SATS, early years tests and league tables will be abolished, and "creative" subjects given equal parity to the "academic".

Independent schools will lose their charitable status and pay corporation tax, while church schools will be stripped of taxpayer funding. Religious instruction will be banned in school hours.

Tuition fees will be abolished - but state research funding for universities will increase to reduce a reliance on "biased" commercial research.

THE BEYONCE TAX

Under cultural reforms, the Greens will explore a "a tax on superstar performances" to support "local cultural enterprises".

The BBC will be forced to show educational programming during prime time, giving it "equal precedence" to entertainment shows and not "ghettoised at inconvenient times".

Foreign companies will be stripped of newspapers and television shows if they control too much of the market. The "overall volume" of advertising on TV and newspapers will be controlled and cut, as part of a war on the "materialist and consumption driven culture which is not sustainable".

The England football, rugby and cricket teams would no longer play against countries where "normal, friendly, respectful or diplomatic relations are not possible." Football clubs would be owned by co-operatives and not traded on the stock markets.

DEATH OF DUTY FREE

The Greens will aim for all energy to be supplied from renewables, with wind the main source of power by 2030.

Under a new hierarchy for transport, pedestrians and bikes come first - and aeroplanes last.

Buses and trains will be electric by 2030, while taxes and regulations will be imposed to force people to buy smaller, lighter and less-powerful cars.

No more new airports or runways will be built, and existing ones nationalised. All new homes and businesses must by law provide bicycle parking. Helicopter travel would be regulated "more strictly". The sale of alcohol on planes and airports will be tightly restricted to prevent air-rage, and the air on inbound flights tested for disease.

Advertising of holiday flights will be controlled by law to halt the "promotion of a high-carbon lifestyle". New taxes would be imposed on carriers to reduce passenger numbers.

THE NHS TAX

Foundation hospitals and internal markets will be abolished, PFI abandoned and prescription charges abolished. A new NHS Tax will be introduced specifically to fund the health service.

Assisted dying will be legalised, and the law on abortion liberalised to allow nurses to carry it out. "Alternative" medicine will be promoted. Private healthcare will be more heavily taxed, with special levies on private hospitals that employ staff who were trained on the NHS.

It will be a criminal offence, with "significant fines", to stop a woman from breastfeeding in a restaurant or shop, and formula milk will be more tightly regulated.

In order to prevent "overpopulation" burdening the earth, the state will provide free condoms and fund research for new contraceptives.

VEGETARIANISM FOR ALL

A Green party would impose "research, education and economic measures" to drive a "transition from diets dominated by meat". Factory farming would be abolished, and the sale of fur criminalised and shooting banned. Whips and jumps would be banned from horse racing.

SIGN UP TO AL-QAEDA

International aid should be increased by nearly 50 per cent to one per cent of GDP under Green Policy.

Merely being a member of al-Qaeda, the IRA and other currently proscribed terrorist groups will no longer be a criminal offence under Green plans, and instead a Green Government should seek to "address desperate motivations that lie behind many atrocities labelled `terrorist'," the policy book states.

Terrorism, it adds, "is an extremely loaded term. Sometimes governments justify their own terrorist acts by labelling any groups that resist their monopoly of violence 'terrorist'."

Britain will leave NATO, end the special relationship with the US, and unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons. A standing army, navy and airforce is "unnecessary". Bases will be turned into nature reserves and the arms industry "converted" to producing windturbines.

OPEN DOORS

"Richer regions do not have the right to use migration controls to protect their privileges from others in the long term," the party's policy book states.

A Green Government will "progressively reduce" border controls, including an amnesty for illegal immigrants after five years.

Access to benefits, the right to vote and tax obligations will apply to everyone living on British soil, regardless of passport. The policy book states: "We will work to create a world of global inter-responsibility in which the concept of a 'British national' is irrelevant and outdated."

Political parties will be funded by the state, and the electoral system changed. The monarchy will be abolished.

SOURCE

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

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

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Giant East Antarctic glacier melting with warmer oceans

I have no reason to doubt that the glacier concerned is melting somewhat.  Glaciers do that from time to time.  They also expand from time to time.  And I don't doubt that there is warmer water in its vicinity.  But what is causing the warmer water?  They offer only assertion about that.  No data. No evidence. No survey of the possibilities.  And, since there has been no statistically significant climate change for 18 years, the cause cannot in fact be climate change.  Sub-sea volcanoes have recently been detected in West Antarctica so I suggest that sub-sea volcanoes will also be found in East Antarctica.  And having a volcano under you definitely warms you up!

Warming ocean water is said to be melting the largest glacier in east Antarctica, underscoring climate change's assault on the continent's ice cover.

Australians scientists returning with the first direct measurements of seawater from the Totten Glacier confirm it ranks alongside others in west Antarctica as a climate trouble spot.

Dr Rintoul said it became a focus of concern after satellite measurements showed it was thinning faster than other glaciers in East Antarctica, losing around 14 gigatonnes each year.

"What we have found is that warm water reaches the base of the Totten," voyage chief scientist Steve Rintoul, of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC said in Hobart on Monday.

The Totten has a 538,000 square kilometre drainage system, more than twice the size of Victoria, and its 70 billion tonne yearly outflow would top out Sydney Harbour every two and a half days.

