Meet Reverend Billy, preacher of the climate apocalypse

A chronic attention-seeker if ever there was one.  It's a motive that drives a lot of those on the Green/Left

“The place where the crucial issues are discussed with the drama they deserve is on the streets.”

Reverend Billy Talen is talking about Tahrir Square. He is talking about #blacklivesmatter. He is talking about climate change.

With the zeal of a televangelist and the Broadway-infused backing of his Stop Shopping Choir, Talen certainly brings the drama.

A performer and activist rather than an ordained minister, he is in London touring the show “Faster! Monsanto Die! Die!” with a 3-piece band and a dozen singers.

Talen meets RTCC in a Camden café to explain how he is reclaiming climate change from the technocrats with his unique brand of apocalyptic preaching.

He took to the soapbox around 15 years ago in a reaction against consumer culture.

“I was overwhelmed by TV and advertising and sports,” he says. “I didn’t want to tear off my clothes and run into the middle of the forest – I’m a city person, I’m a New Yorker. I started shouting about it.”

Talen became known for his theatrical protests in public places, casting “demons” out of cash registers in Asda and Walmart.

“Our complaint about consumerism is it makes us stupid, it makes us do the wrong things, it makes us lead dull lives.

“Consumerism is a key ingredient to the recipe of the end of the world. Consumption based on fossil fuel is eating the planet alive.”

Globally, the dominant climate narrative is of green growth: shaped by the New Climate Economy project, it holds that countries do not need to choose between economic growth and climate action.

This is seen as critical to get emerging economies like China and Brazil on board with emissions cuts – as well as challenging sceptics in developed countries like the US.

At the same time a more radical left-wing movement, always present in the debate, has gained fresh impetus with the growth of fossil fuel divestment.

Spearheaded by the likes of Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, this segment is suspicious of the willingness of profit-driven companies to cut emissions.

It makes a moral case for action through grassroots networks, particularly from the richer parts of the world.

Talen falls firmly within this camp. Most of his clothes are from thrift stores and he admits anti-consumerism can be “a difficult message for the striving middle classes”.

But with their vibrant creativity, his band of activists aim to show a low carbon lifestyle is not all self-denial: “We believe that sustainable living can be comfortable living.”

Earthalujah!

Dressed in a white suit, black shirt and dog collar, Talen adopts a televangelist persona.

He even has a book, melodramatically entitled “THE END OF THE WORLD” and available – like his concert tickets – for a donation. RTCC gets a free copy, signed with “Earthalujah!”

It contains sermons, poems and colourful descriptions of actions, like the time 80 activists – led by Talen’s partner Savitri D – stripped naked, wept and smeared themselves with coal in Deutsche Bank to protest mountaintop removal.

In London, the group teams up with BP or not BP for an impromptu performance at the British Museum, in protest at oil company sponsorship.

It is a feature of their tours that they stay with local activists and lend their vocal talents to diverse causes.

While non-violent, this confrontational mode of expression has got Talen arrested “50 or 60 times”.

SOURCE






Jeffrey Sachs address to the Party of European Socialists

Jeffrey Sachs does a good line in ad hominem abuse of climate skeptics.  See here. So perhaps we should talk about him too.  Dennis Ambler writes as follows

In 2009, Sachs addressed the annual conference of the Party of European Socialists: https://vimeo.com/8673040

He described the “profound honour “ of addressing the Party of European Socialists and said they were heirs and leaders of the most successful economic and political system in the world, Social Democracy. Social equity, environmental sustainability and fiscal re-distribution were the successful elements, in marked contrast to the US whose taxes were too low and where the poor were ignored.

He asked for PES leadership “for the sake of the world” on social principles, financial regulation and solidarity with the poor. In advance of Copenhagen, he claimed that millions were suffering because of drought caused by western induced climate change and a carbon levy was needed.

He singled out the US as the biggest emitter of CO2 per capita and said it must spend more to save the planet. He promoted the UN Millennium Development Goals and the global target of 0.7% of GDP to fund development. He wants a carbon tax and a financial transactions tax, a global health fund, a global education fund and a global climate fund.

In fact he wants everything that the UN, the OECD, Socialist International, George Soros, Rajendra Pachauri, Lord Nicholas Stern, Barack Obama, environmental NGO’s, the Democrats and some Republicans want. Members of the external advisory board include George Soros and Rajendra Pachauri.

He asked the PES to make common cause with Progressives in the US and let them share their wisdom and thanked them for their leadership.

Via email






UNISYS pulls down map showing dramatic ocean cooling

More fudging needed.  Must keep the story straight.  Dissent not allowed

As some have jested in the climate blogosphere, UNISYS’ recent SST anomaly map looked like the onset of an ice age. UNISYS has pulled the product down for the time being, citing data processing issues.

Many around the climate blogosphere have noted that UNISYS’ recent sea surface temperature anomalies were showing radically different values from various NOAA products.

I decided to reach out to UNISYS directly to find out what might be behind the discrepancies, mentioning that it was confusing that UNISYS was showing Hudson Bay cold, water off the East Coast of Russia frigid, and most of the Northern Hemisphere dramatically cooler than 6 weeks ago, when NOAA was showing nothing of the kind.

UNISYS’ weather program manager, Brian Hughes, sent along the following response:

After further thought and additional analysis, I’ve asked that the images be taken down temporarily.

What originally appeared to be a simple color bar/enhancement table issue looks to be an issue with our anomaly product itself. I took more looks at areas where our product is indicating cooler than normal, the corresponding NOAA product appears to show warmer. That tells me something is off with our processing.

In July, we had to switch to the higher resolution RTG-SST product as the input because we had been using a legacy SST product from NOAAPort that NWS discontinued in June. The SST anomaly product may be suffering from amplified cooling as we transition into NH winter, an error not originally seen when we first switched in the summer.

The dataset used to process and create the anomaly appears to also be an issue, perhaps our software is not calculating the correct temp since the switch to the RTG-SST hires.

We are going to evaluate this and work on a solution.

SOURCE





The BBC on global warming is beyond a joke

Green activists, aided by the state broadcaster, are whipping up support for a new climate treaty

The BBC’s relentless efforts to promote the need for that treaty to “decarbonise” the world’s economies they so desperately want to see agreed in December are getting way beyond a joke. On Monday’s Today programme, for instance, they yet again wheeled on that joke figure Lord Stern to tell us that renewable energy now enjoys “very little subsidy or none at all” (don’t tell the owners of offshore wind farms, who imagine they are getting subsidies of more than 200 per cent). Most energy from fossil fuels, Stern went on, is “heavily subsidised”, to the tune of “$500 billion a year”. Even John Humphrys sounded faintly disbelieving when Stern explained that most of this “subsidy” was the taxation not imposed on fossil-fuel companies for “polluting” the planet.

An hour later, we had the BBC’s science editor, David Shukman, telling us how he had gone up to the Arctic (presumably with the aid of fossil fuels), to join a bunch of Norwegian scientists (also presumably there with the aid of fossil fuels), who were discovering that the ice had got thinner than ever, and that this was causing irreparable damage to the “biodiversity” of the poor little creatures which live under that vanishing ice.

Not a shred of scientific evidence was offered to support this scare story, let alone the latest data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which show that the thickness of multi-year ice across the Arctic has been making a dramatic recovery from its low point seven years ago (for details see Paul Homewood’s Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog),

All this drearily make-believe propaganda is designed to whip up support for a treaty which, as the Indian government yet again confirmed last week, is never going to happen, because India and China – still building enough coal-fired stations to add more CO2 to the air every year than the total emitted by the UK – are simply giving two fingers to a treaty they regard as an even bigger joke than Lord Stern.

SOURCE




Update from the Gelbspan files

Russell Cook (the good Cook) is a real terrier going after Warmist lies.  What he writes below is instructive.  Heaps of links at the original

Me as a Henchman or Murderer

If folks are attaching those kinds of labels to me, it means they probably interpret what little they read of my work on dissecting the smear of skeptics as something to shout down, the ol’ fingers in ears “la-la-la-la…” bit.

All I’ve ever done from the beginning of my foray into the climate change issue is ask questions, as I detailed back in a 2011 Competitive Enterprise Institute piece. Regarding global warming in particular, I first asked why skeptic climate scientists’ assessments were being largely ignored, and when told such skeptics were industry shills, I asked myself if I could independently corroborate the accusation. Surely, this is something any believer of catastrophic man-caused global warming could also undertake in order to be above reproach when asked what proof there is to back up the accusation.

Having accumulated a wealth of references showing that the accusation is utterly baseless, that particular devil’s advocate element became a hobby pursuit of mine years back, where I would ask at online comment sections if global warming believers posed such questions on their own, or if they were certain their talking points on the accusation could survive tough cross examination in a courtroom hearing. Knowing what I know on specific details of the accusation, it didn’t surprise me when global warming believers ducked my questions and lashed out at me instead, or in the case of blog site owners, deleted my comments after brief appearances or prevented them from being seen in the first place. Hardly an endorsement of the validity of the accusation when a person feels compelled to flee from challenges to prove it they know how to back it up.

One day I’ll have to find the time to count up all my web site comment links I’ve saved, it could number into the thousands over the last seven or so years, and I’ve had comments deleted or barred from appearing by a whole spectrum of people. Among my favorites is an ordinary enviro-activist blogger who used an IP address recognition trick to prevent me from commenting further at her site. I wrote an entire article at RedState because of the way Hewlett-Packard people deleted my comments from their site. Bill Moyers’ people not only deleted my comments, they blocked me from further placement. Another more recent favorite was a blog site commenter complaining about ‘brainwashed industry trolls paid to misinform’ – my comment about the opportunity to destroy such trolls was permitted for a short time, but as one can see from their current iteration, neither that one nor my other comments are seen. Give it a moment, one of my comment links goes directly to a “This comment was deleted” message.

