“Going Green” good for the economy?

Massive increases in government spending, subsidies and further economic control with a blizzard of added regulations are the recipe for economic downturn. History shows this time and again. History also shows the opposite is true; restraining government spending growth and reducing regulations and taxes on the private sector spurs economic growth and job creation.

The “Green” agenda invariably comprises major new government mandates, subsidies and regulations that will harm the country’s economy and citizenry, whether one believes fully in human-caused climate change or not. The Green cure is worse than the purported illness, regardless of how many studies authored by climate alarmists claim otherwise.

There are plenty of studies (using that term loosely) that claim Green policies for energy transformation will “stimulate” the economy. But they always come back to massive new government spending, debt and private sector mandates to subsidize the efforts and label it economic stimulus.

Whichever multi-trillion dollar version of the Green New Deal is examined, including the recent unveiling by presidential candidate Joe Biden, the essence is the same: vast new government regulation and mandates over energy, construction, transportation and pretty much every other industry.

Energy is the lifeblood of our national and global economy.  Affecting its supply and price impacts far and wide. Abundant energy supplies enable the economy to grow.  Restricting energy—namely, fossil fuels and nuclear—in the hopes of forcing its replacement with “renewables” will lead to economic contraction.

Proponents of a Green New Deal would reorder of energy policy to phase our use of coal, natural gas and oil and nuclear to replace them with electricity and so-called “renewable” energy sources, wind and solar. While I am a strong believer in technological progress, no one can plausibly explain how renewable energy can replace fossil fuels in the coming decades, if ever.

Many states and cities already have passed energy plans that mandate greater use of renewable energy and less fossil fuel. If this piecemeal effort becomes widespread, America as a whole, like California, will soon suffer higher energy costs, power outages, deforestation, landscape blight, harm to wildlife, and more.  These outcomes are not the ingredients for economic growth.

Green New Deal advocates are defending the new costs and control in two primary ways. First, they believe the planet itself is at greater risk by doing nothing; and the jobs lost in the energy industry are promised to be replaced with “Green” jobs.

First, the planet is not “at risk” if the global average temperature increases by 1.5 degrees by 2050; though no one can claim with certainty that it will. Nor will reducing carbon emissions in the United States necessarily affect global average temperature since many additional factors influence climate. Other industrialized nations like China and Russia will avoid such masochistic economic policy while they happily watch their U.S. adversary relinquish its fossil fuel production and harm its economic and military capacity in the process.

Second, the promise of “Green Jobs” is as vacuous as any from politicians attempting to reassure the public.  Nonetheless, they are itching to undertake a borrowing a spending binge to “create” jobs to produce solar panels, batteries and other components to foist them on the public, regardless of lack of demand and gross inefficiency. That is why every Green New Deal is priced at trillions of taxpayer dollars and constitutes a wasteful “spoon-ready” approach to creating jobs, as the late economist Milton Friedman would sardonically describe.

The Obama administration’s boondoggle taxpayer guarantees for the Solyndra company to produce solar panels, which cost at least $500 million, is emblematic of the problem.  So also is the example of California’s mandate for solar panels on all new homes. More such Green economic policy would exponentially produce the same folly.

A further problem comes from the current federal spending spree on the coronavirus, with $2.5 trillion added to the national debt and another trillion dollars on deck. America is that much closer to economic risk, including runaway inflation from printing money electronically to finance this unprecedented spending.  From a financial standpoint, the Covid pandemic makes the unaffordable Green New Deal much more so.

Government has a role in spearheading research and development in many areas of the economy, including in energy. When practical and feasible, the private sector on its own will make the investment, assume the risk, and profit accordingly from Green energy. Done foolishly, as proposed by the climate alarmists pushing Green New Deals, trillions of dollars will be printed and wasted, and jobs and livelihoods will be squandered.

SOURCE 




Last Ice Age, Fires Raged As Summer Temps Were 3-4C Warmer

A new study finds that 26 to 19 thousand years ago, with CO2 concentrations as low as 180 ppm, fire activity was [10 times more common] than today near the southern tip of Africa – mostly because summer temperatures were 3-4°C warmer. We usually assume the last glacial maximum – the peak of the last ice age – was significantly colder than it is today.

But evidence has been uncovered that wild horses fed on exposed grass year-round in the Arctic, Alaska’s North Slope, about 20,000 to 17,000 years ago, when CO2 concentrations were at their lowest and yet “summer temperatures were higher here than they are today” (Kuzmina et al., 2019).

Horses had a “substantial dietary volume” of dried grasses year-round, even in winter at this time, but the Arctic is currently “no place for horses” because there is too little for them to eat, and the food there is “deeply buried by snow” (Guthrie and Stoker, 1990).

In a new study (Kraaij et al., 2020) find evidence that “the number of days per annum with high or higher fire danger scores was almost an order of magnitude larger during the LGM [last glacial maximum, 19-26 ka BP]  than under contemporary conditions” near Africa’s southernmost tip, and that “daily maximum temperatures were 3-4°C higher than present in summer (and 2-4°C lower than present in winter), which would have contributed to the high severity of fire weather during LGM summers.”

Neither conclusion – that surface temperatures would be warmer or that fires would be more common – would seem to be consistent with the position that CO2 variations drive climate or heavily contribute to fire patterns.

SOURCE 




Record Crop Yields Punk The Denver Channel’s Climate Alarmism

Among the top Google News results today for “climate change,” The Denver Channel published an article asserting climate change is devastating crop production. The Denver Channel is either inexcusably unaware of on-point United Nations crop data, or The Denver Channel is deliberately telling falsehoods. Objective data show consistent, steady growth in global crop yields, with new records set virtually every year. Tally The Denver Channel as yet another purveyor of fake climate news.

