Obama Touts Climate Change Legacy, Then Takes Credit For US Oil Boom

This has no contact with reality. At the end of Obama's second year unemployment was at 8%.  The only thing that restored American jobs was the fracking boom,  which Obama had absolutely nothing to do with. He was not even aware of it until the boom became too big to ignore.  The work took place on private land and no permits for it were either sought or given

Former President Barack Obama said he was “extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords” before, rather ironically, taking credit for booming U.S. oil and gas production.

“I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords because — you know, I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy, and by the way, American energy production,” Obama said at an event hosted by Rice University’s Baker Institute on Tuesday night.

“You wouldn’t always know it but it went up every year I was president,” Obama said of U.S. oil and gas production. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”

U.S. oil production nearly doubled between 2009, when Obama took office, to 2016. Natural gas production shot up around 50 percent in that time. However, the boom in production almost exclusively took place on state and private lands where the Obama administration had little to no control.

Republicans criticized Obama for lagging oil and gas production on federally-managed lands, which largely stagnated while production elsewhere boomed due to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

Obama did sign legislation in late 2015 ending the decades-old ban on crude oil exports, but at the same time imposed regulations and pursued international policies aiming to move the world away from fossil fuels in the name of fighting global warming.

Obama joined the Paris Agreement in 2016, promising to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent. The Paris accords aimed to keep future global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 through cutting fossil fuel use, including oil.

President Donald Trump plans on leaving the Paris accord as soon as 2020, and his administration has rolled back Obama-era policies seen as restricting oil and gas production.

The oil boom has continued under Trump, with the U.S. producing a record-setting 11.7 million barrels per day in early November. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil-producing nation, outpacing both Russia and Saudi Arabia this year.

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Vanuatu to sue fossil fuel firms for climate change

Believe it when you see it

It is true that Vanuatu is a chain of islands but they are not coral atolls. Most are of volcanic origin and fourteen of them  have surface areas of more than 100 square kilometres

With most of its 82 islands sitting just less than one metre above sea level, the low-lying Pacific nation of Vanuatu faces high risk of becoming inundated by the world’s rising seas if drastic measures are not taken to limit global warming.

The island archipelago has therefore announced that it is considering suing fossil fuel companies for their role in driving climate change, as global courtrooms turn into new battlegrounds for climate action.

Speaking via a video statement on the Climate Vulnerable Forum’s Virtual Summit on Thursday, Vanuatu’s minister of foreign affairs Ralph Regenvanu revealed that the country was exploring ways to take legal action against the “fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly” contribute to the climate crisis and the severe threats faced by Vanuatu as the world struggles to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees celcius.

“I am therefore today putting the fossil fuel industry, and the states that sponsor it, on notice that the climate loss and the damages ravaging Vanuatu will not go unchallenged,” said Regenvanu.

The declaration is the latest move from small island nations that have long sought reparations for damages linked to climate change, and the first time a climate-vulnerable country will legally hold to account those most responsible for global carbon emissions. Vanuatu’s decision joins a growing list of climate lawsuits raised over recent years from individuals and groups against oil, gas and coal companies and the governments that continue to back the fossil fuel industry.

“Vanuatu has become a poster child for the horrible impacts of climate change and companies should confront the request by its government to address these issues,” said Jolene Lin, an associate professor specialising in transnational environmental law and climate change at the National University of Singapore (NUS). “It would be very stupid to play hard ball because it doesn’t make good business sense.”

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Dedicated Greenie helped prepare dire National Climate Assessment

A former Obama administration official with ties to a liberal advocacy group funded by Democratic megadonors George Soros and Tom Steyer helped prepare the Fourth National Climate Assessment, whose dire predictions have since been attacked as overblown.

Andrew Light, who worked on the 2015 Paris accord negotiations as a senior adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change under Secretary of State John F. Kerry, served as a review editor for the assessment, overseeing the pivotal final chapter that concluded under a worst-case scenario that global warming could wipe out as much as 10 percent of the U.S. economy by 2100.