Particularly amusing for me last year was how I landed at another global warming believer’s blog (I forget how, most likely from daily Google email alert I get on stories about global warming that I created in 2008), and after a series of comment placements, the blogger declared in a new blog post that I must be “the Gestapo of the Heartland Institute with the job of hunting down dissenting opinions and persecuting those responsible” (full text here). Tortuous as it might be to read through all of the multi-blog post commentary between us, it becomes obvious he never supported his claim of ‘industry-corrupted skeptics’, but instead sidestepped every challenge from me to do so.

My comments must leave marks on some folks. Around two weeks ago, I was alerted to a Boston University web page by an email blast alert from the Heartland Institute, about comment attacks on the University’s decision to include “sketchy scholarship and specious reasoning” Heartland material, as the first commenter noted. Apparently my comment reply irritated someone at Boston U so much that an alert was relayed to ThinkProgress about the situation, causing Emily Atkin to write about my Heartland tie – however irrelevant it is – prominently in her 5/5 “Climate Deniers Insert Themselves Into Boston University’s Divestment Debate” piece. Long story very short, in my dozen+ email exchange with her, she eventually admitted that had there been no way to tie me to Heartland, she wouldn’t have mentioned me.

She’s gone out of her way to claim her piece was not a guilt-by-association hit piece, but considering her above admission, it’s hard not to see that appearance in the piece. Not helping her position in the least was her error of claiming I edit “a site dedicated to proving that climate denying scientists are not funded by the fossil fuel industry” – now you see the error, now you don’t. I prompted her to fix that, but apparently one of the commenters at the piece couldn’t comprehend the meaning of the error, not only repeating it, but also embellishing it in embarrassing fashion. Funny thing about that specific wacko notion of my mission being to ‘disprove’ illicit industry funding of skeptic climate scientists, it was hurled at me late last year by a different clueless commenter at the Desmogblog UK site who obviously never read a word of what’s here at GelbspanFiles. No joke, click the image below to enlarge it.



But now onto the “murderer” label. Via another email alert days ago, I landed at an obscure blogger’s page which specifically labeled me and 24 others murderers of a pair of lost Arctic explorers who, according to a story she linked to, had stripped to near nakedness due to the hot temperatures up there prior to whatever situation imperiled them. The comment I placed there was the first one questioning her, pointing out several items she could have checked herself before jumping off an accusation cliff. It lasted there for two days at least, but she has predictably deleted it, while letting others remain. It is fully intact in the archive version of her blog post. I attempted to place another comment there later that same day pointing out a few inconvenient truths. That comment never made it online at all, nor did another one where I suggested serious introspection for that blogger. She now blocks me from viewing her Twitter page.

See the pattern? Delete, delete, delete… and kill the messenger. Don’t even bother to address the messenger’s core point, do everything you can to distract people from it ever giving it serious consideration. My own experience is just a microcosm for the larger situation surrounding the truly importing players in the issue, skeptic climate scientists. With that kind of defense surrounding the notion that we need to stop catastrophic global warming, how can the issue not be headed toward certain collapse?

SOURCE





Australian government seeks legal advice on University's axing of controversial Lomborg research centre

Both academic freedom and freedom of speech have died at the University of Western Australia

THE federal government is seeking legal advice on the University of Western Australia’s decision not to host a controversial taxpayer-funded research centre.

The university ditched a $4 million contract for climate change sceptic Bjorn Lomborg’s Australian Consensus Centre, amid strong backlash from staff, students and the public.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne is disappointed and remains committed to opening the centre.

“It is surprising that individuals at an institution of higher learning claiming to embrace the notion of academic and intellectual freedom would display intolerance and shout down a voice in the debate they simply don’t agree with,” a spokesman told AAP on Saturday.

The government believes the investment would enable the “best economic thinkers” in the world to contribute to Australia’s policy debates.

Dr Lomborg blamed the university’s decision on “toxic politics, ad hominem attacks and premature judgment” and said the centre had been used as a “political football”.

He rejected suggestions he was a climate change heretic and said the centre would have put the university at the forefront of global research efforts to improve the use of aid spending.

“This is far too important to let fall victim to toxic politics,” he said.

Yesterday, UWA announced passionate protests had forced it to scrap the think tank, which was designed to undertake economic cost benefit analysis in poverty, social justice and food sustainability.

“I have stated many times that it is not a centre to study climate change, that the University was not providing any direct funding to the centre, and that Bjorn Lomborg would not be involved in its day-to-day operations,” vice chancellor Paul Johnson said in a statement on Friday.

But he also acknowledged the centre required co-operation among people across a wide range of fields. “(So) it is with great regret and disappointment that I have formed the view that the events of the past few weeks places the centre in an untenable position as it lacks the support needed,” he said.

The UWA Student Guild said the decision was a huge victory for the hundreds of people who got involved to save the university’s reputation.

“Students, staff and graduates are the key stakeholders at this institution, and it is so important that they are being heard. It is reassuring to know that when decisions cause this kind of public response, we will be taken seriously,” president Lizzy O’Shea said in a statement.

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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Warmist Nimrods did NOT die in the Arctic because of thin ice

Two Arctic ice researchers presumed drowned after unseasonably high temperatures

That's what Amy Westervelt, in The Guardian of Saturday 2 May said.  To quote:

“Police have called off the search for two Dutch scientists. Unusually thin ice likely played a role in their presumed death in the Canadian Arctic this week.

Researchers Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo are presumed drowned after they appear to have broken through the ice while on a scientific expedition.

In a voicemail on Tuesday, Dutch researcher Marc Cornelissen, founder of Cold Facts, an organization supporting scientific research in Polar Regions, laughed at his predicament. He explained that unexpectedly warm weather had forced him and fellow explorer Philip de Roo to complete that afternoon’s skiing in the Canadian Arctic in their underwear.”

SOME COLD HARD FACTS FOR “COLD FACTS” AND THE GUARDIAN

George Land (georgeland00009999@gmail.com) points out below that there was no thin ice for the Nimrods to fall through. They died of carelessness and ineptitude:

The nearest weather station to the accident site is 200 km to the south at the airport in Resolute, Nunavut Territory. The temperature there on Tuesday the 28th April rose to a high of -9°C (16°F) the low was -12°C (10.4°F), light snow fell throughout the day. There were light winds out of the east. The previous day was very sunny with a high of -8°C (17.6°F) and a low of -13°C (10.4°F).  The airport is in a sheltered cove on the south end of Cornwallis Island. The skiers were 200 km (124 mi.) to the north on the open ice (of Penny Strait?).

Currently the ice thickness in the Strait varies from 2 meters (6 feet) to 5 meters (16 feet). The nearest “open” water is a tiny patch in the Mackenzie delta about 1100 kilometers away. Open ocean is over 2,000 km away near Nuuk, southern Greenland. There is still minor ice cover on Lake Superior 3,300 km to the south. Total global sea ice cover at the time was about 1 million square km. above the mean.

All land expeditions to the Bathurst Island area are carried out in April, after the sun reappears but before spring makes ice travel hazardous. Spring arrives in early July. The ice is perfectly safe in April except for occasional leads (cracks) caused by winds, tides and currents. These three elements are amplified in narrow straits.

“Shore leads” form between the drift ice and a shoreline. “Flaw leads” form between fast ice (frozen onto the seafloor or shore) and the drift ice.  Leads form and heal throughout the year, temperature is not a factor.  It is likely that the skiers experienced overheating while pulling sledges on Monday afternoon in bright sunshine and a “mild” temperature of -8°C. There was a fresh breeze in the hamlet of Resolute most of that day; such a breeze can shift ice, which could open a lead, and then cover it with snow.

The skiers were pulling sledges from the front and may not have been tied together. To defend their needless deaths while performing a grossly negligent publicity stunt, they have been described as scientists or experienced polar explorers and “researchers”.

One cannot fall into a lead on the beaches of Antarctica. A tourist trip to Antarctica hardly qualifies someone to travel over sea ice on the opposite pole. The so-called Cold Facts support team lodged in a warm hotel room in Resolute attempted to send a rescue flight but it was grounded for days by a blizzard.

They opted for a ground attempt by snowmobile. Did they believe they were rushing out onto a melting ice sheet? Did the government plane refuse to land at the accident site because of “poor ice conditions”, or did the blizzard and numerous pressure ridges or the possibility of a hidden lead discourage them? Did they even have skis?

Take a look at Resolute (or any other Arctic village) on Google earth. The tank farms for diesel and gasoline storage are huge, almost as big as the town sites.  Petroleum makes it possible for people like the Cold Facts team to live comfortably in the arctic. Perhaps next year they can go in their underwear and go solar due to global warming.

The Guardian story says that the thin ice and open water was encountered 200 km south of Bathurst Island.  That puts the “drowning” site in the middle of Prince of Wales Island.

More and more frequently neophytes from outside this country are coming here to sail the Northwest Passage or photograph the last polar bear or make a phony claim to have rowed to the pole. They get stuck in the ice or eaten by an extinct bear or they drag a rowboat over ice to where the magnetic pole used to be in 1996.

All of this nonsense by these nimrods costs money.  The territorial Government has a tax base of perhaps 15,000 people. The search and rescue costs are too much for the locals and their semi‑autonomous status.  Rich, over‑privileged, misinformed kids from suburban Amsterdam or London are imposing unnecessary costs on a struggling regional economy for political grandstanding. This is the Arctic equivalent of defacing ancient artifacts on the Nazca Plateau. It’s all lies all the way down.

Just last month the Guardian had displayed supreme hypocrisy in claiming that David Rose, a writer for the Mail on Sunday, “is known for his inaccurate and misleading climate change coverage.” The Guardian regularly publishes hatchet jobs on Dr. Willie Soon, implying he is not a serious scientist. “Cold Facts” is probably a front for the WWF and possibly underwritten by the Guardian as well. Now its founder is dead.