The Denver Channel article is titled, “Farmers across the world worried about climate change impacting their crops.” The theme of the article is summarized by a quote the article provides from a Syngenta spokesperson: “Climate change is impacting agriculture and farmers abilities. … It’s coming down to, especially in the United States, is the unpredictable weather patterns that are beginning to emerge.”

The article especially emphasizes drought as ruining American crop yields. “It’s drier than it used to be,” says a struggling farmer in the article.

Those are bold assertions about climate change, drought, and negative crop impacts. Let’s take a look at the objective data.

Global crop yields during the period of modest global average warming have boomed. As my colleague James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute, recently noted in a Climate Realism article, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports global cereal production (the vitally important corn, wheat, and rice crops) set an all-time record in 2019. Moreover, FAO expects 2020 crop production to surpass the 2019 record.

The same game-changing growth in global production is occurring in the United States. Yields per acre in the United States are 50 percent higher than was the case just 20 years ago, and double what they were in 1980. New records are set virtually every year.

The good news about crop yields tell us that the Denver Channel’s claim about worsening drought is likely false. Here are some additional facts to support that:

As reported in, Climate at a Glance: Drought, the United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history without at least 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. Peaks in drought intensity occurred around 1978, 1954, 1930, and 1900 – between 40 and 120 years of global warming ago. By contrast, in 2017 the United States set a record for its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history. Then, the United States broke that record again in 2019.

To be fair, many farmers around the world likely do fear the effects of climate change on their livelihoods. If they do, however, their fear is driven by media alarmism like the Denver Channel article rather than by nonexistent declines in real-world crop production.

SOURCE 





Comrade de Blasio Declares Isaias A ‘Result Of Global Warming’

This is a perfect illustration of what a moron sounds like when they are a.) feckless and b.) use fact-free talking points. Data shows we are not having more hurricanes, they are not more intense and have been around long before we settled North America. In fact, Isaias is only the fourth tropical storm to hit NYC since 1821 (when recordkeeping began). -CCD Editor

Do communists actually hear what comes out of their mouths? They can make a claim in one sentence and then contradict said claim a minute later.

Their level of confident ignorance can only be described as impressive because a lazy person wouldn’t put this much work into sounding so ridiculous on such a consistent basis.

New York City Mayor Comrade Bill de Blasio held a press conference on Tuesday to talk about and warn New Yorkers of the progression and arrival of Tropical Storm Isaias.

De Blasio took a decent portion of his time to point out specifically that storms like Isaias are the “result of global warming.”

“Let’s talk about the bigger reality,” de Blasio said in propagandistic fashion. “What we’re seeing here, and what we’ve been seeing now for years, is the result of global warming. We’ve been seeing more and more pressure on coastal areas all around the world.”

The mayor spoke about how big storms are more frequent in the age of increased global warming, but de Blasio kind of contradicted himself with the very first statement in this address that he made to the people of New York.

“I just want to emphasize, when we talk about a tornado warning, it’s such a rarity here in New York City. It may sound to some people like that’s not something to worry about.”

Of course, a tornado of any size is something for people to worry about. But, how can tornadoes be rare while global warming is making storms like what Isaias is bringing to the area more frequently?

I thought storms were supposed to be stronger and happen more often. That’s what they all want us to think, right? So which is it?

That first line contradicted most of what de Blasio said after it.

Oh, and just as a quick note, I thought it was “climate change?” It was originally “global cooling.” Then, it was “global warming.” What gives?

De Blasio also made the claim that after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, “there were no more climate change deniers in New York City.” That’s a bold claim.

Since 1821, New York City has seen the effects of 11 hurricanes and four tropical storms, including Isaias.

For those playing the home game, that makes for an average of one major storm about every 13 years. To be fair, weather technology has exponentially increased in the last 50 years.

The main gripe here is that de Blasio took time from legitimately informing people about the particulars of the storm to push a political talking point — which global warming is at this point.

No one gives a crap about that. That “information” helps no one at a time when people should be preparing for whatever storm might bring their way.

Just another instance of de Blasio on his soapbox.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Greta Thunberg fury: Arch-rival launches devastating vow to crush teen activist's argument

GRETA THUNBERG's arch-rival Naomi Seibt has brutally challenged the teen activist to "debate me" after mocking her stance on climate change and urging her to stop "spreading panic, but offer hope".

Ms Seibt, known throughout the world as the anti-Greta Thunberg of climate change, made the demand after she was snubbed by the EU despite Ms Thunberg being allowed to push her point across to MEPs about the myths of global warming. The 19-year-old German has pleaded with institutions to listen to the other side of the debate, which focuses on how the gloomy outlook on carbon emissions is addressed throughout the media. Ms Seibt, who has previously claimed rival Ms Thunberg has spread "panic around climate change when she should be offering hope", agrees carbon dioxide - a by-product from the use of fossil fuels - does affect climate change.

However, she argues that the real damage it causes is considerably lower than the likes of Ms Thunberg allege.

And after seeing Ms Thunberg invited to talk to EU leaders earlier this year - despite coronavirus lockdown conditions being imposed - Ms Seibt wanted a chance to discuss the bill and other arrangements that could be made.

When asked by Express.co.uk whether she expected to ever be asked to speak to the EU, she said: “I don’t think so because they are so immersed in their beliefs that they don’t want anyone from the outside to come in and talk to them.

"Even if I tried to reach out to them I don’t think they would allow me to speak and that’s why I accept every opportunity for an interview or to speak because I would love to talk to someone on the other side.

"And if anybody is willing to debate me, even if Greta is willing to debate me, I’m willing to come any time and debate them on the issue.”

