A climate quiz

Warmists usually just pour out abuse at skeptics but sometimes they try to be more factual.  One such effort is a "climate quiz" that came out last year. It pretends to be a factual approach to explaining why there is and will be global warming.  And it is. It does deal in facts -- or the Warmist version of facts, to be precise.

I just did the first 3 or 4 questions and got them all wrong but they were very technical questions so I was not sure how well founded their answers were.  They asked, for instance, "When Glacier National Park in Montana was founded in 1910 it had 150 glaciers. How many are left?"  The answer was allegedly 25. I had no idea how many nor would most people and the answer is probably disputable anyway.

Then I came to a question: "What was likely the first mammal to lose its habitat and go extinct due to the crisis?"

Now the answer to that was really obscure. I did however happen to know the answer that they were looking for: The Bramble Cay Melomy.  And I knew a bit about that story.

Bramble Cay is a 9 acre sand cay which is the Northernmost part of Australia. There is a lighthouse (now automatic) there and some grass.  A type of rat known as a Melomys was known there which in times past was used as target practice by bored visitors. In 2016 scientific visitors could not find any of them anymore.

So how does that relate to global warming?  It doesn't. We have no idea why the Melomys has died out if it has died out. It is just speculation that global warming was to blame.  Most likey it was shot out by visitors.  It is only 34 miles South of New Guinea and New Guineans would undoubtedly eat them. Melanesians are poor but are excellent sailors.

They normally have very little animal protein in their diet. There are no grazing animals in New Guinea.  They were probably all hunted to extinction thousands of years ago. So now all they have is their pigs and an occasional bird. And they can't feed enough pigs to slaughter one very often. So a Melomys would be a treat.

And it is only the Melomys on that cay which is missing.  There are lots of them elswhere in that part of the world.  So it is not even a small tragedy.

I had some more comments on the melomys story in 2016 (Scroll down)

So that's the quality of the "quiz".  In typical Warmist style, its facts are between dubious and wrong and they don't prove anything anyway -- JR





EPA Administrator: Obama’s Emissions Standards Forced Automakers to Make Cars People Won’t Buy

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Obama administration’s focus was on forcing car manufacturers to make cars that people won’t buy when the focus should have been on making cars that people actually buy more efficient.

Pruitt said the emissions standards for cars and light trucks set by the previous administration were “inappropriate and should be revised.” His agency announced Monday that it planned to revise the standards, but did not specify what specific standards would be set going forward.

“I think the focus in the past has been on making manufacturers in Detroit, making manufacturers in various parts of the country make cars that people aren’t going to buy, and our focus should be on making cars that people purchase actually more efficient,” Pruitt told reporters.

“To have arbitrary percentages of our fleet made up of vehicles that aren’t going to be purchase, that defeats the very purpose of what the CAFE standards are supposed to address,” Pruitt said.

“We should be focused on making those cars more efficient, because if not, then individuals will stay in older vehicles, as Peter indicated, and emissions will go up, so we will get this right going forward this year, but it is very right for us to be here to recognize that what was done in 2011 and 12 as we evaluate it now is not appropriate going forward, and we’re going to get it right as we address it this year,” he said.

Pruitt said revising emissions standards is “another step” in President Donald Trump’s “deregulatory agenda.”

“This president has shown tremendous courage to say to the American people that America is going to be put first, and I think this mid-term evaluation, the auto sector, the importance of auto manufacturing in this country, the president is again saying, America is going to be put first, and we have nothing to be apologetic about with respect to the progress we’ve made in reducing emissions as a country,” he said.

“We’ve led the world with respect to reduction of GHG, mobile sources and otherwise through technology and innovation, and the auto sector from my perspective has been the leader in achieving that through better design and through better technology, and that’s exciting, and we should celebrate that as a country,” Pruitt added.

SOURCE 





EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Says Media Reports About Him Don’t Tell True Story

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt defended his living arrangement in Washington during the presidential transition, noting that career ethics officials at the EPA found no problems with his choice of where to sleep.

“This was an Airbnb-type situation where I rented literally one room that was used in a temporary status until I found more permanent residence.” @EPAScottPruitt says.

Media reports, Pruitt told The Daily Signal during an interview Tuesday, are incomplete and don’t reflect “the truth.”

“I think the information has been, as things go, I think very intermittent and very sporadic and not terribly complete with respect to what the truth is,” Pruitt said in the interview.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>

As Pruitt on Monday announced a rollback of Obama administration emission rules for vehicles in model years 2022 to 2025, multiple media reports focused on the EPA chief’s renting of a bedroom on Capitol Hill.

Pruitt paid $50 a night to the wife of J. Steven Hart, chairman and CEO of the Washington law firm of Williams & Jensen, whose clients include energy companies. He paid Vicki Hart only for the nights he slept in the room at the condo, according to news reports and critics.

“We had a memo and a statement from career ethics officials here that have actually reviewed the lease, that actually reviewed comps—comparables of similar units,” Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, told The Daily Signal.

“And I think what’s missed in this: I didn’t rent a unit,” Pruitt said. “I didn’t rent an apartment. This was an Airbnb-type situation where I rented literally one room that was used in a temporary status, until I found more permanent residence.”

This was during his early days in Washington after the president nominated him as EPA administrator, he said.

“My wife wasn’t here yet. My children were back in Oklahoma,” Pruitt said. “The needs were different. As soon as my wife came up, we moved to a different location where I couldn’t just be living out of a suitcase.”

In a March 30 memo, Kevin S. Minoli, the designated agency ethics official, to EPA General Counsel Matthew Z. Leopold, stated:

The regulations issued by the Office of Government Ethics are clear that if a federal employee pays market value for something, it is by definition not a gift under those regulations. … Under the terms of the lease, if the space was utilized for one 30-day month, then the rental cost would be $1,500, which is a reasonable market value.

The lease authorized use by the Administrator and his immediate family, specifically including his spouse and children, and consistent with that provision of the lease his immediate family did stay there when they were in Washington, D.C. The lease did not require payment when the property was not utilized.

Neither of these two provisions render the rental cost under the lease as something other than market value. Therefore, entering into the lease was consistent with federal ethics regulations regarding gifts, and use of property in accordance with the lease agreement did not constitute a gift as defined in those regulations.

But in a letter Tuesday, two House Democrats, Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Don Beyer of Virginia, urged EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr. to investigate the matter.

The lawmakers contend Pruitt didn’t pay a fair market rate because he paid only for the days he stayed in the space:

Administrator Pruitt didn’t pay $1,500 a month. He paid far less because the unusual lease allowed him to have the condo on demand but he only had to pay for the days he stayed at the condo. Over a period of six months, Administrator Pruitt paid only a total of $6,100 for the furnished condo. This is far below market value and, as such, would constitute an impermissible gift under federal regulations.

Asked about Pruitt on Tuesday, President Donald Trump told reporters: “I hope he’s going to be great.”

Trump reportedly called Pruitt on Monday and told him: “Keep your head up. Keep fighting. We got your back.”

Pruitt also pushed back against reports that he rented space from an energy lobbyist.

“The other thing I would say is that the owner of the residence—people, I’ve heard, say that he’s an energy lobbyist,” Pruitt told The Daily Signal.

Speaking of Hart, Pruitt said: “He’s the chairman of a law firm. I’ve know this gentleman for years. He’s an Oklahoman, and his firm represents these [energy industry] clients, not him. There has been no connection whatsoever in that regard.”

Trump reportedly spoke Monday to Pruitt, according to media reports Tuesday. White House chief of staff John Kelly also spoke with the EPA administrator.

Pruitt declined to comment on media speculation regarding his future at the EPA.

SOURCE 






President Trump should stand by EPA Administrator Pruitt

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging President Donald Trump to stand by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt:

“Scott Pruitt’s tenure as Administrator of the EPA is one of the best examples of a successful cabinet level pick by President Donald Trump.  It is normal that those who are attempting to defend the Obama EPA’s radical stranglehold on our economy would subject Pruitt to a constant barrage of complaints to hamper the deregulatory agenda that is ending the war on coal. Reports from the agency that Pruitt has been subjected to a dramatic increase in threats to his and his family’s safety demonstrates the kind of courage and commitment it takes to unwind the radical environmentalist agenda.

