The NYT resurrects lake Poopo

And I say it is a lot of poop.  I don't use rude words very often but sometimes the opportunity is too tempting.  Lake Poopo really is called that.  It is a lake in South America that lacks water at the moment and Warmists like to say the water has all gone away because of global warming. So the NYT has up a big picture of the dry lake bed.

But NYT readers must be mostly scientific illiterates. Given their Leftism I can believe it.  It's High School science that warmer waters give off more evaporation which eventually comes back down as more rain.  So any real global warming would fill Poopo up!  Drought suggests global COOLING!

What is actually happening is that the growing population in the region  is diverting the water from the rivers that flow into Poopo and using the water for irrigation and domestic purposes.  The NYT is just completely dishonest about it in the usual Leftist way

The article underneath the picture of Poopo is below.  It says that the governments of the world are finding it too hard to stop global warming but that at some unknown time in the future they may get serious about it.  Rather a waste of print, it seems to me.  A lot of Poopo, even


In 1988, when world leaders convened their first global conference on climate change, in Toronto, the Earth’s average temperature was a bit more than half a degree Celsius above the average of the last two decades of the 19th century, according to measurements by NASA.

Global emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to the equivalent of some 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year — excluding those from deforestation and land use. Worried about its accumulation, the gathered scientists and policymakers called on the world to cut CO2 emissions by a fifth.

That didn’t happen, of course. By 1997, when climate diplomats from the world’s leading nations gathered to negotiate a round of emissions cuts in Kyoto, Japan, emissions had risen to some 35 billion tons and the global surface temperature was roughly 0.7 of a degree Celsius above the average of the late 19th century.

It took almost two decades for the next breakthrough. When diplomats from virtually every country gathered in Paris just over two years ago to hash out another agreement to combat climate change, the world’s surface temperature was already about 1.1 degrees Celsius above its average at the end of the 1800s. And greenhouse gas emissions totaled just under 50 billion tons.

This is not to belittle diplomacy. Maybe this is the best we can do. How can countries be persuaded to adopt expensive strategies to drop fossil fuels when the prospective impact of climate change remains uncertain and fixing the problem requires collective action? As mitigation by an individual country will benefit all, nations will be tempted to take a free ride on the efforts of others. And no country will be able to solve the problem on its own.

Still, the world’s diplomatic meanderings — from the ineffectual call in Toronto for a reduction in emissions to the summit meeting in Paris, where each country was allowed simply to pledge whatever it could to the global effort — suggest that the diplomats, policymakers and environmentalists trying to slow climate change still cannot cope with its unforgiving math. They are, instead, trying to ignore it. And that will definitely not work.

The world is still warming. Both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that global temperatures last year receded slightly from the record-setting 2016, because there was no El Niño heating up the Pacific.

While the world frets over President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, I would argue that the greatest impediment to slowing this relentless warming is an illusion of progress that is allowing every country to sidestep many of the hard choices that still must be made.

“We keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome,” said Scott Barrett, an expert on international cooperation and coordination at Columbia University who was once a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Climate diplomats in Paris didn’t merely reassert prior commitments to keep the world’s temperature less than 2 degrees above that of the “preindustrial” era — a somewhat fuzzy term that could be taken to mean the second half of the 19th century. Hoping to appease island nations like the Maldives, which are likely to be swallowed by a rising ocean in a few decades, they set a new “aspirational” ceiling of 1.5 degrees.

To stick to a 2-degree limit, we would have to start reducing global emissions for real within about a decade at most — and then do more. Half a century from now, we would have to figure out how to suck vast amounts of carbon out of the air. Keeping the lid at 1.5 degrees would be much harder still.

Yet when experts tallied the offers made in Paris by all the countries in the collective effort, they concluded that greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would exceed the level needed to remain under 2 degrees by 12 billion to 14 billion tons of CO2.

Are there better approaches? The “climate club” proposed by the Yale University economist William Nordhaus has the advantage of including an enforcement device, which current arrangements lack: Countries in the club, committed to reducing carbon emissions, would impose a tariff on imports from nonmembers to encourage them to join.

Martin Weitzman of Harvard University supports the idea of a uniform worldwide tax on carbon emissions, which might be easier to agree on than a panoply of national emissions cuts. One clear advantage is that countries could use their tax revenues as they saw fit.

Mr. Barrett argues that the Paris agreement could be supplemented with narrower, simpler deals to curb emissions of particular gases — such as the 2016 agreement at a 170-nation meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions — or in particular industries, like aviation or steel.

Maybe none of this would work. The climate club could blow up if nonmembers retaliated against import tariffs by imposing trade barriers of their own. Coordinating taxes around the world looks at least as difficult as addressing climate change. And Mr. Barrett’s proposal might not deliver a breakthrough on the scale necessary to move the dial.

But what definitely won’t suffice is a climate strategy built out of wishful thinking: the proposition that countries can be cajoled and prodded into increasing their ambition to cut emissions further, and that laggards can be named and shamed into falling into line.

Inveigled by three decades of supposed diplomatic progress — coupled with falling prices of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries — the activists, technologists and policymakers driving the strategy against climate change seem to have concluded that the job can be done without unpalatable choices. And the group is closing doors that it would do best to keep open.

There is no momentum for investing in carbon capture and storage, since it could be seen as condoning the continued use of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, the only source of low-carbon power ever deployed at the needed scale, is also anathema. Geoengineering, like pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s heat back into space, is another taboo.

But eventually, these options will most likely be on the table, as the consequences of climate change come more sharply into focus. The rosy belief that the world can reduce its carbon dependency over a few decades by relying exclusively on the power of shame, the wind and the sun will give way to a more realistic understanding of possibilities.

Some set of countries will decide to forget Paris and deploy a few jets to pump sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cool the world temporarily. There will be a race to develop techniques to harvest and store carbon from the atmosphere, and another to build nuclear generators at breakneck speed.

It will probably be too late to prevent the Maldives from ending up underwater. But better late than never.

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Even the one reliable source of "renewable" power is problematical

Great feats of Canadian engineering are seen as a honeypot by parasitical native people



Deep beneath a granite mountain in the vast, snow-covered wilds north of the Saint Lawrence River, a frigid torrent surges through a massive, man-made tunnel, its white water propelling eight powerful turbines that generate electricity for hundreds of thousands of people.

Within two years, a significant amount of that power, along with hydroelectricity from other plants in this Canadian province, could be exported to Massachusetts, providing the state with a long-awaited influx of renewable energy.

This week, state officials are expected to announce whether they intend to buy more hydropower as part of the Baker administration’s energy plan. But in and around this old paper mill town about 400 miles northeast of Montreal, the indigenous peoples of the region harbor major concerns about the environmental impact of the project, complicating the quest for climate-friendly power.

State energy officials are considering six bids for renewable energy projects that would produce enough electricity to power about a million homes, enabling Massachusetts to reduce its carbon emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, as required by state law.

Three of those bids are for lucrative long-term contracts from Hydro-Québec, a government-owned company that generated $13.3 billion in revenue in 2016 from its immense system of 63 dams and 27 reservoirs, many of which were built amid great controversy. By some estimates, the contract with Massachusetts, which would run for 20 years, could be worth $12 billion.

But those bids have thrust Massachusetts into a long-running dispute between the power company and the region’s indigenous peoples, some of whom have accused Hydro-Québec of “cultural genocide” and damaging rivers that have been vital to their economy and traditions for generations.

“Hydro-Québec has destroyed our territories,” said Chief René Simon of the Pessamit, an indigenous group of the Innu nation whose ancestral lands are now the source of nearly one-third of the company’s hydropower. “I would advise the governor of Massachusetts not to buy the power from Hydro-Québec.”

Officials at Hydro-Québec acknowledge the concerns of the Pessamit, and after years of protests, the company’s chief executive in December welcomed Simon to his office in Montreal. The two agreed to a series of negotiations in hopes of settling the Pessamit’s longstanding claims against Hydro-Québec, which include multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the company.

Company officials maintain that a deal to sell Massachusetts an additional 1,200 megawatts of power — a tiny percentage of Hydro-Québec’s overall capacity — would have little to no impact on the Pessamit.

They also note that they have previously sought to accommodate the group’s concerns, both historical and environmental, by agreeing to share profits from one of their power stations on Pessamit ancestral lands, providing them with grants, and spending years trying to reduce the damage their dams inflict on salmon.

“Hydro-Québec categorically refutes the allegations of the Innu of Pessamit, who claim that increasing our exports will adversely affect [their rivers],” said Lynn St-Laurent, a spokeswoman for the company.  She has called claims of cultural genocide “offensive,” adding they “couldn’t be further from reality.”

