Vicious VICE on HBO

An email to them from Marc Morano below:

Hi Ahmad,

Just watched the show and I must say you conflated my comments. In the broadcast you put in all of these comments from me about 'sea ice.' Not land ice. Then you imply that I am confused on the difference between the two. On the contrary!

Please watch the full interview I gave you at the Heartland conference in DC, I clearly made a distinction and even talked to the interviewer about how people get confused between the two.

Here is my latest report on Antarctica land based glacial ice. Meda at it again hyping Antarctic melt fears – Recycles same claims from 2014, 1990, 1979, 1922 & 1901! – Climate Depot’s Point-By-Point Rebuttal

Your show lacked any perspective on how long these glacial melt fears have been around and it was rank propaganda to have me discussing 'sea ice' and implying I am confused when you omitted my discussion of land based ice.

If I cared enough about the broadcast, I would be upset. But you should at least alert your staff and re watch my full interview. I think you will find you are guilty of misrepresenting my views, perhaps because of ignorance on your production staff. Either way, you omitted my discussion of land-based ice.





80-yr-old Weather Channel Founder Explains the History of the Global Warming Fraud

The video below is from a year ago but it is quite an evergreen and is well worth repeating

John Coleman, 80-year-old award-winning meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel explains the history of the global warming fraud.

“Politics had gotten in the way of the science.” Coleman explains that there is no man-made global warming, and he’s sure of it.

Coleman says:

“I love our wonderful planet Earth. If I thought it was threatened by global warming, I would devote my life to stopping the warming!”

Now they call it “climate change” instead of global warming, because the warming has stopped, says Coleman, and that $4.7 billion in taxpayer money is funding “bogus reports” and “bogus research.”

At about the 11:30, Coleman begins a detailed explanation about just how the global warming fraud was started and heated up, including how Al Gore got involved in the movement

This is a 36 minute video concerning the Global Warming Fraud by the man who started the Weather Channel way back when.  He takes the viewer through all the steps and stages of the subject and tells us to "follow the money".

Global Warming started with Professor Roger Revell (1909-1991) and after much research  Prof. Revell's conclusion was  that global warming was indeed a hoax.

Former Vice Pres. Al Gore figures prominently in this narrative, starting with being a "D" student of Pro. Revell at Harvard, receiving prestigious awards, turning on Prof. Revell and then refusing any debate on the issue of Global Warming, now changed to the semantically PC wording Climate Change.



SOURCE






This changes nothing - The Guardian campaign on climate change

The Guardian has embarked on a campaign to put climate change in the spotlight again. Starting last weekend it used the first pages of its print edition to publish comments by high profile campaigners like Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and George Monbiot. These were accompanied by powerful artwork from Anthony Gormley, Nele Azevedo and Judy Watson. The motto of the campaign is 'Keep it in the ground', don't burn the vast amounts of fossil fuels that are still buried underground. Otherwise we would fry the planet.

The campaign kicked off with Naomi Klein. She asks 'What is wrong with us?'

"A great many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke (“more signs of the Apocalypse!”). Which is another way of looking away. Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come up with a technological miracle that will safely suck the carbon out of the skies or magically turn down the heat of the sun. Which, I was to discover while researching this book, is yet another way of looking away."

Framing the issue in this way prompts the question 'Why do we look away when confronted with so many other, more devastating issues, causing harm in the here and now?' We (as human civilization, community of states, societies) have not found ways to stop war, economic crises, or inequality. Compared to these issues that cause daily human suffering, harm and death, climate change is a distant threat. Framing the issue in the way Klein does makes it rational not to put climate change on the top of the political agenda.

Klein believes that there is a solution to the problem of climate change which makes us all better off, through reclaiming democracy, blocking free trade deals, nationalising energy and water, etc. There is a lot of wishful thinking in this, and the belief that all the good things go together. Somehow in this process carbon emissions will go down, and we will live happily ever after.

