Lessons From Patricia

By Joe Bastardi

Failing to bring about the kind of devastation a 200 MPH hurricane does because (a) it did not have 200 MPH winds when it reached the coast and (b) it hit a sparsely populated area, Hurricane Patricia immediately became an example of how hurricanes have become a ping-pong ball between two different climate agendas, as I wrote about a few days ago. As Patricia grew to scary dimensions, the screams grew from what seems to be a cadre of climatic ambulance chasers who claim this, like Irene or Haiyan, is evidence of so-called climate change. (Again, no one denies that the climate changes, it’s just the cause that is up for debate.) Interestingly enough, Irene fell apart coming up the East Coast, something that may not happen in coming years. And in the late 1800s, a similar storm to Haiyan, instead of weakening, went into Haiphong and killed over 250,000 people.

My point is that every storm now is being blamed on climate change, but no one is accountable for their ideas when one falls apart.

This list should put some of the “it’s worse than ever” cries to rest. Example: A flood on the Yellow River in China killed 900,000 people. What is remarkable is, when you look at the top 16 at the end of the file, in spite of better detection methods and more people living in harm’s way, it seems like the spread is fairly even.

Amazingly, the very day I wrote the hurricane ping-pong ball article, we get the media playing right into the missive with agenda-driven statements on the storm.

Early Friday, I informed people through Twitter that Patricia would be off her peak when she hit: “Patricia should weaken a bit before landfall as monster storms need perfect conditions and drier air may get entrained. Still a beast tho.”

The point is the weakening was being seen, and I assume by more people than me. Monster storms like this need perfect conditions to be perfect. I use the analogy of the 9.1 second 100-yard dash sprinter. Just a tweaked hamstring and he is nothing out of the ordinary anymore. The stronger the system, the more perfect the conditions have to be. So if you “tweak” the perfect hurricane with less than perfect conditions, it will weaken. Patricia “filled” 30-50 millibars (rapid pressure rise) as it approached the coast in the last six hours — the exact opposite of what happened when it ramped up. The power and impact scale I have takes into account pressure rises and falls. A storm filling (intensifying) more than 2 mb/hour gets a category subtracted (added) to it. More than 4 mb/hr it’s two categories.

This is not my original idea. I learned this method from two National Hurricane Center forecasters in the 1980s, Gil Clark and Bob Case. The physical reason likely lies with the fact that in a rapidly weakening system the storm’s ability to bring strongest winds to the surface is impeded, since the very reason it is weakening means there are processes occurring to disrupt it! Naturally, the opposite is true. But my power impact scale said this was no more than a Category 3. It rivaled Lili in the Gulf as it approached Louisiana in 2002, falling from a 4 to a 1 in just 12 hours. In that case it was because of dry air and cool water left from Isadore a week or so earlier, but the same thing happens. With Patricia, there is a chance they will find an area that sustained Cat. 5 winds, but it would be a very tiny area. In the large scale, the rapid weakening means the power and impact scale I have, which is meant to give people an idea of the total power of the storm, says this was a major storm but not as extreme as the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Camille, 1969, Janet in 1955 and several other storms in the  Atlantic basin!

Conversely, storms like Celia in 1971 at Corpus Christi, which went from a 1 to a 4 in 24 hours, or Humberto in 2007 can do the opposite.

But here is my argument as to why a hurricane like Patricia does not support the argument that storms are stronger. We just observed a beast over the water, the strongest ever observed in the Western Hemisphere, right? Well, a lot of Cat. 3s have hit the coast that did not have reconnaissance, so how do we know if they were not that strong over the water? We don’t. The only true metric is landall intensity, which we have known through the years because there have been observations on land all that time. So in reality, though powerful, Patricia was just another strong hurricane that hit the Mexican coast. If this were the 1950s, you may not have even known. Speaking of the 1950s, did you know the only Atlantic basin recon disaster occurred with Janet in 1955, which made landfall as a 914 mb hurricane? The recon went down in the storm, likely because the extremely low pressure of the storm caused its altimeter to malfunction. We had recons, but they were very infrequent, not constant like we see now. Patricia likely did not beat Janet at landfall (it hit from the Caribbean) as the pressure had already risen to 910 mb two hours before landfall and it was filling rapidly. It did not beat the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 with a verified land pressure of 892 mb.

Now think about that. Patricia was south of Mexico. The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 went through the Florida Keys!

Storms like 1935, Janet, Celia, etc., are a warning that the rapid weakening of Patricia is not something that occurs with every storm. Large, powerful storms such as Katrina and Rita will weaken as much as a day away because their circulations are such that they pull in drier air from off land. Both weakened to Cat. 3s from Cat. 5s. But storms like Camille (1969) and Charley (2004), both of which by the way occurred in El Nino years, were at their peaks when they hit. The smaller, more intense storms approaching our coasts, which don’t have mountains right on top of the beach, do not act the same way as what we saw with Patricia. Moral of the story: Each one is unique to the circumstance it’s in. And every example of “worst ever” can be countered with an example of the opposite.

One forecast is already verifying though: With the Atlantic coming to life in the coming years, look for that missive to grow even more distorted. That’s a forecast you can bet on!

SOURCE





Study shows climate change made Calif. drought LESS likely to occur

Written by Thomas Richard

A new peer-reviewed study refutes Gov. Jerry Brown's assertion that global warming is behind California's drought, indicating that climate change neither makes droughts more likely to occur nor exacerbates them. saving water

The study, published this week in the Journal of Climate, shows that the "net effect of climate change" has made California's agriculture drought "less likely" to happen and that the "current severe impacts of drought on California’s agriculture" has not been exacerbated by long-term climate changes. This is another stinging indictment that Gov. Brown's belief that global warming is causing California's drought is bordering on wish fulfillment.

As first reported here, two earlier studies also show that natural variability, and not global warming, are behind California's four-year-long drought. An untimely combination of natural events is occurring, but unfortunately for Brown, they have nothing to do with global warming.

This hasn't stopped Gov. Brown from blaming the drought, and wildfires, on climate change and making it one of his key talking points during press events and educational summits. More puzzling, Brown's drought statements have gotten more forceful and extreme, even as the science is telling a far different story. Even the NY Times jumped on the bandwagon,quoting one climate scientist who said global warming has made the drought even worse, but admitting that without climate change, it would be a "fairly bad drought no matter what."

This most recent study looked at how global radiative forcing (the difference between how much sunlight is absorbed by the Earth and radiated back to space.) influences long-term climate change in California, specifically on its drought. Using observations and computer models, the simulations show that increased "radiative forcing since the late 19th Century induces both increased annual precipitation and increased surface temperature over California." This, they write, is consistent with observed long-term changes (what is actually measured) and previous computer model studies (what is expected to happen).

What the authors found was "no material difference in the frequency of droughts" defined using various, multiple indicators of "precipitation and near-surface (10 cm) soil moisture." That's because shallow soil moisture is more responsive to "increased evaporation driven by warming," which makes up for the "increase in the precipitation." Conversely, when using deep soil (~1 meter), "droughts become less frequent" because deep soil moisture is more responsive to "increased precipitation."

Put simply, the study shows how different land surfaces and depths respond to climate changes, which is most pertinent for "near-surface moisture exchange and for root zone moisture availability." Moisture availability for roots is the most important as the deep layer determines "moisture availability for plants, trees, and many crops." In the end, it shows that "climate change has made agricultural drought less likely, and that the current severe impacts of drought on California’s agriculture has not been substantially caused by long-term climate changes."

This should come as good news to Gov. Brown, who fundamentally believes that climate change is causing the severe drought in his state, even though historical records indicate that long-running droughts have occurred in California for millennia. The last multi-year drought happened in 1976, except climatologists blamed that drought, and the subsequent wildfires, on global cooling, not global warming.

The current drought, though, has been made worse by one thing that nature has little control over: man-made interference in the state's poorly regulated water system that favors agriculture over availability. Another factor is the much-hyped delta smelt, a tiny fish that environmentalists claimed was endangered and successfully had it listed on the Endangered Species Act in 1993. Since that time, many scientists have concluded that listing the delta smelt was premature and not based on factual evidence.

According to Examiner.com's Lorraine Yapps Cohen, "Legislation that diverted water into San Francisco Bay was intended to protect the delta smelt mini fish from water pumps." Because environmentalists were able to get the smelt listed as an endangered species, millions of gallons of agricultural water are dumped into the ocean, in a misguided attempt to save a fish at the expense of people's livelihoods.

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Tesla’s electric car ‘success,’ a great example of how government regulations manipulate markets

The American consumer is resistant to marketing aimed at selling them electric and hybrid vehicles. For the first quarter of 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Chevrolet sold 1874 Volts — its electric car introduced in 2010 with “high expectations.” That number might not sound so bad, until you read on to discover that it is equivalent to the number of Silverado pick-up trucks sold in one day.

In another report, WSJ states: “Through June, the market share in the U.S. for hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius and C-Max and for electric vehicles such as the Leaf accounted for 2.8 percent of industry sales. That is down from 3.6 percent through the same period in 2014. Volumes of those vehicles fell 22 percent while overall industry volumes rose, according to researcher Edmunds.com.”

“Recent sales data show that consumers don’t want electric cars,” proclaims Investor’s Business Daily. “And these pitiful electric-car sales,” it adds, “mind you, come despite the very generous $7,500 federal tax credit, along with various state incentives — Illinois offers rebates up to $4,000.”