“Over the past 40 years, Hydro-Québec has diligently consulted the native population for all of our production and transmission projects, including the Pessamit,” St-Laurent said.

In Massachusetts, Baker administration officials declined to comment on whether they’re considering the concerns of indigenous groups in choosing a bid. The other bids include proposals by National Grid to import wind power from Québec and by Emera to build a power line beneath the ocean, from New Brunswick to Plymouth.

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Trump Misses the Mark With Solar Tariffs

In essence, Trump's decision continues the government's proclivity for picking winners and losers.

This week, solar industry imports were dealt a heavy blow with Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 30% tariff. The Associated Press reports that among those advocating for the tariff on solar panels was the U.S. International Trade Commission. According to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, “The president’s action makes clear again that the Trump administration will always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses in this regard.”

China’s Commerce Ministry was angered by the tariff, responding: “The U.S. side once again abused its trade remedy measures. China expresses its strong dissatisfaction with this.” Mexico is also rattled. The nation’s Economy Department shot back, “Mexico will use all available legal resources in response to the U.S. decision to apply protections on Mexican washing machines and solar panels.”

These complaints are to be expected given where they’re coming from. Nevertheless, was this a wise decision? As Heritage Foundation analyst Katie Tubb explains, not exactly. She writes: “The case involves two failing manufacturing companies — Suniva and SolarWorld — which have petitioned the government for globally applicable tariffs on inexpensive imports of solar cells and panels. That petition has run the gauntlet of comments, hearings, and analysis from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Since then, organizations across the political spectrum, including the Solar Energy Industries Association, have made the case for why the requested tariffs would be harmful for the solar industry writ large.”

Tubb lists three justifications for “why rejecting the request for sweeping tariffs would be consistent with Trump’s campaign trail ideals and policy vision for energy dominance.” It begins with innovation. As Tubb explains, “There is almost no better way to fossilize an industry than by guaranteeing prices and knocking out the competitors of a select few companies. The only innovation that this spurs is creative ways to lobby the government for new ways to interfere in energy markets.” Moreover, “[Government] intervention would also punish competitive American solar companies in order to keep two failing ones afloat.”

Secondly, tariffs handcuff competition. “Trump should protect competition, not specific competitors,” says Tudd. “The solar industry in America can provide customers the best, most affordable service to Americans when it is able to access components from the most competitive companies around the globe. The proposed tariffs block this access. In essence, they are a massive regulatory subsidy for Suniva and SolarWorld — at the expense of the rest of the solar industry.”

And finally, there’s the issue of fostering a healthy job market. Tudd notes: “Suniva and SolarWorld argue that global tariffs are essential to their survival and will create thousands of jobs. Using the force of government to eliminate a company’s competitors will almost certainly preserve those company jobs.” However, “There will be negative implications for the rest of the industry and the indirect jobs it creates if the administration bends over backward to shore up two failing companies. The federal government shouldn’t be the arbiter of whose job is more valuable.”

National Taxpayer Union’s Free Trade Initiative director Bryan Riley makes yet another shrewd point: “Because the government provides a whopping 30 percent tax credit for the installation of solar energy systems, a big chunk of increased costs generated by the new trade restrictions will be paid for by the federal government. That doesn’t seem like an ‘America First’ policy.”

In essence, Trump’s decision, unfortunately, continues the government’s proclivity for picking winners and losers. Furthermore, the Associated Press reports, “Sen. Ben Sasse … said Republicans need to understand that tariffs are a tax on consumers.” He’s right. There’s no doubt any of this was the administration’s intent — Trump, after all, once pledged, “We will get the bureaucracy out of the way of innovation, so we can pursue all forms of energy” — but nevertheless, the decision was made without taking these issues into account. Imposing tariffs on the solar industry wasn’t one of Trump’s brightest decisions.

SOURCE




Mega Blizzard Complicates Travels At Conference On Global Warming

World leaders are worried that a massive blizzard could derail their opportunity to talk about solutions to global warming at a major economic conference in Switzerland.

Snowflakes are canvassing Davos in nearly six feet of snow. Snow kept pounding the valleys and areas surrounding the town Monday night, causing plutocrats, members of the media, and world business leaders to slip and slide on their way to various conferences at this year’s World Economic Forum.

Some participants say it’s the worst snow storm they’ve seen at the conference in years.

“I’ve been coming for eight years and this is the worst I’ve seen it,” Linda P. Fried, the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told The New York Times. She dismissed critics who mock the incongruity of talking climate change during a giant snowstorm.

“It isn’t accurate, people just don’t understand, that’s not the metric” said Fried, who was late to a discussion on climate change, despite having etched out three hours for travel from her hotel to the conference hall. Journalists who were late to interviews at the conference tweeted out photos of the enormous snowbanks blocking their travels.

Organizers are hoping the snowy conditions loosen up by the time President Donald Trump arrives on Friday to give the closing address. Things could dicey if snow continues apace, especially if the president decides to use helicopters to land in Davos.

“When Trump comes on Friday it is far from obvious whether he will be able to use a fleet of large helicopters to land in Davos,” a source close to the organizing committee told Reuters. “Large helicopters increase the risk of avalanches.”

A bulletin from the SLF Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, which calculates the possibility of avalanches, showed a broad band of the mountainous country under Level 5 avalanche danger, the highest on a 1-5 scale.

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Top down command is not the way to improve the environment

The [British] government’s 25-year environment plan is more than a piece of virtue signalling, despite its chief purpose being to persuade the young to vote Conservati(ve)onist. It is full of sensible, apolitical goals and in places actually conveys a love of the natural world, which is not always the case with such documents.

The difficulty will be putting its ambitions into practice. It is all very well to want cleaner air and water, more biodiversity, less plastic litter and richer soils. How are these to be achieved? Except in a few places, such as the discussion of “net environmental gains” in the construction industry, the plan is worryingly vague.

The word that bothers me most, appearing often, is “we”. “The actions we will take . . . we will protect ancient woodland . . . we will increase tree planting” and so on. Who is we? This is the language of the central planner, who assumes that the government decrees and the passive population obeys. There is relatively little sense here that the vast majority of our environment is managed by people or organisations other than the government and that the vast majority of actions that damage or improve it are taken by people other than civil servants.

People do not foul their own nests, on the whole, so the role of government is to create as much sense of real environmental ownership as possible. If the de facto owner of the environment is the state, through too many rules and restrictions, then people will not volunteer to help. Communised assets lack a sense of ownership: look at the litter in laybys, for example, or the terrible state of the environment in Soviet Russia under the state planning committee, or Gosplan.

At the micro level it’s easy to create sense of ownership. Private property is a powerful motivator. At communal levels it’s harder, but not impossible. There are many local conservation charities and private organisations looking after a woodland and a flower meadow here, a stretch of river there: small groups of people who take pride in the responsibility.

Now, you cannot always use a commercial market in environmental matters, because people do not willingly pay for the things they want (though sometimes they do — most winter bird seed crops are planted by shooters). But you can at least try different things in different places to learn what works.

The big green pressure groups forget all this. They are more comfortable with a centralised and top-down policy, amenable to lobbying. The reaction of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) to Michael Gove’s plan is telling: “But these commitments will only become a reality if they are backed by the force of law, money and a new environmental watchdog.” In other words, a green Gosplan, a Goveplan, which would be counterproductive for the same reasons that Gosplan didn’t work.

Take the agri-environment schemes under which farmers are rewarded for doing things that, say, make yellowhammers [a bird] happy. Most agree, and this plan notes this, that under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) the schemes have been wasteful, spending fortunes on things that work poorly and too little on things that work well. Talk to smaller research organisations such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and you will find that they have learnt through experimentation how to stop yellowhammers starving at the end of the winter (non-dehiscent plants that don’t shed all their seeds too early). It is the same with wild flowers, woodland and clean water. Good practice spreads by word of mouth in the countryside after practical people discover it through trial and error. The rewilding of the Knepp estate in West Sussex by Sir Charles Burrell, for example, has shown that nightingales are attracted to breed in unkempt thorn hedges.

In the inflexible world of the CAP, with its pillars and schemes and schedules, experimentation is impossible. To the extent that the vagueness of Mr Gove’s plan is a tacit recognition that government’s job should not be to tell people what to do, but to encourage a thousand metaphorical (and literal) flowers to bloom, good. To the extent that it sets out an agenda for the pressure groups and corporatist quangos to colonise with their tick-box mentality, bad. We will have to see which turns out to be true.