While Klein's vision is to get rid of capitalism in order to solve the climate problem, Bill KcKibben thinks that technical solutions are available, and made operational by some big capitalist firms:

"None of the problems the fossil fuel players keep predicting for renewables seem decisive. Yes, the sun goes down at night, but that tends to be when the wind kicks up. We’re learning to store peak power in all kinds of ways: a California auction for new power supply was won by a company that uses extra solar energy to freeze ice, which then melts during the day to supply power. The smart meters now coming on line around the world allow utilities to juggle demand, turning off your water heater when its not needed.

Wise companies have either seen the future or learned their lesson: E.ON, Germany’s biggest utility, announced last year that it will now focus on wind and sun. “We are the first to resolutely draw the conclusion from the change of the energy world,” chief executive Johannes Teyssen told reporters in Dusseldorf. “We’re convinced that energy companies will have to focus on one of the two energy worlds if they want to be successful.”

Again, a fair amount of wishful thinking, and a big ask of consumers to accept demand based pricing of energy based on surveillance technologies. Be that as it may, both his and Klein's visions are based on the problems of the Western rich countries, where carbon emissions will peak soon. What about the rising demand in cheap energy in the rest of the world?

Step up George Monbiot, making the slogan 'Keep it in the ground' operational. He suggests the Paris summit in December should adopt a document along these lines:

"Scientific assessments of the carbon contained in existing fossil fuel reserves suggest that full exploitation of these reserves is incompatible with the agreed target of no more than 2C of global warming. The unrestricted extraction of these reserves undermines attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We will start negotiating a global budget for the extraction of fossil fuels from existing reserves, as well as a date for a moratorium on the exploration and development of new reserves. In line with the quantification of the fossil carbon that can be extracted without a high chance of exceeding 2C of global warming, we will develop a timetable for annual reductions towards that budget. We will develop mechanisms for allocating production within this budget and for enforcement and monitoring.”

The consequence of such a policy would be that prices for fossil fuels rise massively. In the absence of alternative sources this would have serious impacts on economic activity and social wellbeing. Either there is some wishful thinking that somehow we will have solved the problem of renewables just in time, or a complete disregard about these issues because of the need to 'save the planet'. Again, there can be no surprise that such proposals will not find political traction.

The good thing about the Guardian is that it also has comment pages where such grand visions are brought back to reality. Today Mark Lynas has such a comment which demonstrates how such campaigns are unlikely to change much, because the issue is polarised, and the contributions published so far only help deepening the polarisation.

"The Guardian’s climate campaign is, in principle, very welcome. But it risks reinforcing this polarisation by leading with two extensive extracts from Naomi Klein’s latest book, This Changes Everything: Climate vs Capitalism. Lefties will lap it up; others will see it as evidence that science has been appropriated as cover for an ideological project.

For Klein, whose career has always focused on fighting capitalism, climate change merely means we must renew that fight. It doesn’t seem to strike her as odd or fortuitous that this new “crisis”, which she admits she’s only lately discovered, should “change everything” for everyone else but merely reinforce her own decades-old ideological position. Her analysis of the problem is the same as for all the rest of today’s challenges – that it is the fault of multinational corporations, “market fundamentalism” and the “elites”, who in her view control the media and democratic politics.

Depressingly, all this confirms what social psychologists have long insisted: that most people accept only scientific “facts” that are compatible with or which reinforce their political identities and worldviews. The environmental left leapt on climate science because it seemed to confirm deeply held notions of the planet being fragile, and modern civilisation being in essence destructive. Moreover, climate science at last seemed to herald the global doom that the eco-Malthusian left had always hoped for.

All of this makes climate change much harder to deal with than it would otherwise be. In insisting that tackling carbon emissions must be subordinated into a wider agenda of social revolution and the dismantling of corporate capitalism, Klein isn’t making climate mitigation easier: she is making it politically toxic. In rejecting “too easy” solutions such as nuclear power and advanced renewables technologies (the dreaded “technofix”), the left puts its cards on the table – and confirms what the right has always suspected: that climate mitigation is not a primary but at best a secondary goal.