Manufacturers are slashing prices, offering low-priced leases, and 0 percent financing. Despite the deals, dealers view selling the existing electric vehicle inventory as a “challenge.” But selling a used electric car, like Nissan’s Leaf, is even harder. WSJ reports: “used Leafs aren’t attracting much demand.” Though Nissan offers leaseholders $4,000 in incentives to buy the used model they are driving, drivers are not snapping up the opportunity. When the leases expire there is little market for the cars and dealers are returning them to the manufacturer.

While demand for electric vehicles has dropped, contrary to logic, investment in them hasn’t. Earlier this year, USA Today said: “Automakers have already invested billions to offer a wide spectrum of vehicle choices and improve fuel efficiency with turbocharged engines, batteries and electric motors, multi-gear transmissions, more aerodynamic designs and lighter materials. Companies have also spent heavily to market eco-friendly vehicles and have no plans to stop developing them.”

“Why,” you might ask, “don’t manufacturers focus on building the cars consumers want?” The answer: government regulations in the form of the CAFE Standard. The word CAFE, here, means Corporate Average Fuel Economy and is the measure manufacturers must meet to sell cars in the U.S.

First enacted by Congress in 1975, the idea was to reduce energy use, thus preventing an over-dependence on foreign oil and improving national security. In 2009, under the Obama administration, the program morphed to include a higher focus on tailpipe emissions with a two stage implementation process. Phase One demands a 23 percent improvement in pollution standards and a CAFE target of 34.1 miles per gallon (MPG) by model-year 2016. Phase two calls for a further increase of roughly 35 percent in pollution standards, equivalent to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

While the exact calculations are complicated, these standards are not meant to be met by each vehicle, but by the entire fleet produced by each manufacturer. So a company that makes small, fuel-efficient cars, such has Honda, easily meets the requirements. While a company like Chrysler, known for its Ram trucks and American muscle cars, faces an uphill climb. In fact, it is the CAFE Standards that made the Chrysler/Fiat marriage attractive, as the Fiat fleet includes a 40-MPG car. It is also what makes the Volt a good option for Chevy.

Manufacturers who don’t comply with the regulations face fines — or they can buy credits. Either way the costs ultimately get passed on to the consumer who dares to purchase a vehicle based on his or her personal preference rather than the fuel-efficient vehicles the government wants automakers to produce.

These government regulations manipulate the markets and make winners and losers that would not be the case if we had a true free market.

Interesting stories emerge.

One is Ferrari, which by the nature of the car, can’t meet the U.S. government regulations. As one report on the topic declared: “Ferraris are beautiful. They are fast. They are nimble. And they are thirsty.” The hybrid LaFerrari gets 14 MPG.

Most readers are not likely to buy one of the 499 LaFerrari cars built, but its story is illustrative of the market manipulation.

Since 1969 Ferrari has been part of the Fiat family, but that will soon change as Ferrari is being spun off to make it an independent automaker. While the sale is reportedly being done “to finance expansion plans,” it will remove the gas-guzzler from the Fiat Chrysler fleet — making meeting CAFE easier. Yet, earlier this year, CEO Sergio Marchionne said: “the U.S. auto industry should ask the U.S. government to push back fuel economy targets.”

While an independent Ferrari will have challenges meeting CAFE without Fiat to help create an acceptable average, another single focused manufacturer meets the requirements handily — so well, in fact, it has credits to sell. I am talking about Tesla, the car company that the Environmental Protection Agency smiles upon because it produces only electric cars.

Most U.S. car companies — like Fiat Chrysler — want the federal fuel economy mandates to be watered down. Tesla wants the targets to be tougher.

Companies — like Ferrari — that don’t meet the fleet standards can purchase compliance credits. CNN Money reported: “Since Tesla sells nothing but electric cars, it is rolling in the credits and is one of the few sellers.” The Los Angeles Times (LAT) says: “Since 2008, the company has earned more than $534 million from the sale of environmental credits.” It adds: “Tesla has created a brisk market in credits, selling to automakers that either don’t produce electric cars or have made a strategic decision to buy credits and cap their own sales of such vehicles.”

But it is not just Ferrari that will have trouble meeting the 2025 standard. According to LAT, Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers — which represents companies like General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, and others — said: “While consumers have more choices than ever in energy-efficient automobiles, if they don’t buy them in large volumes, we fall short.”

With the American car-buying public resistant to doing what the government wants them to do, making a car that few can afford and that many of those who can don’t like (On October 20 Consumer Reports pulled its “recommendation” of the Tesla Model S after owners complained about a “range of issues”), Tesla is receiving a huge windfall from its competitors while the standards drive up costs for consumers.

Addressing the 54.5-MPG for the 2025 model year, Marchionne said: “There is not a single carmaker that cannot make the 54 number. The question is, at what price?”

SOURCE





HEAVEN AND HELL: The Pope condemns the poor to eternal poverty

The Encylical Letter of Pope Francis Laudato Si "care for our common home" was influenced by atheists, communists and green activists, claims Professor Ian Plimer, a world-renowned climate critic.

In "Heaven and Hell" Professor Plimer, a successful geologist and long-time critic of climate alarmists, takes Pope Francis to task, looking purely at the science rather than the theology.  Plimer shows the failure of the current Pope in his understanding of the real issues causing poverty, especially in Third World countries.

Plimer's is a trusted voice in the heated climate debate and, as in his previous books, his new publication again shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact.

"The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology," says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority.

 Professor Plimer tells Principia Scientific International that he "hops into Naomi Klein in this book." (Klein is a trumpeter for the alarmist movement and recently admitted that man-made climate change is not about the science). The book is on general release from October 23, 2015.

Plimer has previously warned that:

    "The Climate Change Authority and the Greens want more renewables because apparently, human emissions of CO2 drive global warming. I am a patient chap, was fabulously good looking in the long ago and have a dog that’s never bitten me but please, dear readers, can someone show me from basic science and mathematics that the human emissions (3% total) of plant food (CO2) drive climate change yet the 97% of natural emissions of CO2 do not.

This has never been done and I’m still waiting for the proof. It’s easy to show that human emissions of CO2 don’t drive climate change and there are many scientific arguments to show that the total atmospheric CO2 does not drive climate change"

SOURCE





Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?

Written by Dr Patrick Moore

As I have stated publicly on many occasions, there is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age. Patrick Moore If there were such a proof through testing and replication it would have been written down for all to see.

The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”.

But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth and that without its presence in the global atmosphere at a sufficient concentration this would be a dead planet. Yet today our children and our publics are taught that CO2 is a toxic pollutant that will destroy life and bring civilization to its knees. Tonight I hope to turn this dangerous human-caused propaganda on its head. Tonight I will demonstrate that human emissions of CO2 have already saved life on our planet from a very untimely end. That in the absence of our emitting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came in the first place, most or perhaps all life on Earth would begin to die less than two million years from today.

But first a bit of background.

I was born and raised in the tiny floating village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rainforest by the Pacific. There was no road to my village so for eight years myself and a few other children were taken by boat each day to a one-room schoolhouse in the nearby fishing village. I didn’t realize how lucky I was playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rainforest, until I was sent off to boarding school in Vancouver where I excelled in science. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia, gravitating to the life sciences – biology, biochemistry, genetics, and forestry – the environment and the industry my family has been in for more than 100 years. Then, before the word was known to the general public, I discovered the science of ecology, the science of how all living things are inter-related, and how we are related to them.At the height of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the threat of all-out nuclear war and the newly emerging consciousness of the environment I was transformed into a radical environmental activist. While doing my PhD in ecology in 1971 I joined a group of activists who had begun to meet in the basement of the Unitarian Church, to plan a protest voyage against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska.

We proved that a somewhat rag-tag looking group of activists could sail an old fishing boat across the north Pacific ocean and help change the course of history. We created a focal point for the media to report on public opposition to the tests.When that H-bomb exploded in November 1971, it was the last hydrogen bomb the United States ever detonated. Even though there were four more tests planned in the series, President Nixon canceled them due to the public opposition we had helped to create. That was the birth of Greenpeace.

Flushed with victory, on our way home from Alaska we were made brothers of the Namgis Nation in their Big House at Alert Bay near my northern Vancouver Island home. For Greenpeace this began the tradition of the Warriors of the Rainbow, after a Cree Indian legend that predicted the coming together of all races and creeds to save the Earth from destruction. We named our ship the Rainbow Warrior and I spent the next fifteen years in the top committee of Greenpeace, on the front lines of the environmental movement as we evolved from that church basement into the world’s largest environmental activist organization.

Next we took on French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They proved a bit more difficult than the US nuclear tests. It took years to eventually drive these tests underground at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. In 1985, under direct orders from President Mitterrand, French commandos bombed and sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing our photographer. Those protests continued until long after I left Greenpeace. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that nuclear testing finally ended in the South Pacific, and it most other parts of the world as well.

Going back to 1975, Greenpeace set out to save the whales from extinction at the hands of huge factory whaling fleets.  We confronted the Soviet factory whaling fleet in the North Pacific, putting ourselves in front of their harpoons in our little rubber boats to protect the fleeing whales. This was broadcast on television news around the world, bringing the Save the Whales movement into everyone’s living rooms for the first time. After four years of voyages, in 1979 factory whaling was finally banned in the North Pacific, and by 1981 in all the world’s oceans.In 1978 I sat on a baby seal off the East Coast of Canada to protect it from the hunter’s club. I was arrested and hauled off to jail, the seal was clubbed and skinned, but a photo of me being arrested while sitting on the baby seal appeared in more than 3000 newspapers around the world the next morning. We won the hearts and minds of millions of people who saw the baby seal slaughter as outdated, cruel, and unnecessary.