In this respect, another welcome feature of the plan is the focus on local environmental goals: plastic, clean water, clean air, soil, wildlife, trees. The big global issues that have dominated the professional environmental industry for so long — global population, resources, acid rain, ozone, climate change — are in the document, but no longer crowding out the local ones as they did for years, and in many cases actively making things worse.

There are still problems. The plan mentions in one breath both climate change mitigation and the prevention of international deforestation, yet fails to spot that the burning of wood for “renewable” electricity and the cultivation of palm-oil biodiesel plantations have been inspired and justified entirely by misguided climate policies. Wind farms do kill birds, as well as trashing landscapes; hydro on free-flowing rivers does harm fish, and so on. Environmental objectives do conflict but the plan shows little recognition of this. The main omission, however, is science. There is no sense in the plan of the technologies becoming available to protect the environment: the biotechnology that has already made agriculture so much greener elsewhere in the world and is limiting land-take; the gene editing that promises to enable us to grow better crops with fewer chemicals; the British breakthroughs that promise to give us contraceptive vaccines to control invasive species humanely; the new techniques for eradicating rats from oceanic islands to save seabirds.

The good intentions of Mr Gove’s plan are obvious and welcome, but they could have been written down any time in the past century, while the means hinted at are regrettably tinged with an anti-scientific and potentially authoritarian puritanism that just won’t work. Five out of ten.

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.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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With talk of ‘mini ice age,’ global warming debate may again be about to change

The unfalsifiable theory

Many Americans believe the debate over whether man is primarily responsible for Earth’s recent warming was started by Al Gore in the 1990s, when the issue prominently made its way onto the national stage, but scientists have been debating humans’ role in our changing climate for many decades.

For instance, in 1969, the New York Times reported, “Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier [now serving with General Dynamics], is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two. … A number of specialists believe that an ice-free Arctic Ocean would not freeze again.”

In the 1970s, some scientists speculated Earth was about to go through an extensive global cooling period, with some even suggesting the cooling could be catastrophic.

These dire predictions, and many more just like them, never occurred, of course, but they all have one thing in common: Environmentalists have consistently used scientific projections to justify radical, often socialistic policy changes, including carbon taxes and exchanges, incentives to limit population growth and other extreme measures that take power away from individuals and give it to an ever-growing centralized government.

I believe we could be about to experience another remarkable shift in the climate change debate, although radical environmentalists’ plan to seize your rights will likely remain the same.

Another ‘mini ice age’?

On Dec. 27, Sky News, a large media outlet in the United Kingdom, published a news article on its website titled, “Scientists predict ‘mini ice age’ could hit UK by 2030.” In this article, reporter Gerard Tubb describes a new report from researchers at Northumbria University that claims “a mathematical model of the Sun’s magnetic activity suggests temperatures could start dropping here from 2021, with the potential for winter skating on the River Thames by 2030.”

Sky News reported the research team, led by professor Valentina Zharkova, projects there will be “rapidly decreasing magnetic waves for three solar cycles beginning in 2021 and lasting 33 years.”

Zharkova says there is a 97 percent chance the model is accurate, but she and her team say because of man-caused global warming, it’s not clear how much cooler things might get. Still, Zharkova says it’s very possible global temperature will drop in a manner similar to when solar activity was last at Zharkova’s projected levels, in the mid-1700s, when much of the world experienced a so-called “mini ice age.”

Many of those who believe humans are primarily responsible for global warming have already denounced the mini ice age prediction. They believe humans are creating so much warming that it will far outweigh changes in the sun’s magnetic waves.

“The effect is a drop in the bucket, a barely detectable blip, on the overall warming trajectory we can expect over the next several decades from greenhouse warming,” Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and the man behind the infamous “hockey stick graph,” said in an email to the Washington Post.

If Mann is right and the “warming trajectory” — which I think is a rather misleading term given some of the findings by Dr. John Christy and other researchers — continues, then it’s unlikely the climate change debate will change much over the next decade or two. Alarmists will continue to say the world is about to end, skeptics will say they think the alarmists are wrong, and most people will go on with their lives, waiting until the debate definitively ends or until climate alarmists get their wish and institute massive, far-reaching and expensive policies that will control how much carbon dioxide people can emit without paying a fine.

However, if Mann is wrong and the changes to solar magnetic waves expected by Zharkova’s team do occur and do cause warming to cease, or even cooling, then the climate change debate will inevitably shift, as alarmists and politicians scramble to come up with an explanation for why their many highly touted and dire predictions never occurred. How will far-left environmentalists save themselves from total embarrassment?

A new strategy

Interestingly, at least some climate scientists are already beginning to drop hints about how they might react. When asked by Sky News about how potential alterations to the sun’s magnetic waves might affect global warming, Zharkova responded, “I hope global warning will be overridden by this effect, giving humankind and the Earth 30 years to sort out our pollution.”

Ah yes, how fortunate it is that the sun’s changes will give Earth “30 years” to come up with a solution to global warming! Rather than admit that they might be wrong and that warming could be driven primarily by factors other than carbon-dioxide emissions, Zharkova suggests instead that an extreme cooling period would push the red line people like Al Gore are always ranting about 50 years into the future.

This conveniently gives the environmental left and many Democrats a doomsday deadline far enough off into the future that it will theoretically affect most people now living (or at least their kids) but not so far off that people aren’t concerned about it.

Given what I’ve read about Zharkova, it doesn’t seem as though she should be classified as an “alarmist.” In fact, in accordance with good scientific practices, she seems very willing to consider all the evidence on both sides of the debate. But her statement speaks volumes about the future of the global warming movement should her predictions about the Sun turn out to be accurate.

Zharkova isn’t the only one who has suggested such a view, either. In a Newsweek article, James Renwick, a professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, was quoted as saying any cooling would be limited to the 30-year period projected by Zharkova, and that global warming would pick up right where it left off, or be even worse, when the solar activity changed again around 2050.

“If things played out as described in Zharkova’s paper, and we did see a decrease in solar output roughly as happened in the 1700s, there would be some cooling for 20 or 30 years,” Renwick said. “But the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are so much higher now (and will be even higher in 2030) that temperatures would not drop much below where they are today. And that drop would last only until 2050 or so. Then we’d have a bounce upwards again.”

Newsweek reported Howard Diamond, the program director for the U.S. Climate Reference Network, also concluded warming temperatures would quickly rebound, even if Zharkova is right.

As these statements show, even if we experience lots of cooling because of solar changes, many climate scientists are likely to ignore those alterations as evidence that natural causes may be the most important climate change consideration.

Instead, it appears they will stick to their climate change theory about man’s responsibility and possibly use the cooling period (if one occurs) as a time to rally support for radical energy policies. This situation is eerily similar to when alarmists shifted away from using the term “global warming,” replacing it with the more-ambiguous and all-encompassing “climate change.”

Climate change doesn’t appear to be on the way out, but the debate could be on the verge of evolving again, this time putting alarmists on the defensive as global temperature cools because of changes in the Sun’s magnetic waves.

SOURCE





Bob Lutz slams Tesla’s future prospects, says if you like electric cars ‘buy one while they’re still available’

TESLA was once the darling of the automotive industry, but it’s starting to lose its lustre with those in the know.

CAR industry veteran Bob Lutz has cast doubt on the future of electric car maker Tesla, which has struggled to make a profit, and suffered chronic production delays and quality problems.

The former high ranking executive from General Motors, now retired, said Tesla boss Elon Musk “hasn’t figured out the revenues have to be greater than costs … when you are perennially running out of cash you are just not running a good automobile company”.

A Los Angeles Times report said Lutz, 85, made the comments while addressing a crowd of vintage car collectors at an auction in the US.

Lutz praised the latest Tesla electric car as “one of the fastest, best handling, best braking sedans that you could buy in the world today” with enough acceleration to “beat any $350,000 European exotic”.

However, Lutz said the future prospects of the company are grim.

“I don’t see anything on the horizon that’s going to fix that, so those of you who are interested in collector cars may I suggest buying a Tesla Model S while they’re still available,” Lutz said.

Afterwards, Lutz told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times: “Twenty-five years from now, [the Model S] will be remembered as the first really good-looking, fast electric car. People will say ‘Too bad they went‎ broke’.”

Lutz — who has worked for BMW, Ford, Chrysler and, finally, General Motors before he retired from the US car giant in 2010 — is known for his direct and outspoken views in an industry mired in political correctness and marketing speak.

It is not the first time Lutz has questioned Tesla’s “cash burn”, drawing attention to it during a CNN interview in 2016.

“The last time I checked their quarterly cash burn is about $250 million. For a company that size that’s horrific,” Lutz said.

Although he was instrumental in approving the development of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid car, Lutz describes himself as a climate change sceptic rather than a climate change denier.

