Canadian Documentary Pokes Holes in Global-Warming Mantra

Our planet is actually colder than previous eras when life already existed, and, believe it or not, carbon dioxide does not have any clear correlation with global temperature growth. Examining climate fluctuations and natural dynamics from over 12,000 or 50,000 years appears to discredit the arguments of climate-change alarmists and the assertion of man-made global warming.

The documentary The Environment: A True Story invites us to rethink global warming and to question what the media and some influential actors say about it. Produced by Canadian history professor John Robson, the film presents historical evidence and comments from climate scientists, such as climatologist Richard Keen from the University of Colorado, Boulder, to demonstrate that “alarmism is not a good science.”

Robson, who describes himself as a passionate environmentalist, demonstrates in two hours and 40 minutes that the Earth's climate has always fluctuated. It is, therefore, derelict to blame humans for something that already happened when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It is even worse to study global warming with computer models originally designed to predict natural phenomenon that have, at most, only 150 years of recorded data.

Robson claims that a historical overview of the geographical and weather conditions of the planet is enough to shake up the commonly accepted belief in man-made global warming.

The interviewed specialists explain that the Earth passes through cycles of big ice ages and big melts. The Holocene epoch — the period since the last ice age — began 12,000 years back and has permitted human life, but it is actually an interglacial stage. Now the Earth is approaching the next big melt, and that explains some rising temperatures in recent years.

Robson suggests another key line of reasoning: the natural processes of the Earth recycle and reuse almost everything, including carbon dioxide. CO2 emissions are not as harmful as alarmists argue, and their presence “does not explain the climate variability” to the degree that sun activity does. In other words, the magnetic field of the sun alters the physical dynamics of the Earth, particularly those related to the water cycle. Therefore, the climate scientists presented argue that water vapor is instead the most important greenhouse gas when it comes to global temperature change.

Despite the film's long duration of almost three hours, it addresses specific topics in brief scenes and presents consistent evidence against the analyses that favor man-made global warming. Robson finally recommends that decision-makers, who are wrongly basing their policies on alarmist analyses, stop wasting money and time on trying to solve a natural event and deal instead with real threats, such as withdrawing plastic from the oceans and taking conscious care of “our only home,” the Earth.

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Opposition to movement of fracking sand

Sounds like they are desperate to find something to protest about

SUPPORTERS OF Olympia Stand, a climate justice coalition in Olympia, Washington, has constructed an encampment blocking the railroad tracks to the Port of Olympia--under a banner reading "No Fracking Sand in Our Port."

The purpose of the blockade is to prevent fracking sands, known as ceramic proppants, from being shipped from the port to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and other places.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting oil and natural gas from source rock, primarily shale. This is done by pumping a mixture of fracking sands, and large amounts of water and chemicals into the veins of the source rock to open them and extract the oil and natural gas.

As one activist at the blockade said in an interview: "We are here because we reject the port's complicity with the fossil fuel industry. For example, they have a bad contract with Rainbow Ceramics [the Houston-based company that produces the proppants] that allows the proppants to be stored at the port for free."

At about the same time last year and at the same place, a similar blockade was built to stop the trains then shipping fracking sands to North Dakota. The same activist added, "We are here to celebrate the anniversary of last year's blockade and also the 10-year anniversary of the attempt to prevent the port from sending military equipment to [Joint Base Lewis McCord]."

In 2007, members and supporters of Port Military Resistance engaged in a protest that included street battles with police over transporting military equipment between the port and Joint Base Lewis McCord. The equipment consisted mostly of motor vehicles that were returning from Iraq for maintenance and repair and were then scheduled to be returned to Iraq.

OLYMPIA PORT Resistance, a participant in the current encampment and blockade, has issued two demands: First, that the Port of Olympia cease all fossil fuel and military infrastructure shipments; and second, that control of the port should be horizontal and democratic.

The second demand relates to concerns about the port that many area residents share. The port is governed by a commission consisting of three members. Only one of the members, E.J. Zita, has opposed allowing the port to accept anti-ecological and military cargos.

The future of the blockade is unclear. As this article was being written, it had lasted for four days. Both the Olympia Police Department and Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the tracks, have stated that they have no plans to break the encampment up.

However, last year after the blockade had stood for about a week, a railroad lawyer offered to meet with representatives of the encampment the following day, assuring them that no efforts would be made to disrupt the encampment beforehand.