Why then did I leave Greenpeace after 15 years in the leadership? When Greenpeace began we had a strong humanitarian orientation, to save civilization from destruction by all-out nuclear war. Over the years the “peace” in Greenpeace was gradually lost and my organization, along with much of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that humans are the enemies of the earth. I believe in a humanitarian environmentalism because we are part of nature, not separate from it. The first principle of ecology is that we are all part of the same ecosystem, as Barbara Ward put it, “One human family on spaceship Earth”, and to preach otherwise teaches that the world would be better off without us. As we shall see later in the presentation there is very good reason to see humans as essential to the survival of life on this planet.

In the mid 1980s I found myself the only director of Greenpeace International with a formal education in science. My fellow directors proposed a campaign to “ban chlorine worldwide”, naming it “The Devil’s Element”. I pointed out that chlorine is one of the elements in the Periodic Table, one of the building blocks of the Universe and the 11th most common element in the Earth’s crust. I argued the fact that chlorine is the most important element for public health and medicine. Adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health and the majority of our synthetic medicines are based on chlorine chemistry. This fell on deaf ears, and for me this was the final straw. I had to leave.

When I left Greenpeace I vowed to develop an environmental policy that was based on science and logic rather than sensationalism, misinformation, anti-humanism and fear. In a classic example, a recent protest led by Greenpeace in the Philippines used the skull and crossbones to associate Golden Rice with death, when in fact Golden Rice has the potential to help save 2 million children from death due to vitamin A deficiency every year.

The Keeling curve of CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere since 1959 is the supposed smoking gun of catastrophic climate change. We presume CO2 was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before human activity could have caused a significant impact. I accept that most of the rise from 280 to 400 ppm is caused by human CO2 emissions with the possibility that some of it is due to outgassing from warming of the oceans.

NASA tells us that “Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature” in child-like denial of the many other factors involved in climate change. This is reminiscent of NASA’s contention that there might be life on Mars. Decades after it was demonstrated that there was no life on Mars, NASA continues to use it as a hook to raise public funding for more expeditions to the Red Planet. The promulgation of fear of Climate Change now serves the same purpose. As Bob Dylan prophetically pointed out, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”, even in one of the most admired science organizations in the world.

More HERE





Australia: Malcolm Turnbull repels anti-mines push with coal hard facts

Prime Minister Turnbull has repudiated calls for a moratorium on new coal mines, in a fundamental break with environmental activists. The Prime Minister drew ­industry acclaim but sparked fury from green groups

The International Energy Agency also countered predictions of an end to the coal trade, declaring yesterday that other ­energy sources had little chance of beating the cost of coal-fired power stations in the rising economies of Asia. With global ­demand for coal rising 2.1 per cent a year for the next five years, the Turnbull government sees the ­nation’s $40 billion in annual coal exports as vital to the economy, despite a price slump that has hit the federal budget.

The coal trade has seen a ­doubling of capacity at Port ­Waratah in Newcastle, NSW, in the time that coal services worker Shaun Sears has made his living from the exports. “The port’s ­capacity has gone from 70 million tonnes to 145 million in the 12 years I’ve been here,” the 52-year-old said yesterday.

The Prime Minister yesterday issued a swift response to an open letter from 61 prominent Australians, including Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, rugby union ­player David Pocock, former ­Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser and ABC radio host Adam Spencer, in which they called for a global climate change agreement to stop new coal mines.

Mr Turnbull embraced the prospect of cheaper renewable ­energy from solar and wind power but debunked the idea of a rapid shift away from fossil fuels and warned against driving the world’s poor into “energy poverty” by clamping down on coal.

“If Australia were to stop all of its coal exports it would … not reduce global emissions one iota,” Mr Turnbull said when asked about the call. “In fact, arguably it would increase them because our coal, by and large, is cleaner than the coal in many other countries. So with great respect to the motivations and the big hearts and the idealism of the people that advocate that, that is actually not a sensible policy, either from an economic point of view, a jobs point of view or, frankly, from a global warming or global emissions point of view.”

Government ministers and backbenchers saw the remarks as a signal of Mr Turnbull’s approach to climate change policy after the bitter Coalition divisions of the past, with a pragmatic new message that rejects the extreme positions taken by some green groups or those who reject the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Trade Minister Andrew Robb stepped up the government’s message, declaring that Australia had a “moral obligation” to sell its coal to developing nations. Mr Robb, who is in India for the latest round of talks on a free-trade deal, said it would be wrong to deny electricity to millions of people. “No matter which way you look at it, over the next 50 to 70 years there is no alternative to coal as part of the mix,” he said.

Bill Shorten also rejected a moratorium yesterday.

The IEA, the world’s top energy authority, has issued robust forecasts for the use of coal. Its executive director, Fatih Birol, told a conference in Singapore yesterday that coal would not “disappear quickly” because it had a significant cost advantage over gas.

Dr Birol cautioned, however, that unless policies changed there would be “serious environmental impacts” from the widespread use of coal-fired power across Southeast Asia.

The IEA estimates that coal demand will rise 2.1 per cent a year to 2019, down from the 3.3 per cent rate in recent years but still growing. Chinese coal consumption will not peak during the five-year outlook.

The signatories to the moratorium turned on the Prime Minister yesterday, saying he should act on a warning from Kiribati President Anote Tong to halt new mines. “In essence, Malcolm Turnbull misses the whole point,” said La Trobe University emeritus professor Robert Manne. “The call is for an international moratorium on new coal mines and that reflects our understanding that the planet is not to be destroyed. Eighty per cent of known reserves of fossil fuels have to be left in the ground. The issue is as simple as that.”

The Australia Institute’s executive director, Ben Oquist, said Mr Tong had not called for an export ban but had made a “considered call” for a global moratorium on new mines.

Company director and former Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd said critics of coal needed to accept that wind and solar were not capable of providing reliable base-load power. Mr Turnbull had made “sensible, balanced comments” that Australians should welcome, he said.

Australian Mines and Metals Association chief Steve Knott said Mr Turnbull had highlighted that if Australia did not export coal then other countries would.

SOURCE

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Ya gotta laugh!  The NYT could teach Dr Goebbels a thing or two

The NYT has up at the moment a big article by a dear little lady named Coral Davenport (and friends) under the heading: "Greenland Is Melting Away". It's a long article decorated with huge and beautiful pictures so one might expect a lot of it.


Coral is a twit

But Coral presents zero proof that Greenland Is Melting Away.  Instead she salivates over a group of "scientists" travelling to Greenland to take "measurements".  The only actual statement she  makes about Greenland overall is "The full melting of Greenland’s ice sheet could increase sea levels by about 20 feet".

Maybe it could, though she gives no calculations or proof, but the interesting thing about the claim is that she doesn't say when or how long that will take.  In fact she goes on to say that nobody knows that and that the scientists she adulates are there to take measurements that might answer the question.  The answer could be "1,000 years" for all we know -- and for all that the NYT tells us

So the whole thing is just a glossy bit of unusually brainless propaganda. But it's the sort of  propaganda that Leftists need to prop up their sagging hypothesis about global warming.





Steve Goddard takes on little Coral with some facts and figures

The facts and figures are deadly to Warmism so it's no wonder little Coral doesn't mention any

Even the most ridiculous estimates of ice loss in Greenland are less than 200 km³ per year. The volume of the ice sheet is 3,000,000 km³. Using the most aggressive claims, it would take 15,000 years for the ice sheet to melt. That accounts for a sea level rise of about one hundredth of an inch per year. Does Coral Davenport think that one inch of sea level rise over the next century is going to drown her?

But the reality is that the surface of Greenland gains about 300 billion tons of ice every year. Greenland is not melting.



Ninety percent of the ice sheet gained mass from September 1, 2014 to August 30, 2015.



Claims that the ice sheet is losing 200 km³ / year are based on unreliable gravity calculations made by people with an agenda.

Glacial flow to the ocean is controlled by the amount of excess ice building up in the interior. If for some reason the amount of ice building up in the interior decreased, flow would also decrease.

Climate is cyclical. There is no rational reason to believe that the Greenland ice sheet is going to disappear. More than half of it never gets above freezing most years.

More HERE





It’s deep in the ocean, and it could stop Global Warming

Something else not accounted for in those wonderful "models"

A groundbreaking new study finds that a bacteria living far below the surface of the waters cold be a key to reversing climate change

A stunning new finding out of the University of Florida has revealed the existence of bacteria deep down on the ocean floor that could have a huge impact on climate change.

Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that is most responsible for global warming, and it is emitted largely by human activity, meaning that figuring out a way to eliminate these vast quantities of carbon dioxide is key to fighting climate change. Now, a research team has found a bacteria called Thiomicrospira crunogena that gobbles up carbon dioxide by producing an enzyme that converts it into a compound that is totally benign, and can even strip carbon dioxide from organisms, according to a Christian Science Monitor report.

The bacteria is found deep down in the ocean, living near hydrothermal vents in temperatures too extreme for most creatures to survive.