Her comments came amid the announcement that Brussels intended to create new legislation in order to eliminate carbon emissions to become the world's first "carbon neutral continent".

The Green Deal - the name of the EU’s proposal - was created in a bid to curb panic and is the basis of a new growth strategy for those in the bloc.

The law was unveiled by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and makes it essential that the EU balances emissions and the removal of greenhouse gases.

At the time, Ms Thunberg also took aim at the plan, saying by having such a long term goal, the EU had “surrendered” to climate change.

In a letter to leaders, Greta and 33 other activists added: “It means giving up. “We don’t just need goals for 2030 or 2050. “We, above all, need them for 2020 and every following month and year to come.”

And for once it appeared Greta and Ms Seibt agreed - the deal was nothing to get excited about.

Ms Seibt added: “I think that is just ridiculous because the effect the C02 emissions can have is absolutely insignificant and the consequences of controlling society in that way and only relying on alternative energy sources is not reliable.

“Like solar power and wind power that is not reliable or sustainable it’s just ridiculous.

“We don’t even have nuclear power to switch to, so right now in the lockdown of the coronavirus, I’m a bit worried because what happens if we experience a blackout and don’t have any electricity.

“So the economic consequences are ludicrous.

“Something that I do find hypocritical is that usually in my experience, it’s the people on the side of climate change that says we need to help the poor, need to fight for climate justice and social justice.”

SOURCE 





Made with Wind Power

As the completely unhinged push for increasing amounts of renewable energy continues, more and more companies are proudly printing that they are "Made with Wind Power" on their packaging.

These companies, no company, has any way of knowing that the electricity they are using comes directly from wind energy. Do you know how they feel they have the right to put these meaningless little pictures on their packages? Well, we asked...

Two things:

1. They pay a PREMIUM price for electricity.
2. They still need COAL.

They pay for this "wind powered" designation. The wind does not blow 100% of the time and they also produce energy at a fraction of what Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear do.

To better understand why they cannot possibly know where their energy is actually coming from, we refer to Ohm's Law.

This is directly from MISO (the gird). The same grid that General Converting, Inc. gets their electricity from.


Again, two things:

1. Electricity passes through all possible paths but there is more flow through paths with less resistance.

2. Once a fuel source has added their energy to the grid, it becomes part of the fuel mix. MISO does not keep the fuel sources separate. They cannot and do not say, "Wind power to this building, Nuclear to this home, Coal to this factory." That is a magical world and it is not reality.

SOURCE 





How climate change alarmists are actually endangering the planet

“You’ll die of old age, I’ll die of climate change,” reads a typical poster held by teenagers in climate rallies across the world. The media, activists and even politicians are unabashedly indulging in climate alarmism, stoking the fears of millions.

Books on the impending implosion of civilization due to climate change line shelves in bookstores across the world. Media outlets have changed the name of climate change, calling it the “climate emergency” or even “climate breakdown.” The cover of Time magazine tells us: “Be worried. Be very worried.”

Unsurprisingly, this causes most of us to brood about a future that we’re being told will be calamitous. Children are growing up terrified, with six in ten American teenagers now afraid of climate change. The scaremongering has reached such a crescendo that now half the world’s population really believes climate change will likely end the human race.

This alarmism is not only false but morally unjust. It leads us to make poor decisions based on fear, when the world not only has gotten better, but will be even better over the century.

Remember that the world today is much better in almost every measurable way. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 32. Today, it has more than doubled to 72. The disparity in health between the rich and poor has reduced, the world is much more literate, child labor has been dropping and we are living in one of the most peaceful times in history. Indoor air pollution, previously the biggest environmental killer, has halved since 1990. Four out of five people were extremely poor in 1900 and today — despite the intense impact of the coronavirus — less than one in five is.

Alarmist is not only fake, it's unjust. Rising sea levels is a trumped up charge.

The UN Climate Panel’s middle-of-the-road estimate for the end of the century is that we will be even better off. There will be virtually no one left in extreme poverty, everyone will be much better educated, and the average income per person in the world will be 450 percent of what it is today. Yet, because climate is a real challenge, it will leave us less well off. Based on three decades of studies, the UN and the world’s only Nobel climate economist estimate global warming will reduce the 21st century welfare increase from 450 percent to “only” 434 percent of today’s income.

Clearly, this is a problem. But a 3.6 percent reduction by the end of the century is not an existential threat. Resorting to panic and hysteria is unlikely to help. Indeed, one of the UN Climate Panel authors warned against this: “We risk turning off the public with extremist talk that is not carefully supported by the science.”

How is it possible that the media’s portrayal of the impacts of climate change are so vastly removed from reality? Because simple, moderating factors are left out. Last year, a paper generated lots of headlines and clicks claiming that future sea-level rise would flood 187 million people.

But it was spectacularly misleading. It had to assume no one would adapt over the next 80 years. Actually, the research showed that as people obviously adapt, just 0.3 million people will have to move. The scary number is 600 times too large.

This trumped-up rhetoric leads us to make unrealistic promises. We have mostly failed our climate promises for the last thirty years, and we are poised to fail our Paris climate promises by 2030 as well. It also leads nations to make exorbitantly expensive promises of carbon neutrality by 2050, something that will be more costly than permanent coronavirus shutdowns. Only New Zealand has asked for an independent assessment of the cost of its climate policy. It will cost 16 percent of its GDP each and every year by 2050, making it more costly than the entire New Zealand public expenditures for education, health, environment, police, defense, social protection, etc.