Instead, both local police and railroad police raided the encampment at 4 a.m. on the day that the meeting was to take place. Twelve demonstrators were arrested and others were injured in the process.

Whatever happens this time around, activists have one message for attempts to ship fracking materials: "No frackin' way!"

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Beware the army worm

Africa needs GM crops

An even more dangerous foe than Robert Mugabe is stalking Africa. Early last year, a moth caterpillar called the fall armyworm, a native of the Americas, turned up in Nigeria. It has quickly spread across most of Africa. This is fairly terrifying news, threatening to undo some of the unprecedented improvements in African living standards of the past two decades. Many Africans depend on maize for food, and maize is the fall armyworm’s favourite diet.

Fortunately, there is a defence to hand. Bt maize, grown throughout the Americas for many years, is resistant to insects. The initials stand for a bacterium that produces a protein toxic to insects but not to people. Organic farmers have been using the bacterium as a pesticide for more than five decades, but it is expensive. Bt maize has the protein inside the plant, thanks to genetic engineers, who took a gene from the bacterium and put it in the plant.

However, influenced by European environmentalists, most African countries forbid the growing of genetically modified crops. This is a pity, because unless they change their attitude fast, they will face the prospect of using far more pesticides, which small-scale farmers cannot afford, and which come with environmental and safety risks, or suffering famine, relieved by expensive imports of food.

Fortunately, inch by inch Africa is changing its mind on biotech crops, though only South Africa has approved Bt maize. Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya are slowly changing their legislation. But bureaucrats with empires to build keep putting roadblocks in the way of change, and environmental pressure groups are campaigning to undermine the efforts.

Some years ago I spoke to the leaders of a large charity working with African farmers and asked them why they did not come out in support of biotechnology. They replied that they dared not do so for fear of retribution from the big environmental pressure groups, such as Greenpeace, for which opposition to biotechnology is a totemic issue when fundraising in Europe.

Money came before humanity, in other words. Greenpeace’s former director, Stephen Tindale, changed his mind about biotechnology and said two years ago, before his death: “I worry for Greenpeace and the other green groups because they could, by taking such a hard line . . . be seen to be putting ideology before the need for humanitarian action.”

Last year 129 winners of the Nobel prize signed a letter, saying: “We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology.” Yet Greenpeace remains opposed to biotech crops. The European Parliament also voted to accept a Green Party report arguing against involvement in a new international agricultural technology initiative in Africa because of the involvement of biotech firms. A Kenyan farmer, Gilbert Arap Bor, wrote: “They want us to remain agricultural primitives, stuck with technologies that were antiquated even before we entered the 21st century.”

More than half of the two billion people who will be added to the world’s population by 2050 will be Africans. Yet feeding the continent’s growing population, largely from African farms, is possible. And, like Asia before it, Africa can initially prosper through agriculture more than any other industry, but only if there is a green revolution of farming modernisation comparable to what happened in Asia in the Sixties.

The average yield of an African maize crop is less than a quarter of that of a North American crop, even before the effect of the fall armyworm. This is largely down to a lack of fertilisers, pesticides, hybrid seeds and biotechnology, and frequent drought. Hybrid seeds alone, produced by conventional breeding, can deliver improvements in yield of 20 to 30 per cent, I’m told. Drought-resistant varieties, also conventionally produced, can double the yield. But neither helps against the fall armyworm.

The African Agricultural Technology Foundation is co-ordinating a public-private partnership called Water Efficient Maize for Africa (Wema). Its aim is to develop drought-tolerant and insect-protected maize using both biotechnology and modern techniques of conventional breeding. Its first product, a drought-tolerant, white maize hybrid seed, was delivered to farmers in Kenya four years ago. It resulted in a harvest of 4.5 tons per hectare, compared with 1.8 tons normally. The Wema project has the support of industry to make the varieties available royalty-free to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through African seed companies. Monsanto, for example, is giving away its intellectual property in the region.

Ah, say its critics, but Monsanto is hoping that Africans will use its hybrids and thus become rich enough to buy more seeds from it one day. Yes, and what is wrong with that? Suppose Wema does result in many African smallholders earning enough money to buy a tractor, put a child through school and go into the market in search of the best seeds, as well as sufficient fertiliser? Where’s the problem? All right, say the critics, but resistance to the Bt toxin is already developing in fall armyworms in Brazil. True, but so is resistance to insecticides. Agriculture is an arms race against the other species, and newer techniques should keep us easily one step ahead, so long as we do not prevent them.