Robert McKenna, who is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the UF College of Medicine, said according to the report: “This little critter has evolved to deal with those extreme temperature and pressure problems. It has already adapted to some of the conditions it would face in an industrial setting.”

There’s just one problem: in order for this process to be feasible, a lot of carbonic anhydrase will be needed — the good news is that McKenna’s team has found a way to get this enzyme without diving deep down to the ocean floor to collect this bacteria.

And we can thank the deadly E. coli bacteria for that. By genetically engineering E. coli scientists can produce the enzyme in a lab setting, although so far they have been able to produce only very small quantities. Considering the massive problem we have on our hands when it comes to global warming and just how much carbon dioxide is out there that needs to be absorbed, we’re going to need a lot more than a few milligrams at a time.

Also, the enzyme can’t be produced all that quickly, and that presents another obstacle for researchers.

A news release on the finding was published on the University of Florida’s website, which can be found here.

SOURCE




War Between the States: Clean Power Plan Edition

The latest legal filing against the United States government, specifically the Environmental “Protection” Agency, is the case of 24 states fighting the astronomical emissions standards of the Clean Power Plan. That plan should serve as even more hard evidence that Barack Obama and his statist fellow travelers truly believe in the maxim, “rex non potest peccare” or “the king can do no wrong.”

Obama is simply making sure to fulfill his 2008 campaign promise that, “Under my plan, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” But he and his ecofascist militants have triggered another response from the real world — the states where energy production, especially coal, is key for families pursuing the American Dream and the greater economy.

Why are nearly half of the states united in their opposition against an overreaching leftist administration?

Via its Clean Power Plan, the EPA has declared war on coal and any other fossil fuel. They claim to be fighting a danger as great as terrorism — climate change — at least as declared by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. In February 2014, Kerry bloviated, “Climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”

Obama’s plan to reduce carbon emissions 32% by 2030 is more a plan to bankrupt the coal industry, with petroleum next on the list. Since 2010, according to Politico’s “War on Coal,” the equivalent of a coal-burning power plant has been forced to close by the Obama administration’s extreme regulations every 10 days.

Incredibly, Janet McCabe, EPA acting assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, proclaimed last week, “The power plan is based on a sound legal and technical foundation” that “really puts states in the driver’s seat.

Ms. McCabe, why don’t you tell that to the newly unemployed in Erwin, Tennessee?

On Oct. 15 in Erwin, a city of just of 6,000 residents, the CSX rail terminal completely closed suddenly and without advanced notice, eliminating 300 jobs. Why would 5% of a small Appalachian town find itself unemployed in such a dramatic act?

CSX spokeswoman Melanie Cost cited "changing business environment” and, specifically, “significantly reduced coal traffic through the region.”

The Obama-led Left rails against so-called “trickle-down” economics — the Reagan Era economic expansion that included an increase of wages and prosperity. But leftists guarantees trickle-down misery and unemployment. You see, the Erwin CSX terminal was on the mainline through Unicoi County that feeds coal traffic out of western Virginia and eastern Kentucky to the ports of Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington. More misery is sure to trickle down.

The radical Left can’t handle the fact that our economy is built on energy.

Despite King Obama’s promise to bankrupt coal companies and close plants while, therefore, increasing the cost of electricity, the EPA vigorously denies that its edicts will have a negative economic impact to states. The illogic of the militant environmentalists is that, by a stroke of a wand, all energy should be supplied by wind or solar — “renewable” energy sources.

Never mind that the actual technology and infrastructure doesn’t exist on a scale to make this fantasy a reality, the political will and commitment to an ideology is the priority. Hence, the vast divide between the actions of the “Red” versus “Blue” states.

The 24 states suing to protect their workforce and citizens' budgets are predominantly center-right politically: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming and Wisconsin.

There are 15 states and the District of Columbia, led by leftists, who oppose the lawsuit and applaud government-run economies. These states generally have little dependency on jobs related to manufacturing. In essence, the states where the ivory-towered elites reside who frown upon manufacturing and blue-collar labor are assisting Obama and the Left with their de facto tax on the Red states where hard-working Americans produce rather than merely pontificate.

The most idiotic of all the facts produced in this lunacy of the Left was exposed last September in a hearing before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology by Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX). Through testimony and data, the unnecessary and unbelievable price that Americans are being asked to pay to reduce carbon emissions was laid bare. After 14 years of impact to the American economy, by 2030 the reduction in carbon emissions demanded of our companies would equate to “just over 13 DAYS of Chinese emissions.”

Remember China — one of our main competitors for manufacturing jobs?

Comedian George Carlin pretty much summed up the danger of the Left these days: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

SOURCE




Global warming despotism

Science works through status quo challenges, through checking and rechecking, through producing evidence to counter other evidence and constantly arriving at reconsidered conclusions. Societies, in similar fashion, work best by being open and free, getting it that, in a contest between discourse and dictate, it’s time and again discourse that provides the needed wisdom.

All of this and more is why it is so astonishing and dismaying — but also revealing — to see a group of 20 alarmed climatologists wanting to curtail debate on global warming by shutting up the opposition, and hardly by gentle means. They want to employ tactics fashioned to go after gangsters.

The tool would be the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, allowing trials of those only indirectly involved in crimes. It was meant to heap massive damage on such groups as the Mafia, and it did. The climatologists want to use it against those connected to fossil fuel corporations who are arguing that global warming is not the terror it is often portrayed as being.

These climatologists say there’s self-serving deception going on here and that the consequences could be inadequate action curtailing a wide variety of horrors. They have sent a letter asking President Barack Obama and others in his administration for an investigation, and what we will get if it comes is massive damage to free speech and something you would think an alarmist would fear: less discernment in coping with climate change.

Free speech, after all, has beneficial consequences. As the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill said in his 1859 book, “On Liberty,” silencing an opinion robs everybody. It just may be true or at least partially true, and, if we do not hear it, we may never profit from the multiple dividends this truth provides.

If it is false, he said, its collision with truth can lead to a “clearer perception” of what the true statement has going for it as defenders more closely examine their reasoning. “Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field,” Mill explains.

To argue that authority can squash opinion without fear of squashing truth is to assume human infallibility of a kind that Mill has never noticed, he says. He tells us, too, that discounting an argument because it’s intemperate can be risky, seeing as how all sides in a dispute may be intemperate.

Twenty years before the birth of Albert Einstein, who dramatically redid the theories of Isaac Newton, Mill said even Newton should be questioned. So should the views of warming alarmists. Throughout the history of science, consensus theories have evolved only to be sent to the shed, and the alarmist consensus is nowhere near what it is made out to be, as careful critics have shown. Most climatologists do believe in warming and human activity as a cause without always believing in certain catastrophe down the road or embracing political solutions that could do more harm than the warming itself.

Scientists and public officials will be holding a conference in Paris this December to fashion a global climate policy agreement, and the last thing we need is a quieting of those with important questions before it begins, while it’s going on or after it’s done. The more back-and-forth discussion there is on a topic, the better answers can get, as Mill also said, in contradiction to confused despotic urgings inspired by apocalyptic imaginings.

We’ve had as much from members of Congress instigating investi gations of the funding of supposed warming skeptics, from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D.-R.I., who also called for the RICO action, and from these 20 scientists. Their proposals would make Mill blush and ought to make the American citizenry outraged.

SOURCE





The latest scare: Global warming could threaten survival of European lizards

Just a laboratory experiment.  Not considered is that in a real-life environment, the lizards would move polewards, to a temperature that suited vthem

Global warming may threaten the survival of European lizards by forcing the reptiles to live fast and die young, new research has shown.

Scientists set up an experiment in which 18 populations of common lizards lived in semi-natural enclosures, one of which simulated an end-of-the-century climate 2C warmer than it is today.

After a year, lizards in the warmer conditions were found to be coping very badly and dying at a rate that would lead to rapid population extinctions in around 20 years.

Dr Elvire Bestion, from the University of Exeter - who co-led the study, said: "While a two-degrees warmer climate might seem beneficial at first, as it leads to faster growth of juvenile lizards and earlier access to reproduction, it also leads to lower survival in adult individuals, which should endanger population survival."

The common, or viviparous lizard, Zootoca vivipara, is widespread across Europe and one of only two indigenous lizards in the UK, not including the legless slow worm.

Co-author Dr Julien Cote, from the Laboratoire Evolution et Diversite Biologique in France, said the team did not predict the total extinction of the common lizard. But he added that some populations could be hit hard by climate change.

"We suggest that populations at the southern edge of their range of distribution might particularly suffer from warmer climates," he said. Across Europe as a whole, between 14% and 30% of lizard populations could be threatened.

Dr Bestion said: "Anecdotally, we .. showed that warmer climates led some adult females to engage into a second reproduction event during the summer, while these lizards normally reproduce only once a year during the spring.

"Combined with the earlier juvenile reproduction and the higher adult survival, these results suggest a shift of demographic strategy from a relatively long life and low reproductive output to a faster life, higher reproductive investment. We can wonder whether this strategy shift may help adaptation of populations to warmer climates over time."

The research is published in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

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.  

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Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows (?)

Just the first part of a new article from the professional Warmists at "Think Progress" below.  In my usual pesky way, I went straight back to the first journal article cited below.  I append that Abstract.  What the academic authors did was to take a 600ppm level of CO2 as the normal indoor level of CO2 and compare it with much higher levels, starting with 1,000 ppm.  On their measure of decision making, they found reduced performance at the 1,000 ppm level.  

