This is even nuttier than saying correlation proves causation. The "correlated" events are not correlated at all. There is a 600 year gap between the two. As the well-named Dr Swindles says below: "there was a time lag of roughly 600 years between the climate event and a noticeable decrease in the number of volcanic eruptions". When is a gap big enough to reject a claim of correlation?
Shrinking glacier cover could lead to increased volcanic activity in Iceland, scientists have warned.
A new study, led by the University of Leeds, found there was less volcanic activity in Iceland when glacier cover was more extensive. As the glaciers melted, volcanic eruptions increased due to subsequent changes in surface pressure.
Dr Graeme Swindles, from the School of Geography at Leeds, said: “Climate change caused by humans is creating rapid ice melt in volcanically active regions. In Iceland, this has put us on a path to more frequent volcanic eruptions.”
The study examined Icelandic volcanic ash preserved in peat deposits and lake sediments and identified a period of significantly reduced volcanic activity between 5,500 and 4,500 years ago. This period came after a major decrease in global temperature, which caused glacier growth in Iceland.
The findings, published today in the journal Geology, found there was a time lag of roughly 600 years between the climate event and a noticeable decrease in the number of volcanic eruptions. The study suggests that perhaps a similar time lag can be expected following the more recent shift to warmer temperatures.
Iceland’s volcanic system is in process of recovering from the ‘Little Ice Age’ — a recorded period of colder climate roughly between the years 1500 to 1850. Since the end of the Little Ice Age, a combination of natural and human caused climate warming is causing Icelandic glaciers to melt again.
rock fragments and particles ejected by a volcanic eruption.
Small rock fragments and particles ejected by past volcanic eruptions have been preserved in peat deposits and lake sediments
Dr Swindles said: “The human effect on global warming makes it difficult to predict how long the time lag will be but the trends of the past show us more eruptions in Iceland can be expected in the future.
“These long term consequences of human effect on the climate is why summits like COP are so important. It is vital to understand how actions today can impact future generations in ways that have not been fully realised, such as more ash clouds over Europe, more particles in the atmosphere and problems for aviation. “
Icelandic volcanism is controlled by complex interactions between rifts in continental plate boundaries, underground gas and magma build-up and pressure on the volcano’s surface from glaciers and ice. Changes in surface pressure can alter the stress on shallow chambers where magma builds up.
Study co-author, Dr Ivan Savov, from the School of Earth & Environment at Leeds, explained: “When glaciers retreat there is less pressure on the Earth’s surface. This can increase the amount of mantle melt as well as affect magma flow and how much magma the crust can hold.
“Even small changes in surface pressure can alter the likelihood of eruptions at ice-covered volcanos.”
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Sharing our blessings
This Thanksgiving we should give thanks for fossil fuels – and promote them for rest of world
Paul Driessen
This Thanksgiving weekend is a good time to express our gratitude for the jobs, living standards and life spans we enjoy today – largely because of abundant, reliable, affordable energy, 83% of it still because of fossil fuels. As my CFACT colleague Craig Rucker suggests, we should also be grateful that we live in a country that can provide hundreds of millions of turkey dinners, at a price anyone can afford, all on the same day, thanks to our free market economy (and fossil fuels).
Thanksgiving is also an opportunity to ponder why billions in our human family still do not enjoy those blessings, have electricity only sporadically or not at all, and try to survive on a few dollars a day or less. It’s a time to reflect on what we can do to help change policies that perpetuate that situation.
For thousands of years, humanity was mired in poverty, disease, malnutrition, misery, and average life expectancies of 40 years or less. Even nobility in their fancy homes had few of the luxuries we take for granted today. Then, in the late nineteenth century, a sudden surge in life expectancy, health and wealth transformed much of the world, as the growing use of coal and petroleum powered incredible advances in construction, sanitation, transportation, communication, medicine, agriculture and other technologies.
In 1882, Wisconsin’s Hearthstone House became the world’s first home lit by hydroelectricity. No one then could have foreseen how electricity would dominate, enhance and safeguard our lives in the myriad ways it does today – or envisioned the many ways we generate electricity today.
Today, Asian countries are roaring far beyond where they were just two decades ahead, as they adopt freer economies and use coal to generate electricity, create jobs, and bring hope, health, technology and prosperity to billions. Africa still lags behind, but here too coal and natural gas are providing electricity to a continent where more people than live in North and Central America’s still do not have access to it.