President Trump has been right in the past when he regularly and openly praised Pruitt for his dedication, hard work and commitment to restoring balance to America’s environmental regulations. Now there are those who are attempting to besmirch Pruitt’s reputation through attacks about his Washington, D.C. living arrangements. Let’s be clear. Pruitt received approval from career civil servants in charge of the EPA ethics office that are now being questioned by partisans with a radical agenda.

“President Trump knows better than anyone what it is like to be falsely attacked by people with an agenda and how the anti-Trump news media will accuse first and look for the facts later. Trump should embrace Pruitt as a man of integrity and empower him to continue doing his outstanding work at the EPA, carrying out the Trump agenda to end the war on energy development and make America competitive again.”

SOURCE 

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Australia's Greens leader admits he agrees with conservatives  about one thing – Australia MUST lower its immigration intake

Greens are anti-people so that figures

Greens leader Richard Natale has admitted he agrees with former prime minister Tony Abbott's call to cut immigration.

The left-wing party leader told journalists in Canberra big business was behind the push for high population growth.

'The notion that we need a big Australia based on economic drivers is not one we support,' he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

'Often this is an argument that is run by the business community.'

With Australia's population set to surpass the 25 million milestone this year, Tony Abbott has called for the nation's net annual immigration rate to be slashed from 190,000 to 110,000.

However Senator Di Natale, who hails from Melbourne, declined to explicitly confirm he agreed with the former Liberal PM even though reducing population growth is Greens policy.

'I don't buy into the debate that Tony Abbott is trying to run at the moment,' he said.

'He is not having a debate about population, he is having a debate about the leadership of the Liberal Party. It is not a sophisticated debate about immigration.'

Under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's watch, Australia's population is growing at 1.6 per cent a year, which is more than double the United States' 0.7 per cent and well above the world average of 1.1 per cent.

Millionaire businessman Dick Smith has called for Australia's net annual immigration rate to return to the 20th century average of 70,000 a year, a position shared by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

Like them, the Greens agree 'population policy should not be primarily driven by economic goals or to counter the effects of an ageing population'.

'The current level of population, population growth and the way we produce and consume are outstripping environmental capacity,' the party's policy platform said.

Despite agreeing with Tony Abbott, Senator Di Natale said the debate about reducing population growth should not be held as the former Liberal prime minister makes efforts to destabilise Malcolm Turnbull.

'We are very happy to have that debate but let’s not have it in an environment when what is ­actually happening is a proxy war between the Prime Minister and the former prime minister,' he said.

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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Environmentalist Publishes Op-Ed on Climate Change… Covers it With Blatant Lies

An anti-fossil fuel movement proponent dubiously claimed Tuesday natural gas development’s methane emissions are hitting catastrophic levels.

Activist are failing to impress upon people the dangers associated with the fracking industry, according to Vermont’s Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben. He also suggested most research shows methane emissions from natural gas are pitching above a safe level, yet many studies show the antithesis.

“When I think about my greatest failing as a communicator — and one of the greatest failings of the climate movement — it’s not that global warming still continues,” McKibben wrote Wednesday for Yale Environment 360.

The movement’s biggest moral failing, he said, was not selling people on the danger unchecked methane emissions pose to the climate.

Democrats, Republicans and the public have generally accepted the idea natural gas is a fine alternative to other forms of fossil fuel production, but the general population is unaware methane emissions from such energy put the climate in a precarious spot, McKibben added.

“It turns out that there are lots of places for leaks to happen — when you frack a field, when you connect a pipe, when you send gas thousands of miles through pumping stations — and so most studies show that the leakage rate is at least three percent and probably higher,” he noted without citing any specific study buttressing his claim.

McKibben relied on data from Cornell University Ecology Professor Bob Howard’s studies to conclude methane emission leakage rates were nearly three percent, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Howard’s work has been criticized in the past for using too short a time frame. He uses a 20-year window to study the global warming potential of methane emissions in the atmosphere as opposed to the more common 100-year horizon.

Environmental groups have also scrutinized Howard’s work.

“While I can see an argument for using a time horizon shorter than 100 years, I personally believe that the 20-year GWP is too short a period to be appropriate for policy analysis,” former National Resources Defense Council director Dan Lashof said in 2011 of McKibben’s chronological methodology.

Environmental Protection Agency research and other studies, meanwhile, paint a much different story.

Actual emissions from gas power plants were “nearly 50 times lower than previously estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” a 2013 University of Texas study availed. Researchers at UT concluded methane emissions from the supply chain’s upstream portion are 0.38 percent of production.

EPA’s latest methane emissions data from 2017 show very low methane leakage rates of approximately 1.2 percent. The agency and UT’s data and research were concluded, using the more reliable 100-year time frame. McKibben has spent several years thrashing Democratic leaders for promoting the natural gas industry.

McKibben was singing a different tune in 2009 when he felt so strongly about power plants switching to natural gas he was willing to be jailed in support of the cause. He was one of several celebrities who protested on Capitol Power Plant’s front steps in Washington, D.C.

“There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law … We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested,” McKibben told reporters prior to the March 3, 2009, protest.

“(I)t would be easy enough to fix. In fact, the facility can already burn some natural gas instead, and a modest retrofit would let it convert away from coal entirely. … It would even stimulate the local economy,” he added.

SOURCE




EPA’s Scott Pruitt Begins Repeal Of Obama Climate Regs For Cars, Trucks

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Monday the Obama administration’s fuel economy regulations were not appropriate and would be revised.

Pruitt said EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would begin crafting new greenhouse gas emission and mileage, or Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), standards for vehicles built in 2022 through 2025.

“The Obama EPA’s determination was wrong,” Pruitt said in a statement. “Obama’s EPA cut the midterm evaluation process short with politically charged expediency, made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality and set the standards too high,” Pruitt said.

EPA’s revising of CAFE regulations also put the agency on a collision course with California. The Golden State got permissions from the Obama administration to issue its own, higher emissions standards.

Conservative groups urged Pruitt to repeal California’s waiver, arguing the state can use its influence over automakers to supplant federal standards. EPA is still examining California’s waiver, but Pruitt seemed critical of continuing the policy as it stands.

“Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” Pruitt said. “EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford – while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars.”

“It’s in everyone’s best interest to have a national standard, and we look forward to working with all states, including California, as we work to finalize that standard,” said Pruitt.

EPA’s is also moving against President Barack Obama’s emissions pledge under the Paris accord, which he joined in 2016. Obama committed the U.S. to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025.

The Obama-era rules required cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Officials estimated the rules would cut 540 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions and save consumers money.

However, automakers missed fuel efficiency targets for model year 2016 cars and light trucks by about 9 grams per mile. Indeed, the Obama EPA’s own analysis found cars may not meet the 2025 target, only getting between 50 and 52.6 miles per gallon by then.

SOURCE 





UK: 'Major milestone' as first well completed at controversial fracking site

Work on creating the first well at a controversial Lancashire fracking site has been completed.

Energy firm Cuadrilla said drilling of the UK's first horizontal shale gas well had been successfully completed at its site on Preston New Road in Fylde.

The company will now begin drilling a second well and has planning permission for a total of four wells on the site.

A spokesman for the firm said it would apply for permission to frack the completed well in the "very near future" and planned to be in a position to frack the first two wells on site later this year.

CEO Francis Egan said:

Our completion of the UK's first ever horizontal shale gas well is a major milestone towards getting Lancashire gas flowing into Lancashire homes as we lead the way on UK exploration.

"From the data we have amassed so far we are optimistic that, after fracturing the shale rock, natural gas will flow into this horizontal well in commercially viable quantities demonstrating that the UK's huge shale gas resources can be safely produced and contribute to improving the UK's energy security."

The site was initially refused planning permission by Lancashire County Council in 2015 but was given the go-ahead by Cabinet minister Sajid Javid following an appeal and a planning inquiry.

Campaign groups lost a High Court action to overturn the decision, but protests have continued at the site.

The controversial process of fracking involves drilling vertically deep underground and then horizontally, before pumping in liquid at high pressure to fracture shale rock and release gas trapped in the shale.