These unfortunate bumpkins were neither scientists nor researchers; they were cannon fodder in a disgustingly corrupt political stunt. Instead of effusive praise and a fictional hagiography, the Guardian should pay for a recovery effort so the families can take them home.

Via email





Hollywood's Climate Hypocrites

Hollywood and global-warming panic have always been a natural match. After all, who can tell you better to cut back on your wasteful ways better than a high-flying multimillionaire movie star with the carbon footprint of a Tyrannosaurus rex?

It’s never mattered that the stars have all the scientific expertise of Pee-wee Herman. They’re just so good-looking and famous, who cares? PBS broadcast a 10-hour series in 1990 entitled “Race to Save the Planet.” The show’s host was Meryl Streep, who proclaimed: “By the year 2000 … the Earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there will be enormous calamities in a very short time.”

Oops.

It’s bad enough that they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s worse that they’re sheer hypocrites while preaching their nonsense. A private jet burns as much fuel in an hour as a car does in a year. The 48,000-pound Gulfstream G550, which can fly from Chicago to Rome with 15 passengers, burns through more than 400 gallons of fuel per hour.

Exhibit A is Leonardo DiCaprio, who lectures, “If we don’t act together, we will surely perish.” Radar Online reported in April that DiCaprio boarded a private jet six different times within six weeks last year. But the charade continues. A partnership between DiCaprio and Netflix was announced in March to create yet another series of propagandist environmental documentaries.

The Media Research Center has a new report on “Climate Hypocrites and the Media That Love Them.” Take Julia Roberts, who recently made a video for Conservation International playing a big role: “Some call me nature. Others call me Mother Nature. I’ve been here for over four and a half billion years. 22,500 times longer than you. I don’t really need people, but people need me. Yes, your future depends on me. When I thrive, you thrive. When I falter, you falter. Or worse. But I’ve been here for eons. I have fed species greater than you, and I have starved species greater than you.”

The loathing of the human race is a constant green theme. But it’s not hard to find photos of Roberts climbing in and out of private jets. In fact, for a while she even co-owned a private jet.

Woody Harrelson is such a tree-hugger that he told CBC News in Canada that he’d “like to see it get to the point where we never use trees to make paper because to me it’s just a barbaric way to make it. … It’d be nice to just stop using the forest.” But at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, when Harrelson realized that he had left his vegan belt and shoes behind, he had them flown to France from California.

At least John Travolta offers self-awareness, that when he said global warming is a “very valid” issue, he added “"I’m probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.” Travolta owns five jets and has flown tens of thousands of miles in the air. He thinks the answer may be “other planets,” a natural suggestion for a Scientologist.

These celebrities don’t take tough questions well. When asked about DiCaprio’s hypocrisy, actor Mark Ruffalo shot back: “Oh, brother, that is a question you shouldn’t be asking here today because that defies the spirit of what this is about.” He added that anyone who attacks DiCaprio is “a coward or an ideologue” because “Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice carries farther than any one of those politicians, even the president.”

If that’s true, blame a star-dazzled media elite that never cares one whit about hypocrisy.

SOURCE






Heartland Replies to Jeffrey Sachs

Joe Bast



On May 3, Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and “special adviser” to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, wrote a commentary condemning global warming “deniers” that appeared on a Catholic website called Pewsitter. Since he takes aim specifically at The Heartland Institute, a reply seems to be in order.

Sachs wrote about an event convened by Pope Francis on global warming and sustainability at the Vatican in Rome the prior week. Observing that only alarmists and advocates of population control – most notably, Jeffrey Sachs – were on the program, I decided Heartland should send some real scientists and other experts to Rome to provide a different opinion.

We created a webpage at https://www.heartland.org/Vatican-Environment-Workshop where we posted news releases and opinion-editorials expressing our concern that the pope was being misinformed and offering links to more reliable scientific research and commentary on Christian views toward the environment. Following the event and safe return home of our delegation, we posted all the presentations and video from the event on the website.

Our presence generated extensive worldwide press attention. We were able to reach millions of people with our simple message that “climate change is not a crisis.”

The Vatican and United Nations seemed shocked that anyone would criticize their bias or the lack of scientific credentials of their speakers. Peter Raven, a speaker at the summit, devoted several minutes of his remarks to commenting on our presence, and now Sachs’ essay appears to be part of the UN’s effort at damage control.

Sachs did not attend our press conference or any of the presentations our experts made the following day. To our knowledge, none of the persons scheduled to speak at the “summit” chose to attend our public events. Nevertheless, Sachs writes: “the libertarian Heartland Institute, supported over the years by the Koch brothers, mounted a fruitless protest outside of St Peter’s Square.”

The Heartland Institute has received just $25,000 from a single organization, a charitable foundation, affiliated with “the Koch brothers” during the past 15 years. Our annual budget is approximately $7 million. Even that small gift was earmarked for our work on health care reform, not global warming. Why does Sachs mention “the Koch brothers” unless his intention is to smear an independent organization by falsely implying a much larger or somehow improper level of support from some singularly unpopular billionaires?

Our press conference and seminar were not a “protest.” We weren’t on the street waving signs or shouting slogans. Our speakers were highly qualified and their writing and speaking relating to the pope and the Catholic Church were respectful and focused narrowly on the science, economics, and politics of climate change.

The dishonesty in Sachs’ reference to The Heartland Institute would be startling, coming from a person of Sachs’ stature, if this sort of misrepresentation of facts weren’t so common in the debate over climate change. President Barack Obama sets the tone, comparing global warming realists to members of the “flat earth society” and rather ominously calling on his supporters to “hold climate change deniers’ feet to the fire.”

In fact, those who say global warming is a man-made crisis gave up arguing the science and economics behind their campaign long ago. They now rely only on exaggeration, lies, and ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagrees with them.

Sachs is correct about one thing: The Heartland Institute is indeed a libertarian organization. We are devoted to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic issues. We make it very clear on our website and in interviews that it was this perspective that led us to examine the science behind the global warming scare. That examination led us to become (in the words of The Economist) “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism of man-made climate change.”

Sachs says some “free-market conservatives … have followed their ideology to the point of denying well-established science.” He seems blind to the possibilities that the science is not “well-established” or that his fellow socialists and “progressives” have themselves fallen prey to this malady. What else explains their refusal to admit there has been no warming for more than 18 years, that real data show no increase in extreme weather events, and that the benefits of using fossil fuels outweigh the costs, by orders of magnitude, even including the vastly inflated costs attributed to climate change that might occur centuries from now?

Sachs has had a long and distinguished career as an academic and in various government agencies, but on this issue he is letting his liberal ideology cloud his judgment. His short essay reveals a disturbing lack of knowledge about climate science and compassion toward the billions of people in the world who will be harmed by the UN’s plans to make energy more expensive and less reliable.

Sachs ends his essay with a call to people of all faiths to “fulfill our moral responsibilities to humanity and to the future of Earth.” That responsibility starts with truth-telling. Sachs and his colleagues on the left haven’t reached the starting line yet.

SOURCE





Shining a Light on the Darker Side of Solar

In today's edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Managing Editor of Environment & Climate News H. Sterling Burnett speaks with Michi Iljazi. Iljazi is the communications and policy manager for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. The Taxpayers Alliance has a subsidiary called SolarSecrets.org which is dedicated, in their words, to "shining a light on the darker side of solar power."

Iljazi points out that the U.S. benefited immensely from the creativity, innovation and prosperity-generating power of the free enterprise system. Yet corporate welfare and corporate cronyism are eclipsing genuine capitalism and threatening innovation and prosperity -- and the solar industry is right in the center of the corporate handouts.

The Taxpayer Alliance's new study, “A House of Cards:  Solar Energy’s Subsidy-Based Business Model,” in particular shines light on how much the solar industry has received in subsidies over the past five years and how much money it is losing every year. In addition it exposes the sleazy business practices of one company in particular, SolarCity?

SOURCE. (Podcast at link)





Iowa Should Embrace Frac Sand Mining

Lansing, Ia., is located near sizeable deposits of the highly specialized sand used for hydraulic fracturing. The growing demand for this sand, commonly referred to as "frac sand," has spurred a mining boom that has created thousands of high-paying jobs throughout Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, Lansing and other northeastern Iowa communities have largely missed out on the sand mining boom because local governments, citing environmental concerns, have enacted restrictive ordinances and moratoria severely limiting the growth of the industry. The scientific evidence suggests local officials should embrace, not prohibit, sand mining.

Sand mining has fewer environmental impacts than other types of mining. This is a key reason why Bob Lima, the state geologist for Iowa, recently told Winneshiek County supervisors, "If you just come in and dig sand out, there is very little risk to the water," noting there would be more impact from processing sand. Lima suggested trout fishing would not be harmed by sand mining because the St. Peter sandstone layer is not a big supplier of water to trout streams.

Allamakee County enacted an impossibly restrictive ordinance on sand mining, which for all intents and purposes prohibits sand mining in the county. Less onerous regulations would have allowed sand to be mined in an environmentally responsible way.

In addition to environmental concerns, the Allamakee County ordinance cites concerns the tourism industry in the area could be threatened by increased traffic caused by mining. In places like Lansing, however, tourism jobs are generally low-paying, seasonal jobs providing only part-time work for full-time residents.

Until all the storefronts in Lansing and other northeastern Iowa cities no longer have signs that say "Space Available," local governments should reconsider their unscientific opposition to sand mining.

SOURCE





Australian Greens leader leaves behind a team in turmoil

A move away from extreme Leftism coming?

FORMER GP Richard Di Natale was elected unopposed as the new leader of the Greens on Wednesday - but don't be fooled.  The obscure senator won thanks to a secret plot that will actually leave the party even more divided.

