Attention-seeking Naomi has a new word for climate realists:  'They Are Arsonists'

She makes a good buck out of her flights of fancy.  "Klein" is Yiddish for "small" and that well describes her understanding of the world.  She takes after her peacenik parents, who fled to Canada to escape the evil U.S. Republicans. Her father was born into a Communist family so delusory beliefs are a family tradition

Left-wing activist, journalist, and best selling author Naomi Klein said it is not true that President Donald Trump did not mention "climate change" in his State of the Union speech because he praised the oil and gas industry, which, she added, is destabilizing the planet. She also said the House of Representatives cheered Trump's remarks and this demonstrates that many of the lawmakers are not climate change "deniers," but are "arsonists."

During his speech on Tuesday, Trump said, "[W]e have unleashed a revolution in American energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy."

At that point, the Republican side of the chamber stood and cheered; on the other side, nearly all of the Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), stayed seated and did not applaud.

This morning, Feb. 6, Naomi Klein, author of the best selling This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, tweeted, "People claim Trump said not one word about climate change but that's false. He celebrated the US being the world's 'No. 1' oil and gas producer. And the house cheered -- they cheered for the knowing destabilization of the planet."

"Don't call them deniers, they are arsonists," wrote Klein.

Apparently, the search for and production of oil and natural gas "is destabilizing the planet." Those who support this work are thus supporting global warming, which allegedly is burning up -- arson -- the planet.

Climate change skeptic Marc Morano, the founder of the non-profit Climate Depot, said that Naomi Klein believes that free markets and the Earth's climate cannot co-exist.

On his website, Morano noted that the Los Angeles Times likened Trump to an arsonist. In a 2018 story, the newspaper ran the headline, "As global warming continues, Trump wants to burn fossil fuels with an arsonist's glee."

In addition to her journalism and books, Klein currently holds the Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

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Mike Shellenberger rejects AOC and her enablers

Mike is a "moderate" Greenie.  He is President, 'Environmental Progress'.  Also Time Magazine 'Hero of the Environment’

He believes nukes are the only realistic way to "decarbonize" Below is a series of his tweets

1. I'm sorry, but I am calling bullshit

You can't call for closing down our largest source of zero-emissions energy *and* claim "world is gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate"

Those two statements are simply incompatible

Anyone else suffering cognitive dissonance from this?

"The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change" - @AOC…

2. I am calling bullshit not just on @AOC but on her progressive enablers in the news media who are giving her a pass on the most crucial test of moral and political leadership of our time when it comes to climate change: a person's stance on nuclear power.

3. I am calling bullshit on climate fakery.

Anyone who is calling for phasing out nuclear is a climate fraud perpetuating precisely the gigantic "hoax" that Texas Sen. James Inhofe famously accused environmentalists of perpetuating.

4. If you want renewables, energy efficiency, and to close down our largest source of zero-emissions energy — fine. Just stop dressing it up as action on climate change.

It's gotten to the point of being ridiculous

5. And if you want to be a self-respecting progressive or journalist who is fairly considering or covering the climate issue, please stop giving @AOC and other supposedly climate-concerned greens a pass.

THEY ARE INCREASING EMISSIONS

"Ye shall know them by their fruits"

SOURCE






Projected melting of the Antarctic this century now reduced to give a max 17" sea level rise

Many predictions are for a one metre rise. Tamzin Edwards from King’s College London and her colleagues looked at paleoclimate data to estimate sea level rise from Antarctic melting.  They re-analyzed data on ice loss and ocean level 3 million years ago, 125 thousand years ago and in the last 25 years and estimated the likelihood of rapid destruction of unstable sea areas of Antarctic glaciers

They found that the controversial marine ice-cliff instability (MICI) hypothesis does not necessarily explain the dynamics of sea level in the past, and without this the probability that the level will grow by more than 43 centimeters (17") by 2100 is only about 5 percent


Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice-cliff instability

Tamsin Louisa et al.

Abstract

Predictions for sea-level rise this century due to melt from Antarctica range from zero to more than one metre. The highest predictions are driven by the controversial marine ice-cliff instability (MICI) hypothesis, which assumes that coastal ice cliffs can rapidly collapse after ice shelves disintegrate, as a result of surface and sub-shelf melting caused by global warming.

But MICI has not been observed in the modern era and it remains unclear whether it is required to reproduce sea-level variations in the geological past. Here we quantify ice-sheet modelling uncertainties for the original MICI study and show that the probability distributions are skewed towards lower values (under very high greenhouse gas concentrations, the most likely value is 45 centimetres).