In 2008 he told a room full of journalists “global warming is a crock of shit”, before explaining “I’m motivated more by the desire to replace imported oil than by the CO2 (argument)”.

Among his list of career achievements, Lutz played a key role in getting the Holden Monaro coupe and Holden Commodore sedan exported to the US in the early to mid 2000s.

He was also a senior executive at GM in charge of future models when the company went into bankruptcy in the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, and it was forced to axe brands such as Hummer and Pontiac.

However, Lutz is not the only high ranking executive to question Tesla’s claims.

Last year General Motors’ director of autonomous vehicle integration Scott Miller said “I think he’s full of crap” when asked about Musk’s claims that certain Tesla cars “already have the hardware for full self driving capability”.

Mr Miller said Tesla vehicles currently lack the back up systems to properly deliver a truly autonomous car.

“Do you really want to trust one sensor measuring the speed of a car coming into an intersection before you pull out? I think you need some confirmation,” Miller told Australian media in a technology briefing in Detroit.

Despite the gloomy forecast, Tesla is buoyed by the value placed on it by investors.

According to the latest data, Tesla has a market value of $US59 billion and trades at $US351 a share even though it only produced 101,000 vehicles in 2017.

By comparison, General Motors has a market value of $US61.5 billion and trades at $US43 a share after producing more than 9 million vehicles in 2017.

The world’s number one car maker Volkswagen has a market value of $US116 billion and trades at $US46 a share after producing approximately 11 million vehicles in 2017.

SOURCE





The Dangers of Asserting 'Hottest Year Since...'

It's one thing to compare satellite temps and quite another to make claims using dubious 100-year-old logs.

We recently turned the calendar over to a new year, which provides us an opportunity to analyze last year’s climate rankings. According to Dr. Roy Spencer, a renowned climate researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the temperature of the lower troposphere in 2017 registered a positive anomaly of 0.38°C. This measurement originated via satellite recordings that began in the 1970s and uses 1981-2010 as a baseline. According to Spencer, at +0.38°C, 2017 ranks as the third-warmest year (2016 and 1998 were both higher).

Similarly, the California-based Remote Sensing Systems company, whose niche is “specializing in satellite microwave remote sensing,” says based on its analysis that “the lower troposphere [in] 2017 was the second warmest recorded since satellite observations began in 1979.” Both the UAH and RSS computations take into account a 39-year satellite history. This is very important, as we’ll explain.

On Thursday, NASA asserted that “Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 ranked as the second warmest since 1880.” More specifically, “Globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean.” Strangely, even the libertarian site Reason ran with the headline, “2017 Was the Second Hottest Year Since 1880, Says NASA.” It’s true that the NASA ranking is similar if not identical to the satellite reports, but it’s incredibly deceptive to pretend they mean the same thing.

It’s one thing to compare more modern satellite temperatures and quite another to make concrete claims that are heavily dependent on logs from 100-plus years ago. Satellite measurements — the most reliable tool we have — went into commission in the late 1970s. On the other hand, NOAA is taking us all the way back to 1880, when satellite data was nonexistent. Anyone who claims that global climate data from then up until the satellite era is anywhere close to factual is delusional. Moreover, NASA is utilizing revisionist temperature data along with very spurious methodology. So next time you hear “It’s the hottest year since…” remember, it’s all relative. And if government data is involved, it’s most likely based on highly unsubstantiated claims.

SOURCE





We can't win:  Cleaning up pollution may make global warming WORSE

Or so they say

The very contaminants that are helping to fuel global warming may also be masking its effects, research has indicated.

Efforts to remove pollutants from the air could result in an increase in warming, extreme weather and other climate effects, according to the study, which was published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Specifically, removing aerosols, which are human-made pollutants often emitted by industrial activities, could push the earth's temperature to become half a degree to 1.1 degree C warmer.

It might not seem like much of an increase, but it has the potential to make the earth's temperatures approach dangerous levels.

Experts have said they hope to keep world temperatures within 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius of their pre-industrial levels, Scientific American noted.

The earth may have already warmed by a degree, which means any incremental increases could make a big difference.

Not only would cooling the earth result in warmer global temperatures, but it may also enhance the related effects of global warming.

Chief among those effects are increasingly dangerous weather, such as precipitation and natural disasters. 

'We also see that the impact that these aerosols have on temperature in Asia really transports northwards to the Arctic region, northern Europe, Norway, the northern U.S.,' said Bjørn Samset, the study's lead author, according to Scientific American.

'That part of the world is also quite sensitive to the changes in aerosols in Asia.'

The scientists also noted that the negative effects of removing pollutants tend to be stronger in areas that were more polluted to begin with.

Researchers used four global climate models to simulate the impact of removing human-contributed emissions of major aerosols, such as sulfate and soot.

The scientists concluded that doing so would warm the earth by half a degree to 1.1 degrees Celsius.

For the time being, Samset said he hopes that the study will help 'inform the next generation' of climate research.

The study follows similar research that found artificial cooling techniques, often referred to as 'geoengineering,' can be harmful to the earth.

One technique involves firing aerosols into the atmosphere to combat global warming. Doing so would cool ultimately cool the earth by blocking incoming solar radiation. However, if the geoengineering technique is abruptly stopped, it can actually cause the planet to warm ten times faster than normal.

This could lead to devastating floods or droughts and could be a 'huge threat' to the natural environment and biodiversity.

SOURCE





Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal over endangered frog



The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a lower-court decision protecting a dusky gopher frog on private land in Louisiana.

The high court will hear the case of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service against Weyerhaeuser Company, a timber producer.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had designated nearly 6,500 acres in Louisiana and Mississippi as a critical habitat for the frog living underground in open-canopied pine forests. That includes more than 1,500 acres on private land in St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana.

Since 2001, the dusky gopher frog has been listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. In 2012, the U.S. agency designated the private land as protected.

In June 2016, a three-judge panel of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the classification even though the frogs no longer live on the St. Tammany Parish land. But the court agreed with the federal agency that those lands are essential because they contain five ephemeral ponds, each within hopping distance of the next. They lay their eggs only in these temporary ponds and the parish was the last known Louisiana breeding ground.

The Weyerhaeuser Company wants to use the land for residential and commercial development, as well as timber operations. It argued the wildlife agency abused its power under the Endangered Species Act.

"The landowners thus face the Catch-22 that they can continue forestry operations on the frogless land largely unhindered by the designation," the company wrote.

If it tries to develop the land, consistent with existing plans and zoning, the designation may well stop the development in its tracks -- "which again would not help the frog. Either way, the designation destroys economic activity, leaves the land as unoccupied non-habitat, and does nothing to help the frog."

The lower court ruled that critical-habitat designations do not transform private land into wildlife refuges.

"We're disappointed the Supreme Court took up the case but confident the justices will ultimately uphold this imperiled frog's habitat protections," said Collette Adkins, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney who works to conserve amphibians and reptiles. "The Fish and Wildlife Service followed the unanimous advice of frog experts in deciding to protect essential habitat of these critically endangered animals."

Although at one time prevalent throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, dusky gopher frogs are now nearly extinct.

"The Supreme Court's ruling is bad news for these endangered frogs," said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network. "This lawsuit attempts to gut essential habitat protections for the frog. For too long the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had to focus its limited resources on defending this decision rather than recovering the frogs and restoring their habitat."

The Center for Biological Diversity and Gulf Restoration Network are participatating in the litigation before the Supreme Court.

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.  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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You CAN have your cake and eat it too -- if you are a Warmist

The first article below is fairly logical.  Warmer oceans would indeed produce more rain.  But the second article predicts drought from warming.  Which should we take heed of?  Easy answer:  Neither. 

Unless countries urgently boost their flood defences, millions more people will be at risk from river flooding in the next 20 years as global warming increases the likelihood of severe rainfall, scientists said on Wednesday

In Asia, the numbers at risk will more than double to 156 million, up from 70 million, with India, China and Indonesia among the worst-affected countries, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Pakistan, already prone to flooding, "will observe almost a doubling in high-end flood risk," with 11 million people at risk of floods unless protective measures are taken by 2040.

The numbers at risk in South America also will double, to 12 million, and Africa will see a rise to 34 million facing flooding threats, up from 25 million, the researchers said.

However, the actual number of people at risk is likely to be higher than the scientists' predictions, as the estimates do not take into account population growth or more people moving to areas at risk of flooding, scientists said.

In a new study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers calculate how much more flood protection will be needed to keep the risks of high-end floods constant in the next 25 years.

Unless actions are taken - such as enhancing dykes, boosting building standards, relocating settlements and managing rivers - the number of people affected by devastating floods could skyrocket, warns the report, based on models that are 10 times more precise than commonly used climate computer simulations.

