Warmists still longing for Zion

Their Zion is an actual increase in global temperature. "2015 May Bring Long-Awaited Step-Jump In Global Temperatures", says paid propagandist Joe Romm.  But the figures he is getting his kicks from are the much-massaged surface records. Strange that he  doesn't mention the much more accurate satellite data which shows that this year and last are nowhere near record temperatures.



Historically, the global temperature trend-line is more like a staircase than a ramp. We now appear to be headed for a step-jump in global temperatures — one that scientists have been expecting.
NASA reported this week that this was the hottest five-month start (January to May) of any year on record.

The recent study, “Near-term acceleration in the rate of temperature change,” explains why a speed up in the rate of global warming is imminent — with Arctic warming rising up to 1°F per decade by the 2020s.

More than 90 percent of global heating goes into the oceans — and ocean warming down to 2000 meters (1.24 miles) has accelerated this century.

Climatologist Kevin Trenberth has explained that “a global temperature increase occurs in the latter stages of an El Niño event, as heat comes out of the ocean and warms the atmosphere.”

This week, NOAA released its monthly El Niño Southern Oscillation [ENSO] report, which concludes, “There is a greater than 90% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere fall 2015, and around an 85% chance it will last through the 2015-16 winter.”

So — barring a massive volcanic eruption in the next few months — 2015 is all but certain to become the hottest year on record by far. And if the growing El Niño does extend into next year, than 2016 will be another blistering year.

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Little Sir Echo -- pathetic

The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday launched a crusade against climate change – two days before the Pope.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby issued a green declaration signed by British faith leaders, which asserted that climate change has hurt the poor of the world.

The Anglican statement called on people of all faiths to ‘recognise the urgency of the tasks involved in making the transition to the low carbon economy’ and demanded that national leaders make laws to ‘limit the global rise in average temperatures to a maximum of two degrees celsius’.

Pope Francis’s teaching document is due to be officially released tomorrow, but it has already been widely discussed.

The Papal encyclical is understood to tell Roman Catholics that climate change is damaging the earth and hurting the poor.

It will say harm is being done to the poorest countries ‘because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods God has placed on her’.

According to a leak of the 192-page document, the Pontiff will say that climate change is largely a result of human activity.

He will also equate climate change scepticism with sin. A draft of the document, acquired by the Italian magazine L’Espresso, condemned ‘attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers’, and quoted a prominent theologian saying ‘a crime against nature is a crime against ourselves and a sin against God’.

The Anglican intervention, the timing of which may raise eyebrows in the Vatican, spoke to all faiths, and was also signed by Muslim, Sikh, Jewish and Roman Catholic leaders in Britain.

It said: ‘As representatives of the vast numbers of people of faith across the globe we urge our government to use its influence.’

The Anglicans’ Lambeth Declaration echoed an original declaration organised by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, which the Church of England hoped would persuade leaders at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. The Copenhagen meeting proved a failure.

Both the Vatican and the CofE are trying to put pressure on ahead of the UN climate change summit in Paris in December.

But the assumption in both the Vatican and Lambeth Palace that man-made climate change is harming the world and the poor in particular, and that radical efforts to reduce carbon emissions are necessary, is likely to irritate a number of prominent Catholics and Anglicans.

Some Christians will also resent the implication that those unconvinced about man-made climate change are sinners.

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Austin’s Plastic Bag Ban Worse for Environment Than Bags It Outlaws

In an effort to protect the environment, Austin,Texas passed an ordinance banning single-use plastic bags in 2013.

However, a recent review concludes that Austin’s bag ban has backfired, creating more negative effects on the environment than the plastic bags it outlawed.

“Beginning March 1, 2013, no person may provide single-use carryout bags at any City facility, City-sponsored event, or any event held on City property,” the ordinance reads. “Beginning March 1, 2013, a business establishment within the City limits may not provide single-use carryout bags to its customers or to any person.”

Two years after the bag ban was implemented, the city asked the Austin Resource Recovery group to investigate its effectiveness. Their June 10 report, written by Aaron Waters, states that while the ban was successful in lowering the amount of single-use plastic bags made from high-density polyethylene in city landfills, it was actually worse for the environment overall.

“The amount of single use plastic bags has been reduced, both in count and by weight,” Waters states. “However, in their place, the larger 4 mil [4/1,000ths of an inch] bags have replaced them as the go to standard when the reusable bag is left at home. This reusable plastic bag, along with the paper bag, has a very high carbon footprint compared to the single use bag.”