So this finding is completely irrelevant either to the present or to the foreseeable future.  The present ambient atmospheric level is around 400 ppm.  Even using an improbable straight-line projection, it will be a very long time before we get to an ambient 1,000 ppm level of CO2.

I could look at other evidence on the question.  Greenhouse workers, for instance, seem to have no problems working amidst a concentration of around 1,000 ppm and levels of CO2 go up to 8,000ppm in U.S. submarines, but given the dishonest way the article below started out, I am not inclined to waste time looking further

And don't forget:  Around two thirds of all published medical and psychological research findings are not replicable -- i.e. wrong.  The findings below are good candidates for falling into that category

In an email, Craig Idso comments:  "Years ago we took CO2 measurements inside various buildings. I distinctly remember the values we recorded at the local high school, which were well over 1000 ppm from all the human exhalation inside the classrooms from the students. The concerns cited below are an absolute joke and the "scientists'" recitation of them is a disservice  to real science.

:
In a landmark public health finding, a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making. These impacts have been observed at CO2 levels that most Americans — and their children — are routinely exposed to today inside classrooms, offices, homes, planes, and cars.

Carbon dioxide levels are inevitably higher indoors than the baseline set by the outdoor air used for ventilation, a baseline that is rising at an accelerating rate thanks to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels. So this seminal research has equally great importance for climate policy, providing an entirely new public health impetus for keeping global CO2 levels as low as possible.

In a series of articles, I will examine the implications for public health both today (indoors) as well as in the future (indoors and out) due to rising CO2 levels. This series is the result of a year-long investigation for Climate Progress and my new Oxford University Press book coming out next week, “Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know.” This investigative report is built on dozens of studies and literature reviews as well as exclusive interviews with many of the world’s leading experts in public health and indoor air quality, including authors of both studies.

What scientists have discovered about the impact of elevated carbon dioxide levels on the brain

Significantly, the Harvard study confirms the findings of a little-publicized 2012 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) study, “Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance.” That study found “statistically significant and meaningful reductions in decision-making performance” in test subjects as CO2 levels rose from a baseline of 600 parts per million (ppm) to 1000 ppm and 2500 ppm.

Both the Harvard and LBNL studies made use of a sophisticated multi-variable assessment of human cognition used by a State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University team, led by Dr. Usha Satish. Both teams raised indoor CO2 levels while leaving all other factors constant. The findings of each team were published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Environmental Health Perspectives put out by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a part of NIH.

SOURCE

Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance

Usha Satish et al.

    Abstract

    Background: Associations of higher indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations with impaired work performance, increased health symptoms, and poorer perceived air quality have been attributed to correlation of indoor CO2 with concentrations of other indoor air pollutants that are also influenced by rates of outdoor-air ventilation.

    Objectives: We assessed direct effects of increased CO2, within the range of indoor concentrations, on decision making.

    Methods: Twenty-two participants were exposed to CO2 at 600, 1,000, and 2,500 ppm in an office-like chamber, in six groups. Each group was exposed to these conditions in three 2.5-hr sessions, all on 1 day, with exposure order balanced across groups. At 600 ppm, CO2 came from outdoor air and participants’ respiration. Higher concentrations were achieved by injecting ultrapure CO2. Ventilation rate and temperature were constant. Under each condition, participants completed a computer-based test of decision-making performance as well as questionnaires on health symptoms and perceived air quality. Participants and the person administering the decision-making test were blinded to CO2 level. Data were analyzed with analysis of variance models.

    Results: Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scales of decision-making performance (raw score ratios, 0.06–0.56), but performance on the focused activity scale increased.

    Conclusions: Direct adverse effects of CO2 on human performance may be economically important and may limit energy-saving reductions in outdoor air ventilation per person in buildings. Confirmation of these findings is needed.

Environ Health Perspect; DOI:10.1289/ehp.1104789

U.S. Has Now Gone Record 120 Months Without a Major Hurricane Strike

So much for "extreme weather events"

Even as the remnants of historically powerful Hurricane Patricia dropped heavy rains on Texas on Saturday, the United States marked the completion of a record 120 straight months since the last major hurricane (Category 3 or above) made landfall in the continental United States.

The last major hurricane to make landfall on the continental United States was Hurricane Wilma, which hit Florida on October 24, 2005.

On Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center had reported that Patricia, at that point was “the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center's area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins.”

However, Patricia weakened and dropped below hurricane force after it made landfall on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

The decade-long major hurricane drought is the longest such hiatus dating back to 1851, according to records kept by NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (HRC).

The 2005 hurricane season was particularly harsh one. That year, “nearly 4,000 people lost their lives and there was nearly $160 billion in damage,” NOAA said in a statement marking the 10-year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, the last major hurricanes to strike the U.S.

Wilma “is the last major hurricane to strike the U.S.--an unprecedented stretch that could unfortunately lead to ‘hurricane amnesia’ for the destruction such a hurricane can cause,” NOAA noted.

According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, major hurricanes classified as Category 3 or above have sustained wind speeds of more than 111 miles per hour and are capable of causing “devastating” or “catastrophic” damage.

Since 1851, three catastrophic Category 5 hurricanes – defined as having a maximum sustained wind speed of over 157 miles per hour – have made landfall in the U.S.: the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys, Camille in 1969, and Andrew in 1992.

SOURCE


 

Hurricanes Become a Ping-Pong Ball in the Climate Debate

By Joe Bastardi

This caught my eye, from USA Today: “Study: Climate change adding billions to U.S. hurricane costs.”

Oh really?  The study quoted ended in 2005, not factoring in the last 10 years. During that time, by way of the Saffir-Simpson scale, there were no major hurricane hits on the U.S. (On my power and impact scale, there have been three borderline majors.) It’s been an amazingly quiet period, meaning the dire ideas that we heard about have been nothing but wrong.

Another USA Today headline from 2006:  “New study ties global warming to stronger hurricanes.”

There are numerous articles on how global warming (climate change is a redundant focus group-driven term that is now used since there has been no significant warming for nearly 19 years) is causing everything to be worse. Tropical cyclones, since they are awesome to look at and report on, are front and center as examples of how bad things are. But there is a big problem here: They aren’t as bad. This chart by National Hurricane Center researchers Eric Blake and Chris Landsea plainly shows the busiest decade for major hits in the last 30 years (2001-2010) is equaled or exceeded by six of the 15 decades in the chart.



I often go after Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — who lately has been pushing the idea of RICO-like investigations on scientists that do not believe in human-induced global warming — for his pronouncements on hurricanes being worse now than before. It’s astounding given he is from a state that was devastated in 1938, 1944, 1954 and 1960 by major hurricanes. But look at the hits of majors. 1871-1880, 1891-1900, 1911-1920, 1931-1940, 1941-1950, 1951-1960 — all were decades equal to or greater than 2001-2010. In addition, the 30-year period from 1931-1960 had 61 hits, or two a year, 27 of which were major (almost one a year). By contrast, the most recent 30 years ending in 2010: 43 hits, 19 majors. Not even close!

The idea that costs are going up is not from increased frequency and intensity of storms. It can’t be since the frequency and intensity of landfalling storms has decreased. So we have one side of the debate that is pushing hurricanes as a reason to suspect there is, as they put it, climate change, even though the facts show there are less landfalling storms now than there have been in many years before.

Right off the bat, the immense buildup of coastal development means that storms are going to be much more costly. I will leave it to others to play with inflation figures, but an example could be Hazel in 1954. This is the latest Category 4 storm to hit the U.S., and that it hit on the coastal Carolinas in mid-October is extreme in itself. In 1954 dollars, the storm did $354 million dollars in damage. The government’s inflation calculator says it would be 10 times that now, but crucial is the fact that in 1954 there was not near the amount of buildup in the areas Hazel hit (it had hurricane force winds all the way to Toronto!) But that is not climate change or global warming. It’s a product of man believing he is in control of the Garden of Eden, as if this is paradise and nothing bad happens. The thumbing of the nose is not CO2 in the air, but buildings on the beach.

My side of the climate debate counters this with what seems to be an intuitive argument about the lack of storms being a sign that there is no global warming. This is a very dangerous tactic. It’s one thing to counter, as I did above, the argument that landfalling storms are stronger and more frequent, simply because they aren’t. But that is all that means. So what happens if seven majors hit in two years like in 1915 and 1916? And guess what? I am very concerned that we are about to see a major burst of hurricanes between 2016 and 2018. Why? because I have seen this before. If we look at sea surface temperatures for next hurricane season, by next July the El Niño is gone and is reversing to a La Niña! The main development region of the Atlantic is very warm.

Now look at the sea surface temperatures in July of 2005 in the tropical breeding areas.

Very similar to the mega year of 2005! Major bursts of landfalling storms occurred in ‘95 and '96 after the El Niño of 94,’ 98 and ‘99 after the El Niño of '97, and '03, '04 and '05 after the El Niño of '02. It’s natural, it’s happened before and it’s about to happen again. So I would not be tooting the lack of hurricanes as anything but what it is — a lack of hurricanes. But much more deceitful, in my opinion, is using hurricanes as a sign of global warming. It shows the gall of the people suggesting that. Even with facts staring them in the face, they simply ignore them and say it anyway.