Dr Rintoul said it became a focus of concern after satellite measurements showed it was thinning faster than other glaciers in east Antarctica, losing around 14 gigatonnes each year.

"It was thought that the glaciers on the east Antarctic ice sheet were relatively immune to the kind of melting taking place on the much smaller West Antarctic ice sheet," he said.

A recent benchmark study by University of California glaciologist Eric Rignot found the west Antarctic ice sheet had gone into an irreversible retreat, and melting would raise sea level by 1.2 metres.

But Dr Rintoul said the Totten system, east Antarctica's largest, contained ice equivalent to a six-metre sea level rise, making understanding of its behaviour critical.

Like the west Antarctic's Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, the Totten was found to be grounded on bedrock below sea level.

"We didn't know until recently that inland, it sloped downwards, and so was susceptible to melting," Dr Rintoul said.

"Pine Island is melting and thinning more rapidly, but Totten is not too far behind," he said.

"This is a surprise because the warm waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current get much closer to the Pine Island Glacier in the south-east Pacific."

Earlier this month Australian scientists on Aurora Australis pushed through a narrow sea ice lead to spend three days taking direct measurements of the water below the Totten's ice cliffs.

They also retrieved moored instruments deployed two years ago by US researchers.

"It will take some time to work out exactly how much the water is warming,  but we can say it is sufficient cause the glacier to melt from below," Dr Rintoul said.

Dr Rintoul said the next step would be to send robotic instruments into the water below the glacier front, to find out how far, and how rapidly, it was melting back.

SOURCE





Climategate, the sequel: How we are STILL being tricked with flawed data on global warming

Something very odd has been going on with the temperature data relied on by the world's scientists, writes Christopher Booker

Although it has been emerging for seven years or more, one of the most extraordinary scandals of our time has never hit the headlines. Yet another little example of it lately caught my eye when, in the wake of those excited claims that 2014 was “the hottest year on record”, I saw the headline on a climate blog: “Massive tampering with temperatures in South America”. The evidence on Notalotofpeopleknowthat, uncovered by Paul Homewood, was indeed striking.

Puzzled by those “2014 hottest ever” claims, which were led by the most quoted of all the five official global temperature records – Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) – Homewood examined a place in the world where Giss was showing temperatures to have risen faster than almost anywhere else: a large chunk of South America stretching from Brazil to Paraguay.

Noting that weather stations there were thin on the ground, he decided to focus on three rural stations covering a huge area of Paraguay. Giss showed it as having recorded, between 1950 and 2014, a particularly steep temperature rise of more than 1.5C: twice the accepted global increase for the whole of the 20th century.

But when Homewood was then able to check Giss’s figures against the original data from which they were derived, he found that they had been altered. Far from the new graph showing any rise, it showed temperatures in fact having declined over those 65 years by a full degree. When he did the same for the other two stations, he found the same. In each case, the original data showed not a rise but a decline.

Homewood had in fact uncovered yet another example of the thousands of pieces of evidence coming to light in recent years that show that something very odd has been going on with the temperature data relied on by the world's scientists. And in particular by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has driven the greatest and most costly scare in history: the belief that the world is in the grip of an unprecedented warming.

How have we come to be told that global temperatures have suddenly taken a great leap upwards to their highest level in 1,000 years? In fact, it has been no greater than their upward leaps between 1860 and 1880, and 1910 and 1940, as part of that gradual natural warming since the world emerged from its centuries-long “Little Ice Age” around 200 years ago.

This belief has rested entirely on five official data records. Three of these are based on measurements taken on the Earth’s surface, versions of which are then compiled by Giss, by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit working with the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, part of the UK Met Office. The other two records are derived from measurements made by satellites, and then compiled by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) in California and the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH).

The adjusted graph from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies



In recent years, these two very different ways of measuring global temperature have increasingly been showing quite different results. The surface-based record has shown a temperature trend rising up to 2014 as “the hottest years since records began”. RSS and UAH have, meanwhile, for 18 years been recording no rise in the trend, with 2014 ranking as low as only the sixth warmest since 1997.

One surprise is that the three surface records, all run by passionate believers in man-made warming, in fact derive most of their land surface data from a single source. This is the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN), managed by the US National Climate Data Center under NOAA, which in turn comes under the US Department of Commerce.

But two aspects of this system for measuring surface temperatures have long been worrying a growing array of statisticians, meteorologists and expert science bloggers. One is that the supposedly worldwide network of stations from which GHCN draws its data is flawed. Up to 80 per cent or more of the Earth’s surface is not reliably covered at all. Furthermore, around 1990, the number of stations more than halved, from 12,000 to less than 6,000 – and most of those remaining are concentrated in urban areas or places where studies have shown that, thanks to the “urban heat island effect”, readings can be up to 2 degrees higher than in those rural areas where thousands of stations were lost.

Below, the raw data in graph form



To fill in the huge gaps, those compiling the records have resorted to computerised “infilling” or “homogenising”, whereby the higher temperatures recorded by the remaining stations are projected out to vast surrounding areas (Giss allows single stations to give a reading covering 1.6 million square miles). This alone contributed to the sharp temperature rise shown in the years after 1990.