The United States and parts of Europe also will need to make major investments in flood protection - such as improving river dykes, river management and building standards, or relocating people - to prevent a rise in the numbers of people facing flooding.

"More than half of the United States must at least double their protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in river flood risks," Sven Willner, from the Germany-based Potsdam Institute, said in a statement.

"In South America the number of people affected by flooding risks will likely increase from six to 12 million, in Africa from 25 to 34 million," the study said.

In Germany the number of people affected is projected to rise seven-fold, from 100,000 to 700,000.

In North America, it could rise from 100,000 to one million.

Global warming increases the risk of flooding because the amount of rain that can fall during an extreme downpour "increases exponentially" as temperatures rise, Anders Levermann, also of the Potsdam Institute, said in an interview.

When more heat-trapping pollutants surround the Earth, more moisture is held in the air, leading to more rainfall.

Cutting these emissions is crucial to reducing flood risks for future generations.

Global temperatures have already risen by more than 1 deg C above pre-industrial levels, and are expected to continue rising.

Countries committed in 2015 to try to hold global temperature rise to "well below" 2 deg C, but the world is currently on track for more than 3 deg C of warming, a level expected cause much more extreme and unpredictable weather, and to cause worsening crop failures and more migration.

"The findings should be a warning to decision-makers," added Levermann. "Doing nothing will be dangerous."

Although river floods may seem less dramatic than hurricanes and cyclones, they can inflict serious damage.

Last year, Peru experienced its worst flooding in decades, causing up to US$9 billion (S$12 billion) in damage. South Asia in 2017 suffered its worst monsoon flooding in a decade, which killed more than 1,400 people, left hundreds of villages submerged and drove tens of thousands of people to relief camps.

Disaster management officials in the region said although flooding is normal during the monsoon months, they received a whole year's rain in just a few days.

But the question of how best to protect people from river floods is a complex one.

"It's not that straightforward to think if only we built dykes and levees along the rivers ... then the world will be a safe place," said Richard Klein, a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Building flood protection "will also have an effect on food production and it will increase the risk of particularly high magnitude events", he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Bangladesh for example, regular and often predictable floods dump a fertile layer of river sediment on fields, one reason the country is self sufficient in rice, Klein said.

"People tend to pick up their stuff, move to higher ground and come back when the water's gone, and (they) benefit from the fertile soil that they have," he said.

Building infrastructure to contain floodwaters can also give people a false sense of security, so they are more likely to build in areas still at risk of flooding after a severe downpour. "That's not to say one shouldn't protect people, but ... simply protecting ... has consequences," he said.

SOURCE

Earth will become a DESERT by 2050 if global warming isn't stopped, claims latest study

The globe is set to start drying out dramatically if global warming isn't stopped.

That's the message from a new environmental study published by the journal Nature Climate Change .

Over 25% of Earth will start experiencing the effects of "aridificaiton" by the year 2050 if humans don't meet the changes proposed by the Paris climate agreement .

The study claims that if the Earth's average temperature goes up by two degrees Celsius over the next 32 years, the planet will start to become a desert.

“Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 percent of the world’s land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2ºC," said Manoj Joshi, the lead researcher of the study.

"But two-thirds of the affected regions could avoid significant aridification if warming is limited to 1.5ºC (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit)."

The study goes on to point out that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will keep global warming under the 2 degree threshold and reduce the likelihood of aridification.

An annual U.N. audit of progress towards that goal showed emissions are likely to be 53.0-55.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030, far above the 42 billion tonne threshold for averting the 2 degree rise.

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said climate-fuelled hurricanes, floods and drought would rapidly worsen unless ministers committed to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

"Paris was just the starting point," she said.

The Nature Climate Change study predicts the regions that will be most affected by an average temperature increase are those located in Central America, Southeast Asia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa and Southern Australia.

SOURCE




Despite What You've Heard, Global Warming Isn't Making Weather More Extreme

We keep reading about how the extreme weather of 2017 is the "new normal" thanks to global warming — even if the weather in question is frigid air. But the data don't show any trend in extreme weather events in the U.S. for decades. Science, anyone?

The latest to make this "new normal" claim is Munich RE, which issued its annual report on the damage costs from hurricanes, floods, wildfires and the like on Thursday.

According to the report, insurers paid out a record $135 billion because of these disasters, and total losses amounted to $330 billion, the second worst since 2011. It was also, the report says, the costliest hurricane season on record. And if you look at the chart in the report, it does appear that the cost of natural disasters has been on the uptrend since 1980.

Naturally, climate change advocates point to this as further proof that the increase in CO2 levels is already causing calamities around the world. "As human-induced climate change continues to progress, extreme weather is becoming more frequent and dangerous," is how the Environmental Defense Fund put it.

Munich RE's own Corporate Climate Center head claims that "2017 was not an outlier" and that "we must have on our radar the trend of new magnitudes."

But what evidence is there that extreme weather "is becoming more frequent and dangerous." In the U.S., there isn't any.

If you don't believe that, then look at the series of charts below, which are taken from government sites, that depict trends in hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and wildfires — all of which should be, according to environmentalists, on the uptrend.

What do you see in these charts. There is no trend in any of them.

Look at the data on drought conditions, from the EPA. There is no meaningful increase from 1900 to 2016. In fact, the past decade has been relatively mild on the drought front, with several years below average.

The same is true when it comes to tornadoes. The number of tornadoes in 2014 was below the number in 1954, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association data show. Indeed, the trend line seems to indicate that tornado activity has been lower since the mid-1980s than it was in three decades before that.

What about hurricanes? Yes, this year was a bad one in terms of the number and damage caused by hurricanes. But these storms came after years of lower than normal hurricane activity, both in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. NOAA data show the annual Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE)  in each region going back to 1970.

As NOAA explains "The ACE index is used to calculate the intensity of the hurricane season and is a function of the wind speed and duration of each tropical cyclone." Can anyone see a discernible upward trend in this index in the past 46 years? As with tornadoes, the index seems to have declined since the 1980s.

Wildfires? Sorry, but as with the other natural disasters, there's nothing here to validate the environmentalists scare stories, either. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were 67,743 wildfires in 2016. That's down from more than 85,000 in 1986. By December 22 of last year, there had been about 66,000 fires, NIFC data show.

The snowfall trend hasn't changed in decades, either, according to EPA data, although you'd think there'd be less snow as the planet warms. Of course, whenever there's a blizzard or a blast of arctic air — as with the "bomb cyclone" in the northeast — environmentalists start mewling about how that, too, is a sign of global warming. So if there's no trend one way or another, what does that mean?

Even global temperatures aren't rising as fast as the global warming computer models say they should be, as we pointed out in this space recently.

Yet despite these data, story after story continues to peddle the claim that the weather is getting more extreme, using whatever recent string of bad weather as the hook.

OK, but what about the Munich RE numbers showing the continued increase in costs? That can easily be explained by the fact that the past several decades have seen increases in development and population in areas that are prone to severe weather.

If a hurricane battered Florida 100 years ago, the monetary damages would be far, far less than today — even if you adjust for inflation — for the simple reason that Florida's population and its economy have exploded over the intervening years.

It's also not inconceivable that Munich RE could have a vested interest in playing up the potential for climate-caused natural disasters, as a way to justify rate increases. That would present a conflict of interest that journalists — normally on guard for things — are noticeably disinterested in exploring.

In any case, the question remains: If climate change is supposed to unleash waves of horrifying natural disasters as climate experts claim, why aren't we seeing any evidence of it here?

SOURCE




Despite global warming, some reefs are flourishing, and you can see it in 3D

Maybe it’s not the end of the world for corals after all.

That’s one of the surprising findings of a new project called the 100 Island Challenge, led by two scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Jennifer Smith, Stuart Sandin and their team from Scripps are studying the changes taking place on 100 coral reef systems around the world. What they have found offers a surprising, and hopeful, glimpse of the current state of coral reefs.

“We’ve seen evidence of health pretty much everywhere,” says Sandin. “This isn’t saying that every reef is thriving, and every reef has stayed immune to climate change. But what we’re seeing is that after a reef dies, organisms grow.” Call it the Jurassic Park effect: life finds a way.

While they acknowledge that some reef systems like the Great Barrier Reef in Australia have suffered tremendously from recent warming events, other reefs seem to be thriving.

“We were inspired by some observations that we had about seeing coral reefs in far flung places that showed signs of resilience, that showed bounty, that showed wonder,” says Sandin. “And these observations that we had were somewhat in contrast to some of the news reports of doom and gloom, of loss.”