The 4 mil reusable bags are often made from non-recycled low-density polyethylene and require more resources to manufacture than the single-use bags, Waters explained. Many of the heavier gauge 4 mil bags are also shipped from overseas, which increases their carbon footprint compared to the single-use bags.

Waters also reported that the ordinance increases costs for both consumers and retailers. Consumers are spending more money purchasing reusable bags and some businesses are losing customers due to the ordinance.

For example, a Here Everything’s Better (HEB) grocery store within Austin city limits must adhere to the ordinance. However, it is surrounded by neighboring towns that have no such restrictions.

“The close proximity of the other grocery stores has proven problematic for the HEB in this area of Austin, as they have reported that upon the implementation of the Single Use Bag Ordinance, this store lost between $60,000 to $70,000 per week in revenue as a result of customers choosing to shop at a store which would provide single use bags,” Waters reports.

Waters recommended that the city eliminate the 4 mil reusable bags, educate consumers on recycling, and encourage surrounding areas to ban plastic bags as well.

There has been some backlash within Texas in the nine jurisdictions that currently have some type of bag ban.The Texas Retailers Association initially sued Austin over its bag ordinance, but later dropped the case. However, earlier this month the Dallas City Council voted to repeal its plastic bag ordinance after a group of bag manufactures filed a similar lawsuit.

Then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott also argued that state law prohibits local governments from enacting such ordinances, which have been passed in nearly 200 cities and towns in 17 states. A ban on plastic bags was first imposed at the state level in California.

“Texas is being Californianized and you may not even be noticing it,” now Governor Greg Abbott said earlier this year. “It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree-cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model.”

A June 2014 report by the Reason Foundation also found that “for the main environmental effects of concern—i.e. non-renewable energy consumption, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—HDPE [ high-density polyethylene] plastic bags are superior to the alternative options currently available….

“Advocates of restrictions on plastic bags frequently assert that their preferred option is for people to use reusable bags. When the impact of washing such bags is taken into account, the environmental effect of such bags is likely worse than HDPE plastic bags—especially in places such as California where fresh water is relatively scarce.”

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Jeb Bush: Pope Francis should steer clear of climate issue

In his first official day on the presidential campaign trail on Tuesday, Republican Jeb Bush, a Catholic, had sharp words on Pope Francis’ decision to leap into the climate change debate, saying the pontiff should steer clear of political issues.

Bush, at a town hall event in New Hampshire a day after formally announcing his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election, said he was eager to read an encyclical the Vatican is set to release Thursday on climate change, but will take it with a grain of salt, even as he called Francis an extraordinary leader.

"I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home,” Bush said. “But I don’t get my economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope."

Bush, a former Florida governor who converted to Catholicism 25 years ago, said religion "ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm."

In an appearance in New Hampshire last month, Bush said it was arrogant for people to insist that science on climate change is clear.

In Derry on Tuesday, Bush said he did not think the science on climate change was "complete."

More than 70 percent of U.S. Catholics believe the planet is getting warmer, though only 47 percent attribute that warming to human causes, according to the Pew Research Center. The views of Catholics on the issue are similar to those of Americans overall.

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UK: European Court bars discounts on Greenie products

The European Court of Justice has today handed down a bizarre ruling to the British government, demanding that despite Europe’s constant hectoring over carbon emissions, the UK may not seek to reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) on energy-saving materials to increase its uptake amongst consumers.

The ruling, which has already been criticised by Conservative Party MEPs, states that Britain would breach the EU’s VAT Directive by applying a reduction in the rate of VAT applied to energy-saving materials for housing.

The EU has decided that the policy, introduced by the coalition government last year, can only apply to social, or government housing. Today’s ruling says:

    “…the Court states that, while it is true, as asserted by the UK, that a policy of housing improvement may produce social effects, the extension of the scope of the reduced rate of VAT to all residential property cannot be described as essentially social. By providing for the application of a reduced rate of VAT to supplies of energy-saving materials and installation of such materials, irrespective of the housing concerned and with no differentiation among people living in that housing, the UK measures cannot be regarded as having been adopted for reasons of exclusively social interest or even for reasons of principally social interest.”

The policy of a 5 percent reduction in VAT applied to households’ heating controls, water turbines, wind turbines, insulation, heat pumps, and boilers.

The new ruling flies in the face of the government’s other, both self-imposed and EU-imposed obligations to attempt to reduce overall carbon emissions.