A planning inquiry on a second Cuadrilla site, at Roseacre Wood in Lancashire, is due to be held next week

SOURCE 





If environmental radicals are in full panic mode over Scott Pruitt at EPA, that means he is doing a good job

The left has spent over a decade trying to expand the influence and oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but the American people voted against this influence when they elected President Trump to prioritize economic advancement. Trump followed through on this promise by appointing Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator. The left is now trying everything to destroy his position and defame his record, but Pruitt must power through, his job is far too important.

Last year, nearly every Republican and two Democrats voted to confirm Pruitt. North Dakota Senate Democrat Heidi Heitkamp explained, “Once Mr. Pruitt is confirmed to lead EPA, I’ll work to make sure EPA focuses on smart regulation and works with states and local communities to address issues like the unworkable Waters of the U.S. rule and the punitive final Clean Power Plan rules.”

And this is exactly what Pruitt has done. Under Pruitt’s leadership in the last year, the EPA has begun receiving public comments to replace the Clean Power Plan and blocked the implementation of the Waters of the U.S. rule. Both of these Obama-era initiatives dramatically expanded the EPA’s influence over local waterways and implemented emissions regulations to “combat climate change,” and as a consequence, close businesses ruled environmentally hazardous.

Pruitt has been integral in implementing the conservative agenda of President Trump, and it terrifies liberals. So the left has resorted to character attacks.

Democrats, such as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), have been quick to blast Pruitt for his expenditures on increased security this year, not realizing, they are the reason for the cost.

Pruitt and his entire family have received an unprecedented number of direct threats to their life.

The EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations, Patrick Sullivan, told CNN on Nov. 2017, “We have at least four times — four to five times the number of threats against Mr. Pruitt than we had against [Obama’s EPA Chief] Ms. McCarthy… They run the variety of direct death threats — ‘I’m going to put a bullet in your brain’ — to implied threats — ‘if you don’t classify this particular chemical in this particular way, I’m going to hurt you.’”

Additionally, the Washington Examiner reported on Feb. 2018; the EPA currently has 70 open probes into threats against Pruitt and his family. This has caused the EPA’s Criminal Investigations Division to provide Pruitt with a 24/7 security detail to ensure his and his family’s safety.

Now, the left has cooked up a new conspiracy against Pruitt.

It has recently been revealed that Administrator Pruitt and his family stayed in a Capitol Hill condominium partially owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist several times over the last year. The lease has sparked controversy because of its “unconventional” term, Pruitt paid for the space by the day at a rate of $50 a night. His payments amounted to $6,100 over the course of six months, according to documents shared with Bloomberg News.

Pruitt received approval in advance for the arrangement by the EPA Ethics office, but in spite of this okay, Democrats have been quick to call “corruption!”, claiming that the lobbyist wife’s ownership of the condo makes it a “gift” to Pruitt.

In a March 30 memo, Kevin Minoli, a career attorney, and the EPA’s designated ethics official explained, “Market value for rental apartments is commonly thought of in terms of rental cost per month. Under the terms of the lease, if the space was utilized for one 30-day month, then the rental cost would be $1500, which is a reasonable market value… “The lease authorized use by the administrator and his immediate family, specifically including his spouse and children, and consistent with that provision of the lease his immediate family did stay there when they were in Washington, D.C.”

Minoli continued, “Entering into the lease was consistent with federal ethics regulations regarding gifts, and use of the property in accordance with the lease agreement did not constitute a gift as defined in those regulations.”

Minoli is the second EPA ethics official to come to Pruitt’s defense. Justina Fugh, an ethics lawyer at the EPA for a dozen years, told BuzzFeed News this story was causing “so much drama” for what she believes to be an above board living arrangement.

Scott Pruitt has done his job, and he has done it well. All the left’s continued attacks prove is that it is willing to dismiss facts in favor of pushing an agenda. Pruitt must continue charting the EPA’s path toward a balance between environmental concerns and economic development and security, rather than be distracted by the baseless attacks from political opponents, and President Trump needs to stand behind this stalwart of his administration, who is big part of what is needed to make America great again.

SOURCE 




What the Pope Doesn’t Know about the Environment

Along with poverty reduction, Pope Francis made environmental protection a theme of his 2015 encyclical about “care for our common home.” Unfortunately, the pontiff voiced widespread misunderstandings about markets and the environment, mistaken claims he repeated last January during his widely reported visit to Peru. In truth, rather than being inherently antagonistic, the free market creates strong incentives for the prudent conservation of earth’s amenities.

“Private property and the profit motive are crucial to the long-term preservation of resources, from water and land to endangered species,” write Independent Institute Research Fellows Robert M. Whaples and Adam B. Summer in a recent op-ed. “Pope Francis and other critics of free-market capitalism need to understand that the deciding issue isn’t whether or not capitalists—or companies—have humanitarian motives. It’s whether or not the environment and humanity are better served when environmental resources are privately owned and property rights are vigorously enforced, or when government runs the show.”

Free-market pricing for water, for example, discourages the wasting of that scarce resource, whereas mandated below-market pricing encourages demand to outstrip supply. Similarly, a free market in rhinoceros farming and the sale of horns drastically reduced rhino poaching in South Africa, whereas a ban in neighboring Kenya decimated the rhino population, Whaples and Summer explain. Such examples can be found around the globe, enabling us to draw a robust conclusion. As one study by Guatemalan economist Daniel Fernandez puts it, “The greater the economic freedom, the better the environmental quality indexes.”

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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That pesky cooling in the Antarctic

CO2 levels have risen steadily to a record high but Antarctica has shown a clearly growing sea ice cover since 1980, totally contradicting global warming theory.  The authors below therefore have begun to look at what actually influences the Antarctic

Low-Frequency Climate Modes and Antarctic Sea Ice Variations, 1982–2013

Abstract

The NCEP–NCAR composite dataset (comprising sea level pressure, 500-hPa geopotential height, 500-hPa temperature, and meridional wind stress at 10 m above the surface) is used for compiling a set of climate indices describing the most important physical modes of variability in the Southern Hemisphere (SH): the southern annular mode (SAM), semiannual oscillation (SAO), Pacific–South American (PSA), and quasi-stationary zonal wavenumber 3 (ZW3) patterns. Compelling evidence indicates that the large increase in the SH sea ice, recorded over recent years, arises from the impact of climate modes and their long-term trends. The examination of variability ranging from seasonal to interdecadal scales, and of trends within the climate patterns and total Antarctic sea ice concentration (SIC) for the 32-yr period (1982–2013), is the key focus of this paper. The results herein indicate that a progressive cooling has affected the year-to-year climate of the sub-Antarctic since the 1990s. This feature is found in association with increased positive SAM and SAO phases detected in terms of upward annual and seasonal trends (in autumn and summer) and upward decadal trends. In addition, the SIC shows upward annual, spring, and summer trends, indicating the insulation of Antarctica from the warmer flows in the midlatitudes. This picture of variations is also found to be consistent with the upward trends detected for the PSA and ZW3 patterns on the annual scale and during the last two decades. Evidence of a more frequent occurrence of the PSA–ZW3 combination could explain, in part, the significant increase of the regional and total Antarctic sea ice coverages.

SOURCE 





Egyptian election: Army-backed President wins second term with 97% of vote



There's that 97% again -- the hallmark of a fraud: In climate politics as in any politics.  Warmists really are in good company

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won a second, four-year term in office, with more than 97 per cent of the vote in last week’s election, according to official results announced on Monday by the election commission, which put turnout at 41.05 per cent.

SOURCE 





The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have a boring name, but it has a very important job: It measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it seems to be a captive of the global warming religion. Its data are fraudulent.

What do we mean by fraudulent? How about this: NOAA has made repeated "adjustments" to its data, for the presumed scientific reason of making the data sets more accurate.

Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — lowering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past, and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in the recent present.

This creates a data illusion of ever-rising temperatures to match the increase in CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere since the mid-1800s, which global warming advocates say is a cause-and-effect relationship. The more CO2, the more warming.

But the actual measured temperature record shows something different: There have been hot years and hot decades since the turn of the last century, and colder years and colder decades. But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, at least not one that suggests runaway warming.

That is, until the NOAA's statisticians "adjust" the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data to reflect not reality, but their underlying theories of global warming. That's clear from a simple fact of statistics: Data generate random errors, which cancel out over time. So by averaging data, the errors mostly disappear.