Hurricanes are nature’s way of taking heat out of the tropics and redistributing it to the temperate regions. Weather and climate are nature’s way of seeking a balance it can never attain because of the very design of the system. Nothing more, nothing less. Attributing such things as hurricanes as a sign of so-called “climate change” is provably wrong. Hurricanes are much more than ping-pong balls for someone’s agenda. They are an awesome display of nature, sometimes resulting in terrible consequences, but all part of the natural up and down that is inherent in the system.

SOURCE  (See the original for links and graphics)




Obama turns to climate deal

The Obama administration is ramping up its efforts to get the American public behind its goal for a strong global climate change deal in Paris in December.

With weeks to go until negotiators meet to hash out a final international agreement, President Obama worked in recent days to make sure the country knows the importance of United States leadership in getting worldwide buy-in for a strong deal.

Republicans also ratcheted up their efforts to undermine Obama’s participation in the climate talks, arguing that the deal will amount to a treaty that requires — and will not receive — Senate ratification to take effect.

The GOP also wants to show world leaders that the Obama administration’s pledge for the deal — a 26 percent to 28 percent cut in the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, compared with 2005 — is not possible, and Obama should not be trusted to live up to his promises.

Though the deal is still being negotiated, it’s shaping up to be a collection of individual pledges from countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, steps to increase clean energy production, financing for poor countries and other efforts. Chances are that the deal will not be legally binding, which allows Obama to argue that it is not a treaty that needs Senate ratification.

The stakes are high, both because of the expected effects of climate change and because Obama wants to avoid the mistakes of the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks, which ended with no deal.

The White House set the tone for the week Monday with the news that 81 companies, including some big names like Intel Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co., are on board with Obama’s goals for an ambitious, strong, long-lasting agreement in Paris.

“As we look at this major conference that we’re going to be having in Paris in just a few months, where we’ve already mobilized the international community, including China, to participate, I just want everybody to understand that American businesses want this to happen as well,” Obama said after meeting with five major CEOs, saying that they need a level playing field to thrive.

“If we’re able to establish those kinds of rules and that’s the goal that we’re setting forth in Paris, I have no doubt that these companies are going to excel,” he said. “And that’s going to mean jobs, businesses, and opportunity alongside cleaner air and a better environment.”

Getting big business buy-in on the Paris deal is an attempt by Obama to increase the legitimacy of his efforts and to show opponents who can benefit from the talks.

Later in the week, a senior administration official laid out the strategy and stakes for the talks.

The official also tried to set expectations for the deal, which is unlikely to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“It’s been clear for some time that, given the history of this issue, and the fits and starts of international negotiations, that the most important thing about a Paris agreement was going to be achieving durable, credible and universal agreement that reflected bottom-up country-delivered agreements,” the official said.

Republicans are fighting back and asserting what they see as the Senate’s rightful place in international treaties.

“Just like the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations framework convention on climate change, any agreement that commits our nation to targets or timetables must go through the process established by the founders in our Constitution,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said at a hearing he chaired in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee subpanel about the deal. “It must be submitted to the United States Senate for its advice and consent.”

“The president has made clear that he doesn’t see it that way, as was the case with the Iranian nuclear deal,” he said.

Barrasso later said that it’s important to tell foreign countries that Obama’s promises will not stand.

“The president can make promises, but it doesn’t necessarily carry the full force of the United States,” he said. “There are still court rulings to come. They may find that a number of things this administration does are not legal.”

Elliot Diringer, executive vice president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said Republicans are only reinforcing Obama’s strategy to stick with non-binding targets that don’t require Senate ratification.

“What came across in the hearing is that binding targets and timetables would require advice and consent from the Senate — and that the administration won’t agree to binding targets,” Diringer said. “The U.S. isn’t alone in that view, and I think the likeliest outcome in Paris is that targets won’t be binding.

Republicans’ work on the climate deal is far from over. Lawmakers including Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee energy and power subpanel chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) are considering going to Paris or sending staff to try to influence the talks.

“I don’t know if I’ll repeat what I’ve done several times before, which is to go over and be the bad guy, the one-man truth squad, and tell the truth, that they’re going to be lied to by the Obama administration,” Inhofe said.

Inhofe, a vocal climate change skeptic, has bragged that he traveled to the Copenhagen talks in 2009 and served as a “one-man truth squad” to derail the deal.

Whitfield said he wants to show negotiators that much of Obama’s promised emissions goal relies on regulations that Congress could weaken or overturn.

“We may send a group over to Paris, just to let them know that there’s another branch of government, in addition to the executive branch, on these issues,” he said.

Diringer said that Obama’s best bet would be to push for a deal that doesn’t require Senate input and is based on United States law, which has been the administration’s goal.

Meanwhile, Republicans in both chambers are launching new efforts to overturn the carbon limits for power plants through the Congressional Review Act.

Obama has vowed to veto any efforts to overturn the rule, the centerpiece of his climate change initiative. But even with his veto, the GOP hopes a vote could send a strong signal to the Paris negotiators that Obama’s environmental agenda has significant opposition domestically.

Congressional leaders have yet to say when the disapproval resolutions might get votes. But Republicans hope that they would come before or during the Paris talks.

SOURCE





Paris Climate Conference Is Likely to Fail

By S. Fred Singer

COP-21, the 21st Conference of the Parties (to the Global Climate Treaty) is convening in Paris (November 30 to December 11, 2015) to try to impose global restrictions on the emission of the greenhouse (GH) gas carbon dioxide. The usual cast of characters will show up—delegates from nearly 200 nations, who have made a lifetime career out of the climate business, plus some 15,000 hangers-on. We think they will fail to reach an effective international agreement—for a variety of reasons: Important developing countries have other priorities; scandals are brewing and may flare up; and the climate itself is not cooperating. But the media will portray Paris as a huge success, trying to burnish the environmental-climate legacy of President Barack Obama.

Paris will be a big “nothing-burger”

Do you remember Anne Gorsuch, who may have coined this pungent term? She was the first female administrator of EPA, and rather different from both Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy. Gorsuch served for a couple of years in the Reagan administration, during which time she managed to cut the EPA budget and slim down the agency. She proved that a determined administrator can do something to rein in the regulatory excesses of the EPA. [Actually, one of the most effective ways of achieving that goal might be to expand the EPA office in Alaska, and then transfer most of the Washington activists to that office.]

Outlook for global agreements

President Obama has been actively pushing nations to make commitments on cutting CO2 emissions, and most have obliged him by making meaningless commitments that will have very little effect on actual levels of carbon dioxide—and even less on the world climate.

China has agreed to peak its emissions in 2030, but do nothing to stem growth in the remaining 15 years. They calculate, apparently, that by then their population and demand for electric power will have stabilized. In other words, their “commitment” involves no real hardships.

Similarly, in a half-hearted commitment, India will also peak its emissions sometime around the middle of the century. However, India’s actual plan is to double its domestic coal production in the next 5 years and then continue to use fossil fuels to generate the electricity that is badly needed by its population.

Southeast Asia is another rapidly growing user of fossil fuels to generate electricity. In Europe, eastern nations will continue to build coal-fired power plants. Even Germany is turning to coal, having foolishly decided, after Fukushima, to phase out their well-operating nuclear reactors.

By mid-century, US emissions are likely to be less than 10% of world total and thus of little consequence.

Perversely, Obama has pledged to commit the US to reduce emissions by 28 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, by trying to use EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” in his promised “war on coal.”

When challenged by Russia on his leadership in the Middle East, Obama replied (on Sixty Minutes, on Oct 11): “My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris.” Note that Congress has not been consulted on these matters; it is likely that a future White House will simply cancel his US commitments; and the world is aware of this.

Will ShuklaGate play a role in Paris?

Many people think that the leak of Climategate e-mails in Nov 2009 played an important role in scuttling any climate agreement at COP-15 in Copenhagen. The e-mails exposed the sleazy actions of a US-UK group of IPCC scientists and their attempts to suppress any contrary opinions: through misuse of the peer-review of independent research, by bullying editors of scientific journals (often with their connivance), and even by the manhandling of fundamental data (“hide the decline” [of temperature]).

Might history repeat itself? Could Shukla-gate play a role in derailing any Paris agreement? Prof. Jagadish Shukla has been accused of extracting $63 million of US government funds, much of it flowing into his and family members’ pockets. His downfall came when he organized a very public campaign against scientific skeptics, accusing them and their financial supporters of bad faith and profiteering. Some ask the question: How do you say ‘chutzpah’ in Hindi?

This dirty laundry will on full display in Congressional hearings being organized by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Science. They may help convince the public, here and abroad, that hyped worries about global warming are mostly driven by money. Other examples come to mind: the promised $100-billion/year subsidy (bribe?) to developing nations (that perversely include China!), Solyndra and a plethora of other ‘clean’ energy projects, Al Gore’s rise to become a centi-millionaire, and many more. Undoubtedly, envy plays a role here—in addition to concern about how tax money is wasted. Why have we spent some $25 billon on climate science just in the past decade if the “science is settled?”

Will the Verdier scandal affect COP-21?

Philippe Verdier, a household name for his nightly TV weather forecasts on France-2, has been taken off air after criticizing the UN-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Mr Verdier claims in the book Climat Investigation (Climate Investigation) that leading climatologists and political leaders have “taken the world hostage” with misleading data. Top climate scientists, who often rely on state funding, have been “manipulated and politicized.”