But still more worrying has been the evidence that even this data has then been subjected to continual “adjustments”, invariably in only one direction. Earlier temperatures are adjusted downwards, more recent temperatures upwards, thus giving the impression that they have risen much more sharply than was shown by the original data.

An early glaring instance of this was spotted by Steve McIntyre, the statistician who exposed the computer trickery behind that famous “hockey stick” graph, beloved by the IPCC, which purported to show that, contrary to previous evidence, 1998 had been the hottest year for 1,000 years. It was McIntyre who, in 2007, uncovered the wholesale retrospective adjustments made to US surface records between 1920 and 1999 compiled by Giss (then run by the outspoken climate activist James Hansen). These reversed an overall cooling trend into an 80-year upward trend. Even Hansen had previously accepted that the “dust bowl” 1930s was the hottest US decade of the entire 20th century.

Assiduous researchers have since unearthed countless similar examples across the world, from the US and Russia to Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, an 80-year cooling of 1 degree per century was turned into a warming trend of 2.3 degrees. In New Zealand, there was a major academic row when “unadjusted” data showing no trend between 1850 and 1998 was shown to have been “adjusted” to give a warming trend of 0.9 degrees per century. This falsified new version was naturally cited in an IPCC report (see “New Zealand NIWA temperature train wreck” on the Watts Up With That science blog, WUWT, which has played a leading role in exposing such fiddling of the figures).

By far the most comprehensive account of this wholesale corruption of proper science is a paper written for the Science and Public Policy Institute, “Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?”, by two veteran US meteorologists, Joseph D’Aleo and WUWT’s Anthony Watts (and if warmists are tempted to comment below this article online, it would be welcome if they could address their criticisms to the evidence, rather than just resorting to personal attacks on the scientists who, after actually examining the evidence, have come to a view different from their own).

One of the more provocative points arising from the debate over those claims that 2014 was “the hottest year evah” came from the Canadian academic Dr Timothy Ball when, in a recent post on WUWT, he used the evidence of ice-core data to argue that the Earth’s recent temperatures rank in the lowest 3 per cent of all those recorded since the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago.

In reality, the implications of such distortions of the data go much further than just representing one of the most bizarre aberrations in the history of science. The fact that our politicians have fallen for all this scary chicanery has given Britain the most suicidally crazy energy policy (useless windmills and all) of any country in the world.

But at least, if they’re hoping to see that “universal climate treaty” signed in Paris next December, we can be pretty sure that it is no more going to happen than that 2014 was the hottest year in history.

SOURCE





The Blizzard That Wasn't

Another failure of prediction.  Those models are just no good

There was no climate change where I live in a suburb of Newark, N.J. if by “climate change” you meant a dramatic blizzard with high winds and several feet of snow. It’s winter and you get the occasional, rare blizzard every few years, but more often you get snowstorms. That’s not “change” by any definition.

Listening to WABC radio follow events with callers from around the Tri-State area calling in with far more accurate reports than the meteorologists was an education in the way those trained in meteorology and the rest of us have been conditioned to believe that something is happening to planet Earth that, quite simply, is not happening.

The meteorologists spent their time trying to figure out the difference between a European computer model and one generated here in the U.S. The former predicted far worse conditions. The latter fell victim, along with the rest of us, to the mindset that the conditions the computers were interpreting did not reflect what was actually happening.

At this early morning hour, it is clear that Long Island, parts of Connecticut, and generally along the coastlines, there has been a heavier snowfall. A few miles inland however it is a far different story. Callers who had been out in the midst of the storm described light, powdery snow and perhaps two to four inches at most.

Why, they asked, did the Governors of New York and New Jersey, along with the Mayor of New York City close down the metropolitan area? They speculated on the millions of lost income for everyone involved in a storm that was not posing a significant traffic or other problems, but who had seen businesses, schools, bus lines, and other public facilities shut down. When a significantly incorrect weather prediction does that, it demonstrates how important it is to correctly interpret the data being provided by the satellites—the best source.

When, earlier in January, NOAA and NASA reported that 2014 had been "the warmest year" it should have raised far more questions and media coverage given the sheer absurdity of such a report. Remember, though, these are two federal government agencies we expect to get it right. They didn’t just get it wrong, skeptical scientists were quick to note how they had deliberately distorted the data on which they based the claim.

That is the heart of the issue surrounding the endless claims of “global warming” or “climate change.”  The planet has not been warming for 19 years at this point because the sun has been in a perfectly natural cycle of low radiation.

Centuries ago, it was noticed that when there are few sunspots, magnetic storms, the Earth got colder. Thus, “climate change” is not an unusual event, but rather a reflection of the well-known cycles of warmth or cold that the planet has passed through for billions of years.

At this writing it is too early in the morning hours to know what the rest of the East Coast looks like, but the indications are that, as one moves westward the “blizzard” has been far less than the one predicted and will likely be downgraded to a standard winter snowstorm.

That’s the good news. The bad news was the over-reaction of meteorologists and politicians. No doubt they wanted to be “safe than sorry” but they inadvertently taught us all a lesson about the way environmental organizations and a government led by a President telling us that “climate change” is the most dangerous challenge facing us have been deliberately lying about the true meteorological record in order to drag us all back to a time in which we burned wood for heat and rode horses for transportation.