Now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Mr. Light also spent five years as senior fellow and director of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, which was founded and now led by longtime Democratic insider John Podesta. The center is also financed by liberal billionaires such as Mr. Soros and Mr. Steyer.

The involvement of Mr. Light and other figures known for their climate change advocacy has raised questions about the credibility of the report, which has been widely depicted as a politically neutral, scientific document prepared by disinterested specialists from 13 federal agencies.

Roger A. Pielke Jr., University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor, criticized the decision to bring in Mr. Light, as well as the report’s reliance for the 10 percent figure on a 2017 study funded in part by Mr. Steyer’s Next Generation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

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Macron’s Energy Policy Speech Fails to Defuse Anger; More Protests Planned

Organizers of fuel price protests that have roiled France for almost a month expressed disappointment and frustration after an energy policy speech by President Emmanuel Macron, saying it failed to address their grievances and vowing to continue demonstrating.

Members of the so-called “yellow vest” campaign are planning another big protest in Paris on Saturday, to demonstrate to Macron that they view his response as unsatisfactory. Labor unions are planning to take part too.

The movement, named for the high-visibility yellow jackets worn by the protesters, is becoming more organized, choosing representatives across the country.

“We expect respect,” Laetitia Dewalle, leader of the movement in a region near Paris told French television. “President Macron is too haughty and contemptuous.”

The protests were first sparked by a rise in fuel prices – an increase in the tax on petroleum products was announced in September, and further increases are due each year until 2022 – but the campaign has widened to focus on high taxes, a loss of purchasing power, and demands for an increase in the minimum wage (currently around $1,690 a month, for those working a 35-hour week.)

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has offered to meet protest leaders to talk about their grievances but also warned that the government policy, part of a plan to move France away from fossil fuels, would not change.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Macron laid out an energy policy for the next 10 to 20 years designed to transition to renewable energy, but critics said he did not address the issues driving the protest.

One protester in eastern France said on television Macron was sending everyone to sleep by speaking about the environment.

“Everybody is for ecology, who can be against it?” he asked. “But it does not bring any solution for the average classes and the poor.”

The protestors were not alone in criticizing Macron’s speech, which also drew flak from unions and political parties across the spectrum – including from environmentally-minded groups.

Yannick Jadot, a member of the European Parliament representing a party called Europe Ecology – The Greens, said on Twitter Macron delivers great speeches but very small steps. He said one does not extinguish anger with fine words but without acts of social justice.

Eric Ciotti of the center-right Les Républicains said Macron offered no real solution to the problem of poor purchasing power, and all opposition parties said the speech lacked concrete solutions for low-income citizens.

The “yellow vests” movement includes construction and factory workers, temporary workers of all ages, and even retirees. They have been blocking roads and motorway entrances as well as toll booths, service stations and shopping centers.

The protests have come at a time when Macron’s approval ratings have been dropping. Opinion polls have found significant support for the protests from the French public.

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From "Climate Lessons" blogger

While the rise of climate alarmism and its intrusion into politics, education, and the mass media is a dismal event that would strain anyone's faith in mankind's ability to cope with propaganda and fear-mongering, there are some consolations to be found in the works of people who stand opposed to the flow of nonsense, hyperbole, and half-baked 'science'.

One example is the Cartoons by Josh.  His work highlights the conceits, the arrogance, the foolishness and worse of the climate scaremongerers, and it does so with huge amounts of charm, and even compassion for these destructive and ill-informed people.



Josh's Calendar for 2019 is now shipping.  When the climate madness subsides into some kind of academic obscurity, and if there is a big effort to understand the collective madness of the CO2 Scare, then these cartoons will be, as they say, collectors' items.  I'm certainly going to keep all my copies of past and future calendars as a kind of poor man's collection, one which I hope will be of interest to show just how the whole costly charade was seen through by some as it happened.  We were not all duped.  We did not all jump on the bandwagon be it for fame or for fortune or merely to get a glow from 'saving the planet'.  Plus the cartoons are also just plain funny.  Raising a smile or even a laugh in the midst of the madness is quite an achievement.  Thank you, Josh.

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