The 5 percent VAT reduction formed part of the last government’s “Green Deal” initiative. Today’s ruling will increase the cost of the materials and installation, with experts claiming that it threatens “to make the Green Deal unviable in many cases.”

Conservative MEP Ashley Fox said: “When you consider the importance these days of promoting energy-saving, this judgment is most unfortunate and thoroughly unwelcome. It defies common sense.

“People will be aghast when they see the EU on the one hand hectoring member states about carbon reduction while on the other handing down judgments like this.”

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Coal seam gas: How left-wing groups are closing Australia to business

The latest blow to the economic wellbeing of the nation and future generations is the proposal by some members of the NSW National Party to buckle before Green extremists and oppose coal seam gas mining in the Northern Rivers region as outlined before the State election.

Without any exaggeration, the growth of CSG as an energy source has been an international game changer, reducing the dependence of Western nations on Arab and Russian energy supplies and subservience to the oligarchs who run the petroleum cartel.

Locking up our own gas reserves and artificially forcing a reliance on imports is a no-brainer, but then no-one ever accused the Green lobby of being either smart or putting the interests of the nation before its international agenda to end fossil fuel consumption.

The Nationals, having lost their formerly safe Northern Rivers seat of Ballina to the Greens at the March election have been spooked but a blanket ban on CSG in any area hits at investment security across the nation as surely as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrew’s decision to tear up the contracts for Melbourne’s $6.8 billion East West Link.

The decision by NSW Nationals leader and deputy Premier Troy Grant may have something to do with the shrill anti-CSG campaign mounted on the Leftist anti-social media networks but the Nats have traditionally shown more backbone.

NSW Minerals Council CEO, Stephen Galilee, said expressed alarm at the move yesterday.

“Calls for an end to CSG drilling in the Northern Rivers region are concerning,” he said, “because the chief proponents are the anti-mining Greens who have used fear and misinformation to whip up community uncertainty about CSG in order to generate opposition to mining more generally. The Greens agenda to end the NSW resources industry would result in tens of thousands of job losses, devastate regional communities, and put NSW into recession.

“With the right policy settings, the resources sector can continue to underpin the strength of the NSW economy for many decades to come. The International Energy Agency predicts that global electricity demand could double by 2035 and that coal is likely to fuel more of that supply than either oil or gas for the foreseeable future. This is because coal is superabundant, easy and safe to move, and it is cheap compared to other energy options.”

The activists have as usual relied heavily on hysteria generated by the anti-fracking lobby in the US and falsehoods peddled in emotional pseudo-docos like the recently produced Frackman, which was hyped by the taxpayer-funded ABC and funded with the assistance of the Australian taxpayer.

Naturally, it made no mention of the fact that fracking has been practised widely in the US and Canada since 1947 and in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland without incident since the late 1960s.

Just last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency released a draft assessment of a study on fracking which concluded that “hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources”.

Thomas A. Burke, the EPA’s science advisor and deputy assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and Development, acknowledging that potential water vulnerabilities exist said the study was intended to help identify those vulnerabilities so the nation could take measures to reduce risks and better protect its water.

The evidence gathered by five-year, multi-million dollar study underscored the reality that in the US, fracking is being conducted safely under the environmental stewardship of state regulators and industry best practices.

The EPA, following a congressional request, studied all aspects of the use of water in fracking, from the acquisition of the water, chemical mixing at the well, injection of fracturing fluids, the collection of fracturing wastewater, and wastewater treatment and disposal.

There is no reason why Australian environmental regulators and CSG operators could not follow the same practises and permit ordinary Australians to enjoy the economic benefits of a thriving CSG industry.

The Australian public has been lured down a very dangerous path the koala-suited extremists.

Renewable energy is not the answer for this nation.

Solar, windpower, even hydro, are inherently unreliable. There are cloudy days, there are windless days and there are droughts. Those are the facts the Greens will not face.

We have an abundance of coal, a cheap source of energy, and we have gas. The Greens are opposed to the use of both forms of fuel – and, of course, they hate uranium, which is probably the best long-term fuel available and again, a mineral which is found here in copious quantities.

Thanks to the Greens and Labor, taxpayers are still being slugged billions to keep the renewable energy sector afloat through generous subsidies, most of which are sent to offshore manufacturers.

On a cost-basis, the renewable energy alternatives just don’t stack up.

The Nationals haven’t helped by caving in to the apocalyptic Greens on CSG.

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