That's not what NOAA does.

According to the NOAA, the errors aren't random. They're systematic. As we noted, all of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past, and warmer in the more recent past. But they're very fuzzy about why this should be.

Far from legitimately "adjusting" anything, it appears they are cooking the data to show a politically correct trend toward global warming. Not by coincidence, that has been part and parcel of the government's underlying policies for the better part of two decades.

What NOAA does aren't niggling little changes, either.

As Tony Heller at the Real Climate Science web site notes, "Pre-2000 temperatures are progressively cooled, and post-2000 temperatures are warmed. This year has been a particularly spectacular episode of data tampering by NOAA, as they introduce nearly 2.5 degrees of fake warming since 1895."

So the global warming scare is basically a hoax.

This winter, for instance, as measured by temperature in city after city  and by snow-storm severity, has been one of the coldest on record in the Northeast.

But after the NOAA's wizards finished with the data, it was merely about average.

Climate analyst Paul Homewood notes for instance that in New York state, measured temperatures this year were 2.7 degrees or more colder than in 1943. Not to NOAA. Its data show temperatures this year as 0.9 degrees cooler than the actual data in 1943.

Erasing Winter

By the way, a similar result occurred after the brutally cold 2013-2014 winter in New York. It was simply adjusted away. Do this year after year, and with the goal of radically altering the temperature record to fit the global warming narrative, and you have what amounts to climate fraud.

"Clearly NOAA's highly homogenized and adjusted version of the Central Lakes temperature record bears no resemblance at all the the actual station data," writes Homewood. "And if this one division is so badly in error, what confidence can there be that the rest of the U.S. is any better?"

That's the big question. And for those who think that government officials don't have political, cultural or other agendas, that's naivete of the highest sort. They do.

Since the official government mantra for all of the bureaucracies at least since the Clinton era is that CO2 production is an evil that inevitably leads to runaway global warming, those who toil in the bureaucracies' statistical sweat shops know that their careers and future funding depend on having the politically correct answers — not the scientifically correct ones.

"The key point here is that while NOAA frequently makes these adjustments to the raw data, it has never offered a convincing explanation as to why they are necessary," wrote James Delingpole recently in Breitbart's Big Government. "Nor yet, how exactly their adjusted data provides a more accurate version of the truth than the original data."

There are at least some signs of progress, however. In the case of the Environmental Protection Agency, future reports and studies will include the data and the underlying scientific assumptions for public scrutiny.

That's one way to bring greater honesty to government — and to keep climate charlatans from bankrupting our nation with spurious demands for carbon taxes and deindustrialization of our economy to prevent global warming. The only real result won't be a cooler planet, but rather mass poverty and lower standards of living for all.

SOURCE 





Climate Alarmists May Inherit the Wind

They likened a courtroom ‘tutorial’ to the Scopes Monkey Trial. But their side got schooled.

Five American oil companies find themselves in a San Francisco courtroom. California v. Chevron is a civil action brought by the city attorneys of San Francisco and Oakland, who accuse the defendants of creating a “public nuisance” by contributing to climate change and of conspiring to cover it up so they could continue to profit.No trial date has been set, but on March 21 the litigants gathered for a “climate change tutorial” ordered by Judge William Alsup—a prospect that thrilled climate-change alarmists. Excited spectators gathered outside the courtroom at 6 a.m., urged on by advocates such as the website Grist, which declared “Buckle up, polluters! You’re in for it now,” and likened the proceeding to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.

In the event, the hearing did not go well for the plainti s—and not for lack of legal talent. Steve W. Berman, who represented the cities, is a star trial lawyer who has made a career and a fortune suing corporations for large settlements, including the $200 billion-plus tobacco settlement in 1998.

“Until now, fossil fuel companies have been able to talk about climate science in political and media arenas where there is far less accountability to the truth,” Michael Burger of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University told Grist. The hearing

did mark a shi toward accountability—but perhaps not in the way activists would have liked.

Judge Alsup started quietly. He flattered the plainti s’ first witness, Oxford physicist Myles Allen, by calling him a “genius,” but he also reprimanded Mr. Allen for using a misleading illustration to represent carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a graph ostensibly about temperature rise that did not actually show rising temperatures.

Then the pointed questions began. Gary Griggs, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, struggled with the judge’s simple query: “What do you think caused the last Ice Age?”

The professor talked at length about a wobble in the earth’s orbit and went on to describe a period “before there were humans on the planet,” which “we call hothouse Earth.” That was when “all the ice melted. We had fossils of palm trees and alligators in the Arctic,” Mr. Griggs told the court. He added that at one time the sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than today.

Mr. Griggs then recounted “a period called ‘snow ballers,’ ” when scientists “think the entire Earth was frozen due to changes in things like methane released from the ocean.”

Bear in mind these accounts of two apocalyptic climate events that occurred naturally came from a witness for plainti s looking to prove American oil companies are responsible for small changes in present-day climate.

The defendants’ lawyer, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., emphasized the little-discussed but huge uncertainties in reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the failure of worst-case climate models to pan out in reality. Or as Judge Alsup put it: “Instead of doom and gloom, it’s just gloom.”

Mr. Boutrous also noted that the city of San Francisco—in court claiming that rising sea levels imperil its future—recently issued a 20-year bond, whose prospectus asserted the city was “unable to predict whether sea level rise or other impacts of climate change or

flooding from a major storm will occur.”

Judge Alsup was particularly scathing about the conspiracy claim. The plainti s alleged that the oil companies were in possession of “smoking gun” documents that would prove their liability; Mr. Boutrous said this was simply an internal summary of the publicly available 1995 IPCC report.

The judge said he read the lawsuit’s allegations to mean “that there was a conspiratorial document within the defendants about how they knew good and well that global warming was right around the corner. And I said: ‘OK, that’s going to be a big thing. I want to see it.’ Well, it turned out it wasn’t quite that. What it was, was a slide show that somebody had gone to the IPCC and was reporting on what the IPCC had reported, and that was it. Nothing more. So they were on notice of what in IPCC said from that document, but it’s hard to say that they were secretly aware. By that point they knew. Everybody knew everything in the IPCC,” he stated.

Judge Alsup then turned to Mr. Berman: “If you want to respond, I’ll let you respond. . . . Anything you want to say?”“No,” said the counsel to the plainti s. Whereupon Judge Alsup adjourned the proceedings.

Until now, environmentalists and friendly academics have found a receptive audience in journalists and politicians who don’t understand science and are happy to defer to experts. Perhaps this is why the plainti s seemed so ill-prepared for their first court outings with tough questions from an informed and inquisitive judge.

Activists have long claimed they want their day in court so that the truth can be revealed. Given last week’s poor performance, they may be the ones who inherit the wind.

SOURCE 





Australia: Pressure from conservative parliamentarians for more coal-fired electicity

Malcolm Turnbull faces a challenge to his signature energy ­policy from a group of Coalition backbenchers, including Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and Kevin ­Andrews, who have formed a lobby group to promote government support for the construction of new coal-fired power stations.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly and Nationals MP George Christensen yesterday claimed more than 20 government MPs had joined the newly created Monash Forum, named after World War I military hero John Monash, a key figure in opening Victoria’s ­Latrobe Valley to coal production.

The Australian was told last night that Barnaby Joyce had thrown his support behind the new informal political faction along with up to 11 other Nationals. The former deputy prime minister did not respond to ­requests for comment.

The lobby group could threaten the Prime Minister’s national energy guarantee (NEG) as he ­attempts to secure support from state and territory governments for a new national framework later this month.

While not ­opposed to the NEG, the Monash Forum aims to test Mr Turnbull’s assurances to the Coalition partyroom that the government framework is “technology-neutral” by aggressively pushing for more coal-fired power stations.

One member of the new group said: “Some of us see ­energy as being the only ticket to ride in the next election and the NEG is clearly not going to cut it for us.”

The backbench lobby group push comes as Mr Turnbull faces pressure over his leadership, with the Coalition on track to trail Labor for 30 consecutive Newspolls — the benchmark Mr Turnbull used to oust Mr Abbott as prime minister in September 2015.