That plot - and that division - is part of the troubled legacy of Christine Milne, who quit on Wednesday as leader after only three years.

Forget the media praise for Milne, whose resignation surprised even party founder Bob Brown.  She actually cemented the Greens' reputation as zealots incapable of compromise, blind to the terrible price of their pure politics.

Milne refused to use her party's huge power over the Gillard Labor government to change the border policies that lured 1200 boat people to their deaths.

She helped to extract from the Gillard government a $10 billion clean energy fund that won't actually change the world's temperature.

Since the Abbott Government's election, Milne also helped Labor to block spending cuts in the Senate, claiming "we won't have a bar of the nonsense around the whole Budget repair story", despite government now spending nearly $1 billion a week more than it collects.

With Milne it was all about seeming, not achieving.

She became so obsessed with the alleged wickedness of Prime Minister Tony Abbott that she even helped the Senate to block the Government's planned rise in the petrol excise levy, even though Greens' policy calls for taxes on fossil fuels. The result: Milne's Greens appealed to a permanent minority of Australians who get high on moral outrage - but they frightened off the rest.

Indeed, Milne was hammered in her one election as leader, in 2013. The Greens' Senate vote fell from 13.1 per cent to only 8.65, with just four senators added to the six elected in 2010. In the Lower House the Greens only retained Adam Bandt's seat of Melbourne.

The polls suggest some recovery since, but nothing in Milne's leadership showed the party would go anywhere fast, despite the unwavering support of the ABC and many academics.

Now it is up to Di Natale to find a way out of Milne's dead end. He has advantages. He's more reassuring and more pragmatic than Milne.  "I am not an ideologue," he insisted on Wednesday. "I follow the evidence."

He even hinted he would change Milne's irrational opposition to the petrol excise increase and broaden the Greens' appeal. He said his interests weren't just global warming and the environment, but Medicare, healthcare, multiculturalism and "social justice".

But can he bring his team with him?

Di Natale's first problem is his low profile. Half the Greens MPs are better known.

In fact, the ambitious Bandt is the party's best media performer, yet was on Wednesday humiliatingly replaced as deputy leader by Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters.

Bandt later implied he'd just wanted to prepare for the arrival of his baby, but he seems instead to have been knifed.

Milne refused to comment on claims by angry Bandt supporters that she'd given Di Natale and Ludlam advanced warning of her resignation so they had time to stitch up a leadership deal that froze out the unsuspecting Bandt.

Di Natale also wouldn't comment, yet gave the game away when a journalist asked if he'd discussed standing for leader with his family.  "I had a long chat with my partner, Lucy, and the impact it is going to have on my life," he blurted, before realising his mistake and adding: "I was talking to Lucy six months ago."

He then admitted "someone may have been disappointed by the outcome" before Milne hastily terminated their press conference.

His deal with Ludlam may have given Di Natale the leadership, but it's also created a powerful rival and brake. Ludlam in return wasn't just made co-deputy but chairman of the parliamentary party.

Nor do the divisions end there. Milne and Brown long fought to contain the rise of "watermelon greens" - Greens MPs who are actually socialists.

The ultimate watermelon is Lee Rhiannon, a former communist trained in the Soviet Union who backs a boycott of Israel and fights to protect the CFMEU, a construction union accused of corruption by the royal commission into trade unions.

Sure enough, Rhiannon on Wednesday tweeted her objection to the way Di Natale was chosen.  "Members should have a vote," she protested, knowing a ballot of members would favour radical candidates like her.

Does this seem a happy team of big huggers - one able to negotiate out of Milne's cul de sac and deliver Kumbayah at last?

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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Murdered by climate change deniers (?)

I suppose I should join a lot of my fellow skeptics by having a laugh at dear little "Schatzie" (Yiddish for little treasure) who wrote the hymn below.  It passionately celebrates faith -- faith in global warming.  No knowledge of actual climate facts or interest in climate data is evident.

Her logic is a bit hard to follow but she seems to be saying that Arctic explorers would not have to explore so hard if everybody accepted the global warming gospel. So when Arctic explorers die, that is the responsibility of climate skeptics, who undermine faith in global warming.

I am of course sad to hear of the missing Dutchmen but no evidence that they were motivated by a desire to refute climate skeptics is offered.  And the possibility that explorers explore because they like to explore is also not mentioned.

She has certainly not considered the possibility that the big money showered on climate research as a result of the warming scare might have been responsible for the upsurge in climate "research" generally, and the research being done by the dead Dutchmen in particular.

And as far as loss of human lives is concerned, has she considered the number of people who died because they have been denied access to reliable, affordable electricity and other modern technologies?  –- thanks largely to the Big Green factions Schatzie extols.  That loss of life would be far greater by many orders of magnitude than what even she could possibly attribute to us wicked skeptics.

She is actually a good example of an old axiom in logic which says that if your premises are faulty your conclusions are likely to be absurd.  Her unquestioning faith in the tenets of global warming has certainly led to an absurd conclusion in this case.  Talking facts to her would clearly be pissing into the wind

Jo Nova has also had a laugh at this sad little lady


Two Dutch Arctic ice researchers, Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo, have disappeared and are presumed drowned. They were last heard from on Thursday, when Cornelissen, who is the founder of Cold Facts, jokingly left a voicemail on his organizations answering machine lamenting the fact that the unexpectedly warm weather where they were located (200 km south of Bathurst Island in the Canadian Arctic) had forced the pair to ski in their underwear.

Cornelissen and de Roo were on a months long mission planning to measure the thinning Arctic ice as part of the Last Ice Survey.

So, you may be wondering, how were the pair murdered by climate change deniers? Scientists, and I mean REAL scientists, not the Willie Soon crooked bunch of characters, are risking lives and limbs every day to not only try and figure out how all the known, and unknown, feedback loops interact and are impacted by climate change, but they are forced to defend their every move by buffoons such as Senator James Inhofe, et al, who lazily park their fat asses in their comfy office chairs, cashing in fossil fuel dollars, while shooting spit balls at the scientific community.

This obfuscation utterly squanders the efforts of scientists and researchers who must constantly work up against the walls erected around them by deniers instead of actually working towards reversing out of the planetary death spiral we are all on.

Moreover, as scientists around the world go to extreme and heroic lengths to document and prove their point, the fossil fuel industry, aided and abetted by the US government and other western leaders, work around the clock to JUST MAKE IT WORSE by green lighting every lunatic idea (such as Shell trying to drill for oil again in the melting Arctic) the fossil fuel industry puts forth. It’s like the drunkest EVER bar patron asking to be hooked up to a never-ending supply of bourbon, and then, right before he’s going to pass out, handing him keys to a Ferrari (and expecting benign results).

Think about this for a moment: we KNOW what is causing the Earth to heat up to the point of inhabitability: burning fossil fuels. We know how to stop making it worse: stop burning fossil fuels. Are we going to end up in caves, living like the Flintstones when we stop burning fossil fuels? No, because we have 100% technologically advanced renewable energy sources ready to fill that gap. SO, where is the logjam preventing us from beginning to heal the horrific insults we have inflicted upon our planet? Climate deniers, who make the work of scientists all the more difficult and s-l-o-w down the demise of the fossil fuel industry.

Deniers, who keep the public thinking that there is still some sort of DOUBT about the validity of global warming (there is NOT) continue to pour money into the politicians and other sell-outs who keep the fossil fuel industry profitable. Ergo, climate change deniers and their ilk have viciously killed these young men. They are entirely responsible for their deaths. And you can bet that if they were charged with causing these deaths, and penalized in a real way (not the bogus monetary fines imposed on the biggest polluters), they’d think twice before building that next oil well.

SOURCE





Obama's carbon plan could save 3,500 lives annually

And pork might become airborne.  Just modelling again.  Who needs evidence when you've got models?

The Obama Administration's hotly debated plan to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the nation's power plants will save about 3,500 lives a year by cutting back on other types of pollution as well, a new independent study concludes.

A study from Harvard and Syracuse University calculates the decline in heart attacks and lung disease when soot and smog are reduced - an anticipated byproduct of the president's proposed power plant rule, which aims to fight global warming by limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

Past studies have found that between 20,000 and 30,000 Americans die each year because of health problems from power plant air pollution, study authors and outside experts say. The study was published Monday in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

The proposed EPA rule, which is not yet finalized, is complex and tailored to different states. It aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Study authors said their research, while not hewing to the Obama plan exactly, is quite close and comparable. The study also finds about the same number of deaths prevented by reducing soot and smog that the administration claimed when the plan was rolled out more than a year ago.

Some in Congress have been trying to block the regulation from going into effect, calling the plan a job-killer and an example of government overreach.

The study finds that the rule would eliminate an average of 3,500 deaths a year - a range of lives saved from 780 to 6,100 - with more than 1,000 of the lives saved in just four states that get lots of pollution from coal power plants: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Illinois. The new regulation would reduce hospitalizations by 1,000 a year and heart attacks by 220 a year, the study says.

Cleaning the air as part of reducing carbon dioxide has immediate and noticeable benefits, the authors said.

"There could be lives saved associated with the way we implement the policy," said study lead author Charles Driscoll, an environmental engineering professor at Syracuse. "Why not kill two birds with one stone if you can?"

Lab studies on animals show how soot and smog harm the cardiovascular and respiratory systems and epidemiological studies link tens of thousands of deaths each year to soot and smog pollution, said study co-author Joel Schwartz, a Harvard environmental epidemiologist. The study's authors examined 2,417 power plants and used computer models to project and track their emissions.

The study was praised by outside academics, the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental advocacy groups. But officials in the energy industry called it costly and flawed.

