Pick your statistic:  Was recent Australian weather unusually hot?

The authors below have picked statistics that appear to show that recent times in Australia were unusually hot.  As with most Green/Left claims, the key is to look at what they did NOT say.  And it stands out like dog's balls what they have done.  They have discussed summer only.  What about other recent seasons?   Were they unusually hot too?  They probably were in parts but it's the average that matters and the BoM tells us that 2016 was only the 4th hottest year for Australia.  So overall, there is nothing to get heated about.  It's just the usual dishonest propaganda below


​Scientists have confirmed what anyone who lived through the past summer knows to be true - climate change is driving hotter and longer summers that are becoming "the new normal", according to scientists, with worse to come unless tough decisions are made.

The summer of 2016/17 produced not only Sydney's hottest summer on record, Canberra's hottest summer for daytime temperatures and Brisbane's hottest summer in terms of mean temperature, but Queensland's second hottest summer on record and the hottest summer temperatures on record for almost 45 per cent of NSW.

Scientists have called it "the angry summer" as more than 205 records were broken in just 90 days, according to a new report from the Climate Council.

"We are into the latter half of the critical decade, and temperatures are continuing to increase and extreme weather events are worsening. Climate change is increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves and warm spells. Hot days and heatwaves, like those experienced in the 2016/17 angry summer, are becoming the new normal, and even more extreme heat is on the way in future unless rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are achieved around the world," the report warned.

The reports authors, which include Professor Will Steffen, the inaugural director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, warned that Australia will continue to warm up throughout the 21st century and experience increasingly severe impacts.

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The latest emission from David Suzuki

In good Warmist style, David Suzuki's latest relies heavily  on "ad hominem" abuse rather than any discussion of science.  Suzuki is however still popular in Canada so his fellow Canadian, Patrick Moore,  has written a reply.  It follows Suzuki's rant below

Apparently, fossil-fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That’s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: “The amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.”

The “logic” of climate-change deniers and antienvironmentalists is often baffling. Although the person who posted that comment doesn’t appear to claim professional background or knowledge, Canadian antienvironmentalist Patrick Moore— who capitalizes on his science degree and long-ago association with Greenpeace to shill for polluting industries—told the Vancouver Sun in 2011 that oil companies are “leaving the soil cleaner than they found it because they’re removing the oil from it.”

Those who coat their “alternative facts” with a veneer of “expertise” often employ twisted logic. Take a petition letter urging U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Letter author Richard Lindzen, a climate skeptic whose work has often been debunked, claims “more than 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals from around the world” signed the petition. What kind of “eminent scientists” would sign something claiming carbon dioxide “is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth” and that “warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign”?

The idea that CO2 is little more than plant food is common in denier circles, floated recently by the U.S. Heartland Institute, its affiliated industry promoters like Canadians Patrick Moore and Tom Harris, and others. In a 2014 book, two signatories to the Trump letter, retired Environment Canada scientist Madhav Khandekar and retired Australian geology professor Cliff Ollier, along with database marketing consultant Arthur Middleton Hughes, wrote that the world should burn more coal “to produce electricity and increase CO2 in the atmosphere.” They also argue for more use of the pesticide DDT.

We’ve addressed the debunked CO2 argument before. It ignores pollution from burning coal and other fossil fuels, and the complexity and interconnectedness of natural systems. Many plants do need CO2, but it doesn’t follow that more CO2 is better, or that CO2 is the only factor in plant growth. Studies show rising temperatures often hinder plant growth and nutritional value. And droughts, floods, and other increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather events brought on by climate change are not beneficial to agriculture or plant growth. We also need oxygen to live, but too much can be toxic.

So, who are the “300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals” who put their names to such unscientific nonsense? Like Khandekar, many are affiliated with the industry-funded Heartland Institute, which has promoted tobacco and compared climate scientists to the Unabomber and Charles Manson.