Rhetoric from the left inflates non-threatening issues. Here, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a committee on the environment.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has helped fuel the belief among young people that they will die of climate change.EPA
Spending 16 percent of a nation’s income to solve a smaller part of a 3.6 percent problem is bad policy. Moreover, it is unlikely to happen. We need smarter solutions.

Climate economic studies convincingly show that one of the best investments to fix climate in the medium run is to invest heavily in green R&D. Because research is cheap, we can explore many avenues, from better renewables and battery storage, to carbon capture and fusion, fission, carbon-neutral oil-producing algae, and more. If we can innovate on the price of green energy down below that of fossil fuels, everyone will switch — not just well-meaning rich people, but also most Chinese, Indians and Africans. The models show that each dollar invested in green energy R&D will avoid eleven dollars of climate damage.

It’s imperative that we shift our focus to such smart efforts — efforts that have been shown throughout history to work. We should tackle climate smartly, and also make sure that a monomaniacal focus on climate change doesn’t crowd out urgent investments in the many other, crucially important issues of health, education, jobs and nutrition.

SOURCE 




Cancel Culture Dominates Climate Research, Canceling the Scientific Method

Contrary to popular perception, “cancel culture,” in which people or their opinions are shamed and shut out of the discussion when they don’t conform to whatever those shouting the loudest or rioting in the streets believe, isn’t a new phenomenon.

For more than two decades, politically connected climate scientists have been leading the cancel culture movement.

These researchers abandoned the pursuit of knowledge and human progress for the pursuit of political power to impose their vision of how society should be shaped. Rather than seeking an understanding of the world through the use of the scientific method and its reliance upon data and empirical falsification, they’ve promoted the political notion of consensus as to how knowledge is obtained, and comity, rather than experimentation, as to how progress is made.

They “cancel” through making personal attacks, denial of funding, removing “opponents” from positions, and suppressing the research of any researcher or analyst who dares to disagree with the so-called consensus position that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

Honest scientists who cling to the quaint notion that climate change theory should be tested against data are deemed retrograde or climate deniers, whose views aren’t worthy of being considered in these days of post-modern climate science. Indeed, many cancelers advocate for imprisoning climate skeptics.

Let’s look at just a couple of examples of in which academic conferences and media headlines have given consensus, cancel culture science pride of place over the facts when it comes to alarming climate claims.

Based solely on the unsupported assertions of consensus climate researchers, the media has been flooded with stories claiming human-caused climate change is causing famine and starvation.

In late June 2020, Cornell Alliance for Science claimed farmers in sub-Saharan Africa were desperate for new farm technologies and crops to fight a climate change-induced decline in crop production that the Alliance claimed was “driving millions [of Africans] into hunger.” Yet data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization shows cereal (staple) food crop production across southern Africa has grown substantially, and fairly steadily, since at least the 1960s. Moreover, the past 10 years have provided the 10 highest crop yields in sub-Saharan African history.

Dozens of similarly false claims linking supposed anthropogenic climate change to an agricultural apocalypse were covered by outlets such as Google News, GQ, the New Republic, and Roll Call over the past couple of months. Yet, had the journalists writing the stories showed a little bit of investigative initiative, they could have easily discovered hundreds of field experiments and studies collected on CO2 Science, much of which was distilled or summarized in the exhaustive report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, titled “Climate Change Reconsidered II.”

These reports show crop yields have been booming and hunger and malnutrition declining as, and in large part because, carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising.

Following the Democratic playbook, per Rahm Emanuel, of “never letting a crisis go to waste,” radical climate alarmists have also manipulated science to assert climate change is making pandemics more frequent and deadlier. Dozens of media outlets, including Jurist Legal, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and Time magazine published articles during the midst of the CCP virus pandemic claiming human-caused climate change, if not already making the incidences of pandemics more likely, would make them more frequent and more deadly in the future.

For instance, an article in Pro Publica blatantly lied when it stated, “Vector-borne diseases—those carried by insects like mosquitoes and ticks and transferred in the blood of infected people—are also on the rise as warming weather and erratic precipitation vastly expand the geographic regions vulnerable to contagion.”

The body of scientific literature, as detailed in Chapter Four of the second volume of “Climate Change Reconsidered II,” shows there is no factual basis for this claim.

Studies from Africa to England and Wales, to North and South America, to Thailand and beyond, find that any link between human climate change and the spread of malaria, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and other vector-borne diseases is either grossly overstated or outright false.

Indeed, historically, colder periods are linked to famine, as crops fail, and to the rapid spread of pandemics, such as the bubonic plague, which ran rampant during the little ice age. By contrast, pandemics typically wane, though they don’t disappear, and hunger and malnutrition decline sharply during relatively warm periods.

In one study published in The Lancet in 2015, researchers examining health data from 384 locations in 13 countries, accounting for more than 74 million deaths—a huge sample size from which to draw sound conclusions—found that cold weather, directly or indirectly, killed 1,700 percent more people than hot weather.

Commenting on the study in a 2017 New York Times article, columnist Jane Brody wrote, “Over time, as global temperatures rise, milder winter temperatures are likely to result in fewer cold-related deaths, a benefit that could outweigh a smaller rise in heat-caused mortality.”

Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Sadly, climate researchers would cancel Einstein if he said that today.

There is an old adage in legal circles, “When the law is on your side, pound the law; when the facts are on your side, pound the facts; when neither are on your side, pound the table.” For three decades, climate alarmists have been pounding the table. They hold rallies carrying placards and wearing T-shirts that say “Believe Science,” even as their actions betray science.

Too many climate scientists have become sideshow hucksters hoping to sell the general public the dangerous notion that giving government experts greater control over our lives will allow us to control the weather, and make the world a utopia. Ask the people in Cuba, Hong Kong, North Korea, or Venezuela how that’s working out for them.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all

He leaves out a category:  The scientifically literate.  And he offers no evidence that any of his types exist outside of his own imagination.

