Brainless Greenies again






Pope warns Trump: Do not back away from UN climate pact – Pope declares ‘crisis of climatic change’

Both Mr Trump and I were brought up as Presbyterians so I can guess how much notice Mr Trump will take of the Pope

Pope Francis has issued a climate change challenge directly to President Elect Trump. The Pope, in thinly veiled speech, urged Trump not to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations Paris agreement reached in 2015. The UN treaty has been said by critics to be “history’s most expensive treaty’,” with a “cost of between $1 trillion and $2 trillion annually.”

Pope Francis warned of the “crisis of climate change.”  “The ‘distraction’ or delay in implementing global agreements on the environment shows that politics has become submissive to a technology and economy which seek profit above all else,” Francis said, in what Reuters described as “a message that looked to be squarely aimed at” Trump.

Trump pledged to pull the U.S. out of the UN Paris climate agreement and defund and withdraw from the UN climate process.

Speaking to a group of scientists, including physicist Stephen Hawking, the pope said in his speech that scientists should “work free of political, economic or ideological interests, to develop a cultural model which can face the crisis of climatic change and its social consequences”. The Pope has previously urged Catholics to pray for a UN climate agreement.

Pope Francis also called for “an ecological conversion capable of supporting and promoting sustainable development.” In 2015, the Pope issued an encyclical on climate and the environment titled “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home.”

SOURCE




MRCTV’s New Documentary Shows Casualties of the Left’s ‘War on Coal’

MRCTV’s new documentary, Collateral Damage: Forgotten Casualties of the Left’s War on Coal, addresses the struggles West Virginia coal miners and their families are facing largely due to regulations implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Between September 2014 and May 2016, the U.S. lost about 191,000 jobs in the mining industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to data presented in the documentary, coal production in West Virginia alone has declined by 28 percent, and more than 9,000 coal-mining jobs have been lost as a result of government regulations.

“You don’t come into an industry that makes up the support system for so many thousands of people and bankrupt it when it’s already struggling with the [economic] downturn,” executive producer Brittany Hughes said at the documentary’s premiere, which was held at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. D.C. Wednesday.

“This is not just an attack on coal. Coal is the first one. It’s the first one. But this is an attack on fossil fuels and this country. At least with the technology we have right now, we can’t run off of windmills and solar panels unless everybody just wants to cover the entire country in them, and even then I’m not sure that it would be effective enough,” Hughes added.

In 2015, an MRCTV camera crew went to the southern counties of West Virginia to expose and document the devastating impact EPA regulations were having on coal mining families and their communities.

Jeremy Abraham, a West Virginia coal miner who was laid off from his job after months of worrying whether EPA regulations would impact the mine where he was employed, told the MRCTV crew that because of the severe economic struggles facing his family, he was forced to sell his house and now has to decide whether or not to relocate his family.

I’ve already sold my house. I’m probably going to have to move my family. I mean I’ve got two young babies at home“I’ve already sold my house. I’m probably going to have to move my family. I mean I’ve got two young babies at home. I’ve got a boy that turned three in August and a little girl that just turned 20 months old,” Abraham said. “And I really don’t want to pack them up and move them away from their grandparents.”

But “our community is dying, everything around us is dying. There’s no jobs, there’s no future for them,” he added.

 In his August 2015 response to the adoption of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said: “This latest iteration of the EPA’s regulatory assault against coal-fired power generation is being presented as addressing the concerns of industry, but nothing could be further from the truth.

“Yes, the final regulation tacks on a couple of years to the compliance timeline, but all this accomplishes is to perpetuate uncertainty and provide more time for the rule to do more damage – irreversible damage – to the nation’s industry and electric grid,” Raney said.

However, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy defended the plan, stating that “by 2030, the Clean Power Plan will reduce carbon emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels. Because carbon pollution comes packaged with other dangerous pollutants, our plan protects public health, preventing thousands of premature deaths, asthma attacks, and missed work and school days.

“Our plan will grow and strengthen our economy by sending longer term market signals that will drive innovation and investment. It will keep energy affordable and reliable. It will steer us towards where the world is going, not looking back at where it's been,” McCarthy said.