"This is more than just an academic exercise to the tens of millions of Americans who depend on affordable, reliable electricity to power their homes and places of work every day," said Laura Sheehan, senior vice president for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. "For them, this is about their livelihoods. Coal provides nearly 40 percent of the nation's electricity and its use is becoming cleaner all the time. And while these academics are hypothesizing about unprovable consequences, what's known is that families are struggling to pay their monthly bills and companies are struggling to stay in business - and any increase in energy costs will unnecessarily burden them. "

EPA, in a statement, said the study confirms their earlier research, which shows that for every dollar spent complying with the regulation, "Americans will see up to $7 in health benefits."

Three top science officials in the George W. Bush Administration who are now outside academics - George Gray at George Washington University, John D. Graham at Indiana University and Howard Frumkin at the University of Washington - praised the study to various degrees.

"This analysis is both sound and useful," Gray, former EPA science chief and now director of risk science and public health, wrote in an email. "The cool thing is the question they ask: What public health effects might occur due to changes in air pollutants as we act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?"

SOURCE





Now Seismic Upheavals Are Humans’ Fault?

Joe Bastardi notes the inconvenient linkage between earthquakes and volcanoes

Basically, no matter what happens, it’s used as a reason to fuel hysteria. This latest volley claims that a warming planet is going to cause an increase in seismic activity. (Strange since objective measurements show no warming for 18 years, and even a suggestion of cooling the last 10, and there is no apparent linkage between CO2 and temperatures)

I am sometimes amazed at the logic used by the alarmist crowd, but, given the lack of intellectual curiosity by those that buy it, they get away with it. They assume that no one will a) question them on what they are saying or b) examine the folly of their assumptions. So they use it. First of all, my approach to the whole climate problem can be likened to playing chess. I love to simplify the board, trade down and then be left with a battle over basic endgame positioning. In science, two ideas on this come to mind.

1.) Occam’s Razor.

The principle states that among competing hypotheses that predict equally well the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove to provide better predictions, but in the absence of differences in predictive ability the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.

Given the track record of the warming hysteria the past 20 years, the idea of the climate being cyclical not only is predicting equally well but is far superior to the modeling!

2.) Le Chatelier’s Principle.

When a system at equilibrium is subjected to change in concentration, temperature, volume or pressure, then the system readjusts itself to (partially) counteract the effect of the applied change and a new equilibrium is established.

I will use it in a devil’s advocate way.

Suppose I concede that the so-called warming is leading to more seismic activity. This would also imply that there is an increase in volcanic activity, a known linkage to earthquake activity. Increased volcanic activity is linked with cooling. Therefore it is logical to assume that, even if the premise put forward here is right, nature will simply correct to the opposite conclusion of what the hysteria-based article is concluding!

In other words, if the author is right in the shorter term, he is wrong in the long run because the increase he fears, and it’s part of something I have been pushing for years as one of the legs of climate, would lead to cooling in the end.

So, being the nice guy I am, I will give him his due. Let’s assume he’s right. Then you have to agree with me — that such an increase would lead to the response, and if we simplify to the logical conclusion nature adjusts!

Not only is this intuitive, but Le Chatelier’s Principle would argue for it. Unless of course he seeks to simply throw it out, which we see happen quite often to data that does not seem to fit the missive being pushed.

This is not to say I accept his premise. It is to say that if he wants to play that game he has to then play mine. It’s pay me now, or pay me later.

SOURCE





A Winter to Remember: In the Northeast USA January through March was Harshest since 1717

If it's unusually hot somewhere, Warmists seize on that as "proof" of global warming.  So we do well to note when other places are unusually cold

By Joseph D'Aleo

No one who has lived in many parts of the Northeast into Canada experienced a six-week and calendar month as extreme for the combination of cold and snow as we have this late winter. From this writer’s viewpoint in southern New Hampshire, February 2015 was the coldest month ever recorded in nearby Nashua with an average temperature of 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit. It beat out January 1888, which had averaged 12.9F. A record 18 days had low temperatures at or below zero (as cold as 14F below). 25 days remained freezing or below, also a record.

Not far away in Boston, where temperature records began in 1872, February 2015 was exceeded only by February 1934, which brought Boston its all-time record of -18F. Temperatures never rose out of the 30s this year in February in Boston, though it topped 40 four times in 1934.

The cold in February 2015 was not confined to the Boston-Nashua area. It was the coldest month ever in Worcester, Hartford and Portland. It was the coldest February in Chicago and Cleveland, third coldest in New York City and fifth coldest ever in Detroit and Baltimore, both with records back into the early 1870s.

Boston set a record for monthly snow with 64.6 inches in February and 100.4 inches in the 39 days following January 24th. The 110.6 inches for the entire season exceeded the 107.6 inch record from 1995/96. The snow that year was spread out over six months with thaws, not concentrated so much in less than six weeks. The snow blitz and the intense cold is why the snow piles were so high this year. College students were shown on local television jumping out second story windows onto huge snowbanks in their bathing suit.

ONLY 1717 BEAT THIS?

Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas this winter’s snow blitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717.

That year, snows had reached five feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches. The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as eight feet or more.  The New England Historical Society’s account indicated New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut were hardest hit, a lot like 2015 in what was known as the year of the great snows.

“Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow. In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for elderly people at risk of freezing to death… Sometimes they were found burning their furniture because they couldn’t get to the woodshed. People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house.”

You may hear or read that increased snow is consistent with global warming because warmer air holds more moisture. In actual fact, 93% of the years with more than 60 inches of snow in Boston were colder than normal.

During the 40 days of snowy weather this winter, we averaged over 11F below normal, and moisture content of the air in the snow region was well below the long-term average. Cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Indeed, winter temperatures have cooled over the last two decades in the Northeast and the 10-year running mean of Boston area snowfall has skyrocketed to the highest level since snow records were first kept.

The cold continued in March here in New England. The month averaged 5.1F below in Boston and 5.8F below normal in Nashua. There were only four 50F days in March after no 40F days in February in Boston. This compares with seventeen 50F days, eleven 60F days, seven 70F days and one 80F day in March 2012.

SOURCE





Oil Production Is Up 53% Since 2010, But It’s Declining on Federal Lands. Here’s Why

Thanks to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling methods perfected at the end of last decade, production of crude oil in the United States has skyrocketed.

U.S. oil production is up 53 percent since 2010, but the increase has occurred almost entirely on non-federal lands. Production on federal lands has not seen a similar liftoff, and is actually down overall.

The reasons federal area drilling has lagged is not because of lack of oil.  Proved oil reserves under federal areas account for about 26 percent of all proved crude oil reserves. (Proved oil reserves are amounts accessible under current policy, prices and technology). If the new methods for extracting oil increase production on private lands, they can also on federal lands.

The main difference between drilling for oil on non-federal and in drilling on federal lands is whether or not the driller has to navigate the complex regulatory obstacles required by the federal government.

President Obama has said, “As Democrats, we believe in reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting our planet. Today, America is number one in oil; number one in gas; number one in wind power.”

But if America is number one in oil and gas, it is certainly not because the federal government is making it easy to drill. During the Obama administration:

* Fewer federal leases are being offered than in previous years.

* Federal permits to drill have taken longer to be approved than during previous years, and

* According to the Congressional Research Service, the permitting process is complex and cumbersome.

In fact, the Bureau of Land Management took 227 days on average to process an application for permission to drill in 2014. State agencies sometimes approve permits in 10 days, and leave many surface management issues to be negotiated between the oil producer and the private land owner. For obvious reasons, an oil producer would rather deal with one farmer than be ordered around by a complex and multi-faced federal government.

Now the Obama administration is seeking to raise royalty fees for oil and gas leases on federal lands. That’s a shame, since more complex rules and higher costs will result in less production, not more; all bragging rights aside.

SOURCE




NZ: Dr Vincent Gray's Letter to Sir Peter Gluckman

Dear Sir Peter,

I would like to comment on the speech "Trusting the Scientist", a summary of which you delivered to the recent seminar "Scientists Speak Out" organised by the New Zealand Association of Scientists.

You begin with the following statement:

"It is instructive here to consider what the public role of science has been until now. For much of history beyond the classical period, the answer is a simple one: little or none.  Or so it was, at least up until the modern inter-war period, and even then it was rather limited until perhaps the late 1980s. Before then the scientist with a media profile was, too often, looked upon with suspicion by his or her colleagues."

Surely science has always had a vital public role if you interpret science to mean the discoveries which are the basis for the many technologies which have led to the progress of human race. You seem to accept the existence and importance of the early science which culminated in ancient Greece and was the main influence throughout the Middle Ages, Modern science is regarded as beginning well before the 1980's with Copernicus, Kepler Galileo and Newton.

Early astronomy had always been professional  In Britain King Charles the Second, who founded the Greenwich Observatory in 1675, appointed the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed.

The King had already founded the Royal Society of London in 1663. In 1714 the British Government offered a prize for a simple practical method for determining longitude. Isaac Newton was one of the administering Committee. The story has been told in the book by Dava Sobel. The winner, John Harrison, competed with the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. One of Harrison's chronometers  was used by Captain Cook on his second voyage in 1772.

The French Revolution set up a committee which led to the metric system in 1799. A shame they did not do a better jpb on the calendar.

Weather Forecasting has a long history. The British Government set up its Meteorological Office in 1854 with Admiral Robert Fitzroy, former Governor of New Zealand. Its first gale warning for ships was made in 1859. Fitzroy was a mathematician and cartographer who believed in scientific measurements. He even designed a barometer.

You might note that the New Zealand Weather Service is by far the most popular scientific TV programme. It presents the climate of the entire earth every night and it enjoys the trust of everybody who consults it.

Scientists had a positive media profile when I grew up. Ernest Rutherford attracted crowds to his lectures. My school took us regularly to the lectures at the Royal Institution where we were introduced to the wonders of science.