If he was less full of himself he might have done a survey, extracted the principal components from the results and did  a varimax analysis of them.  That's old hat if you want to know the actual subtypes in the responses

But he is probably not scientifically literate enough to do any kind of factor analysis.  I am no great fan of factor analysis myself but it sure beats mere opinion


The shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool: each distorts the urgent global debate in their own way

Anew book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.

How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.

Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as “cherry-picking”, “misleading” and containing “outright falsehoods”.

The article was widely republished, even after being removed from its first home, Forbes, for violating the title’s editorial guidelines on self-promotion, adding further heat to the storm. And this is why all those who deny the reality or danger of the climate emergency should be ignored. Obviously, I have broken my own rule here, but only to make this vital point once and for all.

The science is clear, the severity understood at the highest levels everywhere, and serious debates about what to do are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this.

However infuriating they are, arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them. It also helps to generate a fake air of controversy over climate action that provides cover for the vested interests seeking to delay the end of the fossil fuel age.

But the deniers are not all the same. They tend to fit into one of four different categories: the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool.

The shill is the easiest to understand. He, and it almost always is he, is paid by vested interests to emit clouds of confusion about the science or economics of climate action. This uncertainty creates a smokescreen behind which polluters can lobby against measures that cut their profits.

A sadder case is that of the grifters. They have found themselves earning a living by grinding out contrarian articles for rightwing media outlets. Do they actually believe the guff they write? It doesn’t matter: they just warm their hands on the outrage, count the clicks and wait for the pay cheque.

The egomaniacs are also tragic figures. They are disappointed, frustrated people whose careers have stalled and who can’t understand why the world refuses to give full reverence to their brilliance. They are desperate for recognition, and, when it stubbornly refuses to arrive, they are drawn to make increasingly extreme pronouncements, in the hope of finally being proved a dogma-busting, 21st-century Galileo.

The ideological fool is the fourth type of climate denier, and they can be intelligent. But they are utterly blinded by their inane, no-limits version of the free-market creed. The climate emergency requires coordinated global action, they observe, and that looks horribly like communism in disguise.

They could explore the many credible climate action plans being pursued, including by those on the political right. But their cognitive dissonance forces them to the conclusion that because state intervention is wrong, acting to avert climate danger cannot be right. Intellectual gymnastics to “expose” climate alarmism then follow naturally.

But why do I say ignore them all? The climate crisis is urgent, and we need debate to drive action. However, vigorous debates over action are already taking place in good faith all over the world, from the tops of governments to the smallest local action groups.

SOURCE




Biden wants to kill an economic gold mine

Just last week, Joe Biden once again reaffirmed his commitment to killing the fossil fuel industry. Ironically enough, it was fossil fuel development, namely natural gas and the fracking boom, that accounted for the vast majority of growth and job creation during the economic “recovery” of his President Barack Obama. The wannabe 46th president wants to end fossil fuel production by 2035, beginning at a time when the nation will be rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic. Should Biden have his cake and eat it too?

Let’s take a quick review of the Obama economy that Biden is happy to take credit for and seeks to emulate. The economy under Obama averaged just 2% GDP growth, the “new normal,” as New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman named it. To be fair, assuming office in the middle of a recession is no blessing, but Obama’s attachment to Keynesian economics slowed down the nation’s recovery.

In fact, the Obama administration actively worked to restrict the very industry that led the economy as a percentage of GDP growth. Oil and gas development accounted for nearly half of GDP growth and the hydraulic fracking boom alone accounted for 9.3 million jobs, nearly half of the jobs created during his entire presidency. States such as Texas contributed nearly 70% of all jobs created during the Obama administration. Wage growth for workers in the natural gas industry also skyrocketed, with workers in states such as North Dakota seeing their weekly wages increase up to 40% post-shale boom. Without oil and gas development, there would have been almost no economic or job growth during the Obama administration.

Energy production laid the foundation for energy independence. Offshore drilling and the shale boom resulted in a decline in imports of foreign oil. By the end of the Obama years, the United States saw a 74% increase in oil production. By 2016, imports of foreign oil had declined by 4 million barrels since before Obama assumed office. Yet, it wasn’t until President Trump implemented a laissez faire approach to energy that America was finally able to achieve energy independence.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, at the behest of far-left environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, did everything it could to impede the fossil fuel industry through executive orders and overregulation. Now, Biden wants to end U.S. fossil fuel production altogether by 2035. Regardless of Obama’s wavering support for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, the industry and the economy saw tremendous growth thanks to its implementation.

By 2014, 98.5% of fracking occurred on nonfederal lands. Permits for federal onshore extraction during the Obama administration declined. For all the talk of Russian meddling in American affairs, there’s clear evidence the Kremlin funded the anti-fracking movement.

Obama’s push for renewable energy, which focused on wind and solar energy, failed to achieve market dominance. Crony schemes such as Solyndra wound up costing taxpayers. By the end of the Obama administration, renewables only contributed 10% of energy production. Biden wants to “revive” this failed experiment in energy independence.

A recent report from the International Energy Administration indicated that U.S. carbon emissions may have peaked — that’s without the Paris Agreement, the Clean Power Plan, and abundant federal tax breaks and schemes to prop up renewable energy artificially. It goes without saying that U.S. carbon emissions have peaked without the destruction of a major sector of the U.S. economy.

Is Biden listening? Has he considered how voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania might react to his proclamation of doom for the natural gas industry?