This is also a debate conducted in a western bubble. No one in India doubts that the emergence from poverty of hundreds of millions of people in south Asia will require the production of prodigious amounts more energy – far more than could ever be compensated for by any remotely plausible “energy austerity” path taken by the west. Don’t forget: rich OECD countries have already peaked their CO2 emissions, so pretty much all the future growth will come from Asia, Africa and South America".

Quite a lot to agree with, I think.

SOURCE






How a Solar Farm Set Hundreds of Birds Ablaze

It's no secret that solar power is hot right now, with innovators and big name companies alike putting a great deal of time, money, and effort into improving these amazing sources of renewable energy. Still, the last thing you'd likely expect is for a new experimental array to literally light nearly 130 birds in mid-flight on fire.

And yet, that's exactly what happened near Tonopah, Nevada last month during tests of the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project.

According to Rudy Evenson, Deputy Chief of Communications for Nevada Bureau of Land Management (NBLM) in Reno, as reported by Re Wire, a third of the newly constructed plant was put into action on the morning of Jan. 14, redirecting concentrated solar energy to a point 1,200 feet above the ground.

Unfortunately, about two hours into the test, engineers and biologists on site started noticing "streamers" - trails of smoke and steam caused by birds flying directly into the field of solar radiation. What moisture was on them instantly vaporized, and some instantly burst into flames - at least, until they began to frantically flap away. An estimated 130 birds were injured or killed during the test.

But worry not, green home owners. The solar energy we are talking about here is not like the solar panels that top your roofs. Solar panels don't produce enough heat to cause such a scene.

The plant in question, which was expected to come at least partially online this month, runs on 17,500 heliostat mirrors - each the size of your average garage door - that concentrate and reflect thermal solar energy at a tall center tower. This tower uniquely contains molten salt, of all things, which is circulated to produce steam and generate electricity. Excess heat is stored in the salt and can be used to generate power for up to 10 hours, including during the evening hours and when direct sunlight is not available.

As a self-sustaining energy source that only needs water and sunlight, the new plant certainly sounds like a boon for the natural world.

"The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project will reduce the nation's reliance on fossil energy supplies, producing enough solar energy in one year equivalent to about one-eighth of the total output of Hoover Dam," developer Solar Reserve announced during the groundbreaking of the project in 2011.

What's more, this isn't even the first plant of this kind to be seen in the United States. The Mojave desert is home to an older heliostat power plant more than 10 times this latest project's size. Called the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, this plant boasts a stunning 300,000 solar mirrors to heat a specially designed "water furnace" (which is less efficient than the molten salt appropach).

Unfortunately, the redirected sunlight causes such a wide sphere of superheated radiation that  the plant sees one streamer every two minutes, according to investigator estimates.

Officials behind the project have refuted that claim, saying that most of the streamers are floating trash or wayward insects, but federal wildlife officials have begun calling these 'eco-friendly' power towers "mega traps" for wildlife.

According to The Associated Press (AP), many biologists call the number of deaths "significant" and suspect that the streamers are caused by a chain of attraction - that is, insects are drawn towards the bright plant's light, which in turn attracts birds looking to feast on crispy bugs.

However, it's important to note that unlike the California and Nevada plants, earlier, smaller versions of these power towers tested in Europe did not regularly see these kinds of incidents. And when the Crescent Dunes plant ran a second test using less mirrors, no more birds burst into flames.

Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society, even told the AP that while the reports are "alarming... it's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology" that's behind the deaths. It may simply be that more birds follow air paths that happen to cross the new solar fields.

He added that like with any new technology, "there needs to be some caution," and hopefully engineers can learn from these early mistakes.

US Fish and Wildlife Service officials are now waiting for a death toll for a full year of operation at the Ivanpah plant. The subsequent report may impact plans for future solar power towers in the United States.

SOURCE






Does the Ethanol Mandate Include Singing Its Praises?

A number of potential Republican presidential candidates descended on the Iowa Ag Summit this past weekend to shore up their bona fides with the state’s agricultural industry. Unfortunately, when it came to the subject of ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), most of the White House hopefuls resorted to pandering to voters rather than speaking truth about failed policy.