However, MICI is not required to reproduce sea-level changes due to Antarctic ice loss in the mid-Pliocene epoch, the last interglacial period or 1992–2017; without it we find that the projections agree with previous studies (all 95th percentiles are less than 43 centimetres). We conclude that previous interpretations of these MICI projections over-estimate sea-level rise this century; because the MICI hypothesis is not well constrained, confidence in projections with MICI would require a greater range of observationally constrained models of ice-shelf vulnerability and ice-cliff collapse.

SOURCE





Propaganda recognized

Michael E. Mann has Received the 2018 Climate Communication Prize from American Geophysical Union.  Note that is a prize for communication, not science. His citation is below

Michael Mann not only is one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of climate science but also is unparalleled in the depth, diversity, and sheer volume of his communication about climate science and its implications for society. His firm grounding in scholarship at the highest levels of climate science underlies all of his climate communication efforts and makes him effective in engaging his peers as well as members of the public in nuanced, fact-based discussions about climate science, its uncertainties, and its implications for our future.

Mike’s efforts to communicate climate science stretch back more than 20 years; include the use of virtually every communication platform; and exemplify a mastery born of dedicated, sustained, and repeated engagement. He and several colleagues founded the seminal, award-winning science blog RealClimate to engage the public in fact-based discussions about the climate issues of the moment. It quickly became a trusted repository of fact-based discussion about peer-reviewed climate science that is frequently cited, even to this day. He has also written a number of popular science books aimed at engaging and informing science enthusiasts and, most recently, young children about climate change. He has given hundreds of interviews for traditional media outlets, as well as given an equally impressive number of public talks, participated in documentaries, written countless op-eds for prestigious newspaper outlets, and, perhaps most notable of all, is engaged in what appears to be a 24/7 stream of exchanges with his huge social media followings. Of particular note, he has regularly appeared to testify before Congress about climate science, knowing that such appearances will bring him under withering, partisan-fueled attacks.

In the past decade, Mike has been an unflinching and courageous defender of the principles of free and open scientific investigation and the urgency of combating misinformation with the scientific facts of climate change. He has done so at great personal cost, persevering through terrifying death threats, organized smear campaigns, and protracted lawsuits. Long before “alternative facts” became a household phrase, Mike was sounding alarm bells about efforts to undermine climate science findings and their role in shaping evidence-based policy. His courage, his resilience, and his tireless pursuit of truth in the public discourse around climate change have had a lasting impact on an entire generation of geoscientists and the public. Every day, Mike reminds us that communicating science lies at the heart of scientific practice, with untold benefits to society.

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Australian patriots can’t hate Australia's top export, coal

When Samuel Johnson said patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel, he was attacking not patriotism but the scoundrels who falsely use it to defend their cause.

Patriotism gets a bad rap in this postmodern world — where so-called elites diss Brits who voted for Brexit to defend their nation’s sovereignty, or where progressive forces don’t see the value of ­borders in Europe, North America or Australia.

But most of us are viscerally patriotic — we want the best for our country, we know that our ­futures and those of our loved ones are inextricably linked to our nation’s ability to endure and flourish. Besides, we love the place and its people.

When a so-called think tank calls itself The Australia Institute, we assume it is on our side. Surely if it was preoccupied with supranational agendas, globalist redistribution or a borderless world it would be called the The UN Institute, The Globalist Forum or Socialist Alliance.

Yet this very same Australia Institute has been conducting meetings in foreign embassies in Canberra, actively lobbying against investment in Australia. It has been advocating against ­foreign investment in this nation in a way that is designed to damage our national economic interests, reduce employment prospects for our citizens and deliver benefits to our trade competitors.

(Bizarrely enough, given the institute’s claimed focus on equity and the environment, its interventions likely would also hinder the aspirations of poor communities on the subcontinent and lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions.)

The Australia Institute’s chief target is coal, which just happened to have been confirmed this week as the ­nation’s top export. We have overtaken Indonesia as the world’s largest coal exporter and the ­industry usually trails only iron ore as our most valuable export. Buoyant prices boosted coal ­exports above $66 billion last year — a record that tipped iron ore from the top spot.

The coal industry directly ­employs about 40,000 people in well-paid jobs sustaining families, communities and other businesses, primarily in Queensland and NSW. Coal-fired electricity generation still accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation’s power.

It is worth repeating this crucial fact: about 70 per cent of the nation’s electricity comes from coal. This is an industry that not only underpins our nation’s prosperity, filling state and federal government coffers with tens of billions of dollars of revenue, but also one that is absolutely central to every facet of our daily lives. Yet The Australia Institute is setting it up as public enemy No 1.