The Australian understands the new ginger group is based on the Lyons Forum of the early 1990s which was made up of conservative Liberals who played a vital role in facilitating John Howard’s leadership ascension in 1995.

The Lyons Forum, dubbed the “God squad” by some commentators, included Liberal MPs Mr Andrews and Senator Abetz.

The Monash Forum is understood to have its own mission statement or policy manifesto, which was given to backbenchers when parliament sat in Canberra last week. Some MPs were ­encouraged to sign documents to confirm their support.

“It says the government is building a Snowy 2.0 so why can’t it build a Hazelwood 2.0,” Mr Kelly said of the manifesto.

“The group wants to see the ­replacement of Australia’s existing coal-fired power fleet with new high-efficiency, low-­emissions (HELE) coal-fired power stations.”

Mr Kelly and Mr Christensen said yesterday they expected more than 30 MPs to join the forum, which would be more than half of the backbench. Mr Christensen said 10 Nationals had formally joined the group and another two had verbally told him they would join.

Mr Christensen last week sent a message to Nationals MPs asking them to join. “We are setting up a new group called the Monash Forum encouraging the government in the promotion of and ­facilitation of and/or construction of coal-fired power stations,” he wrote. “Why Monash? Because he opened the La Trobe coal reserves and oversaw the construction of coal-fired power there.”

Mr Christensen said there needed to be more federal government support for coal-fired power. He said the government should “secure” Liddell power station in the NSW Upper Hunter and then expand the baseload network.

“I think that there is a strong desire within the backbench for the government to get more actively involved in the construction of reliable, around-the-clock baseload power,” Mr Christensen said. “Most of us haven’t bought into the great green lie that that is going to be achieved by solar with batteries or wind power. Those products have their place but they do not supply affordable, around-the-clock, secure, baseload power. The only thing in the Australian market that does that is coal-fired power.”

When asked if the forum’s requests would be possible within the framework of the NEG, Mr Christensen said: “We are told the NEG is technologically neutral … within those parameters the best solution currently available to us is coal-fired power”.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said yesterday the government’s policy was technology-neutral.

He said independent modelling by the Energy Security Board had suggested coal would make up more than half of the energy mix in 2030. In its advice to government in October, the ESB said renewables were likely to reach 28 to 36 per cent of the energy mix by 2030 under the NEG — with wind and solar providing 18 to 24 per cent.

The NEG is aimed at guaranteeing energy reliability, while lowering costs for consumers and delivering on Australia’s Paris Agreement commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels. It will put an obligation on electricity retailers to buy power at a set level of emissions intensity each year to meet a 2030 reduction target — set by government — for the power generation sector while also forcing retailers to meet a percentage of demand from reliable power generation.

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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The evolution of global warming theory

I have not seen any explicit comment on this but it seems that there has been a large change over the years in what Warmists try to scare us with. There has been a Warmism 1 and a Warmism 2.

Warmism 1 is the Warmism of Al Gore, with sea level rises of 20 feet drowning most coastal cities. That was certainly scary and warranting of urgent action.  But it was most implausible. 96% of the earth's glacial ice is in Antarctica and even at the continental margins the temperature there is many degrees below  zero.  So a few degrees of temperature rise might melt some sea ice but nothing more would happen. Melting sea ice cannot raise the sea level.  So where was the required great volume of water going to come from? Mars?

Warmism 1 had another fault as well. It assumed a most implausible effect of clouds.  It said that warming would be gradual until the cloud cover became much more extensive than it now is.  And there is no doubt that a warmer world WOULD have more clouds as more water evaporated off the oceans.

But Warmism 1 at that point made two great theoretical leaps.  They said that the increased cloud cover would warm the earth when clouds in fact normally cool the earth by blocking out the sun. But let's glide over that point and accept their assumption that clouds would warm us.  The Warmist at that point makes another great leap.  He says that at some point a "tipping point" would be reached so that warming would suddenly accelerate and we would really roast.

Normally, when scientists try to predict the future they make a straight line extrapolation from existing trends.  But Warmism 1 aborts that.  Because of the tipping point, the past is no longer a guide to the future.  Things will get a lot hotter very suddenly.  They will get much hotter than they would under a normal extrapolation from the past.  So while scientific prediction of the future is possible in some instances  -- by looking carefully at the past -- Warmism 1  abandons that and makes a prophecy based purely on speculation.

I have tried to tell the story of Warmism 1 as straight as I can but I think its implausibilities are nonetheless obviously gross.  And, although it has never been formally abandoned by anyone, it has quietly faded away from most Warmist discourse.  It is, for example, years since I have heard anything of the tipping point.  So Warmism 1 has been replaced by Warmism 2


Warmism 2 is much less fantastical. It has reverted to the normal scientific method of predicting the future by extrapolations from the past. There is no Deus ex machina that causes warming to suddenly leap. It hypothesizes a steady process of warming at some specified rate. But finding that rate is the issue. Vast guesses about what CO2 does are used to get a rate.

Different authors assume different rates and the actuality always seems to be less than any predicted rate. So the accepted rate of warming has trended steadily down in the face of all the predictive failures

So under Warmism 2 we will have a temperature rise of only about 2 degrees Celsius and a consequent rise in sea levels of inches, not the yards predicted by Al Gore.

But that is rather boring.  It is hard to frighten people with just a few inches of sea level rise so a whole new industry has arisen which says that the few degrees of predicted warming will lead to catastrophic weather events -- hurricanes etc.  But even that is a dead end as dramatic weather events considered overall do not seem to be increasing and may even be decreasing.

So Warmism has in a way disappeared up its own back passage.  It no longer has any pretence of science behind its warnings of doom.  It is merely an example of telling a big enough lie often enough so that less informed people will believe it.  And while it continues to give scientists a golden shower of research grant money, the myth will be maintained -- JR.





The Federal government needs to prosecute grant fraud

Including all grants given to study global warming?

Every year, the federal government gives out billions of taxpayer dollars through dozens of federal agencies to study man-made climate change. It has become a cottage industry supporting hundreds of “scientists” around the world. Their research has led to countless federal agency regulations costing the U.S. economy thousands of jobs and trillions in economic output. What would happen if the underlying data in the studies was falsified?

The studies are used in courts of law around the country. New York City is suing Exxon, Shell, and several other oil companies for what it calls, “present and future damage to the city from climate change.” San Francisco and Oakland are also suing five oil companies in California, stating oil companies must “pay for the cost of protecting the Bay Area from rising sea levels and other effects of global warming.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger is even getting into the act, recently announcing he is going to sue oil companies “for knowingly killing people all over the world.” He has yet to announce he is going to stop making movies that use copious amounts of energy to produce or quit flying private.

But a recent decision by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may throw everything up for grabs, including the studies used to launch the lawsuits. As the Daily Torch reported last week, Pruitt is ending the practice of “secret science” to justify regulations within the EPA.

This raises an interesting question. If the scientists manipulated data to come to a preconceived result, is this a crime? If the scientists filled out grant applications using manipulated data, is that fraud? The law says yes.

18 U.S. Code 1341 – Frauds and swindles – Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, or to sell, dispose of, loan, exchange, alter, give away, distribute, supply, or furnish or procure for unlawful use any counterfeit or spurious coin, obligation, security, or other article, or anything represented to be or intimated or held out to be such counterfeit or spurious article, for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do, places in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service, or deposits or causes to be deposited any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by any private or commercial interstate carrier, or takes or receives therefrom, any such matter or thing, or knowingly causes to be delivered by mail or such carrier according to the direction thereon, or at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, any such matter or thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code 1343 – Fraud by wire, radio, or television – Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code 371 – Conspiracy – If two or more personsconspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. to commit offense or to defraud United States.

After looking at the hacked emails of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, it certainly appears data was manipulated to achieve a preconceived outcome. Several scientists around the world manipulated data to end the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) according to the leaked emails. The new data was then used to push massive governmental regulations.

This is not the first time questionable science has been used to justify regulations or lawsuits.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of the Centers for Disease Control, issued a report linking health problems to a chemical called diacetyl. The report spawned more than 1,000 lawsuits, but there appears to be a flaw in the science.