Pollution from coal-fired power plants remains a problem in countries where bringing electricity to billions has been deemed more important than eliminating unhealthy emissions. But that is changing, as electricity brings jobs, modernity and prosperity – and people demand cleaner air. Once scrubbers are installed, the only emissions will be what now comes out of US and EU “smoke” stacks: water vapor and plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide, which alarmists still claim is causing weather and climate chaos.
A real irony in all this is that China is financing and building many of these power plants – instead of the United States and Europe, which pioneered electricity generation and pollution control technologies. This is largely the result of US and EU policies, driven by global warming ideology and politics.
Too many still-impoverished nations have been ruled by corrupt, self-centered leaders who care little about their people. But all too often in recent years, when countries wanted to build coal or gas-fueled power plants, a cabal of climate activists in every position of power and privilege told them to drop dead.
Literally. Certainly that has been the result of their policies. It is as though we have returned to the days when Mayans drowned children in cenotes to appease the gods and prevent droughts – and then saw a century-long drought end their civilization.
This 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution memorializes how Communist regimes starved and murdered over 100 million helpless, innocent Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, North Koreans and others unlucky enough to have been born in those places and times – to serve that savage ideology. Even now, Castro protégé Nicolas Maduro is sending countless Venezuelans to early graves.
Today, countless millions are sacrificed on the altar of Gaia, because callous environmentalists continue to tell the world’s most destitute, energy-deprived families they must be content with whatever living standards they can derive from wind and solar – and must never employ fossil fuels. Even in Britain, deaths have risen 40% in the past year among elderly people who cannot heat their homes properly, because renewable energy policies have made energy costs unaffordable for too many pensioners.
Those “fuels of the past” are not sustainable, green ideologues say. They’re running out. They cause dangerous climate change. We will tell you what living standards you may aspire to. Better that you die today from diseases of preventable poverty, than perish tomorrow from manmade climate cataclysms.
One source of these attitudes is Obama science adviser John Holdren. He wrote in 1974 that it was essential to “de-develop the United States,” bringing its economic system and consumption “into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.” Once that is underway, he continued, the US should focus on de-developing other industrialized nations and on the “ecologically feasible development” of under-developed countries. These views strongly influenced President Obama.
In 2009, Mr. Obama told Ghanaians they should refrain from using “dirty” fossil fuels and utilize their “bountiful” renewable energy. In 2013, he told South Africans, if “everybody has got a car and … air conditioning and … a big house, the planet will boil over – unless we find new ways of producing energy.”
His Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support construction of a power plant that would provide clean, affordable electricity from natural gas that companies were just burning in Ghana’s oil fields. President Obama refused to support South Africa’s request for a World Bank loan to continue building a state-of-the-art, coal-fired power plant. In 2013 his Power Africa initiative for a “sustainable Africa” energy strategy emphasized wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal power – but not fossil fuels.
It’s all part of the “wrenching transformation of society” that Al Gore has said is absolutely necessary.
Today, climate claims increasingly reflect a desperate determination to remain relevant and keep the research gravy train on its shaky tracks. “Global warming might be especially dangerous for pregnant women,” says one new study. “Climate change may be making bearded dragons less intelligent,” wails another. (It’s a good thing deep fat fryers are cooling the planet down a bit.) Climate Crisis, Inc. doesn’t seem to care that its depraved ethics have lethal consequences.
Thankfully, developing countries are no longer listening. They have built hundreds of coal-fired generating units and have 1,600 more under construction or in planning. Most now realize industrialized nations will not contribute billions (much less trillions) of dollars to the Green Climate Fund. They are beginning to understand that, if they want health, wealth and jobs, they should not do what many rich nations are saying or doing now that they are rich; they should do what those nations did to become rich.
After 50 years of Nazi and Communist domination, Poland is charting its own destiny, catching up to Western Europe, thumbing its nose at the EU, using more coal to generate electricity, and importing coal from the USA. (The UN’s 2018 climate meeting in Katowice, Poland will be very interesting.)
The UK government says there will be no new renewable energy subsidies until 2025. Even Germany’s “utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality,” says Euro climate and energy observer Benny Peiser.