Just as Obama couldn’t take credit for the economic boom we are seeing under the Trump administration, Biden can’t claim he will oversee a resurgent economy if he plans to eliminate fossil fuel production. The oil and gas boom powered the economic recovery from the Great Recession. Now, with the U.S. looking to emerge from the COVID-19 downturn, Biden wants to do everything in his power to end U.S. energy dominance.

SOURCE





The Sierra Club's 'Racist' Founder

In an era when it is all the rage for businesses and organizations to make bold declarations about recognizing their racial problems, it was hardly surprising when the Sierra Club came forward with its own mea culpa. Among the flood of companies posting their black squares on social media for Blackout Tuesday, the only ones who have managed to stand out are those not bending a knee to the mob. But the fact that the Sierra Club’s introspective outreach was lost in the deluge of other virtue-signaling outlets is illustrative of its superfluousness.

The environmental outfit recently came forward to announce it was addressing the problematic history of one of its founders, John Muir. Beyond helping to create the organization, Muir is credited with preserving Yosemite Valley, worked with presidents to protect natural sites, and aided in the creation of the National Park Service. In environmental circles, Muir holds an esteemed history on par with our Founding Fathers. Given that many of our Founders are coming under fire for social inequities, however, it is not shocking that Muir would also be scorned.

While its desire to be recognized for enlightened thinking is obvious, the Sierra Club — and any entity seeking to cleanse its soul, for that matter — needs to accept that things from the past are, in fact, the past. To acknowledge and demean its founder over views he held in his era does nothing to improve the lot of the organization today.

By today’s standards of “wokeness,” yes, Muir’s views are out of alignment. But Muir created the Sierra Club in the late 1800s, and as the club’s announcement notes, his stances were in line with those of many of the time. He had associations with members of white supremacist groups, but he also did great work on behalf of the environment. Why is that legacy now invalidated? The conflict is on display in this passage:

"In these early years, the Sierra Club was basically a mountaineering club for middle- and upper-class white people who worked to preserve the wilderness they hiked through — wilderness that had begun to need protection only a few decades earlier, when white settlers violently displaced the Indigenous peoples who had lived on and taken care of the land for thousands of years."

In noting Muir’s racist views, the Sierra Club article also notes that “his views evolved later in his life.’’ A piece on Muir addressing his issues in the LA Times lists numerous faults but adds that those are emblematic of a turn-of-the-century mindset. “He was a man of his times,’’ says the paper, lending a qualifier, ‘’who actively worked to displace California Indians by taking their lands.” Even this crime is somewhat couched.

In citing a previous op-ed, the paper mentions Muir’s hostility toward Native Americans. “Muir was depressingly conventional on matters of race, afflicted with a garden-variety Victorian white supremacism,” it stated in his profile. In discussing his work at the preservation of Yosemite National Park, it mentions the Native Americans beset by disease and displaced by force, but then mentions that tragedy took place ‘’17 years before he arrived in 1868.’’ In similar fashion, the Sierra Club article mentions his association with Henry Fairfield Osborn, who ran the New York Zoological Society and the American Museum of Natural History. The problem is, Osborn also helped to found the American Eugenics Society. The article notes he did so, ‘’in the years after Muir’s death.’’

While some of John Muir’s guilt is direct, just as much of it is tangential, and most seems to be rooted in the time in which he lived. While noting his social infractions appears needed today, so too should there be recognition that we are applying contemporary social standards to a man whose conservation efforts began 150 years ago. The question needs to be, do the positions held a century and a half ago — which have little influence today — somehow eclipse the work he did, which has lasted and even grown?

This is not to suggest that his views, toxic by today’s measures, should be ignored. But in the same thought, neither should his work be erased. Otherwise, logic would dictate that if he is regarded as so poisonous as to be stricken from the record, then the outfit this detestable man created should be completely disbanded. Someone so vile could only create a contemptible organization — so close up shop and cease activity.

This, we know, will not take place. The work being done and the goals already in place are too important, they’ll say. This should explain exactly why it is foolhardy of the organization to be swept up in today’s emotional flurry of self-flagellation. The Sierra Club itself references a completely different image of their founder, in fact. In a linked item from a few years ago, a lengthy study of the man shows deep admiration for Native Americans and how they operate as a people and treat the land and expresses contempt for how our military and government treated them.

Why this facet of John Muir can now be overlooked explains the shallowness of the entire movement we are currently experiencing. People are imperfect to begin with, so to ferret out those imperfections from the past to judge and impugn today is not only damaging, but wrong. Lost in the demands for perfection from history is that today’s judgments are being made by equally imperfect people.

SOURCE




Australian irrigators pushed for 'primacy' over the environment in water allocations

NSW's main irrigator lobby group pressed the Berejiklian government to place the state's water plans above the federal law and sought to tap water earmarked for the environment.

The demands are detailed in a letter obtained by the Herald and The Age the NSW Irrigators Council (NSWIC) sent to the state's senior water bureaucrat in April.

At the time, the government was putting final touches to new water sharing plans it has since submitted to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for accreditation.

The irrigators sought the insertion of words that would "confirm primacy" of the plans over the 2007 Commonwealth Water Act, a move environmental lawyers say would trigger legal challenges.

The council also backed a narrowing of the definition of what constitutes so-called planned environmental water, a call it noted Water Minister Melinda Pavey had taken up.

The irrigators thanked the Planning Department for the removal of some environmental water rules, citing the Murrumbidgee River as one example.

The push to identify and allocate "underused" water for farming use may also open the way for legal challenges if such changes run counter to the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Claire Miller, interim chief executive of the NSWIC, said her organisation stood by the letter's contents.

Emma Carmody, special counsel for the Environmental Defenders Office, said while it was normal for a lobby group to advocate its members' interest it was surprising to see them seek water sharing plan provisions at odds with the basin plan and Water Act.