If you don’t believe it, take a look at the video above, which the team has assembled as part of the 100 Island Challenge. In vivid 3D, corals bulge with life, exhibiting vibrant hues that stand in stark contradiction to the pale skeletons left behind after coral bleaching events that have ravaged other reefs.

The videos themselves are an astonishing and important part of the project. Although the corals look computer generated, the videos represent actual reef systems shot with off the shelf DSLR cameras. They are assembled from as many as 4000 photographs, shot by divers who swim lawnmower patterns over the reef, snapping a picture every second. The images are then run through a software process called photogrammetry, which stitches the images together into a 3-dimensional whole, allowing the viewer to glide across the reef with resolution down to one centimeter.

The team has shot over 70 reefs so far, in places like Hawaii, the Marianas, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Tonga, and French Polynesia. This year, they will visit the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Kiribati and several islands across the Caribbean.

They plan to return to each one after 2-3 years to repeat the process. The idea is to gain a fine-grained understanding of the changes that are taking place over time on the reefs, and to do so without harming the coral. It is the most detailed study of its kind on the planet, and it’s providing data the likes of which has never been collected before.

“Now we’re able to do a single dive on a reef, capture thousands of images, bring them back home, recreate that reef in the lab and then spend hundreds of hours extracting data out of that one dive, whereas normally that would have taken hundreds of hours underwater to collect the same data,” says Smith.

Although they have not yet determined how the reefs are changing over time, perhaps the most surprising results they have seen reveal how well many reef systems are doing, even in places facing human impact. Jamaica, for example, has long been held out as a case study for coral loss. But the team visited last year and came away surprised.

“You can see these little colonies of pretty much every species of Caribbean coral alive, growing slowly,” says Sandin.

The team is already taking the study into other interactive realms, with plans to create virtual reality tours of the reefs, adding sound and expanding into 4D by adding the dimension of time into the experience. They believe that the images will become a valuable baseline for understanding the changes, both good and bad, that are taking place on the planet.

“These models are essentially a living library of reefs that will essentially be an opportunity to take a time machine into the past 20 years from now,” says Sandin.

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Australia: New funding for the Great Barrier Reef

This is in response to Greenie claims that the GBR is "dying".  The reef has been there for millennia but Greenies talked up some recent changes as if they were catastrophic and final.  As is now clear even to a Greenie, the reef "fixes" itself.  It has rebounded from the small but highly exaggerated degree of damage that it suffered.

Dead coral revives when the stressor -- in this case a temporary sea level fall -- goes away.  To Greenies, of course, coral deaths are caused by Global Warming. 

The new money seems to be reasonably allocated even if the need for it was built on false pretences

THE number of crown-of-thorns starfish control vessels will be more than doubled under a new $60 million Great Barrier Reef funding suite.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will unveil the package in Townsville today as he continues the North Queensland tour that began in Cairns yesterday.

The Federal Government will spend $10.4 million for what Mr Turnbull labelled an “all-out assault on coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish” to increase the number of culling ships from three to eight.

Another $36.6 million will go towards measures to reduce run-off pollution entering the reef, giving farmers incentives to cut down soil erosion, improve nutrient management, and restoring coastal and riparian vegetation in reef catchments.

“This $60 million funding boost over 18 months will set in motion a major research and development program for coral reef restoration,” Mr Turnbull said.

“For the first time The Commonwealth will bring together key agencies to explore ways the reef can best adapt to the changing environment to protect it for decades to come.

“By supporting the development of innovative new reef technologies we are also helping to cement Australia’s international reputation as a strong innovation-driven economy.”

The Australian Institute of Marine Science and CSIRO will share in $6 million to scope and design the program to develop heat-tolerant coralswith a focus on leveraging private investment.

Mr Turnbull said $4.9 million would be spent to boost the number of field officers protecting the reef and the 64,000 jobs that rely on it.

“It is a vibrant, resilient ecosystem and one of the best-managed coral reef ecosystems in the world,” he said.

“While it is facing increasing threats we intend to remain leaders in reef management.

“The specific science focus of the R & D funding is part of the government’s broader focus on science, innovation and jobs and the central role they will play now and into the future.

“Innovation and science are key to future employment opportunities for Australians.”

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.  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

*****************************************

Germany Becomes the New Poster Child for Climate Change Hypocrisy

Climate hypocrisy is nothing new.

Celebrities cruise around the world in their private jets, eating filet mignon while telling you to pack a salad and bike to work to reduce your carbon footprint.

So, color me not at all surprised that Germany, a vocal critic of the U.S.’ decision to exit the Paris climate accord, is preparing to abandon its 2020 climate targets.

Strong economic growth is a critical reason why Germany is very likely to miss its target.

Germany has an aggressive plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Last November, a leaked document from the country’s Environmental Ministry projected the country would miss the mark by 8 percent without additional action.

In other words, even with generous subsidies for renewable power, the Germans would have to implement some form of economy-restricting policy to curtail emissions. So much for the “go green and grow the economy” mantra.

The Environmental Ministry said the failure would be “a disaster for Germany’s international reputation as a climate leader.” One would think a stronger economy would be cause for celebration, not demonization.

Germany’s abandoned 2020 targets are the latest domino to fall in what is failed international climate policy. Many proponents of action argue that even though the Paris climate accord is nonbinding, with no repercussions when a country fails to comply with its nationally determined contributions, the agreement was an important first step.

The parties that have entered into the Paris accord sure have a funny way of showing they’re committed to it.

Despite bashing the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord, all of the industrialized countries are not on schedule to meet their respective targets. Germany is not alone in the European Union.

An article published last summer on Nature.com argues that the EU “faces a big gap between words and actions.”

Even if the United States and the rest of the developed world meet their intended targets, it wouldn’t make any meaningful impact on global temperatures. Carbon dioxide reductions from the developing world, many of whose people are still living without dependable power, are necessary to move the climate needle.

However, developing nations set targets so lax that they likely won’t change any behaviors. Paris proponents can brag all they want about China taking the lead in solar power, but turn a blind eye to the massive amounts of new coal power generation moving forward in China, India, and the rest of the developing—and, in some cases, developed—world.

The Financial Times recently reported, “Between January 2014 and September 2017, international banks channeled $630 [billion] to the top 120 companies planning to build new coal plants around the world, according to research by campaign groups, including the Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and Friends of the Earth.”

And yet, those who want stringent climate mitigation say the Paris targets are only approximately one-third of what is needed to allegedly keep global warming in check.

Paying attention to what you perceive as positive action on climate (e.g., Paris, subsidizing renewables) while ignoring the realities of new coal build, retiring nuclear power plants, and global economic growth around the world is a curious strategy.

“Do as I say, but don’t pay attention to what I actually do” is the trademark of climate change policy. The Trump administration took a different approach and told it like it is: Paris is a costly, meaningless non-solution.

The reason countries such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea have entered into the accord is not an indication of global commitment to act on climate. It is an indication of how toothless and meaningless the agreement is.

The rest of the world can act high and mighty on climate, but when the rubber meets the road for action, it’s a different story.

SOURCE





The fake 'Trump is racist' issue

Trump’s words are far less despicable than what Green-Democrat policies do to people

Paul Driessen

By now, nearly the entire world has heard reports that President Trump referred to the origins of some immigrants as “sh**hole countries.”

Democrats and their media allies spent an entire week castigating the president, calling him racist for using the salty language of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Hillary Clinton. Their faux outrage served to distract people from the ways Mr. Trump’s energy, deregulation and tax reform policies have rocketed the stock market to record highs a record number of times, created over two million jobs, slashed black and Hispanic unemployment, and increased US wealth by some $8 trillion since his inauguration.

Pounding on this bad-word Fake News story also muddied discussions about immigration, which Dems hope will bring big electoral gains in November. As former Obama aide Jennifer Palmieri recently put it, illegal immigrants are “a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

Mr. Obama himself waded in, saying Trump supporters and other Fox News viewers live “on a different planet” than people who watch “mainstream media.” In this era of hyper-partisan news coverage and political views, he’s absolutely right. You might call that other planet the Real World, inhabited by hard-working blue collar folks … and struggling families overseas. Which brings us to the real issue.

The naughty-word firestorm also distracts people from the Democrats’ own racial history and animus. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln ended slavery and championed civil rights in the 1960s, while the Democrats were the party of slavery, the KKK, segregation, and policies that even today condemn too many minority children to failed schools, fatherless homes and crime-ridden cities. Especially under President Obama, their unending war on fossil fuels hampered economic development and job creation, and brought poor, minority, middle class and blue collar family living standards down a couple notches.