Although employment numbers in coalmining have declined by up to 20,000 over the past ­decade, The Australia Institute wants the job shrinkage to continue. One of its key criticisms of Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin is that it won’t generate as many jobs as the proponents suggest and that it won’t be commercially viable. After exhausting environmental objections over air, land, groundwater and ocean consequences — not to mention indigenous heritage ­options — these anti-capitalist obstructers are willing to use commercial arguments against capital investment.

These malleable and inventive objections to development are nothing new in the environmental movement — more than two decades ago I helped expose how green activism encouraged the concoction of “secret women’s business” to block the Hindmarsh Island bridge — but there was a ­recent development involving The Australia Institute that seems a bridge too far.

It came through Joe Kelly’s ­exclusive report in last week’s The Weekend Australian. “The Australia Institute left-wing think tank met officials at the Chinese ­embassy to urge them not to back a new clean-coal plant in Australia,” Kelly reported, “warning it would result in the same political and community hostility experienced by the Adani project.”

Think about that: an institute bearing our nation’s name ­actively lobbies foreign governments to dissuade investment in this nation, hoping to eliminate employment opportunities for our citizens, revenue for our governments and prosperity for our ­nation. And we wonder why there is a crisis of confidence in Western liberal democracies.

As Kelly reported, on top of the China embassy meeting last month, The Australia Institute has held talks with at least five other embassies and high commissions over the past six months. The institute’s executive director is Ben Oquist, a one-time chief of staff to former Greens leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne.

He defends The Australia Institute’s activities as being in the national interest. “Being Canberra-based, it is not unusual for ­embassy staff to seek briefings from Australia Institute researchers on their economic and policy research in relation to projects ­involving their governments,” Oquist said in response to my queries. “Examples include Galilee Basin thermal coal development, the previous (South Australian) state government’s nuclear waste dump proposals and how Australia will implement the Paris Agreement.

“There is international interest in the ever-changing climate and energy policies in Australia, ­including the financial, economic and social risks of gas and coal ­investment and the growing role of cheaper, cleaner renewable electricity … Our research can add considerably to the understanding of risks, costs and benefits of the projects and policies.

“All of The Australia Institute’s research is focused on the nat­ional interest: making Australia a more just, equitable and sustainable place.”

This is a difficult argument to sustain, given that the only way an assault on coal could possibly benefit Australia would be if global carbon dioxide emissions were cut enough to reduce the expected ­effects of global warming. But global carbon emissions are increasing each year by about double our annual national emissions.

Besides, if Australia exported less coal, other countries with lower grade resources, such as ­Indonesia, would fill the gap, producing even more emissions. (This claim was made by Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 when he was prime minister — “arguably it would increase (emissions) ­because our coal, by and large, is cleaner than the coal in many other countries” — and even an ABC Fact Check endorsed it.)

Regardless, The Australia Institute is out to block the Adani mine and prevent the construction of new high-­efficiency, low-emissions, coal-fired power generation in Australia.

We have a national crisis in energy affordability and ­reliability, and The Australia Institute is subverting efforts to find solutions, preferring to pursue the same ideological crusade for renewable energy ­investment that created the mess.

To bolster the national electricity market, the government is now considering 10 submissions to provide extra dispatchable power that would be underwritten by a minimum price. At least one proposal involves high-efficiency, low-emissions coal generation and others focus on gas-fired plants and stored hydro.

Clearly taxpayers would gain most from whichever plant provides the greatest reliability and quantity of power closest to existing transmission infrastructure. But I have a feeling The Australia Institute might opt for stored hydro, come hell or high water (pardon the pun).

With these crucial policy and economic decisions playing out in an election year, many in the media/political class continue to proselytise for renewables. ABC’s Media Watch this week criticised Queensland and NSW media for positive stories about the possible benefits, including jobs, from coal-related investment.

We have a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster that routinely amplifies The Australia Institute’s efforts to sabotage investment in our natural resources yet mocks commercial media that can see a positive angle on enterprise and employment.

As if this were not bad enough, the NSW Land and Environment Court has now rejected a new Hunter Valley coalmine based on climate change imperatives.

The move, widely hailed by green groups, heralds a new level of global climate activism enforced through our courts.

Judge Brian Preston decided he need to reject the mine because in order “to meet generally agreed climate targets” we needed a “rapid and deep ­decrease” in emissions. The case against the mine was run by the Environmental Defenders Office NSW, which is funded by the state government. Taxpayers’ money used to deliberately attack our No 1 export. We have truly lost our way.

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.  

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