Al Gore, Barack Obama, Tom Steyer, Nat Simons, George Soros and their elitist ultra-green comrades will never give up their jet travel, limos, mansions, wealth, perks and privileges – to “save the Earth” or for any other reason. How dare they lecture us “common folk” – and tell families in impoverished countries what kinds and amounts of energy, homes, cars and consumer goods they will be “permitted” to have.
As we enjoy our turkey dinner leftovers, let us give thanks in the best, most humanitarian way possible: by promoting free market principles and selling, financing and building large-scale modern coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power generation equipment, pollution control systems, and other technologies that will improve and save lives all over this wondrous planet.
Via email
UK: Backlash as Ineos puts fracking on fast track with plans to bypass local councils
Ineos is seeking to bypass local councils by using controversial new rules to fast-track plans to drill for shale gas in the Midlands without their planning approval.
The privately held petrochemicals giant run by the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, one of the world’s ten biggest chemical companies with operations in 16 countries and sales of $40 billion a year, is taking the lead in the development of Britain’s shale gas industry.
It will become the first business to use powers created in 2015 to allow companies to request intervention from ministers in order to secure permission for delayed infrastructure projects deemed to be of national importance.
SOURCE
Every once in a while, environmentalists will let slip that the goal of fighting climate change can't be won unless capitalism is first defeated.
And the fact that there's no evidence to support the claim doesn't seem to matter.
The latest to make this case is Arizona State University fellow Benjamin Fong in an Op-Ed published recently by the New York Times, headlined "The Climate Crisis? It's Capitalism, Stupid."
"It should be stated plainly: It's capitalism that is at fault," he writes. Or, what he later calls "the rampant stupidity of capitalism." The answer, he says, is a "democratic socialist society."
Fong isn't the only one making this claim. Naomi Klein's 2014 book titled "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate" argues that the planet is doomed unless the world abandons "free market" ideology.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of climate change policy wasn't just to cut CO2 emissions, but "to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution."
Assume for the sake of argument that everything environmentalists say about global warming is true — that the computer models are perfectly accurate in predicting future warming and that the result will be entirely negative.
Is capitalism to blame? Let's review the evidence.
Free market economies have become far less carbon intensive over time. Data from the United Nations show that the U.S. emitted 62% less carbon for each dollar of GDP produced in 2014 than it did in 1990. In Hong Kong, which is ranked as having the most free economy, its carbon intensity dropped by 58% over those years.
What about more socialist countries? Communist China emits 86% more CO2 per dollar of GDP than does the U.S.; Russia emits 50% more.
Worldwide, carbon intensity has steadily dropped since 1990. Those were years when free market capitalism was spreading, and the trend started long before the world was taking climate change seriously.
Why? Because even without any government oversight, free markets reward efficiency. And one of the biggest sources of waste is energy use. Trying to increase profits, therefore, invariably means less energy use, and less pollution, including CO2.
Free markets are also inherently "sustainable" because businesses want to stay in business. That means making sure resources are carefully managed for the long term.
Socialism, in contrast, is dirty business. The Soviet Union was a horrendous polluter, as were other Eastern Bloc countries. "The socialist world suffers from the worst pollution on Earth," noted Thomas DiLorenzo back in 1992.
Here at home, the federal government is the biggest energy consumer and polluter — despite being free of any profit motive.
The simple truth is that, as long as there are people on the planet, they're going to need and want things. The best, most sustainable, most earth-friendly way to deliver those things is through free market capitalism.
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In order to drain the swamp, President Trump must first destroy the Green Blob.
James Delingpole
This is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from a series of data leaks and Freedom of Information (FOI) revelations exposing the relationship between left wing campaigners and the great climate change scam.
Global warming, it becomes clear, is primarily a left-wing political issue, not a scientific one. Green is the new red.
These leaks show how rich liberal backers—left-wing institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation, eco hedge-fund billionaires like Tom Steyer, and the various socialistic Geek Emperors of Silicon Valley—are funneling millions of dollars into sock-puppet environmental organizations both to undermine Trump’s economic agenda and to finance his political opponents both in the Democratic Party and the GOP.
U.S. Climate Alliance
This poses as “a bi-partisan coalition of states is committed to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.” Or so the website says. But anyone can set up a website.
The truth, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has discovered through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-requested email correspondence, is that U.S. Climate Alliance is just a front. Its real purpose is to enable the richly funded green lobby to buy up Democrat governors—and one, token, squishy Republican governor: Gov. Charlie Baker (MA)—by effectively bribing them with free office, research and staffing facilities which they can run off books.