A Desmog Blog investigation described the 300 as “medical doctors, mystery men, coal executives, petroleum engineers, economists, and think tank members. Only a small handful could be considered even remotely ‘qualified’ or ‘eminent’—but not in the field of climate science.” Many show no academic affiliation or address. Canadians are represented by the likes of Khandekar and Moore.

Moore once even claimed glaciers are “dead zones” that we’d be better off without! There’s that twisted logic. It’s true that plants don’t grow on glaciers, but microorganisms and other life do. Saying “Ice and frost are the enemies of life” is absurd—especially for those of us who require water to live!

Another signatory, William Happer, is a retired physics professor being eyed as Trump’s science adviser. Greenpeace once caught him in a sting in which he agreed to write an article touting the benefits of coal and to fake its peer-review status.

People posting nonsensical comments on Facebook might simply be uninformed or misinformed. But it’s hard not to conclude that many of the so-called experts are being deliberately deceptive. Any scientifically literate person who has examined the massive amounts of evidence for human-caused global warming and its consequences, collected over many decades from around the world, wouldn’t fall for such easily debunked claims.

In this “post-truth” era, with a climate-change-denying U.S. administration, those who want to keep humanity wedded to outdated, polluting technologies have been emboldened. It’s up to the rest of us to cut through the misinformation and help humanity get on track to a cleaner, healthier future.

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Judge refuses to block Dakota Access pipeline with project days from completion

The Standing Rock Sioux on Tuesday lost another legal challenge to the Dakota Access pipeline, leaving the tribe with few remaining avenues as the project moves within days of being ready to deliver oil.

U.S. District Court Judge James A. Boasberg turned down a request for a preliminary injunction filed by the tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux, ruling that their claim based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was unlikely to succeed.

A status report filed by Energy Transfer Partners with the court said the final ream pass at Lake Oahe is expected to be finished this week, meaning oil can begin flowing as early as March 13.

Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II called the ruling “disappointing, but not surprising,” adding that he was confident that the tribe would prevail in its ongoing lawsuit.

“Trump and his friends at Big Oil have not won. Today’s ruling does not hurt the strength of our legal arguments challenging the illegal easement approved by the Trump administration,” Mr. Archambault said in a statement.

The tribes had argued that running the pipeline below Lake Oahe would desecrate the water used in religious ceremonies, which must be “ritually pure,” even though the pipe runs underground and does not come in contact with the water.

In his 38-page opinion, Judge Boasberg said the tribe’s argument “does not persuasively support the proposition that this purpose requires the federal government to refrain from permitting infrastructure projects on its own land when doing otherwise would render water reserved for the reservation’s use spiritually impure.”

He pointed out that several other infrastructure projects already cross the lake, including a 1982 natural-gas pipeline that runs underneath, an overhead electric utility line, three vehicle bridges and a railroad bridge, and a wastewater-treatment plant that discharges into a tributary that then flows through the Standing Rock reservation into Lake Oahe.

The tribes also argued that the Dakota Access oil pipeline would fulfill the “black snake prophecy,” even though Lake Oahe itself is man-made, built 60 years ago.

“Presumably, the prophecy was issued after Lake Oahe was created; otherwise, the presence of pipelines upstream of the lake, including one that crosses 7.5 miles to its north, would be hard to reconcile with the Tribe’s belief that DAPL alone is the Black Snake,” the opinion said.

Judge Boasberg pointed out that the proposed route was disclosed by the U.S. Army Corps in Engineers as part of its review in October 2014, but it was not until last month that the tribes made a claim based on religion.

“For more than two years after becoming aware of DAPL’s proposed route, construction, and operation, then, Cheyenne River remained silent as to the Black Snake prophecy and its concerns about the presence of oil in the pipeline under Lake Oahe absent any issue of rupture, as well as about the possible applicability of RFRA,” the judge said.

The Standing Rock Sioux has fought the 1,172-mile, four-state pipeline, although its previous arguments were based mainly on the project’s risk to water quality. Energy Transfer Partners has insisted that the state-of-the-art pipeline is safe.