The Greens don’t like humans much and that is why they have been lying about “man-made” climate change when the climate has nothing to do with human activities.

Listen to the skeptics, often maliciously called “deniers”, when they tell you the truth about the meteorological science that has been deliberately distorted since the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. It has been lying to us ever since.

Depending on where you live in the area in which the snow fell and the winds blew, trust your eyes. Trust your commonsense. Be more skeptical because the blizzard that wasn’t is not a lesson you want to forget anytime soon.

SOURCE  





HOW NYC HAS BEEN BURIED IN SNOW IN THE PAST

No obvious trend

In more than a hundred years of record-keeping, snowfall in New York City has only cleared the 20-inch mark a handful of times.  Below are the top five recorded snowfall figures for a single storm:

1. February 11-12, 2006:    26.9inches

2. December 26-27, 1947:  25.8inches

3. March 12-14, 1888:         21.0inches

4. February 25.26, 2010:    20.9inches

5. January 7-8, 1996:          20.2inches

The older storms, from 1888 and 1947, were deadly for many and are remembered as disasters in the city, while later storms made less of a dent because of modern technology and greater preparedness.

The 1888 blast coated the boroughs, and caused chaos by disrupting power lines and other utilities, which were later moved underground as a response.

In 1947, the storm came by surprise as it approached from the sea, where there was little infrastructure for weather warnings. Snow was piled up and dumped in the sewers or rivers from Manhattan, but districts further from water struggled for days with the huge pileups.

Storms in the 1990s and 2000s still caused widespread chaos but were handled more deftly. The 2010 storm canceled a third of all flights from New York City. Costs associated with cleaning up after the 2006 storm reportedly hit the tens of millions.

SOURCE





Climate alarmists all choked up without reading the fine print

By MICHAEL ASTEN (Michael Asten is a professor of geophysics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)

LAST week delivered for the global warming debate, the most anticipated data point of the decade. The year 2014 was declared the hottest of the past century, by a margin of 0.04 degC. The news has been greeted with enthusiasm by those who attribute all warming to man-made influences, (notably in the Fairfax press in Australia), but few commentators have qualified their comment with the observation that NASA put an error margin of +-0.05 C on their result.

The figure below shows global surface temperature as compiled by NASA for the past 134 years. Single data points (years) are unimportant. The 5-year moving average in red is a more useful indicator of temperature trends, and its slope shows clearly the steady rising trend from 1980 to 2000, and the temperature pause from 2000 to present. Anyone with a high-school science education can look at such a graph and form their own conclusions, but four of the most important are that

 *  The slope of the rise from 1980 to 2000 is about 0.19 degC per decade (the rate consistent with current warming models for “business as usual” CO2 emissions)

 *  A closely similar rate of rise in global temperature occurred from 1910 to 1940, pre-dating current high CO2 emissions

 *  Pauses in the rate of rise occurred from 1880 to 1910, from 1940 to 1970, and from 2000 to present.

 *  The model trend as computed by the IPCC continues upwards from 2000, but the pause is a clear break of observed earth behaviour away from the models.



The pauses are regarded by the majority of scientists (both within and outside the conventional anthropogenic global warming camps) as being attributable to natural cycles in global climate, although the two groups favour different causative mechanisms.

What is surprising is that, instead of reading the multiple patterns in such a graph, enormous global publicity has followed on that single point of 2014 — even though we won’t know for a decade whether it represents a break from the current “pause” trend. Thus John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute, greeted the 2014 result with the comment “This data shows not only a series of alarming years but decades of warming to make an undisputable trend”, which suggests a lack of awareness on his part of the steep warming trend which occurred from 1910-1940 without significant man-made assistance, and the pause from 2000 which occurred despite current CO2 emissions.

Will Steffen of the Climate Council also finds cause for alarm in the 2014 data point, using the occasion to release a document titled “Off the charts: 2014 was the world’s hottest year on record” in which objective graphical analysis as we teach in high schools is replaced with poetic subheadings personifying the climate as “Angry Summer”, Abnormal Autumn” and “Scorching Spring”.

We can also look back to 2007 for a fascinating morsel of history; the figure shows at that year there is a clear hint of the start of the pause, although not statistically significant at that time. When Bob Carter, a former head of the Department of Earth Sciences at James Cook University, called attention to the discrepancy between the changed temperature trend versus the modelling predictions, Andrew Ash (then acting director of the CSIRO Climate Adaption Flagship), stated “Professor Bob Carter claims that ‘no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998’. This is an unethical misrepresentation of the facts”.

I suggest this is an incredible accusation to make against a scientist who has read (correctly, as history shows) a trend in a global temperature data set. When comparing Carter’s observation with pronouncements prompted by the single 2014 warm temperature point, we see a disturbing double standard in how scientific commentary is received. (In defence of the management of CSIRO I note that CSIRO has not issued a media release related to the 2014 temperature data point).