He specifically challenges the work of the IPCC, saying they “blatantly erased” data that went against their overall conclusions; he also casts doubt on the accuracy of their climate models, which assert that temperatures could rise by up to 4.8°C if no action is taken to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Mr Verdier writes: “We are undoubtedly on a plateau in terms of warming; and the cyclical variability of the climate doesn’t allow us to envisage if its natural rhythm will tomorrow lead us towards a fall, a stagnation, or a rise [in temperature].” He added: “We are hostage to a planetary scandal over climate change—a war machine whose aim is to keep us in fear.”

His book was criticized as full of “errors” by newspaper Le Monde (the FrenchNY Times): “The models used to predict the average rise in temperatures on the surface of the globe have proved to be rather reliable, with the gap between observations and predictions quite small.” But this fanciful claim is quite untrue; while IPCC climate models calculate a steady rise in global average temperature (matching a corresponding rise in atmospheric CO2), the actual observations record no detectable warming trend for almost 20 years—in spite of a CO2 increase of nearly 10%.

Verdier said he decided to write the book in June 2014, when Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, summoned the country’s main weather presenters and urged them to mention “climate chaos” in their forecasts. “I was horrified by this discourse,” Mr Verdier told a magazine. “What’s shameful is this pressure placed on us to say that if we don’t hurry, it’ll be the apocalypse,” he added, saying that “climate diplomacy” means leaders are seeking to force changes to suit their own political timetables.

Meanwhile, similar ideas have been advanced in the US. Wikipedia reports: In “Climate Science Is Not Settled,” a 2014 essay published in the Wall Street Journal, three years after stepping down as Under-Secretary for Science of DOE, Prof Steven Koonin wrote: “We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy,” and “The impact today of human activity [on climate] appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.” Koonin criticized the use of results from climate modeling to support the “scientific consensus” [quotes in original] about climate change, noting that, among other problems, “The models differ in their descriptions of the past century’s global average surface temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during that time.”

Regarding climate sensitivity, Koonin wrote that “Today’s best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit for a doubling of the CO2 level) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite a heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.”

COP-21 is unlikely to produce results

Notwithstanding the conclusions of the UN-IPCC and the heavily advertized so-called “scientific consensus” about greenhouse warming, the climate itself is not cooperating with costly policies to cut CO2 emissions—though heavily promoted in the lead-up to the COP conference by UN-toadies and even by Pope Francis. But the opposition by developing nations is determined—and assorted scandals are brewing. After all the hype, Paris-2015 may turn out to be a big (and expensive) nothing-burger and mark the end of COP.

SOURCE





Climate change is more important than union corruption?

The Australian Labor Party thinks so -- in a desperate attempt to help their crooked friends

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has accused Malcolm Turnbull of playing “wedge” politics over industrial relations reform and declared climate change, not union corruption, should be top of a new bipartisan agenda.

It comes after Bill Shorten yesterday hit back at the Prime Minister’s ultimatum that Labor pass laws to curb union ­corruption and power or face an election campaign waged on industrial relations, lashing out at Mr Turnbull for reheating “Tony Abbott’s union-bashing’’ exercise.

Mr Turnbull wants Labor to negotiate on industrial relations laws stalled in the Senate - the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, to monitor and promote standards of conduct in the building industry, and the Registered Organisations Bill to impose transparency on union officials.

But Mr Albanese also rejected Mr Turnbull’s pledge to put IR at the forefront of the next election unless Labor “comes to its senses”.

“That’s just a wedge in terms of the union movement,” Mr Albanese said on ABC radio.

“When we’ll take Malcolm Turnbull more seriously and what he should do, because he does believe in action on climate change, he is serious about that issue and he should be prepared to sit down with the Labor Party and talk about real action on climate change.

“Not the sort of action that (former employment minister) Eric Abetz and the sceptics approve of but doing something real in the interest of … I mean that’s the ultimate intergenerational issue.”

Mr Albanese, who is the opposition’s infrastructure and transport spokesman, said the government wanted the media to be talking about union corruption and the CFMEU rather than the “more important” issue of climate change.

“If Malcolm Turnbull is at all serious about long-term working in a bipartisan way, then that (climate change) has to be at the top of the agenda,” he said.

“The other issues that have worked quite well - and to give Tony Abbott credit he certainly tried to work with the opposition about – is reconciliation and advancing the recognition of the First Australians.”

The Opposition Leader, his deputy Tanya Plibersek and immigration spokesman Richard Marles will head to the Pacific islands for four days this week in a bid to put climate change back on the political agenda.

Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare yesterday nominated changes to superannuation tax concessions as the next policy area the government and Labor work on together.

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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American Academy of Pediatrics links global warming to the health of children

Totally crooked and unbalanced Warmist boilerplate below.  No mention that winter is the big killer so a warm climate should be healthier overall.  So they ignore the elephant in the room

Today, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement that links climate change with the health of children, urging pediatricians and politicians to work together to solve this crisis and protect children from climate-related threats including natural disasters, heat stress, lower air quality, increased infections, and threats to food and water supplies.

"Every child need a safe and healthy environment and climate change is a rising public health threat to all children in this country and around the world," said AAP President Sandra G. Hassink, MD, FAAP. "Pediatricians have a unique and powerful voice in this conversation due to their knowledge of child health and disease and their role in ensuring the health of current and future children."

The policy statement, "Global Climate Change and Children's Health," updates a 2007 policy, and is being published in the November 2015 issue of Pediatrics (published online Oct. 26). In the 2015 policy statement, the AAP states that:

    There is wide consensus among scientific organizations and climatologists that the broad effects known commonly as "climate change" are the result of contemporary human activities.

    According to the World Health Organization, more than 88 percent of the existing burden of disease attributable to climate change occurs in children younger than 5 years old.

    Climate change poses a threat to human health and safety, but children are uniquely vulnerable.

    Failure to take prompt, substantive action would be an act of injustice to all children.

"Children are uniquely at risk to the direct impacts of climate changes like climate-related disaster--including floods and storms--where they are exposed to increased risk of injury, death, loss of or separation from caregivers and mental health consequences," explained Samantha Ahdoot, MD, lead author of the policy statement. "They are also more vulnerable to the secondary impacts of global warming, like disease. For example, Lyme disease affects approximately 300,000 Americans each year, with boys, ages 5 to 9, at greatest risk. Climate warming has been linked to northern expansion of Lyme disease in North America, putting more American children at risk of this disease."

A technical report accompanies the AAP policy statement and offers a review of the latest scientific evidence linking climate change to child health, development, wellbeing and nutrition. Highlights include:

    Infants less than one year of age are uniquely vulnerable to heat-related mortality, with one study projecting an increase in infant heat-related deaths by 5.5 percent in females and 7.8 percent in males by the end of the 21st Century.

    Climate influences a number of infectious diseases that affect children across the world, including malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, Chikungunya, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, diarrheal illness, Amebic Meningoencephalitis and Coccidioidomycosis.

    The number of deaths in American high school and college football players from heat stroke has doubled from 15 to 29 from 2000-2010.

    There is an emerging concern that increased atmospheric CO2 impacts grain quality, lowering the protein content of the edible portions of wheat, rice and barley.

    High rates of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms have been found in children following climate-related disasters, including hurricanes and floods.

    Children in the world's poorest countries, where the disease burden is already disproportionately high, are most affected by climate change.

    In 2030, climate change is projected to cause an additional 48,000 deaths attributable to diarrheal disease in children younger than 15 years old, primarily in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The policy also advocates for the promotion of resource efficiency and renewable energy, research on climate-associated health effects, education and public awareness on this critical issue, and green development and transit. The AAP calls for a new public health movement to educate, advocate, and collaborate with local and national leaders regarding the risks climate change poses to human health. Pediatricians, as advocates for the population most vulnerable to climate change health effects, have a vital role to play in this movement.

SOURCE





UK Parliament To Debate Abolition Of Department of Energy and Climate Change

In Whitehall parlance it is known as “mogging” — slamming together or scrapping departments to save cash. Speculation about machinery of government changes is set to reach a fever pitch this week as MPs debate a private member’s bill on the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The bill, introduced by the maverick Tory MP Peter Bone, is unlikely to pass — in its current form at least. Nevertheless, for the hundreds of civil servants at DECC, the debate will not be much fun because its dissolution remains a distinct possibility.

With George Osborne asking for departments to prepare for budget cuts of as much as 40 per cent, winding up one or two would help to ease the burden on those that are considered indispensable. Ministers are urgently running the rule over possible savings in advance of the chancellor’s autumn spending review on November 25.

DECC has always been an unwieldy beast, tossed together from bits of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the old DTI in a shake-up led by Gordon Brown in 2008.

It remains relatively small and could simply be broken up, with the energy policy parts rolled into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the DTI’s successor, and climate policy folded back into Defra. After all, that is the structure that existed only seven years ago.

Best of all for Mr Osborne, unlike most other departments, DECC’s abolition would have no direct impact on public services. Outside Whitehall, few people would notice. Mr Osborne is not known for his sentimentality towards such changes, especially when the political risks are so low. His hunt for cost savings makes DECC a prime target.

However, there are risks here. Machinery of government changes can be blunt. The disruption can last for years, as experienced Whitehall mandarins get bogged down by the logistics and the need to forge relationships with new colleagues and permanent secretaries. [...]