After issuing in July an easement for the final 1,100-foot stretch under Lake Oahe, the Obama administration delayed and then revoked the permit. The corps then reissued the easement in January after President Trump signed a memorandum to expedite the project.

The tribe has called for a full Environmental Impact Statement and “careful consideration” of tribal treaties before the easement is issued.

Delaying the pipeline based on a last-minute argument would “impose significant costs on a third party,” he said, namely Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the $3.8 billion pipeline, which the judge described as “days from completion.”

“Indeed, Defendants previously modified the pipeline workspace and route more than a hundred times in response to cultural surveys and Tribes’ concerns regarding historic and cultural resources,” the opinion said. “The Corps also imposed additional construction conditions on DAPL in response to tribal positions regarding environmental safety.”

Chase Iron Eyes, a leading pipeline foe, said that if there is a spill, the corps and the judge “will have oil and blood on their hands, and we will not let them forget it.”

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Warmists think they can alter what people eat

You would need a new Soviet system to achieve that.  "So, what's the problem", I can imagine them replying

You are what you eat, as the saying goes, and while good dietary choices boost your own health, they also could improve the health care system and even benefit the planet. Healthier people mean not only less disease but also reduced greenhouse gas emissions from health care.

As it turns out, some relatively small diet tweaks could add up to significant inroads in addressing climate change.

That's the finding of a new study led by UC Santa Barbara researchers, who analyzed the potential effects of healthier model diets for the United States. The results appear in the journal Climatic Change.

"To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has done this," said study director David Cleveland, a research professor in UCSB's environmental studies program and geography department. "People have looked at what effect diets have both on climate and on health, but they've never examined the potential to mitigate climate change through the food system and the health care system together."

The food system contributes about 30 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest proportion coming from animal-based food. In addition, the poor quality of the standard U.S. diet -- including high levels of red and processed meat and low levels of fruits and vegetables -- is a major factor in a number of preventable diseases. The U.S. spends $3 trillion on health care every year -- 18 percent of the gross domestic product -- much of it allocated to diseases associated with poor diets.

Cleveland and colleagues first used data from published meta-analyses that examined the effect of foods on diseases. Then, using life-cycle assessment data for the foods that changed in the healthier model diets, they analyzed the effects of the diets on greenhouse gas emissions for the food system. For the health care system, the researchers estimated the change in risk of diabetes, colorectal cancer and coronary heart disease due to the healthier diets and the subsequent effect on both health care costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

To create healthier model diets, the researchers altered the standard 2,000-calorie-a-day U.S. diet, changing the sources of about half of those calories. The different model diets progressively reduced the amount of red and processed meats, with the most stringent diet eliminating them completely. Fruit and vegetable intake was doubled, and peas and beans increased to replace the meat protein removed. Refined grains were partially replaced with whole grains. Added sugar, which Cleveland noted is a known health risk, was not reduced. Neither was dairy, eggs, fish or non-red meat.

"This means our estimates are probably very conservative, both in terms of health and climate change implications," Cleveland said. "Just changing half of the diet and including only some of the diseases associated with diets, we found a huge effect.

"Food has a tremendous impact on the environment," he added. "That means that there is enormous potential for our food choices to have positive effects on our environment as well on our health and our health care costs."

That is exactly what the scientists found. The adoption of healthier model diets reduced the relative risk of coronary heart disease, colorectal cancer and Type 2 diabetes by 20 to 40 percent. Health care costs went down by $77 billion to $93 billion annually and direct greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 222 kilograms to 826 kilograms per person per year.

"In the third diet -- which contained no red or processed meats -- there was a savings of $95 billion out of the total annual cost of $230 billion for those three diseases," Cleveland explained. "That's not huge compared to the $3 trillion total in health care costs, but it's a start. Results like these can also help motivate individual and policy changes."