There is nothing actually illegal in any of this. But to appreciate how ethically dubious it is, just consider how the liberal media would respond if the roles were reversed and it were conservative politicians being provided with all these off-books services by, say, the fossil fuel industry.
Chris Horner, who initiated the FOIA for the CEI, put it like this in the Washington Times:
Mr. Horner asked how the media would react if, for example, the Koch brothers provide staffing on behalf of a Republican governor.
“This would unleash a tsunami of Pulitzers and hysteria if the political parties or priorities were changed,” said Mr. Horner. “Here is a real test for ‘good government’ activists—is this all right if the ‘right’ politicians and donors pushing the approved agenda outsource government?”
What the emails show is the intimate relationship between the liberal donors, green sock puppet organizations and Democrat politics.
Energy in Depth Climate reports here on some of the details:
Climate activist groups, most notably Climate Nexus—a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors—act as the press arm for these governors’ offices at no charge. They also operate as a “shadow staff”to support climate change communications efforts, and supplied research later promoted by these state governors as their own. This includes at least one for-profit contractor, raising the question who its actual paying client is.
The three main Democrat governors fronting the U.S. Climate Alliance are Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, California Gov. Jerry Brown and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But the people actually running it are green lobbyists and activists, doing the bidding of their wealthy anonymous donors in liberal strongholds like Silicon Valley, as well as the usual liberal suspects such as the Rockefeller and Hewlett Foundations. One prominent figure is Jeff Nesbit, Executive Director of a green organization called Climate Nexus. In the emails he is revealed in close discussion with Sam Ricketts, director of Jay Inslee’s Washington DC office.
According to the Washington Times:
“How come governors aren’t even listed on the website?” Mr. Ricketts asked in a June 5 email.
Mr. Nesbit replied: “They will be! I promise. It’s controlled by WWF [apparently referring to the World Wildlife Fund]. They’re melting down over there. I’ll make sure the 9 governors are listed ASAP.”
Mr. Nesbit also wore the hat of press secretary, saying he needed to send a joint statement from Mr. Inslee, Mr. Brown and Mr. Cuomo to The New York Times.
“Do you have it? Is it approved? Is Inslee available to talk to the NYT and others today before Trump does his Rose Garden ceremony at the WH?” Mr. Nesbit asked in the June 1 email.
According to Mr. Nesbit, Climate Nexus, a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, provided its services free of charge and without a contract.
What becomes clear from the emails is the extent of sock puppetry—which the Green Blob uses to give the impression of representing many disparate groups, when in fact they are all just a small group of the same people wearing different hats. There is no shortage of money to support this scam. According to the Washington Times:
Inevitably, there is a Clinton connection to all this skullduggery:
Even before Mr. Trump announced his intention in June to exit the 2015 Paris climate accord, state employees in California, New York and Washington had discussed enlisting the help of outside advocacy groups.
Aimee Barnes, senior adviser to Mr. Brown, proposed reaching out to the Georgetown Climate Center, Under2 Coalition and others, saying that “it can’t always be us staff running around trying to corral each other for sign on.”
“We are fortunate that at the moment there are many resources keen to be at our disposal to support us further, but in order to make the best use of them, we need to tell them what we need,” Ms. Barnes said in a May 5 email.
Mr. Ricketts responded in a May 9 email by noting, “There’s of course a plethora of advocate and funder interest,” adding, “We can approach the different groups (G-town, Rhodium, UNF, whomever) about which of them will play a roll.”
A week later, Georgetown Climate Center Deputy Director Kathryn Zyla provided an update in an email sent to state staffers and climate change advocates.
“We also wanted to let you know that we are working with the Georgetown IT department to develop a platform that can assist this group with communications and shared resources, and will keep you posted. (Please let us know if you have any thoughts on key features for that platform.),” Ms. Zyla said in a May 16 email.
GCC spokesman Chris Coil said the group had no contract with the states. “We support state engagement on climate change (as we have done on a bipartisan basis for many years) free of charge,” he said.
Inslee senior adviser Chris Davis put in a plug for Ann McCabe and her team at the Climate Registry, calling them in a June 5 email, “Great partners who’ve covered our costs for COPs and provided extraordinary on site services and support.”