"Water sharing plans are subordinate legal instruments," Dr Carmody said. "Like all subordinate legal instruments, they sit under, and must comply with, overarching statutes, not the inverse."

Independent NSW MP Justin Field noted the council had recently complained in a letter that their concerns were not being addressed. This leaked document, though, was "proof that they are being heard at the highest levels of government and are getting their way".

"This letter spells out that the Irrigators Council have successfully lobbied to remove significant amounts of water designated for the environment and these changes have made it into the final water sharing plans without other stakeholders having the opportunity to comment," Mr Field said. "That is an outrageous process."

The call for primacy of the state plans over the federal laws was "a gobsmacking request that shows them as bad-faith actors in the implementation of the entire basin plan", he said.

A spokeswoman for Ms Pavey said the government had "consulted widely on all changes to the state water sharing plans" over the past three years.

Other groups consulted included the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, key Aboriginal groups such as the Murray Lower Darling Indigenous Nations and Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations organisations, environmental interests and local councils.

"It shouldn’t be a surprise that the NSW government is committed to creating water policy that benefits water users, including the environment," the spokeswoman said.

It comes as the recently released Living Planet index found the numbers of such fish had plunged 76 per cent globally since 1970, including 59 per cent in Oceania.

Lee Baumgartner, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University and a lead researcher for the project, said fish numbers for many species in NSW were less than 10 per cent of their pre-European colonial times.

"We're dealing with severe water deficiencies," he said, some of which were caused by dams and other interventions.

"By fixing rivers for fish, you are by default fixing them for irrigators," Professor Baumgartner 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 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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Biden’s false climate promises

Biden’s multi-trillion dollar climate action plan is full of promises that the law says he cannot keep. Promising to do what you cannot do is a false promise. Here are some big ticket examples.

Biden says “If I am elected I will do the following:

Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…

Create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations…

Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities…”

What is wrong with these grand promises? Simple. The President of the United States has no authority, or the money, to do any of these things. That authority (and money) belongs solely to the U.S. Congress. So here is what these promises really amount to.

Biden really says “If elected I promise to do the following:

Beg Congress to do something about America’s crumbling infrastructure. I will propose a big plan but what they do is up to them.

Implore Congress to somehow create a lot of jobs in the American auto industry. How they do it is up to them.

Repeatedly ask Congress to build a lot of zero-emissions public transit stuff. I will bug the hell out of them. (What they do is up to them.)”

Not quite so grand sounding, are they? In fact they are pretty humble, because Congress, not the President, runs the U.S. Government. That who is President is all important is just a myth, albeit a seemingly universal myth.

Nor is the Congress likely to do much of this hugely expensive stuff, even if the Democrats win both houses, which is also unlikely. Unlikely + unlikely = very unlikely. This is especially true because Biden’s undocumented cost estimate of two trillion dollars is way low. It is more like twenty trillion.

It would require trillions of dollars in new taxes, which is political suicide, especially in the House where every seat is voted on every two years. The symbolic House Climate Crisis Committee put out an even grander plan than Biden’s, but like the toothless Committee that plan is just symbolic.

Note by the way that there is no mention of all these jobs being union in the real promises. Even Congress cannot make that happen. There are “Buy American” clauses in Federal contracts, but no “Only Unions Shops Can Bid On This” clauses. That would be truly unconstitutional.

It has been suggested that all this pro-union rhetoric is to make up for Biden’s unacceptably truthful admission that killing the fossil fuel industry would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. Or it may be because AOC, who is hot on unions, is his top climate plan planner. In any case it is yet another false promise.

People running for President should only promise to do what Presidents can actually do. They cannot speak for Congress so should not pretend to. Biden’s climate promises are so false they are absurd. You can’t get there from here.

SOURCE 





Lord Monckton Delivers His Most Important Intelliqence Report Yet: CO2 is Saving Earth

This is from a year ago but is a very thorough coverage of the whole scientific picture.  The fact that the video is on Infowars simply reflects the difficulty skeptics have in getting published on mainstream platforms





Climate misanthropes

Most of the doomsaying elites are candid about their contempt for the value of human life and about their political endgame. They are defined by the term misanthropes, “people who dislike humankind”.

Liberal ideologues preach that an all powerful central government on a Global scale is necessary to save the planet. It is also necessary to equitably distribute the worlds financial and physical resources.

Christina Figueres, former chief of The international Panel on Climate Change, called communism the optimal system for avoiding dangerous global warming in an article in the Daily Caller on January 15, 2014. A year later on February 3, 2015 at a European conference she acknowledged that the UN’s climate program has provided the political and organizational wherewithal to replace the economic system that made modern economic growth possible. She said : “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

That is a “frighteningly arrogant statement” said Steve Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White in their brilliant 2016 book FUELING FREEDOM. This requires central planning with uncompromising faith in the power of government and an even stronger belief that personal freedom need not be present in society. It actually describes all the groups battling against our current government. Could they all be misanthropes?

The economic development model that the UN climate czar consigns to the dustbin of history allowed a middle class to flourish. The hallmarks of that model, private property rights, a competitive market and personal freedom are today intertwined with the availability and and creative conversions of fossil fuels.

In the 1970s when the politics of environmentalism emerged, The Club of Rome published a dystopian manifesto titled Limits To Growth predicting the end of growth and the need for a centrally controlled economy. Mr. Biden is building on that plan in his platform for the nation.

In the Club of Rome’s 1991 publication The First Global Revolution, the organization unashamedly revealed their misanthropic world view. It said, “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famines and the like would fit the bill.” Yes you read that correctly.