The next technology to help farming will be gene-editing, different from the transgenic technique that produced Bt maize, and involving the introduction of no foreign DNA, the thing that critics say they most object to. A tweak to the genes of maize can make it resistant to maize lethal necrosis, a viral disease hurting yields in parts of Africa. There is an opportunity for Britain here. Freed from Europe’s deadly precautionary principle, British plant scientists could be well placed to support their colleagues in Africa.

Those who think poverty a price worth paying for nostalgia say we should go back to traditional agriculture, in better harmony with the land. Not if we want wildlife. Globally, if we had the yields of 1960 we would need more than twice as much land to feed today’s population. In which case, you could kiss goodbye to all rainforests, nature reserves and national parks.

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Climate Change Alarmism Is ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out,’ Retired NASA Physicist Says

Unvalidated climate models that don’t correspond with physical data and the requirements of the scientific method contribute to unfounded climate alarmism, a retired NASA physicist said at the Heartland Institute’s recent America First Energy Conference.

Since America’s national security depends in part on energy security, unsubstantiated claims about global warming that prevent policymakers from making “rational decisions” with regard to the development of U.S. energy resources have become a national security threat, said Hal Doiron, a 16-year NASA veteran.

The “propaganda” underpinning climate alarmism is “causing tremendous political bottlenecks” that prevent government officials from “doing the right thing” on energy, he said.

Doiron, who helped develop the Apollo Lunar Module’s landing dynamics software during NASA’s moon missions, also expressed concern that the U.S. military has been directly affected by climate alarmist claims separated from sound science.

He criticized the Navy for “preparing for something that is unreasonable and would cost too much money” in the form of “extreme sea-level rise,” which has not been borne out by rigorous scientific study.

Doiron defines unvalidated climate models as those that do not agree with physical data. Public policy and military planning should be based only on models validated by physical data, he said.

“At NASA, we have a policy: You can’t make a design decision on a spacecraft or rocket that is not validated,” he said. “You don’t make critical decisions based on ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Yet our government has been doing that with respect to climate alarm, because too many academics in universities are writing papers, drawing conclusions from models that don’t agree with physical data.”

Doiron is part of a group called “The Right Climate Stuff,” which includes engineers and scientists from across generations who have taken part in NASA’s most high-profile missions dating back to Apollo.

The group has produced its own “rigorous, earth surface temperature model using conservation-of-energy principles” that operates similarly to the way the surface and internal temperature of a spacecraft is analyzed, the Right Climate Stuff team explains on its website.

The reports produced from the analysis provide more “realistic projections” of the rise in the earth’s surface temperature over the next 150 years that show severe anti-fossil fuel regulations are not justified, Doiron and other former NASA team members contend.

“The scientific method requires that your hypothesis and theories be confirmed by physical data,” he said. “Computer models are not physical data, although I think many in academia don’t understand that.”

When unvalidated models are compared with validated models based on physical evidence, the validated models predict much less global warming, Doiron said. Moreover, the fact that unvalidated models often don’t agree with each other should be a “big, red flag.”

The retired NASA physicist is calling for U.S. policymakers to establish official data on two key metrics; specifically, “the true sensitivity of surface temperature to greenhouse gases” and a “reasonable projection of greenhouse emissions and [the] concentrations rise in our atmosphere.”

Doiron and his team have developed “a new metric” called “transient climate sensitivity,” which measures how much warming can be seen with a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the “way that it’s actually happening,” based on a “very small amount of [carbon dioxide] each year.”

That’s something that can be measured and verified against available physical data, he said. But because policymakers, including military planners, are not operating from reasonable projections, they are not in a position to adequately plan for the future, Doiron cautioned.

Another way climate change alarmism has worked to undermine America’s national security standing is by consuming too much of the military budget at the expense of military readiness, a top naval commander said during the panel discussion.

Adm. Thomas Hayward, who retired from the Navy as chief of naval operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after serving as commander of the 7th Fleet and commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, also addressed the Heartland Institute’s energy conference and sounded concerns.

For the past six to eight years, Hayward said, climate change has been given “a higher priority” than the readiness of the Navy’s fleet. During that time, the Defense Department has spent $100 billion on “just climate change,” while the Navy has spent “$58 billion chasing what is called the ‘green fleet.’”

That means many Navy vessels are using biofuels, but Hayward wonders how many ports around the world are equipped to accommodate Navy vessels that rely on a high percentage of biofuels, and he worries how that would work in a combat situation.