Far worse is what the modern Democratic Party and its allies in the media, radical environmentalist movement and global government agencies are doing to the world’s most impoverished, malnourished, diseased, energy-deprived, politically powerless families. They do it in the name of environmental protection, sustainable development or preventing “dangerous manmade climate change.” But the policies are callous, unjust, dehumanizing, eco-imperialistic and often lethal. Some would even call them racist.

In 2009, President Obama told Africans they should refrain from using “dirty” fossil fuels and focus instead on their “bountiful” wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel energy. In 2013, he told another African audience that global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”

“If everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house,” he continued, “the planet will boil over.” He then announced his “Power Africa” initiative for a “sustainable Africa” – which emphasized wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal power … but didn’t even mention fossil fuels.

His Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support construction of a gas-fired power plant in Ghana that would provide clean and affordable electricity to that power-deprived nation – using natural gas that companies were flaring (burning and wasting) in Ghanaian oil fields. His administration ignored South Africa’s request for a World Bank loan to continue building its state-of-the-art, coal-fired Medupi power plant. Europe’s former colonialist powers had the same attitudes toward their former colonies.

Thankfully, both projects eventually got the necessary funding and were completed.

Continued energy poverty condemns the world’s poor “to real poverty and the diseases, malnutrition and desperation that go with that absence of modern energy,” said Ugandan Steven Lyazi, who died recently in a tragic accident on a horrid African road that is also a product of pervasive poverty. These problems are due to dysfunctional government and incompetent, corrupt leaders, but also to “callous, imperialistic people in rich countries” who use exaggerated or imaginary environmental concerns and fake disasters “to limit how much poor countries may use fossil fuels (or nuclear power) to develop their economies.”

“The principal and unchanged interest” of poor countries continues to be “development and a better quality of life for [their] people,” says Pakistani academic Adil Najam: health, nutrition, jobs, education and life spans. Their principal fear is that the industrialized world is “using environmental issues as an excuse to pull up the development ladder behind it.”

“The greatest threat to the alleviation of the structural poverty of the Third World is the continuing campaign by Western governments, egged on by some climate scientists and green activists, to curb greenhouse emissions, primarily the CO2 from burning fossil fuels,” writes economist Deepak Lal. (He also wrote the foreword to the India edition of my book, Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.)

The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health now claims the Third World is suffering millions of deaths annually from industrial pollution. This is false, says Professor Mikko Paunio. Most of the deaths the commission attributes to industrial air pollution are actually caused by burning wood and dung. Most deaths from diarrhea are no longer caused by polluted water, as it claims, but from poor hygiene because the world’s poor still do not have enough water for proper bathing, cleaning and hygiene.

For the developing world, says Paunio, “adequate water supply has completely fallen off the agenda. Instead, environmental health for poorer countries has come to mean only provision of some clean drinking water and latrines. But the copious supplies of clean water that allow hygienic conditions – and therefore public health – are no longer seen as a priority for the world’s poorest.”

That’s largely because abundant clean water requires abundant, reliable, affordable electricity – which requires large centralized coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydroelectric generators … which Greens oppose. As to renewable energy, ultra-green Germany’s millions of solar panels received just ten hours of (weak) sunshine during the entire 31 days of December 2017! Try running a country or water system on that.

The same radical groups that battle energy also oppose DDT and insecticides to control malaria and other insect-borne diseases. They condemn and obstruct GMO food – even crops created to replace staples that are being decimated by disease, and even Golden Rice, the genetically engineered miracle grain that could end childhood Vitamin A Deficiency and the blindness and slow death that accompany it.

The undeniable result of all these campaigns is that the world’s most destitute people are kept where they are, or allowed to improve their lives only a little, at the margins, to the extent possible with inadequate renewable energy, clean water, bed nets and subsistence farming. That these impacts fall most heavily on the world’s non-white families underscores the racial injustice of so many environmentalist policies.

Like their ancient forebears, today’s superstitious Gaia worshipers sacrifice people to prevent droughts, global warming and climate change. They protect impoverished families from computer-generated climate disasters decades from now – by shortening their lives today. The lesson is simple.

Poor countries should not do what rich countries are doing now that they are rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich – using the best modern technologies available.

China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries are doing exactly that. They are tired of being told not to develop, because it “might hurt the climate” or “wouldn’t be sustainable.” They’re building hydroelectric dams and coal- and gas-fired power plants at a rapid pace – often with the aid of Chinese loans, expertise and technology, because western nations have abdicated their responsibilities.

So yes, there is another planet besides the one where Mr. Obama and his likeminded friends reside. It’s a world where people are tired of kowtowing to ruling elites who live in luxury while telling “commoners” they must roll back their living standards, or never aspire to conditions much better than they have now.

But in a few more years or decades, today’s poor countries will reach economic parity with rich nations – and even surge ahead of those that sacrifice their industries and “commoners” on the Earth goddess altar.

Via email




Europe’s Green Energy Burning Is Killing 40,000 People Per Year, Study Claims

Domestic wood burning has become more widespread in Europe in recent years. Exposure to smoke from domestic biomass use caused 40,000 deaths across the EU28 in 2014, new study claims.

The European Union’s dependence on burning solid biomass – most of it wood – to meet its renewable energy targets makes no sense environmentally. It harms the climate, and damages forests and biodiversity.

Because of this, opposition to the policy has swelled over the past year among the public and scientists.

Next week the European Parliament will vote on a proposed revision to the Renewable Energy Directive, which will determine the EU’s future use of biomass. If approved, it will inevitably mean the continued burning of vast quantities of biomass, mainly in the form of wood.

Quite apart from its disastrous environmental impact, there’s another reason any legislation which increases biomass burning for heating and power should be strenuously resisted.

And it’s one that – until now – has been largely overlooked.

New research for Fern by Dr Mike Holland, a leading independent air pollution expert, reveals the perilous cost to EU citizens’ health from burning solid biomass.

It indicates that tens of thousands of EU citizens are dying prematurely every year as a result of exposure to air pollution from burning solid biomass.

Other health impacts include cancers, cardiac and respiratory complaints, asthma attacks and working days lost to ill health.

Dr Holland’s main focus was assessing 27 biomass burning power plants in the EU where emissions data was available.

Ten of these plants were former coal power stations that have been converted to run on biomass or to be co-fired with a mixture of biomass and coal. The other 17 plants were purpose built biomass plants.

The former coal plants accounted for the bulk of the negative health impacts, due to factors including their much greater size and generally higher levels of harmful sulphur emissions, which were partly linked to continued coal burning in co-fired sites.

Dr Holland’s analysis indicates that more than 1,300 people are dying prematurely each year as a result of exposure to air pollution from the 27 facilities considered.

Measured in financial terms, health costs linked to biomass burning for power generation run into billions of euros each year, with health costs associated with emissions from former coal and co-fired plants amounting to 137,000 euros per year on average for every mega-watt of electrical capacity installed.

Investments in power generation are long term. So once a power plant is built it’s likely to stay in operation for several decades – with the health impacts spreading over that time.

Dr Holland’s report also reviews the evidence of the health impact of air pollution from the use of biomass in domestic heating in the EU.

This has become more widespread in recent years driven partly by renewable energy policies, but also because wood is often cheaper than alternative heating fuels such as coal and oil. Domestic biomass burning increased in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

A study by Sigsgaard and others estimates that exposure to smoke from domestic biomass use led to 40,000 deaths across the EU in 2014. The authors say this is a conservative figure.

Dr Holland extends Sigsgaard’s analysis to produce a fuller picture of the range of health impacts from domestic biomass burning. In a single year, he estimates that in addition to the 40,000 deaths across the EU, there were more than 130,000 cases of bronchitis, more than 20,000 respiratory and cardiac hospital admissions, a million asthma symptom days for children aged 5-19, 43 million restricted activity days and 10 million working days lost.  All because of exposure to fine particles from domestic biomass emissions.

SOURCE





A climate change skeptic travels to a den of true believers

Story by Gerald Holland. Not sure how much is for real

A few years ago a regional newspaper informed its readers about an upcoming Climate Change religion evangelistic meeting at a local hotel. I decided to go and see what the religion had to offer.

The expectant believers huddled in a small meeting room at the hotel. The not-so-moderate moderator and preachers droned on about their expectations of global demise caused by global warming. They played snippets from the first climate change billionaire, Al Gore's, screed, "An Inconvenient Truth." The sermons called for carbon taxes, windmill farms, solar panel energy, something called "sustainability" and so forth. They warned of tipping points, melting polar caps and rising sea levels.

The moderator cautioned  the rapt audience about people such as U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, who said the climate change and global warming movement is one of the biggest hoaxes in history.