The timing of the autumn spending review also poses a tricky challenge for Mr Osborne, coming only a week before the start of the UN climate policy conference in Paris.

Scrapping DECC then would hardly send an encouraging message on British leadership on the problem of climate change. Nor would it chime well with David Cameron’s dubious pledge to lead the “greenest government ever”.

It would also deal an extremely awkward hand to Amber Rudd, DECC’s well-respected secretary of state, who was appointed only six months ago. If Mr Osborne does choose to wind up DECC, he might wait until the new year to do so — but I certainly wouldn’t rule out his doing so before then.

SOURCE





Jim Webb Is Basically A Republican When It Comes To Global Warming

Not a lot of people had heard of former Sen. Jim Webb before the  Democratic presidential debate, but based on his response to a question on global warming voters can assume he’s much farther to the right than his fellow Democrats on the issue.

“You’re pro-coal, you’re pro-offshore drilling, you’re pro-Keystone pipeline. Are — again, are you — the question is, are you out of step with the Democratic party?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked the former Virginia senator during the debate.

Webb responded that he was an “all-of-the-above energy voter” while in the U.S. Senate, adding that he supported nuclear power. Most importantly, however, Webb stressed the point that global warming would not be solved by the U.S. alone — a point most Democrats seem to ignore in the climate debate.

“And really, we are not going to solve climate change simply with the laws here,” Webb said. “If you look at China and India, they’re the greatest polluters in the world. Fifteen out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in one of those two countries. We need to solve this in a global way.”

Webb also took a swipe at the “illusory” agreements between the U.S. and China that have been announced in the last year. Webb argued that the Chinese have been vague on what they would do right away to fight global warming.

“It’s a global problem and I have been very strong on — on doing that,” Webb said. “The — the agreements — the so-called agreements that we have had with China are illusory in terms of the immediate requirements of the — of the Chinese government itself. So let’s solve this problem in an international way, and then we really will have a — a way to address climate change.”

Webb’s answer during Tuesday night’s debate makes him a stand-out among his Democratic opponents on global warming. All of the other candidates have pushed for unilaterally reducing fossil fuel use while ramping up green energy — regardless of what China does.

In fact, Webb’s insistence that China and India need to cut emissions mirrors what Republican presidential candidates have said about their position on global warming.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “we have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy” to protect future generations. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley kept referring to his plan for a “100 percent clean electric grid by 2050.”

“We did not land a man on the moon with an all-of-the-above strategy,” O’Malley said.

Clinton agreed with Webb that China and India need to cut their emissions to truly fight global warming, but the former secretary put forward her own plan earlier this year to install half a billion solar panels across the country. Her plan would also have the U.S. get 33 percent of its electricity from green energy by 2027 and reduce fossil fuel use as well.

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee told CNN’s Cooper that he wanted to address global warming and that he’s proud he’s an enemy of the coal industry.

Chaffee’s website states he’s against the Keystone XL pipeline and Arctic drilling. Webb’s website, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a section for his views on the environment.

Webb’s stance on global warming — judging by his debate comments — is much closer to any Republican candidate than to what his Democratic counterparts espouse.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in April that U.S. must “[b]e cognizant of the fact that we have this climate change issue and we need to work with the rest of the world to negotiate a way to reduce carbon emissions.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said during the second Republican presidential debate that “America is not a planet.” Rubio argued that we “are not going to destroy our economy, make America a harder place to create jobs, in order to pursue a policy that will do nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather.”

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric that regulating emissions here “will make not difference at all, yet we’re destroying people’s lives and livelihoods.”

“So I think the answer to this problem is innovation, not regulation,” Fiorina said. “China could care less. In fact, China is delighted that we are not spending any time or energy figuring out clean coal, because they’re going to go do it.”

SOURCE





The Pope's not Green enough for an old feminist shrew

No matter his recent encyclical on the environment. Pope Francis himself is the cause of global warming, according to feminist activist Gloria Steinem.

Cosmopolitan writer Prachi Gupta revealed that her editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, interviewed Steinem, “arguably the most influential women’s rights activist in the world today” for an hour on Wednesday. From that interview, Gupta recalled Steinem’s “serious wisdom” and “best quotes.”

One of those quotes came from when Coles spoke with Steinem about “rethinking the patriarchy.”

Steinem started off with a focus on economics. She argued, “All of our courses in economics should start with reproduction, not production.”

What do economics and the patriarchy have to do with each other? Steinem’s logic went something like this: Pope Francis and “other patriarchal religions” support “forcing women to have children” instead of abortion. There’s then a “human load” on the Earth. Thus, the pope causes global warming.

Cosmo published Steinem’s quote:

    “I had this thought that we should have this massive education campaign pointing out that the Pope and all of the other patriarchal religions that dictate to women in this way, accusing them of global warming. Because the human load on this earth is the biggest cause of global warming, and that is because of forcing women to have children they would not on their own choose to have … I’m glad the Pope spoke out about global warming and it was very helpful, but does he know he’s causing it?“

At another point in the interview, Steinem addressed Roe v. Wade and abortion.

“​Reproductive rights are a fundamental human right,” she insisted, “like freedom of speech.”​

SOURCE





The EPA Spill In Colorado Was Completely Preventable

In August, the Environmental Protection Agency royally screwed up when they released 3 million gallons of toxic water from an abandoned mine in Colorado. The waste from the Gold King Mine, which had been abandoned for nearly ten years, was so great that it turned the Animas River orange. That river connects with the San Juan River, which leads into the greater Colorado River. The spill has impacted Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Now, investigators have found the EPA could have avoided this environmental fiasco (via AP):

    "The Colorado spill would have been avoided had the EPA team checked on water levels inside the inactive Gold King Mine before digging into its collapsed and leaking entrance, a team of engineers from Interior's Bureau of Reclamation concluded in a 132-page report released Thursday.

    Abandoned hard-rock underground mines are not subject to the same federal and state safety requirements other mining operations must follow, and "experience indicates that they should be," the report concluded.

    "A collapsed flooded mine is in effect a dam, and failure must be prevented by routine monitoring, maintenance, and in some cases remediation," the engineers wrote. "However, there appears to be a general absence of knowledge of the risks associated with these facilities."

    The findings have implications across the United States: Similar disasters could lurk among the many abandoned mines that have yet to be cleaned up.

    The total cost of containing this mining industry mess could top $50 billion, according to government estimates."

The initial clean up cost estimate by American Action Forum had a wide range of $338 million to $27 billion. Moreover, the EPA knew about the blowout risks with the mine. The Navajo Nation,whose livelihoods were threatened by the spill, were furious over the government inaction as well.

Earlier this month, the EPA had a soft repeat of Gold King at Standard Mine near Crested Butte, Colorado, where 2,000 gallons of toxic water leeched into a creek that connects to the town’s water supply, according to the Denver Post.

    "The spill happened at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday [October 6], and the EPA said it immediately informed public works officials. Residents weren't notified. Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep said he wasn't notified until Thursday.

    EPA officials on Wednesday, responding to Denver Post queries about the mine, didn't reveal the spill. On Thursday afternoon, the agency issued a prepared statement saying that, based on neutral acidity and creek flow levels, Crested Butte didn't close its water intakes.

    "Subsequent investigation found no visible plume or signs of significant impacts in downstream locations," the EPA said.

    At the cleanup site, acidic wastewater laced with cancer-causing cadmium and other toxic heavy metals leaches out of the mine into Elk Creek, which flows into Coal Creek — a primary source of water for Crested Butte. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has determined that the levels of arsenic, cadmium and zinc in Coal Creek exceed state standards."

SOURCE





Disputes over financing hamper talks on global warming

Disputes over financing for poor nations hampered negotiations on Friday among almost 200 countries racing against the clock to seal an accord on combating global warming at a UN climate summit in Paris in December.

Some delegates said they feared a repeat of the 2009 summit in Copenhagen when governments last tried, and failed, to agree a deal, although many others said they remained confident of a breakthrough at the November 30th-December 11th meeting in Paris.

US climate envoy Todd Stern predicted a deal would be reached in Paris despite scant progress in Bonn, Germany, the final meeting before Paris, on issues including climate finance.

Many nations want a deal, he said, but “you still have to hack our way through specific language and it gets pretty sensitive and pretty contentious”.

Developing nations, which say their views are often ignored, said climate finance is the core issue, and all sides reported scant progress on the issue in Bonn.

“We are extremely worried about the pace,” said Amjad Abdulla, who speaks on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, which fears rising sea levels.

Poor nations want clear promises of rising contributions from industrialised nations beyond an existing goal of $100 billion by 2020, from public and private sources, to help them curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes such as floods and droughts.

Rich nations led by the US and the EU want to make vaguer pledges beyond 2020 and for Paris to include new donors such as China, now outside the $100 billion plan, which last month pledged $3 billion for developing nations.

The Christian Aid group said a Paris deal was close “but climate finance is the elephant in the room”.

“Developing countries need Paris to be a success. We have no other option. For developing countries, climate change is a matter of life and death,” said Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, South Africa’s delegate, who speaks on behalf of more than 130 developing nations and China.

An updated draft text of an accord on Friday covers 55 pages and has 1,490 brackets, marking points of disagreement. That was up from 20 pages at the start of the talks and far longer than hoped.

Nations were also split over how far the Paris text should include a new mechanism for loss and damage, meant to help emerging nations cope with the impact of droughts, hurricanes and rising sea 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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