In terms of climate policy, the healthier diets could contribute up to 23 percent of the U.S. Climate Action Plan goal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, Cleveland said. Further, the diets could generate up to 134 percent of California's goal of reaching 1990 emission levels by 2020.

According to Cleveland, the findings add weight to the conclusion of several other recent studies: Diet change must be part of successful climate change mitigation policies, and climate change mitigation must be included in policies to improve the food system.

This creates an important opportunity for the University of California, Cleveland noted. "The UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative should have a major focus on climate change mitigation via the food system," he said. "And the UC Global Food Initiative should have a major focus on the relationships among food, climate and health."

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House votes to end unauthorized rogue EPA, agency propaganda to support harmful regs

In fiscal years 2014 and 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tricked the American people into rallying behind a regulation, The Waters of the United States, that took away jobs and harmed businesses.

After engaging in “covert propaganda and self-aggrandizement”, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office reported that the EPA violated critical anti-lobbying law — enacted in annual appropriations bills — to push regulations onto the American people; now Trump is undoing Obama’s damage and Congress is bringing transparency back into government.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.),  authored and had the House pass legislation, H.R. 1004, The Regulatory Integrity Act of 2017, through the House which will require executive agencies to update the status of upcoming regulations consistently on a public format.  The law puts the requirement on agency heads to “make publicly available in a searchable format in a prominent location either on the website of the Executive agency or in the rule making docket on Regulations.gov” each pending regulatory action as well as “a list of each public communication about the pending agency regulatory action.”

The law requires executive agencies to maintain public access to this information for a minimum of 5 years after the regulation has been finalized, ensuring the people have access to accurate information on the regulations they will be asked to submit to.

The Waters of the United States rule proposed by the EPA serves to redefine what constitutes rivers, streams, lakes, and marshes fall under the jurisdiction of the agency as “navigable” waters under the terms of the Clean Water Act to the extent that every puddle on your property could be covered.

The rule dramatically increases EPA oversight and did so under the justification in part that the “final rule reflects consideration of the extensive public comments received on the proposed rule.”

However, this “public comment” was far from what the EPA described. The New York Times revealed in May 2015, through a series of social media campaigns the EPA, without fully disclosing its identity, helped tip the scales throughout the comment period, pushing positive information about the water rule to the public and encouraged newly turned environmentalists to comment on the need for the program.

As the EPA boasted over one million comments with a nearly 90 percent positivity rating, Republican Senator James Inhofe blasted the agency’s involvement, “There is clear collusion between extreme environmental groups and the Obama administration in both developing and promoting a host of new regulations.”

The Government Accountability Office report explained that while the EPA could not quantify the exact cost spent on social media campaigns promoting this rule but that “staff is paid for time spent developing and posting a message but time is not tracked by platform or project.”

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform noted in their report on H.R. 1004 that the most egregious element of the EPA’s actions was that “through these campaigns the EPA oversimplified an immensely complicated rule in order to solicit support for its rule, leaving the public misinformed.”

The EPA tried to fool the American people into legislation that former House Speaker John Boehner at the time said, “is being shoved down the throats of hardworking people with no input, and places landowners, small businesses, farmers and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell.”

Luckily, President Trump has made rescinding this exact regulation a priority. Just this week, Trump signed executive order Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism, and Economic Growth by Reviewing the “Waters of the United States” Rule, to review the EPA’s overreach.

Trump announced, “EPA’s so-called Waters of the United States Rule is one of the worst examples of federal regulation and it has truly run amok and is one of the rules most strongly opposed by farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers all across our land…The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands and regulations and permits started treating our wonderful small farmers and small businesses as if they were a major industrial polluter.”

As Trump removes the “navigable” waters rule the Obama Administration wanted, Congress is working to prevent government from attempting to fool citizens like this in the future.

Now by passing the Walberg legislation, the House is preventing this blatant public misinformation. By forcing agency heads to provide information regarding pending regulations to the public in a clear and concise way, Congress is following through on what Trump has begun; removing executive overreach and bringing government back to the people who provided consent to be governed.

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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