I recently bumped in to a former colleague in the DSIR Chemistry Division who made a comment on how the public rang up the DSIR on any subject and had absolute trust in the reply. Hamish Campbell at the Seminar showed how he helped people with geological questions today.

So we now have to get down to what was the elephant in the room at the NZAS Seminar. Why is it that some scientists today are not trusted?

Everybody there knew the answer to this, but nobody dared to mention it.

The truth is that many people are beginning to believe that some of the statements from scientists who are involved with climate change are deliberate lies. I will give you some examples.

Some weeks ago the Dominion Post had a front page spread with a map showing how Wellington will soon be overwhelmed with a rise in sea level. This was inspired by climate scientists.

Now there are no science journalists nowadays, so it did not occur to the presenter to enquire whether there is any evidence for this coming disaster. He did not know, for example that there is a tide gauge in Wellington harbour which has shown a fall in the sea level for the past ten years, and there are similar measurements all over New Zealand which provide no reason for imminent action.

Most people probably fell for the scare as their knowledge of science was insufficient to find out the facts.

But there are many local residents on our coasts whose experience has shown them that sea level is not rising, so they have been disturbed by demands from local Councils that they must immediately upgrade their coastal defences or vacate their properties because of the advice of climate scientists to the Council that urgent action is needed. Some have succeeded  in reversing this nonsense, But their opinions of scientists have taken a dive.

The same thing has happened in the Pacific Islands. The Australian Government established in 1991 an elaborate programme for monitoring sea level in 12 Pacific Islands using state of the art equipment called Seaframe. There has been little or no change in sea level in any island since then, particularly after GPS levelling was introduced in 2000.

Yet everybody believes the islands are about to fall into the sea. This belief suits the Island Prime Ministers since it attracts aid and ease of emigration. But why does the New Zealand Government endorse this lie?

Then. we continue to be drenched with stories claiming the continued effects of global warming. Yet the preferred technique for assessing this properly, the Mean Annual Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record (which has been used to claim global warming in all previous IPCC Reports) has now been practically constant with little change for over 18 years. The excuses they give are pitiful.

The change is decadal, when we already have nearly two decades. Then it is natural variability when they have previously assumed that this was not involved the temperature rise. Only now it matters.

The Climate Models which are supposed to give projections and not predictions consistently fail to agree with current global or lower atmosphere temperature measurements.

Your own climate paper features the claim that the Arctic ice is melting: when it is largely influenced by ocean currents, but you do not mention the Antarctic continent which now has record amounts of ice.

The UK Met Office which has been taken over by Climate Change people has consistently predicted warm winters when there are record cold ones. The recent US snowstorm led to protests by people wondering where the global warming had gone.

Your speech showed no sign that you would do anything about its subject except to encourage the rogue scientists to promote their lies, on the Dr Goebbels Principle that maybe people will believe them if they are repeated enough.

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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New paper on Antarctic sea ice melt misses the mark

I have been pointing to subsurface polar vulcanism for years -- nice to see others taking it up lately -- JR

According to a new paper in the journal 'Science Magazine,' the Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting at an accelerated rate, which the authors attribute to a warming climate. There's only one problem: According to the National Space Science & Technology Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH), atmospheric temperatures across Antarctica haven't moved up or down since 1979 (See graph 1). uah temp anomaly

Paul Homewood, of the popular site Not A Lot Of People Know That, writes that "the [temperature] trend is a statistically insignificant 0.02°C/decade." He also notes that "sea surface temperatures have been plunging in the last decade," and not rising. According to this paper, the sea ice that is supposedly melting sits on this ocean water, ruling that out as a factor. (See graph 2)

"Even if we only look at summer temperatures, when logically most of the ice melt would occur, there is very little trend. Six of the last summers have actually been below average," Homewood writes. "The only notable summer was 2012/13, when December and January were 1.29 and 1.27C warmer than average. Although unusually warm, such weather was not unprecedented in summer, as December 1989 was 1.36C warmer than average." (See graph 3)

Since 1980, sea ice concentration has also increased considerably around Antarctica according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The report also focuses on the Amundsen and Bellingshausen sea regions (See map), which are part of West Antarctica, saying they have lost up to 18% of their thickness in less than two decades. Homewood doesn't believe we have "the accuracy of measurements, particularly back in the 1990s, to come to any statistically significant conclusions about sea ice volumes over such a short period of time."

As previously reported here, it is common knowledge among geologists that West Antarctica is heavily influenced by underground volcanic activity and is one of the "largest zones of continental extension on Earth." Hidden beneath West Antarctica's thick glacial ice cover is a myriad of currently active volcanoes and dormant but not extinct volcanoes which are all located along an active Rift Systems. (See map)

After contacting geologist James Kamis about this study, he notes this active rift system directly affects Antarctica’s thick glacial ice cover by emitting very hot chemically charged fluid beneath the ice. This acts to melt the ice in localized areas close to the rift system. "Where the rift system cuts across Antarctica’s land mass," he said, "the hot, chemically charged fluids are in direct contact with the base of the ice sheet. Where the rift system extends into the ocean and Antarctica’s ice sheet is floating on seawater, the hot chemically charged fluids heat the overlying ocean, which then melts the base of the ice sheet."

This rift system ice melting process would account for what the authors claim is a 70 percent loss in the past decade in West Antarctica sea ice, and has entirely nothing to do with non-existent atmospheric warming. As is often the case in climate science, factors completely unrelated to man are often the cause of any observed changes to our planet.

SOURCE




UK: Greenpeace fracking advert that claimed drilling for shale gas 'won't cut energy bills' is banned by watchdog

Lies are not protected speech.  Shale has already slashed American oil and gas prices dramatically

A Greenpeace advert claiming that allowing fracking in UK ‘won’t cut energy bills’ has been banned in a victory for David Cameron and other supporters of the technology.

The campaigning group argued fracking for gas under Britain would threaten the climate, the countryside and the water supply.

Significantly, it attempted to appeal to the nation’s purses and wallets by stressing: ‘Experts agree – it won’t cut our energy bills.’

However, a complaint from the pro-fracking Labour peer Lord Lipsey said it was wrong and misleading to state that access to a new source of gas from shale rocks will not cut prices.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has agreed and banned Greenpeace from making the claim in its anti-fracking advertising campaigns.

The promise that fracking will provide cheaper gas to heat the nation’s homes and fuel electricity power stations could well win over consumers sceptical about the impact of fracking.

David Cameron has said he is ‘going all out’ for the rapid development of shale gas on the basis it can increase energy security, help reduce carbon emissions if gas replaces coal and boost the economy.

In 2013, the Prime Minister, said: ‘If we don’t back this technology, we will miss a massive opportunity to help families with their bills … fracking has real potential to drive energy bills down.’

This is rejected by Greenpeace which produced quotes from 22 energy experts, including academics, to support its case that bills will not fall.

The group cited comments from the Lib-Dem energy secretary, Ed Davey, who in March described the idea that fracking would massively reduce prices and transform the economy as ‘ridiculous’.

However, the ASA rules today that given the disagreements, Greenpeace was wrong to state as fact that the introduction of fracking in this country will not cut energy bills.

The watchdog pointed to the comments made by Mr Cameron as evidence there is no consensus on the impact on bills.

It said: ‘While we acknowledged that Greenpeace had provided quotes from 22 people, groups or organisations, demonstrating support for the view that fracking would not reduce energy prices, we understood that there was a significant division of informed opinion on the issue.

‘While we understood the claim was made in the context of a public debate on fracking, we considered the claim was absolute in nature and, therefore, implied the statement was accepted among informed opinion, which we understood was not the case. Because of that, we concluded that the ad was misleading.’

Greenpeace dismissed the decision and questioned the impartiality of the ASA.

It said the ASA chairman is the former Labour Environment Secretary, Chris Smith, who has a second job as head of the Shale Task Force, a group funded by fracking firms including Cuadrilla, Centrica and Total.

At the same time, the complainant, Lord Lipsey, is a former member of the ASA council and sits on the House of Lords economic affairs committee, which published a report last year calling for fracking to be made a national priority.

Greenpeace’s UK energy and climate campaigner, Louise Hutchins, said: ‘An authority led by a fracking advocate has ruled in favour of a pro-fracking Lord merely on the basis of the opinion of an avowedly pro-fracking prime minister.

‘This decision is baseless, biased, and frankly bonkers. We quoted 22 different expert opinions to back up our statement that fracking won’t bring down bills. The ASA could only find shale enthusiast David Cameron to defend the opposite view.

‘This ruling also sets a very dangerous precedent. The same perverse logic could be used to ban statements about evolution or climate change on the basis that someone somewhere disagrees with the mainstream view. We can’t allow the ASA to be used as a kangaroo court to muzzle dissenting voices on controversial issues like fracking.’

SOURCE




Historical record of CO2 levels ignored

The historical record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, claimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the justification for greenhouse gas reduction, is a fraud. atmospheric co2 Research by a Freiburg, Germany professor, Ernst-Georg Beck of the Merian-Schule, shows that the IPCC construed and concocted the pre-1957 CO2 record from measurements on recently drilled ice cores, ignoring more than 90,000 direct measurements by chemical methods from 1857 to 1957. [fn. 1]

The IPCC’s hoked-up record attempts to prove that CO2 concentrations have been steadily increasing with the progress of human industrial civilization. Beck’s work confirms a wealth of previous investigations which demonstrate that the IPCC cherrypicked its data in an attempt to prove that we must stop industrial development and return to the horse-and-buggy age, or face oppressive heat and melting of the polar ice caps.

It shows that the Kyoto Treaty on reduction of greenhouse gases was based on a scientific fraud which violates the laws of the universe, denying the well-established determination of climate by cyclical variations in the EarthSun orbital relationship and in the Sun’s heat output.