The agency tries to link diacetyl to Bronchiolitis obliterans, also known as popcorn lung, through exposure from microwave popcorn and coffee roasting, but the agency ignores cigarette smoke. Perhaps they do this because other studies cannot link smokers to popcorn lung. Cardno ChemRisk published a study in Critical Reviews on Toxicology stating, “We found that diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione exposures from cigarette smoking far exceed occupational exposures for most food/flavoring workers who smoke.” They continued, “Further, because smoking has not been shown to be a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans, our findings are inconsistent with claims that diacetyl and/or 2,3-pentanedione exposure are risk factors for this disease.”

Why would NIOSH ignore one set of facts to concentrate on another set of facts? Could trial lawyers have anything to do with it?

If the federal government is going to continue handing out billions in grants for research, then create regulations based on the research, it must ensure the accuracy of the research and prosecute fraud when found. All data must be made available to agencies and the public, bare minimum. And if a scientist manipulates data to meet a preconceived result, he is not a scientist, he is a fraud and should be prosecuted as such.

SOURCE 




Weather Underground, The Weather Company, IBM

Duane Thresher

Weather Underground prominently features Bob Henson, who declares himself a meteorologist everywhere.  He is not a meteorologist (and certainly not a climatologist, even though he writes a lot about climate, including the books he hawks on Weather Underground).

Weather Underground came to be seen as a weather authority, which made it seem worth the price to IBM (via The Weather Company).  However, it is only a weather authority if its people are and Bob Henson, for starters, is not, by any stretch of the imagination.

Weather Underground (and so The Weather Company and IBM) are companies like any other and so subject to laws about making false claims, like claiming to be authorities on the weather.  Weather can be a life or death issue where false claims can be disastrous.

Additionally, it is outrageous in this day and age that Weather Underground thumbs its nose at common decency and keeps its name.  Its name is a tribute to a terror bombing group bent on overthrowing the U.S. Government.  If that is OK with you why not update the name to Al-Qaeda?  As someone who lived in New York City during 9/11 and in Austin during the recent bombings, I find you offensive.

For more on all this see: HERE 





U.S. Energy Exports Hit Record in 2017; Petroleum and Natural Gas Both Hit All-Time Highs

U.S. total energy exports hit a record high in 2017 when measured in British Thermal Units (Btu), according to the Monthly Energy Review released today by the Energy Information Administration, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

U.S. petroleum and natural gas exports (measured in Btu) also both hit all-time highs in 2017, according to Table 1.4b in the report, while the U.S. energy trade deficit (measured in dollars) hit a 20-year low, according to Table 1.5.

During 2017, total U.S. energy exports equaled 17.998711 Quadrillion Btu, according to the report. That was up approximately 27.4 percent from the 14.129837 Quadrillion Btu in total U.S. energy exports in 2016.

At the same time, the U.S. imported 25.342199 Quadrillion Btu in total energy, meaning the U.S. was a net importer of 7.343488 in energy in 2017.

That is the lowest net energy imports the United States has seen since 1982 (measured in Btu), when the country was a net importer of 7.253481 Quadrillion Btu of energy.

The U.S. total energy exports included a record 12.044051 Quadrillion Btu in total petroleum exports (including both crude oil and refined products such as gasoline, kerosene and lubricants). That was up approximately 20.6 percent from the 9.989907 Quadrillion Btu that the U.S. exported in 2016.

U.S. total energy exports in 2017 also included a record 3.196449 Quadrillion Btu in natural gas. That was up approximately 35.6 percent from the 1.237954 Quadrillion Btu in natural gas that the U.S. exported in 2016.
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U.S. total energy exports in 2017 also included 2.487339 Quadrillion Btu in coal exports. That was up approximately 60.9 percent from the 1.546253 Quadrillion Btu in coal exports the U.S. made in 2016.

According to the Monthly Energy Review, U.S. energy exports in 2017 had a merchandise trade value of $136,358,000,000. At the same time, U.S. energy imports had a merchandise trade value of $194,945,000,000. That gave the U.S. an energy trade balance for the year of -$58,587,000,000.

That is the smallest energy trade deficit the United States has had (measured in dollars), according to the Monthly Energy Review, since 1998, when it was -$47,072,000,000.

The Congressional Research Service has attributed the U.S. surge in the international energy market to the development of new technologies including “hydraulic fracturing.”

“The United States has seen a resurgence in petroleum production, mainly driven by technology improvements—especially hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling—developed for natural gas production from shale formations,” said a CRS report published in 2015.

“Application of these technologies enabled natural gas to be economically produced from shale and other unconventional formations and contributed to the United States becoming the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2009,” said CRS.

SOURCE 





The huge labor costs of "renewable" energy

LONDON: In the US electric power generation sector, the solar industry employed nearly 374,000 people in 2015-16 – double the number of jobs in oil, coal and gas combined, according to a new report from the US Department of Energy.

Traditional energy and energy efficiency sectors today employ approximately 6.4 million Americans. These sectors increased in 2016 by just under 5%, adding over 300,000 net new jobs – roughly 14% of all those created in the country.

A separate report by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) shows how sustainability now collectively accounts for an estimated 4.5 million jobs – up from 3.4 million in 2011 – with renewable energy now making up 64% of new electricity generation capacity installed in the US each year.

“These newly published statistics show once more that clean energy is good for the environment, businesses and the whole economy,” comments Amy Davidsen, Executive Director North America, The Climate Group.

“We recently published our RE100 Annual Report, which demonstrates how leading companies are going 100% renewable - not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it also makes business sense. In the US alone, RE100 member companies source almost 7 terawatts/hours from renewable electricity – the highest amount in any country worldwide.

“We urge businesses, companies and states to accelerate this journey to deliver a healthier, more sustainable and prosperous future for all.”

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

Electric power generation and fuels technologies sectors in the US employ almost 800,000 workers in low carbon emission generation technologies.

The solar workforce increased by 25% in 2016 (+374,000 jobs), while wind energy employment increased by 32% (+102,000 jobs).

Between September 2015 and September 2016, net generation from coal sources declined by 51% – while electricity generation from natural gas increased by 33% and solar by over 5,000% in the same period.

In the transmission, distribution and storage sector, almost a third of employees work in grid modernization or other utility-funded modernization projects.

The advanced vehicles industry employs 174,000 individuals, especially in the hybrid sub-sector.

There are now 769,000 renewable energy jobs – mainly in bioenergy – with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 6% since 2012. By comparison, jobs in fossil fuel extraction and support services had a negative rate of -4.25%.

California leads on solar and energy efficiency jobs, while Texas has the largest employment for the wind sector.

Solar and wind jobs have grown at rates of about 20% annually in recent years and are each creating jobs at a rate 12 times faster than that of the rest of the US economy.

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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Climate study shows Sahara getting bigger

But does it? The journal article is much more interesting than the lay article below and the abstract ends with an admission that generalizations are difficult and shaky in this area so maybe I should really just leave it at that. I append the journal abstract to the lay summary below.

The thing that bothers me is that the overall conclusions of this study appears to contradict what we have long heard about the Sahara -- namely that its green border -- the Sahel -- is expanding.  So why the reversal?

There is actually no reversal.  The authors admit (highlighted in the rubric below) that the Sahel was expanding up until 2013 -- if you look at it in a long term way. So they are putting a lot of weight onto occasional fluctuations in a way that I frankly do not understand

So why has the Sahel gone into reverse recently?  No great mystery.  Many parts of Africa have been in drought in the last few years and the drought is not yet breaking.  I think we have all heard recently about Capetown's reticulated water supply running dry. So drought in the Sahel sounds very much like just another part of that.

But WHY is a lot of Africa in drought?  It cannot be because of global warming.  The rain would be pissing down if the oceans were warmer. It is almost certainly an El Nino effect.  The recent El Nino was a strong one and much more long-lasting than expected.  And the expected reversal in the form of a La Nina has yet to clearly emerge. But just why El Nino affected Africa so strongly I will have to leave to the climatologists.  It seems likely to me that it coincided with some other natural drying cycle within the African climate system and that Africa got a doubly whammy because of that


Earth’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, is getting bigger, a new study finds. It is advancing south into more tropical terrain in Sudan and Chad, turning green vegetation dry and soil once used for farming into barren ground in areas that can least afford to lose it.