Some climate scientists will counter my views with claims that 21st century temperatures are cause for great concern because they are “the hottest ever”. Multiple lines of geological and historical data show they are not. Observations of past surface temperatures constructed from chemical composition of clam shells as far apart as Iceland and the south China Sea point to global temperatures of medieval times (800-1300AD) being warmer than those of today, and those of Roman times even warmer. The message is, the Earth can and does cool and warm on time scales of decades to millennia, and CO2 emissions are not the dominant driver. Our grandchildren will be best served if we devote our Direct Action strategies towards robust protection of communities from effects of drought, fire and floods. All have been a part of our history. And history guarantees all will be a part of our future.

SOURCE

Jo Nova comments:

"We skeptics get excited about unusual things. The Australian published Michael Asten today in the Op-Ed pages, and took the extremely rare step of publishing a scientific graph (!) with a few error bars and everything. Newspapers publish economic graphs all the time, so it’s nice to see the scientific debate getting a bit more sophisticated than just the usual “deniers are evil, government climate scientists speak the word of God” type of stuff. (In the Enlightenment, data was a greater source of authority than any human; how we pine for those days.) The only thing the story should have added was a note that reminds us that the not only was the “hottest” record not beyond the error bars but that it did not occur in satellite measurements. I’m sure a lot of people mistakenly think that NASA might use satellites, but they prefer highly adjusted ground thermometers next to airport tarmac instead.

The headline on that graph could have been “Climate scientists don’t know what caused most of the big moves on this graph”. Some mystery effect caused the warming from 1910-1940. In ClimateScienceTM it is OK to call that “natural variability” and pretend to be 95% sure whatever it was has now stopped.




Parliament bid to block fracking in Britain fails

A group of British lawmakers failed Monday to block plans for shale gas fracking in Britain, but the government agreed to tougher regulation and a ban on fracking in national parks.

Some 200 protesters including the designer Vivienne Westwood rallied outside parliament as the vote was taking place, holding up placards and shouting slogans.

One sign read "Shut the Frack Up" and a colourful knitted banner read "No to Fracking", an extraction process in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped at high pressure underground to access natural gas reserves.

A committee of lawmakers had demanded a moratorium on fracking, arguing that it would endanger a pledge to cut climate change emissions.

The moratorium was rejected by 308 votes to 52 after the opposition Labour party did not take part.

However, the Conservative-led coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron accepted more regulation and agreed to ban the highly productive, but environmentally controversial technique in protected areas.

The regulations were added in an amendment to the Infrastructure Bill, a broad package that includes legislation intended to boost the fledgling shale gas and oil industry that still faces a final vote to become law.

Amber Rudd, junior minister for energy and climate change, argued that a moratorium would be "disproportionate" to the risks of fracking, which opponents fear can cause earthquakes and pollute water supplies.

"We have agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks, sites of special interest and areas of national beauty," Rudd told parliament during the debate.

Previously, the government had planned to allow shale gas exploration in national parks in exceptional circumstances.

The opposition Labour party said it was "a huge u-turn by the government."

"Thanks to Labour's amendment, the government has been forced to accept that tough protections and proper safeguards must be in place before fracking can go ahead," Labour's shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint said in a statement.

However, Green party lawmaker Caroline Lucas, who had pushed for a freeze on fracking, criticised Labour's abstention from the vote on a moratorium as a "farce".

The government has pledged to go "all out" on developing the shale gas and oil industry, which it argues will create jobs, boost the economy and help Britain rely less on energy imports.

The drive received a blow this month when a council recommended plans by British energy firm Cuadrilla to start fracking in two sites in Lancashire in north-west England should be rejected.

A final decision on permission is expected in the coming weeks.

SOURCE

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

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

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Seth Borenstein walks back the "hottest year" claim

From a dedicated Warmist like Seth, that shows that we skeptics are getting to them

In a story Jan. 16, The Associated Press reported that the odds that nine of the 10 hottest years have occurred since 2000 are about 650 million to one. These calculations, as the story noted, treated as equal the possibility of any given year in the records being one of the hottest. The story should have included the fact that substantial warming in the years just prior to this century could make it more likely that the years since were warmer, because high temperatures tend to persist.

The story also reported that 2014 was the hottest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, but did not include the caveat that other recent years had average temperatures that were almost as high - and they all fall within a margin of error that lessens the certainty that any one of the years was the hottest.

An earlier version of the story quoted Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis as noting that the margin of error makes it uncertain whether 2014 was warmest, or the second, third or sixth warmest year. She said that regardless, the trend shows a "clear, consistent and incontrovertible" warming of Earth. That reference to the margin of error was dropped in later versions.

SOURCE






Greenpeace pushes veteran activist under the bus

The Greenpeace Nazca lines fiasco only exposes it further. After delaying handing over names of the activists who were involved in the letter-spreading activity, Greenpeace now gives the Peruvian government just 4 names in a secret report. The initial Greenpeace excuse, if you remember, was that it did not know who took part in the activity, and that it needed time to contact each of its 27 subsidiary bodies.