In a thorough review of 175 scientific papers, Professor Beck found that the founders of modern greenhouse theory, Guy Stewart Callendar and Charles David Keeling (a special idol of Al Gore’s), had completely ignored careful and systematic measurements by some of the most famous names of physical chemistry, among them several Nobel prize winners.

Measurements by these chemists showed that today’s atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 380 parts per million (ppm) have been exceeded in the past, including a period from 1936 to 1944, when the CO2 levels varied from 393.0 to 454.7 ppm.

There were also measurements, accurate to within 3%, of 375.00 ppm in 1885 (Hempel in Dresden), 390.0 in 1866 (Gorup, Erlangen), and 416.0 in 1857 and 1858 (von Gilm, Innsbruck). Ironically, although the 1940s increase correlated with a period of average atmospheric warming, Beck and others have shown that the warming preceded the increase in CO2 concentrations.

The data reviewed by Beck came mainly from the northern hemisphere, geographically spread from Alaska over Europe to Poona, India, nearly all taken from rural areas or the periphery of towns without contamination by industry, at a measuring height of approximately 2 meters above ground. Evaluation of chemical methods revealed a maximum error of 3% down to 1% in the best cases.

By contrast, the measurements hoked up from ice cores, show a rather steady increase in CO2 levels, conveniently corresponding to the preconceived idea that increasing industrial activity has produced a steady CO2 increase. As Beck’s collaborator, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, former senior adviser to the Polish radiation monitoring service and a veteran mountaineer who has excavated ice from 17 glaciers on six continents, has shown, the gaseous inclusions in ice cores have no validity as historical proxies for atmospheric concentrations.

The continual freezing, refreezing, and pressurization of ice columns drastically alters the original atmospheric concentrations of the gas bubbles. [fn. 2]

According to the greenhouse warming theory, the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration caused by human activity, such as burning of fossil fuels, acts like the glass in a greenhouse to prevent the re-radiation of solar heat from near the Earth’s surface. Although such an effect exists, carbon dioxide is low on the list of greenhouse gases, accounting for at most 2 or 3 percent of the greenhouse effect. By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. However, water in the form of clouds can reflect back solar radiation, causing temperature reduction.

There are so many interrelated effects, that correlating global temperature to CO2 concentration is like attempting to predict the value of a hedge fund by the phases of the Moon.

To concoct a convincing case of such correlation requires ample, sophisticated lying, and the greenhouse theorists have been caught at it. By a delightful historical irony, it could be said that it is the founder of modern science, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), who has caught them. Our modern understanding of photosynthesis began when the Flemish researcher Jan Baptist van Helmont took up Cusa’s challenge (stated in the “De Staticis” section of his Idiota de mente, The Layman: About Mind) to weigh a plant and its soil before and after growth.

Van Helmont discovered (circa 1620) that the soil supporting a willow tree, which had grown to 169 pounds in five years, had changed weight by less than a few ounces. Whence did the solid mass of the tree derive?

Ironically, Van Helmont, who had introduced the word “gas” to science, mistakenly concluded that the plant’s mass had come solely from the water applied.

It took almost two more centuries to uncover the astounding fact that much of the mass of the plant, and all of its structural backbone, derives from the invisible and apparently weightless air, most especially the carbon dioxide component of it.

That was the achievement of the revolution in chemistry launched by Lavoisier, and pushed forward by Gay-Lussac, Avogadro, Gerhardt, and others at the beginning of the 19th Century. The ability to place two invisible gases in a balance and compare their weights, proved to be the secret to the determination of atomic weights, and from that the unlocking of the secrets of both the atom and the cell.

Unfortunately for the liars at the IPCC, the measurement of atmospheric CO2 concentration had been a special focus of chemists since that early 19th Century elaboration of the process of photosynthesis, and their carefully recorded measurements remain with us.

SOURCE




Heat Resistance in Reef-Building Corals

Discussing:  Bay, R.A. and Palumbi, S.R. 2014. "Multi-locus adaptation associated with heat resistance in reef-building corals". Current Biology 24: 252-2956.

Introducing their informative study, Bay and Palumbi (2014) write that "physiology and gene expression patterns have shown that corals living in naturally high-temperature microclimates are more resistant to bleaching because of both acclimation and fixed effects, including adaptation," citing in this regard the slightly earlier work of Palumbi et al. (2014). And in further searching for potential genetic correlates of these fixed effects, they go on to describe how they "genotyped 15,399 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 23 individual table top corals, Acropora hyacinthus, within a natural temperature mosaic in backreef lagoons on Ofu Island, American Samoa."

This effort led to the two researchers identifying 114 highly divergent SNPs that appeared to be good candidates for environmental selection, as a result of multiple stringent outlier tests they conducted, as well as the corals' evident correlations with temperature. More specifically, they report that "corals from the warmest reef location had higher minor allele frequencies across these candidate SNPs, a pattern not seen for non-candidate loci." In addition, they discovered that "within backreef pools, colonies in the warmest microclimates had a higher number and frequency of alternative alleles at candidate loci."

In discussing the significance of their findings, Bay and Palumbi say they imply a "mild selection for alternate alleles at many loci in these corals during high heat episodes and possible maintenance of extensive polymorphism through multi-locus balancing selection in a heterogeneous environment," which leads them to their ultimate conclusion that a natural population of these corals "harbors a reservoir of alleles preadapted to high temperatures, suggesting potential for future evolutionary response to climate change."

SOURCE





4000 Years of Climate Change Based on Taiwan Bog and Lake Data

Discussing:  Liew, P.-M., Wu, M.-H., Lee, C.-Y., Chang, C.-L. and Lee, T.-Q. 2014. "Recent 4000 years of climatic trends based on pollen records from lakes and a bog in Taiwan". Quaternary International 349: 105-112.

Very briefly, Liew et al. (2014) begin their recent report on the climatic history of Taiwan by describing how high-resolution pollen records from four lakes and a bog - which they recovered from both high and low altitudes in northern and southern Taiwan - were used together with radiocarbon dating to develop a 4000-year temperature history of the subtropical mountain island.

The result of this effort was a temperature history that compares well with trends that previously had been developed for China and Europe. And again, very briefly, it revealed the occurrence of a relatively long cold period from approximately 1920 BC to 30 AD, which was followed by the Roman Warm Period (about 30-360 AD), which was followed by the Dark Ages Cold Period (about 360-760 AD), which was followed by the Medieval Warm Period (about 760-1300 AD), which was followed by the Little Ice Age (about 1300-1850 AD). Then, last of all, the record depicts the gradual development of the Current Warm Period, which at this point in time appears to be at its peak, having not risen further than where it is now over the past couple of decades.

Therefore, in light of these and other well-documented findings that are reported and analyzed in the Medieval Warm Period Project portion of the Data section of our website (co2science.org) - which can readily be accessed here - it can clearly be seen that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current state of earth's warmth, which was clearly eclipsed by the Medieval Warm Period at various locations around the globe.

SOURCE





Britain's Green party -- in its Brighton stronghold

The writer Keith Waterhouse famously said, “Brighton looks like a town that is helping the police with their enquiries.”

Actually, it’s better understood as a town populated by people looking the other way. After living here on and off for about five years, I’d say that you can probably do anything, be anything, sleep with anything and smoke anything here and no one will judge you for it. Yet despite that reputation for left-wing libertinism, the three seats that comprise the area are more hotly contested than you might imagine.

This stretch of the Sussex coast used to be solid blue. The seats of Hove and Brighton Pavilion voted Tory in every election from their creation in 1950 until 1997; Kempton returned a Labour member from 1964 to 1970 but was otherwise equally conservative. In 1997, all three seats embraced New Labour with gusto – but rejected the party across the board in 2010. Today, Hove and Kemptown are narrowly Conservative, while Pavilion is Green. The current prediction is Pavilion to stay Green, while Hove and Kemptown will go red. The national significance of which I’ll come on to later.

I suspect that the key to understanding the Green Party’s success in Brighton Pavilion is the area’s growing affluence. Incumbent MP Caroline Lucas ought to be on the way out. “The Green council is dreadful,” said a woman with a pram. “That’s all anyone says about them.” Their record certainly is divisive: a bin strike that led to rubbish piling up in the streets, a controversial redevelopment on the seafront, an attempt to pass a massive tax hike and – irony of ironies for an eco-council – a terrible recycling programme that has actually seen recycling get worse.

And yet, says the lady with the pram, “Lucas isn’t bad as an MP.” On the contrary, I sense some pride at having an independent-minded woman who in some way captures the individualist spirit of the seat.

Moreover, Pavilion has changed a lot since I first came here to teach at the university a few years ago. As in a lot of university seats (Cambridge, Oxford East), it’s become the fashion for the students to stay living here after they finish their studies – adding to the left-wing vote. Also, Brighton has blossomed into a satellite town for London, bringing to our shores lots of TV execs, lawyers, doctors and other representatives of the metropolitan elite.

The northern, working-class council estates are probably still solidly Labour. But down by the wealthier seaside, where house prices and rents are ticking upwards, Green signs are everywhere. Eventually, poorer Labour voters will be priced out altogether as gentrification marches on. The kind of socialism that Lucas pushes is most appealing to those that can afford it.

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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Greenpeace will be remembered in history as monsters



Irrational opposition to "Golden" rice





Heartland Daily Podcast – Hal Doiron: Retired NASA Scientist, The Right Climate Stuff

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Managing Editor of Environment and Climate News H. Sterling Burnett speaks with retired NASA scientist Hal Doiron. Doiron, fresh back from his trip to the Pope’s climate conference in Rome, joins Burnett to discuss his time at NASA and how his views on the climate change debate took shape.