But the documentary shows West Virginia’ coal-mining towns slowly drying up, their businesses unable to keep their doors open because of the economic downturn forced upon them by the EPA regulations.

Families are struggling to put food on the table because of job loss, and many residents are contemplating whether or not to leave the places they grew up in in search of work.

During the Wednesday premiere, Hughes said that state officials had invited federal regulators and lawmakers to visit the areas hit hardest by the government regulations, but received no response.

“One of the things we heard most often was that they had invited federal regulators and federal lawmakers to come and see, and that at the time they had not gotten any takers,” Hughes said. “We were the only ones who came down and tried to tell their story in any way possible.

One thing that we heard over and over and over again was that people just felt forgotten“One thing that we heard over and over and over again was that people just felt forgotten. People felt like nobody was listening, and that this isn’t just a little hiccup like, ‘Well, I can’t go buy the car that I want next year’. This is ‘I’m losing my home, and my neighbor’s losing their home and the people down the street are losing their homes'," she said.

Although the coal mining community in West Virginia is accustomed to the ups and downs of the coal industry, Hughes continued, the latest government regulations won’t allow them to recover from hard times.

“Their problem is not so much that coal got hit, because they’ve been through that before. I mean these are people that have weathered some pretty rough stuff in that state’s history. They’re sick and tired of being kicked when they’re down.

“And I think that that would be my response to somebody that says, ‘Well, coal was already gonna have a tough time.’ Alright, [but] if you’ve got a person that’s struggling to pay their bills, do you go and take the little bit of money that they do have?”

Hughes said that by filming a documentary that puts a face on the struggling coal mining communities, viewers and federal lawmakers will be challenged to consider their role and take action to help revitalize the affected communities.

“One thing the Left is very, very good at is humanizing their policy issues. Those of us on the Right, we might have the best data and the best science and the best information and the best facts, but if we don’t put a face on it they’re going to win on that every time.

“And so we feel like this really adds a human face to it and can help start to drive that debate,” she said.

The Media Research Center has joined with several organizations, including Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cornwall Alliance, Energy & Environment Legal Institute, and The Heartland Institute, to give viewers of the documentary a look at the consequences of the Left’s environmental agenda and to expose the mainstream media’s refusal to cover it.

SOURCE




The facts about wind power are more awkward than the Green/Left will admit

Christopher Booker

I must apologise for having last week mistakenly reported that, despite the drive of the US in the Obama years to build ever more heavily subsidised wind and solar farms, the entire contribution of wind and solar to US electricity consumption is still only “less than 14 percent”.

Foolishly, I cited that figure only after a quick internet trawl. where it is quoted on various websites, including Wikipedia. Only when I subsequently referred to a more reliable source did I find that the figure was in fact absurdly exaggerated. All the US was actually getting last year for all the billions of dollars it has spent on wind and solar farms was just 5.4 percent of its electricity. Most of the rest of course came from those CO2-emitting, “planet-destroying” fossil fuels that Obama was so keen to see disappear.

Siemens wind farm factory 'great for Britain'Play! 00:52
So how does this compare with the position here in England, where we are continually told that wind and solar are now providing ever more of our own power? The official headline figures do not separate England, where most of us live, from the rest of the UK. But thanks to some very clever detective work by Paul Homewood on his Not A Lot Of People Know That blog, we can see that the English figures are in fact strikingly similar to those for the US. The contribution of English onshore wind and solar farms to electricity used in England amounted last year to just 5.3 percent.

That intermittently generated by all the thousands of wind turbines spread across the English countryside was just 2.4 percent: rather less than that fed into the grid by a single medium-size gas-fired power station like that recently opened at Carrington outside Manchester – which, thanks to the “carbon tax” and the Climate Change Act, could be the last we ever see built. There’s another very uncomfortable fact you will never see quoted on Wikipedia.