The hard-charging environmental lobby rallies around corn-based ethanol as a fuel alternative because ecofascists have great faith that it’s better for the environment (spoiler alert: it’s not). Farmers, particularly those in Iowa, embrace the policy mandating ethanol as a fuel additive because it raises demand for corn and puts more money in their pockets.

The environmental and agricultural lobbies have been strong enough to keep the RFS alive even after a number of scientists and economists have disproven the effectiveness and benefits of ethanol.

Sure, ethanol combustion in automobiles does produce less CO2 than fossil fuel combustion, which gives climate change fanatics warm fuzzies. However, growing all the corn necessary to meet Washington’s arbitrary mandate (and its subsequent effect on food prices), along with the intensive production process of manufacturing ethanol, heavily outweighs any benefits we experience through ethanol use. And that’s not to mention the fuel’s destructiveness for engines, or that CO2 is not a pollutant.

An Associated Press investigation into ethanol production revealed that, in their rush to clear land to plant corn, farmers “wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies.” Wetlands were devastated, and billions of pounds of fertilizers contaminated rivers. Had manufacturers of any other product taken these actions, the Obama White House would be calling for investigations and fines. Instead, the administration plows ahead with current policy.

And as Mark Alexander wrote last year, “More than 90% of our nation’s corn crop went toward feeding people and livestock in the year 2000, with less than 5% of the crop going toward ethanol. In 2013, however, a whopping 40% went toward ethanol. To illustrate this grossly inefficient use of our natural resources, the amount of grain required to fill a 25-gallon automotive fuel tank with ethanol is enough grain to feed one person for an entire year.”

Nevertheless, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad played the role of Captain Obvious when he stated that any candidate who publicly opposes the ethanol mandate would probably not win the Iowa caucus next year. In truth, it’s tough to stand in front of a crowd of potential supporters and tell them you are against their favorite policy. But no one ever said having the courage of your convictions was easy.

Almost all of the major GOP White House contenders failed the conviction test in Iowa.

Rick Perry said, “I don’t think you pull the RFS [Renewable Fuel Standard] out and discriminate against the RFS and leave all these other subsidies.” In other words, subsidies are good because subsidies exist.

Chris Christie and Lindsey Graham voiced full-throated support for the RFS, and Mike Huckabee claimed ethanol was good for national security policy by reducing dependence on foreign imports. Rick Santorum argued ethanol “creates jobs in small-town and rural America, which is where people are hurting.”

Even Scott Walker, who opposed ethanol in 2006, said that while he is opposed to government intervention he will support the ethanol mandate. “Right now we don’t have a free and open marketplace,” he asserted, so why not keep the mandate going? He did add that eventually there will be “no need to have a standard,” but his squishiness was palpable.

Jeb Bush was less objectionable, but also ducked making any substantive statements. “The markets are ultimately going to have to decide this,” he said, though he equivocated by refusing to set a firm deadline for phasing out the RFS.

Only Ted Cruz managed to get it right. “I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks where the answer you’d like me to give is, ‘I’m for the RFS, darn it,’” he said. “But I’ll tell you, people are pretty fed up, I think, with politicians who go around and tell one group one thing, tell another group another thing, and then they go to Washington and they don’t do anything that they said they would do.”

Cruz added, “I don’t think Washington should be picking winners and losers. When it comes to energy, we should have an all-of-the-above approach, but it should be driven by the market.” Exactly right.

The audience applauded Cruz’s candor for coming out against the RFS, but no doubt many also made a mental note to scratch him off their short list for 2016.

Republicans don’t seem to have a problem speaking out against ObamaCare’s mandate that Americans buy health insurance. Why do they then embrace the mandate that Americans buy ethanol?

The answer is simple: Iowa is always an important state for presidential candidates as its caucus kicks off the primaries. But the ethanol debacle illustrates why this privilege should no longer reside in the Hawkeye State. GOP candidates should be standing by free market principles instead of corporate welfare, but thanks to the primary structure they’re forced to pander to Iowa farmers.

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The EPA Thinks You're Stupid

By Alan Caruba

The folks at the Environmental Protection Agency, starting with a long line of its administrators that now includes Gina McCarthy, think you and the Congress of the United States are stupid. They have been telling lies for so long they can’t imagine that their chokehold on the American economy will ever end.