Doiron has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Houston. As a young scientist Doiron joined NASA, developing the software for the Apollo Lunar landing module. He also worked on the Skylab Program and the mars rover “curiosity.” In 2012, his experience with complex systems dynamic simulation models used for safety-critical applications, led him to organize The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) Research Team of more than 25 NASA Apollo Program veterans, in an independent, objective review of the global warming issue. Doiron discusses why his team of space scientists disagree with the claim that humans are causing dangerous climate change. Their work finds that any influence on temperature from human CO2 emissions will be minimal. He also discusses his disappointment that climate realists were not included as advisors to the Pope at the Vatican conference. He called it a dog and pony show with a predetermined alarmist conclusion.

SOURCE (Podcast at link)





Who would have guessed it? Green studies indoctrinate not educate

I would have loved to be there when Brown University environmental studies student Jaqueline Ho suddenly realised that the course she had (presumably) forked out oodles of cash for was not actually an education at all. It turned out to be just a very expensive brainwashing exercise. Can you imagine the look on her face?

"At Brown, ideas first planted by [Bill] McKibben were reinforced in courses where she read classics by Aldo Leopold and Garrett Hardin, along with recent books by Van Jones and Elizabeth Kolbert.

With these authors anchoring her understanding, it was easy for Ho to believe about climate change “that fossil fuel corporations were to blame, that we had a suite of low-carbon technologies we could deploy immediately, and that grassroots solutions held promise,” she recalls.

Yet only after taking an upper-level political science course on renewable energy and completing a summer fellowship with the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank, was Ho introduced to alternative ways of thinking about climate change as a social problem and the possible solutions."

There are other ways of thinking about a problem! Who would have thought it?! Really though, you have to feel sorry for children who are indoctrinated throughout their school and university careers and only once they get into the wide world do they start to realise what has been done to them. Ms Ho's response to this horrible realisation has been admirable:

"Motivated by her experience, in [a] recent study, Ho and Eric Kennedy (a doctoral student at Arizona State University) analyzed 22 syllabi from introductory environmental studies courses taught at top-ranked North American research universities and liberal arts colleges. They recorded course descriptions, objectives, activities, and readings according to specific themes, topics, and perspectives.

Of the 22 syllabi assessed, less than half explicitly mentioned the importance of critical thinking or exposing students to competing perspectives. Only 10 made any reference to the fact that even among those advocating for action to address a problem like climate change, there are competing narratives about the major societal challenges, the possible technological solutions, and the political strategies needed.

Instead, in most cases, diverging views on climate change were defined relatively simplistically in terms of the clash between mainstream scientists and the false claims of climate “deniers.”"

Yes indeed. You wonder whether the students could sue the universities for fraud.

SOURCE





Government Deploys Bogus Science to Quash Business

Back in December of 2012 we noted federal government efforts, headed by then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to eliminate a longstanding oyster farm on the California coast, even though the small operation caused no environmental damage and kept 30 people employed. The Sierra Club and California Senator Barbara Boxer applauded Salazar’s move, but Senator Dianne Feinstein decried a flawed review process that advanced “false and misleading science.” As Michael Bastach observed in the Daily Caller, the government continued to deploy false science for the same destructive purpose.

The federal National Park Service charged that the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, which had operated in the Point Reyes National Seashore for decades, was to blame for an 80 percent decline in the local population of harbor seals. Park Service bosses also blamed the farm, operated by Ken Lunny and his family, for upsetting the ecological balance of Drakes Estero. These charges turned out to be completely false, but the agency continued to make false claims. It used data from a sixty-year-old study from the Sea of Japan, and substituted jet-ski noise from New Jersey for the impact of Lunny’s small outboard motors.

Mr. Lunny told the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that the National Park Service “engaged in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption to run our small business out of Point Reyes.” It falsified data, but “no one has apologized” for doing so. Lunny appealed to higher-ups at the agency and finally took the matter to the Secretary of the Interior.

“No one, at any level, was willing to admit that false science was being used against us,” he testified.

The inspector general of the Interior Department found misconduct, but as Bastach notes, the IG “was powerless to stop Parks Service officials from attacking Lunny’s business.” An axis of false science and regulatory zealotry forced the family to shut down.

This “unconscionable” action, as Mr. Lunny called it, confirms that the federal government is too big, too abusive, and far too unaccountable.

SOURCE





£5,000 green car grant could go after British Government says it will review subsidy

A £5,000 subsidy for motorists wanting to go 'green' with an electric car could be phased out imminently, according to motoring groups.

The Government has said it will be reviewing the level of grants for ultra-low-emission vehicles over the coming months to avoid 'exhausting the budget too quickly'.

It is likely to spark a rush of orders for plug-in cars before any changes from the shake-up come into effect, according to the RAC Foundation. Over 25,000 claims have been made since the grant was introduced four years ago in a bid to spark a boom in emission-free cars.

The latest electric car grant eligilbiity guidance from the Government's 'Office for Low Emissions Vehicles' spells out: 'In May 2015 we will commence a review of plug in grant levels. 'Following this review, new levels of grant will be available per category. We will communicate the changes as soon as they are agreed.'

The Government said: 'We will announce the new grant levels following our market review, which we will start in May.  'We will be observing the market over the next few months so we can set the grants at a level that will support the market as effectively as possible without exhausting the budget too quickly.

For customers ordering an electric or ulta-low emissions vehicle during the 'transition period', the Office for Low Emissions Vehicles says: ' The date that the dealership enters the claim onto our online claim system determines whether the terms of the current scheme or the new scheme will apply.'

Ministers first hinted at a phasing out of the subsidies back in September 2013 but insisted that support in some form would continue until 2020.

But a scathing report by the Commons Transport Select Committee in 2012 said the £5,000 subsidies were doing little more than 'subsidising second cars for affluent households.'

Explaining the reasons for the latest changes, the Government' s new report says: 'Since the plug-in car grant scheme began in 2011, over 25,000 claims have been made and there are now a wide range of vehicles eligible for the grant. In April 2013, we committed to retain the £5,000 grant until 50,000 claims had been made.'

It said £200 million has been made available to continue the plug-in car grant from 2015 to 2020, but stressed: 'We are keen to ensure that the funding is effectively targeted towards supporting the ultra low emission vehicle (ULEV) market.

'The technology in the vehicles, and number of models available, has developed considerably since the technical requirements for the scheme were set, almost 5 years ago.'

Therefore it noted From 1 April 2015 it is introducing three grant categories for cars, differentiating between ULEVs on the basis of their CO2 emissions and their zero emission range.

The Government says: ' The cap will remain at £5,000 for all cars, regardless of which category they are in, until further notice.'

However, that is likely to change after the review, say motoring groups.  The RAC Foundation said: 'Just as the plug-in car grant is becoming successful, government is thinking of pulling the plug or at least changing the rules, with a review taking place this month.'

Its director Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'Millions of drivers will be utterly confused as to what car to buy next. Diesels are in the doghouse because of the air quality issue and now those thinking of going ultra-green are faced with the possibility of paying more than they bargained for unless they move quickly.'

SOURCE





Sydney without an airport — welcome to the fantasy world of the Australian Greens

By Anthony Albanese, Labor Party spokesman for infrastructure, transport, cities and tourism

One of the advantages of representing a minor political party is that because you aren’t trying to win government, you never have to deliver on your promises.

But that fact should not excuse politicians from minor parties from offering genuine, workable solutions to policy challenges facing the community.

Increasingly, minor parties in this country and overseas are crafting opportunist and negative election positions rather than proposing solutions.

So it is with the Greens and their approach to the commonwealth’s plan to build a second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek. The NSW Greens oppose the development of the Badgerys Creek airport, but they also want to close the existing Kingsford Smith airport and build a new airport at an imaginary, unnamed site outside the Sydney basin, which they would connect to the city by high-speed rail. If this were put in place, Sydney would be the only global city without an airport. It’s the stuff of fantasy. It has no place in the world of serious policy debate. Yet this has been Greens policy for the whole of this century.

One on one, realistic Greens party members acknowledge this is not practical. Yet the policy remains and enables the party to campaign for zero impact of aviation activity anywhere, despite the fact modern aviation is a driver of economic activity.

The community has the right to expect that serious parties come to the table with ideas capable of implementation, not just complaints.

Regrettably, the Greens have given up serious participation in the decades-long debate about Sydney’s aviation needs.

They have not been prepared to step back from the local political ­angles, to consider the bigger picture and the broader economic and strategic national interest.

The Badgerys Creek airport will create thousands of jobs for the people of western Sydney. It will provide a huge boost not only for the economy of NSW but for the entire nation. The issues involved require ­serious consideration from ­politicians.

Before the Abbott government’s decision to proceed with construction of the Badgerys Creek airport, the former Labor government examined whether there were other options. The research identified the only possible alternative airport site at Wilton, but it was a higher cost and an inferior site to Badgerys Creek, where the Hawke Labor government had already purchased the land and put in place strict environmental controls.

The Greens opposed Wilton, too. In the light of this, their proposal to banish Sydney’s airport to an unnamed site and to link it to the city with a high-speed rail line cannot be taken seriously.

The comprehensive study into the plan to build a high-speed rail line from Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney and Canberra found that 67km of tunnelling in Sydney would be necessary for it to operate. It’s a serious project worthy of support. But, like any major infrastructure project, high-speed rail would affect communities along the route. Tunnels require ­exhausts. Construction creates ­inconvenience.

Delivering high-speed rail, just like building the Badgerys Creek airport, will require explanation of the benefits and broad support across the political spectrum.

Indeed, it is likely that the challenges of high-speed rail construction will create issues over a far wider area than the second airport.

In short, it will require political representatives to act on principle rather than seek to exploit local communities’ fear of change for political gain. Given the Greens’ record on opposing a second Sydney airport, opposing the Moorebank Intermodal, which will take freight off trucks and on to rail, as well as ­opposing safety upgrades to the Pacific Highway, it would be remarkable if they did not confect reasons to oppose high-speed rail in practice.

When it comes to economic infrastructure, the Greens are political opportunists.

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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