Yet it is not just the spread of the Sahara that is frightening, researchers say. It’s the timing: It is happening during the African summer, when there is usually more rain. But the precipitation has dried up, allowing the boundaries of the desert to expand.

“If you have a hurricane come suddenly, it gets all the attention from the government and communities galvanize,” said Sumant Nigam, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland and the senior author of the study. “The desert advance over a long period might capture many countries unawares. It’s not announced like a hurricane. It’s sort of creeping up on you.”

The study was published Thursday in the Journal of Climate. The authors said that while their research focused only on the Sahara, it suggests that climate changes also could be causing other hot deserts to expand – with potentially harsh economic and human consequences.

Deserts form in subtropical regions because of a global weather circulation called the Hadley cell. Warm air rises in the tropics near the equator, producing rain and thunderstorms. When the air hits the top of the atmosphere, it spreads north and south toward the poles. It does not sink back down until it is over the subtropics, but as it does, the air warms and dries out, creating deserts that are nearly devoid of rain.

“Climate change is likely to widen the Hadley circulation, causing northward advance of the subtropical deserts,” Nigam said.

Nigam and the study’s lead researcher, Natalie Thomas, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, used data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Center to arrive at their finding.

SOURCE 

Twentieth-Century Climate Change over Africa: Seasonal Hydroclimate Trends and Sahara Desert Expansion

Natalie Thomas and Sumant Nigama

Abstract

Twentieth-century trends in seasonal temperature and precipitation over the African continent are analyzed from observational datasets and historical climate simulations. Given the agricultural economy of the continent, a seasonal perspective is adopted as it is more pertinent than an annual-average one, which can mask offsetting but agriculturally sensitive seasonal hydroclimate variations. Examination of linear trends in seasonal surface air temperature (SAT) shows that heat stress has increased in several regions, including Sudan and northern Africa where the largest SAT trends occur in the warm season. Broadly speaking, the northern continent has warmed more than the southern one in all seasons. Precipitation trends are varied but notable declining trends are found in the countries along the Gulf of Guinea, especially in the source region of the Niger River in West Africa, and in the Congo River basin. Rainfall over the African Great Lakes—one of the largest freshwater repositories—has, however, increased. It is shown that the Sahara Desert has expanded significantly over the twentieth century, by 11%–18% depending on the season, and by 10% when defined using annual rainfall. The expansion rate is sensitively dependent on the analysis period in view of the multidecadal periods of desert expansion (including from the drying of the Sahel in the 1950s–80s) and contraction in the 1902–2013 record, and the stability of the rain gauge network. The desert expanded southward in summer, reflecting retreat of the northern edge of the Sahel rainfall belt, and to the north in winter, indicating potential impact of the widening of the tropics. Specific mechanisms for the expansion are investigated. Finally, this observational analysis is used to evaluate the state-of-the-art climate simulations from a comparison of the twentieth-century hydroclimate trends. The evaluation shows that modeling regional hydroclimate change over the African continent remains challenging, warranting caution in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies.

SOURCE 





Climate alchemy

Using a climate model the authors reach conclusions that contradict well-known thermodynamic principles. They claim that a DECREASE in global atmospheric pressure would cause a WARMING?! Amazing what you can do with models.  Someone should give them an erector set

Long-term climate forcing by atmospheric oxygen concentrations

Christopher J. Poulsen1 et al.

Abstract

The percentage of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere varied between 10% and 35% throughout the Phanerozoic. These changes have been linked to the evolution, radiation, and size of animals but have not been considered to affect climate. We conducted simulations showing that modulation of the partial pressure of oxygen (pO2), as a result of its contribution to atmospheric mass and density, influences the optical depth of the atmosphere. Under low pO2 and a reduced-density atmosphere, shortwave scattering by air molecules and clouds is less frequent, leading to a substantial increase in surface shortwave forcing. Through feedbacks involving latent heat fluxes to the atmosphere and marine stratus clouds, surface shortwave forcing drives increases in atmospheric water vapor and global precipitation, enhances greenhouse forcing, and raises global surface temperature. Our results implicate pO2 as an important factor in climate forcing throughout geologic time.

SOURCE 





Climate chaos claims continue causing consternation

From the Oakland v. oil company lawsuit to ridiculous “research,” the onslaught never ends

Anyone who thought “manmade climate cataclysm” rhetoric couldn’t possibly exceed Obama era levels should read the complaint filed in the “public nuisance” lawsuit that’s being argued before Federal District Court Judge William Alsup in a California courtroom: Oakland v BP and other oil companies.

The allegations read at times like they were written by a Monty Python comedy team and a couple of first year law students. Defendant companies “conspired” to produce dangerous fuels, the complaint asserts, and “followed the Big Tobacco playbook” to promote their use, while paying “denialist front groups” to question “established” climate science, “downplay” the “unprecedented” risks of manmade global warming, and launch “unfounded attacks on the integrity” of leading “consensus” scientists.

“People of color” and other “socially vulnerable” individuals will be most severely affected, it continues. (They’ll be far more severely impacted by climate policies that drive up energy and food prices.)

Oakland’s lawyers excoriate astrophysicist Wei Hock “Willie” Soon for committing the unpardonable sin of suggesting the sun might have something to do with climate change. They couldn’t even get his PhD degree right. They call him an “aerospace engineer,” and claim he personally received $1.2 million that was actually paid to Harvard University (as multiple, easily accessible documents make clear).

They don’t even mention the billions of taxpayer dollars that have been divvied up year after year among researchers and activists who promote alarmist views on global warming and renewable energy.

Oakland and its fellow litigants expect the court to accept their claims at face value, as “established” science, with no need to present real-world evidence to support them. They particularly emphasize rising seas and the resulting “imminent threat of catastrophic storm surges” that are “projected” by computer models that assume carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is now the primary or sole driver of climate change, replacing the sun, cosmic rays, ocean currents and other powerful natural forces that did so “previously.”

In suing the five major oil companies, they ignore the fact that the companies burn very few of the hydrocarbon fuels they produce. It is the plaintiff city governments and their constituents who have happily burned oil and natural gas for over a century, to fuel their cars, heat, cool, light and electrify their offices and homes, and make their industries, communications, health and living standards possible.

In the process, it is they who have generated the plant-fertilizing CO2 that is allegedly causing the unprecedented global warming, melting ice caps and rising seas. Hydrocarbons also fuel essential backup electricity generators for California’s wind and solar facilities – and provide raw materials for fabrics, plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals and countless other products the litigants use every day.

Equally problematical for the plaintiffs, the “established, consensus” science asserted throughout their complaint and courtroom presentations is increasingly uncertain and hotly debated. As Heartland Institute scholar Joe Bast points out, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now expresses numerous doubts and uncertainties about rates of sea level rise, the role of CO2, the cause and duration of a global warming “pause” that has now lasted some 23 years. Indeed, the temperature spike caused by the 2015-16 El Niño has now almost disappeared, as the oceans and atmosphere continue to cool once again.

The oil companies decided not to present much climate science in the courtroom. However, expert materials prepared by Christopher Monckton, Will Happer, Richard Lindzen and colleagues addressed questions about equilibrium climate sensitivity and related issues in amicus curiae filings for the court.

Oakland’s claim that the oil companies “conspired” to hide and misrepresent “the science” on global warming and climate change is on thin ice. Some reports say Judge Alsup dismissed the claim or ruled that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that there was a conspiracy. In any event, a decision on the merits will eventually be made, the losing party will appeal, and the case will likely end up in the US Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, climate chaos claims continue causing consternation in some circles. Too much money, power, prestige, control and wealth redistribution is at stake for anything else to happen.

Indeed, many in the $1.5-trillion-a-year Climate Industrial Complex are determined to use this issue (and equally malleable “sustainability” mantras) to replace free enterprise capitalism with totalitarian one-world governance; fossil fuel and nuclear power (the source of 85% of US and global energy) with expensive, land-intensive wind, solar and biofuel energy; and the hopes and dreams of poor people everywhere with policies that permit their living standards to improve only minimally, at the margins.

Actually, climate chaos hype-potheses now blame not just carbon dioxide and methane for runaway global warming, but also asthma inhalers and meat diets. The results aren’t just rising seas, warmer and colder weather, wetter and drier seasons, forest fires, nonexistent mass extinctions and the other oft-cited pseudo-cataclysms. They also include shrinking animals, a worse opioid crisis, and the endless litany of often amusing afflictions and disasters chronicled in The Warmlist and its video counterpart.