From the back of the room near the door, in case I had to run for my life, I raised my hand and shouted, "I agree with Senator Inhofe." Instantly all eyes turned toward me, shooting glares like arrows from Robin Hood's bow.

I plowed ahead. "Most of the people peddling this fear have their snouts in the government-grant trough and fear being kicked away from the trough if they dissent from the required dogma."

One man in the congregation claimed that the non-believers are in the pockets of Exxon and other Big Oil. I said many independent academics and climate observers deny that catastrophic climate change is a cause for worry.

I continued. "So you think that if you get paid by the government your output is holy writ, but if you work in the private sector your science is automatically suspect."

Shortly thereafter the meeting adjourned for lunch. None of the true-believers wanted me at their tables, but I brought my food to a group of eight or nine of them and made myself comfortable anyway. To stimulate conversation, I quickly stated my opinion that it was all a bunch of fear-mongering like the Salem witch trials.

One of the table-mates, while nearly choking at my comment, retorted, "What's fear-mongering about it?"

I answered that it's like child abuse when the Global Warming believers show Al Gore's climate-change-gospel movie to scare little children so that they will go home and badger their parents that the earth is going to burn up and the parents need to change their ways to save the family from the hellish earth.

"What are your credentials?" he snapped.

"What are yours?" I snapped back.

"I'm a graduate statistician," he said, snarling.

I responded, mockingly: "So as a graduate statistician you think other people can't question this new dogma that the world is going to fry if we don't turn our lives over to gangs of climate change Nazis."

I said the climate has always changed — in pre-history and recorded history. Long before there were industry and fossil fuels there were warmings and coolings. There was an Ice Age, then the earth warmed, thank God. Later there was about 300 years of Little Ice Age when people starved and diseases and plagues killed millions. People migrated en mass to escape the cold's death and devastation. It's warmer now, we're prosperous and healthier, and we should again be thankful.

A quiet young man at the table spoke softly that he lived in Kansas and that lack of water is a big problem for farmers and ranchers in the Great Plains. In a spirit of good will I offered this helpful suggestion: Our government should invest in a massive global warming infrastructure program. Lay huge pipes to carry the polar ice melt to arid areas of North America. Glacier-melt water could be squirting from nozzles on corn, wheat, oats, barley, alfalfa and rye. Cattle and wildlife could graze and flourish on green grass every summer. Pumping units could push the surplus ice-cap water down to replenish the depleted water tables. Problems solved. The diners seemed to be stunned into silence by my unique proposal.

Pretty soon the subject was changed to a discussion of the dangers of armadillo infestation, which I consider to be a greater threat than human-caused climate change. I thanked them for their company, paid my bill and went home. Since then I have never seen a notice in the papers about climate change meetings.

SOURCE




Confidence returns for Australian coal miners

Note:  Thermal coal is the coal used in those evil coal-powered electricity generators.  Metallurgical coal is used in blast furnaces to make steel

Did the doubters declare the death of thermal coal too soon?

Certainly the major listed Australian thermal coal miners have all seen positive movement in their share price from late 2017 through into 2018, bucking the wider perception of a market in decline.

That was in turn driven by a resurgent thermal coal price after its massive bust three years ago.

From August 2015 to August 2016, prices languished below $US60 ($75) a tonne. By October of last year that had spiked to more than $US100 a tonne in October 2016 and remained in a healthy range rarely falling below $US80 a tonne.

There are combination of international and domestic market factors as well as  smarter play by Australian miners that have created market conditions where thermal coal has regained ground, shaking off the zombie company taglines that have dogged the industry over the last year.

The domestic market is also different. Australia has significantly fewer thermal coal miners today than it did five years after a spate of sell-offs, divestments, and exits from the market, and now those who survived are reaping the benefits of a strengthening market.

Whitehaven Coal has been one of the standout performers. In February of 2016 Whitehaven's share price hit 37 cents. Earlier this month it hit $4.77 only slowing down on the back of lowered production guidance figures last week.

New Hope Group has seen strong movement northwards, hitting a share price high point not seen since early 2015.

New Hope chief executive Shane Stephen told Fairfax Media pinpoints the sector's turning point as May 2016, when China announced it would institute new controls on domestic production sending buyers elsewhere.

"We're seeing strong demand for higher quality Australian thermal coal in Asia, and that is what's driving the price. Additionally, we're also not seeing a material increase in supply coming out of Australia

"Prices are around US$107 from Newcastle, to put that in perspective, any price with an eight or nine in front of it is considered good," Stephen says.

"With demand at these prices, New Hope is strongly profitable. I think most coal producers in Australia will produce strong financial numbers in their first half results."

Stephen says the company is continuing to focus on expansion and gaining approvals for its Acland Stage 3 project and the possibility of bringing new coal mines in the Surat Basin online as soon as 2023.

Yancoal is also starting to chart a recovery a massive slump in its share price after it announced its intention to acquire Rio Tinto’s Hunter Valley Operations and Mount Thorley Warkworth thermal coal mines.

Rio's rival, BHP, used its quarterly production announcement this week to spruik an expectation defying result for its energy coal division.

Production was up 8 per cent quarter on quarter, and up 4 per cent for the December 2017 half year from the previous corresponding period, with 14,029 kilotonnes produced during the December

Glencore has maintained its focus on thermal coal, telling Fairfax Media it is aiming to continue growth in the area, although it is still seeking to divest its Rolleston coal asset.

Coal mining regions are welcoming this revival of the industry and the flow-on social and economic effects it will have.

"This is most definitely a positive for the Singleton region," Singleton Mayor Sue Moore says. "The industry has been ticking upwards for the last six months, and we're seeing a turnaround, although it is slow. We expect to see this flow through to the local business sector over the next 12 months, beyond just the mining industry.

Newcastle, home of the largest coal port in the world, is looking beyond coal to future energy. ''The City of Newcastle recognises the role that coal plays in our local, state and national economy," Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes says.

"The Newcastle and the Hunter Region has a proud history of coal mining, with the mining industry supporting thousands of local jobs for well over 100 years. We understand that coal will continue to be exported from the Port of Newcastle into the future; but Newcastle also has a proudly progressive history where our people demonstrate time and time again their ability to adapt with changing economic opportunity," she says.

Fat Prophets analyst David Lennox says the changing face of the world’s energy needs will eventually have a major impact on thermal coal, but the growth of renewables will not negate coal in the near to medium term.

“Even though we’re seeing significant interest for renewables, we’ll still see thermal coal power stations for a long time,” Mr Lennox told Fairfax Media.

This has been reinforced by the Turnbull Government’s National Energy Guarantee, an energy policy announced late last year which sees coal-fired power generation still playing a major role in Australia’s energy landscape.

Mr Lennox says Australia’s higher quality thermal coal is being sought as its lower impurities means lower emissions when burnt in power plants.

“While we don’t consume significant quantities of coal in Australia, there is high demand from China and India.”

Whitehaven's chief executive Paul Flynn said Australia's higher quality coal and location so close to Asian customers has given it an edge. "Australia as a whole has done a good job rebasing its costs quickly as supply and demand has tightened," Mr Flynn said.

"What we've observed is very strong demand out of Asia fuelled by their demand for high-quality coal to fuel their supercritical power stations."

Another major Australian coal miner agreed, stating that significant growth is forecast from South East Asia.

“Thermal coal’s story hasn’t changed, we’ve always had an optimistic view of it in the medium to long-term. China’s domestic consumption even reached an all-time record last year,” the miner’s spokesman says.

A recent Credit Suisse analysis agrees noting that while much of the developed world is turning away from coal, there is still strong demand from South East Asian nations.

"These nations expect to add 32 to 56 gigawatts of coal-fired generation from 2015 to 2025. The high end of the range may represent increased coal demand of 150 million tonnes per annum," it says.

This is the focus for Whitehaven's Flynn. He says the coal outlook has been strong and exceeded many market expectations in the lead up to north Asia's winter period.

"A number of factors are helping to maintain these higher prices - China's draw on the seaborne thermal coal market is steady, demand for high-quality coals from South East Asia and the traditional Asian markets of Japan, Korea and Taiwan remains strong, reflecting buoyant economic conditions across Asia while a number of factors including Australian industrial relations issues and poor weather in Indonesia have limited supply response," Mr Flynn says.

"The outlook for thermal coal in the short to medium term is favourable."

MineLife's Gavin Wendt believes the combination of growth in China’s manufacturing sector and “an almost surprising level of discipline and fiscal management” is aiding a thermal coal revival.

“Thermal coal is trending at its highest level since 2016,” Mr Wendt told Fairfax Media. “This is mainly driven by manufacturing activity in China having a direct impact on coal demand here.”

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.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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