In another instance, the Alliance released a report about economic output and greenhouse gas emissions. Although branded as their own research, it turns out that the report relied almost exclusively on data compiled by the Rhodium Group—an organization headed by a former Hillary Clinton energy and climate advisor, Trevor Houser.
Indeed, given that the central focus of the emails obtained by CEI is tapping the “plethora of advocate and funder interest” in providing support functions which were beyond the ability of the governors’ offices, it seems far more likely this pricey gift was provided to the governors by the for-profit Rhodium Group. What isn’t yet clear is which clients paid for this glossy product of a high-priced consultancy.
It’s unsurprising that the Rockefellers have found a way to exert their influence inside state governors’ offices. Climate Nexus has also been heavily involved in promoting the #ExxonKnew campaign for the Rockefellers. When the RICO 20—a group of professors who petitioned the Obama administration to bring racketeering charges against those who disagreed with the president’s climate agenda—faced enormous backlash for their efforts to silence dissent, Climate Nexus rushed in to clean up the mess. You see, the RICO 20 was suggesting that the government prosecute individual climate skeptics, which got in the way of the Rockefellers’ plans to have the government go after energy companies.
Climate Nexus also receives funding from the Energy Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, two other groups heavily involved in backing the #ExxonKnew campaign.
The Great Republican Carbon Tax Myth
Earlier this year I reported here and here for Breitbart News on the bizarre spectacle of various Republican elder statesmen—including Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz—campaigning to “combat climate change” by agitating for a carbon tax. Naturally the New York Times got very excited at the idea that conservatives were starting to see the light.
The truth: there is next to zero support, anywhere within the GOP, for something as stupid and frankly socialistic as a carbon tax.
So why does this zombie concept keep clawing its way out of the grave?
Because, yet again, we’re being played by the usual suspects: a handful of extremely well-funded lobbyists using their money and influence to give the impression of widespread, cross-party demand for what is in fact only the preoccupation of such paid-up Green Blob members as Elon Musk. They planned this far in advance.
This is clear from two leaked campaign documents dating back to 2015.
One is from the National Wildlife Federation. Its strategy explicitly states that its plan is to co-opt conservatives into its carbon tax scheme:
Note the presence of Tesla on this list: Mr President—Elon Musk is not your friend!
The Wind Energy Foundation, National Wildlife Federation (NWF), EDP Renewables North America (EDPR), Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. (RES), Pattern Energy, and Tesla Motors are working in a cross-sector coalition to enact a federal price on carbon pollution.
We believe that a carbon tax or similar price on carbon pollution is achievable in Congress within five years as part of a grand political bargain on tax and fiscal policy. The key to this success will be the effective deployment of business and conservation leaders and their networks, who will create a non-threatening, non-ideological space for conservative decision makers to engage on climate policy. We anticipate that this campaign will be complemented with efforts in the political sphere to hold accountable those who are unresponsive to our network members or to defend those who are responsive.
The other is another 2015 strategy document, floated among D.C. think tanks, created with the aim to “Engage Congress on Carbon Pricing.”
Again, the tactic used to achieve this was to reposition a carbon tax as an essentially free-market, pro-business solution in order to attract conservative support.
“Carbon Funded Tax Cuts” will stimulate GDP growth, create jobs, make U.S. companies more competitive in the global market place, make the tax system fairer, and result in dramatic climate change benefits.
Did you see what they just did there? These people are sneaky.
And the money for these campaigns—coordinated by think tanks and lobby groups like RStreet and RepublicEn—is in turn funneled via organizations like the Energy Foundation.
Here is the Energy Foundation giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to RStreet.
Here it is donating $200,000 to another lobby group Niskanen.
There’s nothing illegal about this. Just something very dishonest and deliberately misleading.
It’s called Astroturfing.
The Green Blob wants you to believe that, right now, there are a heap of disparate groups of sincere campaigners all of which just happen to share the same worthy and noble mission to combat climate change.
Except they’re really not. They’re just a bunch of liberal sock puppets, bankrolled by plutocrats on a mission to allay their rich-guilt by splashing money on “saving the planet” and green industry rent-seekers who want to rig the market in favor of their renewable energy interests.
This is not about saving the planet. This is about greed—and left-wing politics.
If President Trump is to drain the swamp he must destroy the climate industrial complex.
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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. Email me (John Ray) here.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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