This report has been modified to state correctly how much Hayward said the Defense Department has spent on climate change.

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Crocodiles:  Conservative Australian politician versus "experts"

Crocs mean "no swimming in coastal waters or in rivers within a certain distance from the coast" but that's OK by the Greenies, apparently. They also look at the long term average of croc attacks and say it is low but that is an inappropriate statistic where the population is rising.  They should look at the trend.  And if you do that you see the four recent attacks as a minimum not as an outlier.

And to demonstrate ecological benefit from lots of crocs they had to go to Brazil.  Pretty good evidence that there are no such benefits here.

They are right in saying that crocs are a tourist attraction and some areas should be set aside for that purpose.  But limiting their Queensland population to the Daintree and parts North would be a reasonable compromise.  That would leave a big areas for crocs while leaving most of the North Queensland coast safe.  But compromise is alien to Greenies.  They always want it all


Australian politician Bob Katter wants to launch a war … against crocodiles.

Katter, known for his controversial opinions on multiple topics including same-sex marriage, claimed on Nov. 15 that there are too many crocodiles in Australia. They have no natural enemies, and in the Australian region of North Queensland alone, they eat up to four people each year, he said.

Katter made the anti-croc statement on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's program "Insiders"

But crocodile experts assert that the ancient reptiles are, in fact, good for Australia.

The animals have a positive effect on the ecosystem, as well as the local economy, said Adam Britton, a leading crocodile expert and zoologist at Charles Darwin University in Australia. Though Britton conceded that crocodiles in the rivers of northern Australia can threaten people's lives, these dangers can be easily managed, he said.

"There are probably between 150 [thousand] and 180 thousand crocodiles in the Northern Territory [of Australia] and some 40 [thousand] to 50 thousand in Queensland," Britton told Live Science. "They are certainly not endangered. But over the last 30 to 40 years, we were able to deal with the risks [posed by crocodiles] via a management program."

For local people, that program means no swimming in coastal waters or in rivers within a certain distance from the coast.

Britton, who runs the website CrocBITE, which monitors attacks by all sorts of crocodile species around the world, noted that North Queensland has experienced an unusual streak of crocodile attacks over the past year. However, he said that he doesn't think there are too many crocodiles in Queensland's rivers. Rather, the croc population is still recovering from overhunting that occurred in the first half of the 20th century, he said.

"This year has been a little bit unusual for Queensland," Britton said. "They had four attacks in total. Two of them were fatal. It has been the worst year they've had for a long time."

But in the long term, the statistics look less sinister, Britton said. "Over the last 10 years, there have been 14 crocodile attacks in North Queensland, six of them fatal," he said. "That would be about one person killed by crocodiles every 20 months."

Most of the victims had ignored a slew of warning signs, Britton said. The crocodile habitats are known and marked by warning signs, yet some people decide to risk their lives nonetheless.

In one of the recent cases, for example, a guy "was attacked by a crocodile when he was showing off to a girl," Britton said. "He jumped into the water, where he knew there were crocodiles, and sure enough, one of them bit him. It's like putting on a blindfold and walking into a highway. You may be lucky or you may not."

Britton added that even though crocodiles place limitations on people living in the areas, northern Australia benefits from the animals' presence. The reptiles attract adventure-seeking tourists, and the wild-crocodile egg-harvesting program is an important source of income for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, he said. Harvesters can sell the eggs to crocodile farms that breed the animals for skins, which are popular in the fashion industry.

Moreover, artificially reducing the crocodile population could disrupt the balance of the wider ecosystem, Britton said.

"There are examples from other parts of the world," Britton said. "For example, in Brazil, when they removed black caimans [a large crocodile species], the economically valuable fish that were captured by local people disappeared."

After the reintroduction of the caimans, the fish population recovered. Researchers eventually found that the juvenile caimans feed on crabs, which eat fish eggs. The lack of juvenile caimans had meant too many crabs in the water, which resulted in a reduced fish population and economic problems for local fishers.

Katter said he is concerned that crocodiles don't have natural enemies and that the only way to keep the population within limits is to kill off the animals. But Britton said the population will stabilize naturally once it reaches healthy levels.

"As the crocodile population recovers, the mortality rate of juveniles increases through competition," said Britton. "Crocodiles actually self-control their own population growth, eventually slowing down and reaching a stable level like any wild animal population with limited resources."

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