Now the green group has changed tack, submitting the names of only four, claiming the whole activity was a `rouge operation' run by Wolfgang Sadik and his boss Martin Kaiser - an excuse that is wholly implausible and unlikely given that it was fully poised to exploit the action for publicity and fund-raising. Greenpeace further launders such notions as (i) several people in Greenpeace advising against the activity (not impossible but implausible, and immaterial), (ii) Greenpeace decided on the operation after reaching Peru (laughable, considering the logistics and planning including GIS layouts, and such assets as colored bricks and matching t-shirt attire)

The utter untruthfulness involved is evident from what Mark Hertsgaard appears was told by Greenpeace:

    "Sadik and his team went ahead with the action even as others in Greenpeace strongly advised him against it, Townsley confirmed. "The decisions were taken by those responsible while they were in Peru.  At that point, there was no recourse back to Greenpeace International in Amsterdam or Greenpeace Germany in Hamburg. . Certainly there are many people [within Greenpeace] who think that our internal processes weren't followed properly and if they had been, this activity would have been caught and stopped."

Compare the above to what it declared on Greenpeace Netherlands' website:

    "Yellow Colored stones holding the letters in place. Once the aerial photograph is taken, they extract the substances letters away again, without equipment behind. A GIS system enabled them to lay everything on the right place. The preparation of this action lasted about four months. Every step was carefully calculated."

What does one do in the face of such duplicity?

What's worse, of the names submitted, Greenpeace exonerates 3 of the 4 people, shifting all blame on Wolfgang Sadik:

    "Neither Kaiser, Wiedemann nor Fernandez were involved in "the design or the delivery of the Nazca Lines action," Townsley said, adding that Sadik was "the principal architect and coordinator, and he himself has volunteered that information to the prosecutor."

In effect, Greenpeace is pushing one of its veteran activists under the bus. Is Greenpeace trying to protect higher-ups in its renewable energy campaign wing from the fallout and consequences? Absolutely. By its own admisison, this was planned over a long period and it is extremely unlikely none other than Sadik knew about it at Greenpeace.

Young environmentalists should be extremely wary of joining such an organization.

SOURCE





Greenie terrorism afoot?

A climate change advocate, believed to be a Greenpeace activist and Guardian contributor, has called for the beheading of so-called "climate change deniers", arguing the world would be a better place without them. The comments are merely the latest in a long history of warmists advocating the killing of people who question global warming dogma.

On January 21st, in it's `Climate Consensus - the 97%' section, the Guardian published an article entitled "Matt Ridley wants to gamble the Earth's future because he won't learn from the past", which was illustrated with a fake, but nonetheless rather gruesome image of a severed head.

The article drew hundreds of comments, including one from `Bluecloud' on the day the article was posted, reading "Should that not be Ridley's severed head in the photo?"

Further down he added "We would actually solve a great deal of the world's problems by chopping off everyone's heads.

"Why are you deniers so touchy? Mere calls for a beheading evolve [sic] such a strong response in you people.

"Ask yourself a simple question: Would the world be a better place without Matt Ridley?  "Need I answer that question?"

The comment has since been removed by moderators, allowing `Bluecloud' to attempt to deny that he had called for violence. On Sunday morning he commented "Oh dear, it didn't take much for the denial industry to start claiming environmentalists are out to chop off people's heads.

"It's clear that when they have no argument to make, they stoop to misquoting deleted posts"

Others also tried to deflect blame, with commentor `ianhassall' writing "Bluecloud's moderated comment is causing quite a stir, isn't it.

"If warmists can't get their point across with the settled science I've got no doubt they'd resort to the sort of violence he's suggesting."

To which Bluecloud replied: "And what violence would that be? Making false claims is easy in the absence of evidence."

Unfortunately for Bluecloud, the evidence is easy to come by on Twitter. Climateologist Richard Tol has tweeted a screenshot of his original comment in full:

Furthermore, the Bishop Hill blog is reporting that others commenting on the Guardian article revealed Bluecloud to be Gary Evans, a Greenpeace funded "Sustainability Consultant", according to his Linked In profile, who has written for the Guardian in the past.

The comment fingering Evans was apparently deleted by the Guardian moderators far in advance of Evan's comment being deleted.

Bluecloud's comment comes a week after a Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University called climate change activism a "jihad against atmospheric carbon" in a new paper for the Global Policy Warming Foundation.

However, this is not the first time that global warming advocates have threatened violence against those who question the theory of anthropogenic global warming. In 2010 Greenpeace's Gene Hasmi wrote: "Pressuring politicians on climate change is not working. We saw that in Copenhagen. Three months later, we also know why. Which is why the global climate movement now must do course-correction. We need to shift targets and go after the real termites that hollowed out and imploded Copenhagen.

"Emerging battle-bruised from the disaster zone of Copenhagen, but ever-hopeful, a rider on horseback brought news of darkness and light: "The politicians have failed. Now it's up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It's not working. We need an army of climate outlaws."

"The proper channels have failed. It's time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.

"If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:

"We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. "And we be many, but you be few."

2010 also saw the release of the 10:10 Campaign's supposedly comedic `No Pressure' video, penned by Richard Curtis, in which children and office workers who don't want to do their bit to prevent climate change are blown up by hitting a big red button.