The “solution” isn’t just keeping fossil fuels in the ground. It also includes accepting profound lifestyle changes and dining on climate friendly insects (not ruling elites; just the rest of us).

And the real effects of manmade climate cataclysm fears are not just soaring prices for less available, less reliable, grid-destabilizing “green” electricity. They also include having to rescue adventurers who try to sail, snowmobile or trek across supposedly melting Arctic and Antarctic ice packs – only to become stranded and frostbitten or have their ships trapped in rapidly freezing ice.

So, what should climate disaster stalwarts do, when temperatures and sea levels refuse to cooperate with Al Gore speeches and computer model “projections” and “scenarios”? Or when forecasts of more hurricanes are followed by a record 12-year absence of any Category 3-5 storms hitting the US mainland?

One strategy is refusing to debate anyone who challenges the dire hypotheses, data or conclusions. Another involves “homogenizing,” “correcting” and manipulating original data, to make Dust Bowl era temperatures less warm – and this year’s long and bitterly cold winter not nearly so frigid, by adjusting records from local temperature stations by as much as 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 Celsius).

As to the numerous articles and studies published on WattsUpWithThat.com, DrRoySpencer.com, ClimateDepot.com, ClimateChangeReconsidered.org and other sites that focus on evidence-based climate studies and research, and challenge assertions like those relied on in the Oakland complaint – the increasingly preferred strategy is to employ algorithms and other tactics that relegate their work to the bottom of search engine results. Long lists of alarmist claims, articles and perspectives appear first, unless a student or other researcher enters very specific search terms. Even the major shortcomings of wind power are hard to find, if you don’t know precisely what you are looking for.

Google, Facebook, You Tube and other search, information and social media sites appear determined to be the arbiters of what information, facts and realities we can access, what our children can learn. They help stigmatize and bully scientists whose research or views do not hew to accepted liberal perspectives, and have even enlisted corporate advertisers into policing the speech of political opponents.

All this from the champions  of free speech, tolerance, diversity and inclusion. Just bear in mind:

The issue is not whether our planet is warming, or whether climate and weather are changing. The issue is what is causing those fluctuations, how much is due to fossil fuels versus to natural forces, and whether any coming changes will be as catastrophic as natural forces have caused multiple times in the past. (Imagine what would happen to cities, farms and humanity if we had another Pleistocene ice age.)

All of this once again underscores why America and the world need “Red Team” climate science exercises, more evidence-based climate education, and a reversal of the Obama EPA’s unsupported finding that carbon dioxide emissions somehow endanger human health and welfare.

Via email





The Climate Change Trial: Reason vs. Extremism

The legal battle against oil companies for their purported role in contributing to a climate change crisis is starting to take shape. This past Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco made history, holding the first-ever U.S. court hearing exploring the impact of climate change. Lawyers representing the cities of Oakland and San Francisco as well as five of the largest multinational oil companies named in the lawsuit, participated in a climate change “tutorial,” a chance to explore both sides’ positions on several questions related to climate change.

Here’s what we learned from the hearing: future litigation will pit reasoned dialog in line with mainstream climate science against the politically charged rhetoric of climate change extremism.

Attorneys from the two California cities allege that rising sea levels and other extreme weather phenomena are the result of climate change, which will force the municipalities to spend unspecified billions of dollars to mitigate the damage. Further, the lawsuits they filed last fall seek to pin all the blame and financial responsibility for the purported damage on just five publicly traded American energy companies: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.

Climate change is a global issue, yet greedy trial lawyers are targeting the five major energy companies exclusively because they see them as a potential jackpot in attorneys’ fees; a whopping 23.5 percent of the entire multibillion-dollar payout if they succeed. In truth, we all share a responsibility for climate change. The petroleum industry is primarily interested in extracting, producing, and promoting petroleum products or fossil fuels. Third-party consumers use fossil fuel materials to heat their homes, run their vehicles, and power industry and manufacturing.

The case is flawed and relies on fundamentally weak arguments that have been tried before and failed in court. The plaintiffs attempt to portray a handful of energy companies as solely responsible for climate change. Interestingly enough, they might succeed in making the oil companies seem like the only adults in the room.

Oil companies recognize that climate change is a long-term issue which requires global attention. Each of the companies named in the lawsuit is making significant strides to take a balanced and measured approach toward addressing unique problems associated with climate change. These five companies have invested billions of dollars into efforts to develop technology solutions that boost energy efficiency, expand the supply of cleaner burning fuels, and lead industry engagement toward positive policy solutions. The oil industry is interested in understanding and addressing issues associated with potential climate change. This was made abundantly clear at the hearing on Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup called for the climate change tutorial as a primer to obtain a better understanding of climate change, and rightfully so. Climate science includes aspects of atmospheric chemistry, atmospheric physics, oceanography, and biogeochemistry. It’s a complex field.

The energy companies were able to present a fair and objective answer to every question. Their analysis was based on the most widely-accepted peer-reviewed scientific views on climate change. This wasn’t an opportunity for advocacy of a specific position but rather a forum to present dispassionate scientific findings in line with most mainstream climate science.

It’s also worth noting that Judge Alsup did not warm to the cities’ argument that the oil and gas industry has been conducting a conspiracy to suppress climate science from the public. San Francisco’s city attorney had charged that the companies “have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings and to public and private property.”

In dismissing the plaintiff’s conspiracy accusation, the judge gutted the core component of the bizarre lawsuit. It was a big test for the energy companies and they won.

While Judge Alsup’s evenhanded approach to the tutorial may have been praiseworthy, U.S. climate policy is inherently complex and impacts every American. It is therefore preposterous to suggest that such a matter can rightfully be decided by one judge acting alone in a California courtroom. But unless, as the Supreme Court has already ruled, this case is left to the EPA and the Congress to resolve, that is exactly what will happen.

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Australia: Wholesale electricity prices up in Victoria since closure of big brown coal generator

Brown coal is more polluting than black coal so the Greenies wanted it closed.  It also produced power very cheaply and that was unforgiveable

Wholesale electricity prices have shot up in Victoria since the closure of the coal-fired Hazelwood power station, which has also caused Victoria to rely on power from other states for the first time in almost a decade, according to a new report.

A year on from the closure of the 1600 megawatt-sized plant in the Latrobe Valley, the report from the Australian Energy Regulator found wholesale prices in Victoria were up 85 per cent on 2016.

The regulator's chair Paula Conboy said the rise was driven by the replacement of Hazelwood's cheap, brown coal-fired power generation with power from higher cost sources such as black coal, gas and hydro, at a time when black coal and gas prices were rising.

"The impact of the Hazelwood closure has been, and continues to be, significant right across the [National Electricity Market]," Ms Conboy said.

From mid-2017, for the first time in almost a decade, Victoria relied on energy from interstate to meet its needs, as it increased its imports of gas-generated power from South Australia, and black coal-fired electricity from New South Wales.

Ms Conboy said the price increases and the energy market's response to Hazelwood's closure had been as expected, but new investment in electricity generation was "critical" to put downward pressure on prices.

The regulator said it was difficult to determine the impact of Hazelwood's closure on retail prices, because of the way energy retailers use contracts to purchase power in advance.

But the Australian Energy Market Commission said it expects retail prices in Victoria to increase 15.9 per cent this financial year compared to 2016-17.

However the commission expects prices for households to drop 6.6 per cent in 2018-19 and a further 9.7 per cent in 2019-20, as more wind and solar power becomes available.

Mario Mancusso, a butcher in the Melbourne suburb of Flemington, said his business was feeling the pinch. "At the moment, I'm looking at $3,500 to $4,000 a quarter — 14 years ago when I opened, I was paying $600," he said.

He said power bills were having a huge impact on his business and he had to pass on the costs to his customers. "Once I pay this bill, it will take me weeks to recover. It's costing me a fortune."

He said he understood the closure of Hazelwood had cut greenhouse gas emissions, but the pros did not outweigh the cons. "At the end of the day, I look after my own interests. And I cannot sustain those sorts of bills."

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