It is, however, coming to an end and the reason is a Republican-controlled Congress responding to the countless businesses and individuals being ravaged by a ruthless bureaucracy driven by an environmental agenda determined to deprive America of the energy sources vital to our lives and the nation’s existence.

This was on display in early March when Gina McCarthy testified to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking for a nearly $500 million increase in its 2016 budget. The total discretionary budget request would have topped out at $8.6 billion and would reward states nearly $4 billion to go along with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

The problem is that the Clean Power Plan is really about no power or far more costly power in those states where the EPA has been shutting down coal-fired plants that not long ago provided fifty percent of all the electricity in the nation.

In February 2014, the Institute for Energy Research reported:

“More than 72 gigawatts (GW) of electrical generating capacity have already, or are now set to retire because of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulations. The regulations causing these closures include the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (colloquially called MATS, or Utility MACT), proposed Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), and the proposed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

To put 72 GW in perspective, that is enough electrical generation capacity to reliably power 44.7 million homes—or every home in every state west of the Mississippi River, excluding Texas. In other words, EPA is shutting down enough generating capacity to power every home in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Plants closed or soon to be

Over 94 percent these retirements will come from generating units at coal-fired power plants, shuttering over one-fifth of the U.S.’s coal-fired generating capacity. While some of the effected units will be converted to use new fuels, American families and businesses will pay the price with higher utility bills and less reliability for their electricity.”

What nation would knowingly reduce its capacity to produce the electricity that everyone depends upon?

Answer: The United States of America.

Why? Because the EPA has been telling us that coal-fired plants produce carbon dioxide (CO2) and it is causing ours and the world’s temperature to increase to a point that threatens our lives. They have been claiming that everything from blizzards to droughts, hurricanes to forest fires, are the result of the CO2 that coal-fired plants produce.

That is a huge, stupendous lie.

In the Senate Committee meeting, McCarthy said, “Climate change is real. It is happening. It is a threat. Humans are causing the majority of that threat...the impacts are being felt. Climate change is not a religion. It is not a belief system. It’s a scientific fact. And our challenge is to move forward with the actions we need to protect future generations.”

Climate change is real. It’s been real for 4.5 billion years and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that humans do, least of all heating, cooling and lighting their homes, running their businesses, and everything else that requires electricity.

McCarthy said that the EPA’s overall goal was to save the planet from rising sea levels, massive storms, and other climate events that impact our lives. No, that’s not why the EPA was created in 1970. Its job was to clean the water and the air. It has done a relatively good job, but its mandate had nothing to do with the climate, nor does the provision of energy have any impact on the climate.

The reverse is true. The climate has a lot of impact on us.

Regarding the “science” McCarthy referred to, according to a 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there were record low tornadoes, record low hurricanes, record gain in Arctic and Antarctic ice, no change in the rate of sea levels, and there had been NO WARMING at that point for 17—now 19—years.

When Sen. Jeff Sessions asked McCarthy a number of questions about droughts and hurricanes, she either dodged providing a specific answer or claimed, as with hurricanes, that “I cannot answer that question. It’s a very complicated issue.”

Asked about the computer models on which the EPA makes its regulatory decisions, McCarthy replied, “I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to.” Sen. Sessions said that it was incredible that the Administrator of the EPA “doesn’t know whether their predictions have been right or wrong.”

As for any “science” the EPA may be using, much of it is SECRET.

H. Sterling Burnett, the managing editor of the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News, reported on The Secret Science Reform Act (HR 4012) introduced by the House Science Committee late last year. The bill would “prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing, finalizing, or disseminating regulations or assessments based on science that is not transparent or reproducible.”

The House passed the Act on November 20, 2014 and it has been received in the Senate, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. If it passes the Senate, that will be a giant leap forward in gaining oversight and control of the EPA.

Until then, the EPA’s administrator and staff will continue to work their mischief in the belief that both Congress and the rest of us are stupid. We’re not.

SOURCE

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