SOURCE





STOP CLIMATE FEAR MONGERING

CO2 Increases Can Cause Only Minimal Warming

by William M. Gray

ABSTRACT

The massively funded international global warming movement has grossly exaggerated the threat from CO2 gas increases. This warming scare has been driven by a cabal of international politicians and environmentalist groups using erroneous climate model warming predictions to brainwash an uninformed global public. Their purpose was to scare the public into accepting global government and restrictions on their freedoms and lifestyles to prevent a made-up looming climate catastrophe. Truth of their CO2 warming assertions was of little importance. What mattered was the degree to which the public could be indoctrinated to believe the threat. The many large global warming projections have not and will not be realized in the coming years. The science behind these CO2 induced warming projections is very badly flawed and needs to be exposed to the public. We will see only negligible amounts of CO2 induced global warming in the coming decades. The future temperature changes which do occur will be natural and primarily a result of the changes in the globe's deep ocean circulation patterns of which ocean salinity variations is the primary driver. We can and should do nothing about natural climate change but adjust to it. Economic progress dictates that the US and the world continue with and expands their use of fossil-fuels. Any significant shift to the much more costly wind and solar energy sources should not go forward. Such a shift would greatly lower the US and the world's living standards and do nothing to benefit the globe's climate. This global warming charade cannot long continue. Time and truth are on the side of the warming skeptics.

CURRENT CONDITIONS

Increasing amounts of CO2 gas in the atmosphere over the last 18 years have not caused any increase in mean global surface temperatures. Despite voluminous media and scientific claims to the contrary, the global temperature, global sea ice, severe weather, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, tornadoes, etc. are not showing any of the changes predicted by the warming alarmists and the many numerical modeling simulations on which most of these warming cd Truth of their CO2 warming assertions was of little importance. What mattered was the degree to which the public could be indoctrinated to believe the threat.

CRUX OF THE FLAWED SCIENCE

(Water-vapor feedback and surface evaporation cooling)

There are many flaws in the global climate models. But the largest flaw is a result of the climate model's inability to realistically deal with the small horizontal scale (and model unresolvable) changes brought about by the globe's thousands of individual deep cumulonimbus (Cb) cloud elements (Figure 1). An increase in the totality of these deep Cb convective units adds drying to the upper troposphere (Figure 2). This is in contrast to the assumptions implicit in the General Climate Model (GCM) simulations which increase upper tropospheric water-vapor as a result of enhanced rainfall and Cb convection associated with rising levels of CO2.

Much more HERE






A Warmist troll unmasked

In the beginning, a British academic with an anonymous political blog that no one read attempted to call anyone who mocked climate model validations using "retrospective predictions" as "ignorant" at the world's most viewed climate website - Watts Up With That. After crying about how the honorable Richard S. Courtney treated him, he went back to whine about it on his political blog. But since no one reads it and seeing how he had become "Addicted to Watt" he needed a new strategy. Using his extensive research education and experience he setup a new WUWT troll blog with the original idea to plagiarize the name of another WUWT troll blog.

On April 13, 2013 and only three days out from his pummeling at WUWT by Mr. Courtney the "Wotts Up With That Blog" was born! Yet, after less than 9 months of intense trolling and having the same dismal impact he did with his left-wing political blog, he changed the name of his troll blog to the oh-so-clever, "...and Then There's Physics".

So who is this anonymous academic blogger?  Meet Ken Rice, a Reader of Astronomy and Public Relations Director at the Institute for Astronomy, within the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh (UK).

When not trolling WUWT or whining about posting there, Ken enjoys following, "skeptics are like holocaust deniers" Caroline Lucas and the "Gay-shaded author of romantic M/M short stories and novels" Nick Thiwerspoon.

While after only 20 years as a physicist he finally took off the training wheels and published a review paper all by himself, having it accepted on September 3, 2014. Who would have believed his undoing would be linked to such an accomplishment?

Ken also appears highly obsessed with Dr. Richard Tol, likely due to the fact that Dr. Tol has over 16,000 more citations than he does.

For all those banned and trolled by Ken please feel free to contact him, as I am sure he would love to hear from you.

W. Kenneth M. Rice
Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh,
Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, UK EH9 3HJ
Phone : +44 131 6688384
Fax : +44 131 6688416
Email : wkmr@roe.ac.ukM

SOURCE






Wind turbines kill up to 39 million birds a year!

Big Wind hides evidence of turbine bird kills - and gets rewarded. Here's how they do it

In 1984 the California Energy Commission said "many institutional, engineering, environmental and economic issues must be resolved before the industry is secure and its growth can be assured." Though it was not clearly stated, the primary environmental issue alluded to was the extreme hazard that wind turbines posed to raptors.

Since the early 1980s, the industry has known there is no way its propeller-style turbines could ever be safe for raptors. With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at speeds up to 200 mph, it was impossible. Wind developers also knew they would have a public relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being cut in half - or left with a smashed wing, to stumble around for days before dying.

To hide this awful truth, strict wind farm operating guidelines were established - including high security, gag orders in leases and other agreements, and the prevention of accurate, meaningful mortality studies.

For the industry this business plan has succeeded quite well in keeping a lid on the mortality problem. While the public has some understanding that birds are killed by wind turbines, it doesn't have a clue about the real mortality numbers. And the industry gets rewarded with subsidies, and immunity from endangered species and other wildlife laws.