SOURCE





Australia: Ethanol mandates costing motorists $85m

Why do Greenies want ethanol in motor fuel?  It just combusts to give off small amounts of CO2 the way other fuels do.  It makes no sense
 
MOTORISTS in NSW are spending up to $85 million more on petrol due to the state government’s push to force service stations to sell ethanol-laced fuel, according to the competition watchdog.

In its latest petrol market report, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the NSW Government’s ethanol mandate has led to less choice and higher costs for Sydney motorists.

Introduced in 2007, the ethanol mandate requires service stations to sell at least 6 per cent ethanol as a proportion of their sales. E10 fuel is a mixture of 10 per cent ethanol and 90 per cent petrol.

Earlier this year, the Baird government ramped up its ethanol push by introducing harsh new penalties of more than $500,000 for service stations that do not stock E10 fuel. Manildra Group, the monopoly provider of ethanol fuel in NSW, is a major donor to state and federal branches of the Liberals, Nationals and Labor.

Former NSW Upper House whip Peter Phelps, who quit in March out of protest against the ethanol fuel laws, told the ABC earlier this year that it was “literally the worst piece of legislation NSW has introduced”.

According to the ACCC, the reduced availability of regular unleaded petrol (RULP) has led to higher sales of premium unleaded petrol (PULP) and E10. In 2014-15, PULP made up 54 per cent of total petrol sales while E10 made up 36 per cent. Nationwide excluding NSW, PULP sales were 23 per cent and E10 just 4 per cent.

The ACCC calculates that as a result of the ethanol mandate, Sydney motorists have spent between $75-$85 million extra on PULP, which averaged 11.5 cents per litre more expensive for 95 octane and 18.5 cents per litre for 98 octane than RULP in 2015-16.

“While the use of E10 may be better for the environment, the ethanol mandate has reduced consumer choice and cost Sydney motorists up to $85 million,” said ACCC chairman Rod Sims. “It has also boosted Sydney retailer’s profits due to the higher margins on premium fuel.”

Mark McKenzie, chief executive of the petrol retailer peak body ACAPMA, said government interference in motorists’ choice of fuel was unwanted and created “perverse economic effects”.

“Simply put, people are making a choice as to what product they put in their car and really are thumbing their nose at the government,” he said. “We’re talking about a mandate that’s been around for seven years. People have tried E10 and have fled from it.

“The issue here is the arrogance of the Baird government. They think they can make policy to suit themselves and their mates, when there is a broader community they’re supposed to be serving.

“Our view is the choice of fuel is that of the motorist and the government has no place interfering in a core product.”

NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said while it was true people were buying more premium fuel, there had been a lot of “misinformation” about E10 and it was “demonstrably not true” that it was bad for engines.

“The majors are advertising premium fuels quite heavily. People can buy regular fuel or E10 but they’re buying 98 octane and paying upwards of 30 cents per litre more for no real benefit,” he said.

“About three-quarters of the NSW fleet can run on E10. The remaining that can’t are either cars built before 1986 or they are high-performance vehicles that are mostly imported. The manufacturer will specify if a vehicle must run on premium fuel.”

Mr Khoury also disagreed with the ACCC’s finding that regular fuel was harder to find. “There is plenty of regular out there,” he said. “When we quote petrol prices we’re talking regular, not E10. People are buying it all over the place.”

Queensland is set to become the second state to introduce an ethanol mandate from January. Queensland Biofuels Minister Mark Bailey told The Australian many NSW motorists “wrongly assumed” their car could not use E10 because the NSW government did not roll out a consumer education campaign.

“Our ethanol mandate from January is set at a level that will ensure fuel retailers continue to offer a broad range of fuel grades,” Mr Bailey said.

NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Victor Dominello said the ethanol mandate had been a bipartisan policy since 2007.

“The government made changes to the legislation earlier in the year that will boost competition in the marketplace and provide consumers with greater choice,” Mr Dominello said.

“The reforms ensure the mandate is focused on the bigger petrol station operators while providing appropriate exemptions for smaller operators.

“Consumers are encouraged to use the government’s FuelCheck website which empowers them to find the cheapest fuel by publishing petrol prices in real-time for every service station across NSW.”

SOURCE

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