Early studies identified the extent of the problem

To fully grasp the wind turbine mortality problem, one needs to examine the 2004 report from the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA). The study lasted five years (1998-2003), and researchers did not have full access to all the Altamont turbines.

This careful, honest effort analyzed turbine characteristics in relation to mortality and estimated mortality from body counts compiled in careful searches. Researchers then adjusted mortality numbers by examining statistical data based on searcher efficiency and other factors, such as carcass removal by predators and scavengers. The report even suggested that the mortality estimates probably erred on the low side, due to missed carcasses and other human errors.

This study stands in marked contrast to studies being conducted today, especially the Wildlife Reporting Response System that is currently the only analysis happening or permitted at most wind farms. The WRRS is the power companies' own fatality reporting system, and allows paid personnel to collect and count carcasses. It explains why mortality numbers are always on the low side and why many high-profile species are disappearing near turbine installations.

Incredibly, the APWRA report actually admitted: "We found one raptor carcass buried under rocks and another stuffed in a ground squirrel burrow. One operator neglected to inform us when a golden eagle was removed as part of the WRRS. Based on these experiences, it is possible that we missed other carcasses that were removed." (Chap. 3, pg. 52) It's easy to see how human "errors" keep bird mortality low.

The APWRA study also documented that raptor food sources, turbine sizes and turbine placement all directly affect raptor mortality. It was thus able to identify many of the most dangerous turbines or groups of turbines - those with a history of killing golden eagles, kestrels, burrowing owls and red-tailed hawks.

Studies worsen as turbines proliferate and increase in size

The study also discussed how higher raptor mortality occurred when smaller towers were "upgraded" with larger turbines and proportionally longer blades. These wind turbines offered what raptors perceived as intermediate to very big windows of opportunity to fly through what looked like open spaces between towers, but were actually within the space occupied by much longer, rapidly moving rotor blades.

The result was significantly more fatalities of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, burrowing owls, mallards, horned larks and western meadowlarks. Turbines with slower rotations per minute actually made it appear that there was more space and "greater windows of time." This fooled birds, by giving them the illusion that they had open flight space between the rotating blades.

In fact, the illusion fools people, too. The newest turbines move their blades at 10-20 rotations per minute, which appears to be slow - but for their blade tips this translates into 100-200 mph!

All this was very important, because the industry was moving away from smaller turbines and installing much larger turbines, with much longer blades. However, the industry not only ignored the APWRA findings and rapidly installed thousands of these much larger turbines across America, despite their far greater dangers for birds and raptors. It also kept the APWRA out of the public's awareness, and focused attention on new study results that reflected far less accurate (and honest) searches and surveys.

How the wind industry hides raptor mortality

The APWRA report also looked at the placement of carcasses in relation to turbine types. It documented that the distances carcasses were found from turbine towers increased significantly as turbine megawatt ratings and blade lengths increased. Based on sample of about 800 carcasses, the report revealed that birds were found an average of 94 feet (28.5) meters from 100-Kw turbines on towers 81 feet (24.6 meters) high.

Obviously, taller turbines with longer blades and faster blade tip speeds will catapult stricken birds much further. Figure 1 shows how a turbine 2.5 times larger will result in an average carcass distance of 372 feet (113.5 meters) from the tower. The wind industry is acutely aware of this.

That is why it has restricted search areas to 165 feet (50 meters) around its bigger turbines. This ensures that far fewer bodies will be found - and turbine operators will not need to explain away as many carcasses.

Recent mortality studies like those conducted at the Wolfe Island wind project (2.3-MW turbines) and Criterion project in Maryland (2.5-MW turbines) should have used searches 655 feet (200 meters) from turbines, just to find the bulk (75%-85%) of the fatalities. Of course, they did not do so. Instead, they restricted their searches to 165 feet - ensuring that they missed most raptor carcasses, and could issue statements claiming that their turbines were having minimal or "acceptable" effects on bird populations.

*  Exclude certain carcasses. The 2005-2010 WRRS data show that 347 carcasses (primarily raptors) - plus 21 golden eagle carcasses - were excluded from mortality estimates, because industry personnel claimed they were found outside standard search procedures, said the "cause of death was unknown" (even when the birds' heads had been sliced off), or removed carcasses ahead of a scheduled search.

*  Exclude mortally wounded or crippled birds found during searches, even if they display turbine-related injuries. Even though many birds hit by turbine blades die within days, if they are still breathing when found, they are considered mobile - and thus not fatalities.

*  Simply avoid searching near some of the most dangerous and lethal turbines. The industry justifies this exclusion by claiming that "the number of turbines monitored was reduced and spatially balanced for a randomized rolling panel design." That this "reduction and balancing" excluded the most deadly portion of the Altamont facility was presented as coincidental or part of a proper scientific methodology.

The cold reality is that honest, scientific, accurate mortality studies in the Altamont Pass area would result in death tolls that would shock Americans. They would also raise serious questions about wind turbines throughout the United States, especially in major bird habitats like Oregon's Shepherds Flat wind facility and the whooping cranes' migratory corridor from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.

The techniques discussed here help ensure that "monitoring" studies match the facility operators' desired conclusions, and mortality figures are kept at "acceptable" levels.

SOURCE

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

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

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