Not to be outdone in misanthropy Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in a report to The Federation of American Scientists in 1978 “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

The Marxist founder of the United Nations Environment Program, the late Maurice Strong, contended that “the only hope for the planet” is the collapse of industrialized civilizations. The planetary management advocated by these alarmists is to be carried out by those sanctioned by the elites rather than by the consent of the people.

Few Americans on either side of the political spectrum appear to be aware of this dark side of the global warming issue, and few public officials seem willing to risk the wrath that the mainstream media reserves for climate heretics. Yet opinion polls consistently show that a strong majority of the U.S. citizens abhor the idea of global governance. Europeans may be accustomed to their governments social engineering. We doubt that a critical mass of Americans are willing to surrender to green mandates that will limit the number of miles they drive until they purchase an electric car. If our democratic form of government is to endure, energy policies must be made to satisfy the desires of the public. This could well end Nov 3.

Given the weakening evidence for any concern about climate change and the counterproductive consequences of climate policies, surely economic growth offers the best bet for adaptation to what ever change the Earth might experience. America’s future may not offer a climate any different from today’s, but the future that the alarmists propose is a regression toward the pre-industrial era devoid of the freedoms and prosperity afforded by plentiful energy.

Today it would be hard to argue that no one other than George Soros is the worlds most powerful and effective misanthrope. It would take a team of psychiatrists to figure out why a man with a billion dollars who has made his home in America would so despise this country as to devote decades and his few remaining years at 89 to destroying his adopted homeland.

Perhaps an undiagnosed brain tumor or premature dementia brought on this psychosis. Why else would he finance people intent on undermining all this country has stood for. Why else would he help elect the politicians who allow thugs to run wild burning , looting and vandalizing to their heart’s content.

We are told that Soros is a socialist, but what is a Socialist’s idea of a perfect socialist state: a dictatorship modeled on the old Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela? Or perhaps Nazi Germany, where though he was a Hungarian Jew , he cast his lot with the barbarians. He identifies with them still.

SOURCE 




Australia: More funding needed in government push to cut 'green tape': industry

Resource and agricultural industries are welcoming plans to cut "green tape" and speed up project development by handing control of some elements of national environment laws to state governments, but they say changes cannot come at the expense of wildlife protection.

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced in July plans for a "one-touch" regime that transfers to states the Commonwealth's legal responsibilities for protecting threatened species and ecosystems in assessments of major projects that come under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Ms Ley has ruled out financial support to help the states conduct extra work under a new system. But she has said states would have to show they could meet the standards required under the act, which include assessing complicated, long-term impacts of activities such as land clearing, coal mining or sinking wells for gas production, and impacts on flora, fauna and the water table.

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable welcomed the opportunity to speed project approvals and said the mining industry relied on a "strong social licence" and for environmental assessments "to be done properly".

"The single-touch system is a huge opportunity because it gets rid of duplication and complexity in different systems that exist between state and federal governments," Ms Constable said. "But the department or body that has carriage of compliance must have the right amount of resources."

Federal administration of the act has fallen short since it was created in 1999. The list of threatened species and ecosystems has grown by a third – from 1483 to 1974. More than 8 million hectares of threatened species' habitats have been cleared in that time, mostly for project development, but 93 per cent of these were not assessed under the legislation.

A report last month from the Commonwealth Auditor-General found the Environment Department failed to protect endangered wildlife or manage conflicts of interest in development approvals, and 79 per cent of approvals were non-compliant or contained errors.

National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said green tape was a "huge concern" for the farm sector, with uncertainty about different state and federal processing discouraging investment in activities that should be simply and quickly assessed, such as clearing regrowth of invasive species from a property.

"It is limiting innovation and expansion of farms. Put simply, people don't know what they can and can't do," Mr Mahar said.

He also called for more funding to bolster the system.

"Of course there needs to be more funding, for better engagement with industry about the act, and to make sure the regulations are working they way they were intended," Mr Mahar said.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said the proposed changes could "improve certainty and flexibility for business, environmental groups and communities" and "provide greater flexibility when circumstances change while ensuring environmental protection is maintained".

The government's plans were announced in response a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act by former competition regulator Graeme Samuel, who found the national laws were “not fit to address current or future environmental challenges” and that for industry they are "ineffective and inefficient".

Last week Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his initial meeting with state leaders had been "really positive" and he was confident that negotiations with state governments would lead to agreement for a new regulatory regime.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Greenie son resigns from News Corp board

Good riddance to James.  Lachlan is more balanced, like his father, so the publications will not change noticeably

James Murdoch has resigned from the board of News Corp over a disagreement with its editorial coverage of politics and environmental issues in a move that severs his ties to his family's global media empire.

Mr Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said he would step down as a director of the owner of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Australian and the right-wing Fox News cable television network immediately.

His decision is not completely unexpected - Mr Murdoch has previously expressed unease with News Corp’s editorial direction - but it does confirm a professional rift in the multibillion-dollar business.

"My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," Mr Murdoch said in a letter to the board on July 31. News Corp confirmed the resignation to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and said that the board would reduce to 10 directors. Mr Murdoch had been on the board of directors since 2013.

A joint statement from Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch wished Mr Murdoch “the very best”. “We’re grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” the pair, who are co-chairman and chief executive officers, said.

Mr Murdoch and his wife Kathryn Hufschmid, who has worked for the Clinton Climate Initiative, have previously spoken publicly about their concerns with News Corp’s editorial direction. In September last year Mr Murdoch told The New Yorker he strongly disagreed with many of Fox News’ views and admitted that there were times where he and his father did not talk. Fox News backed US President Donald Trump’s campaign and regularly espouses conservative views.

In October last year Mr Murdoch told Vanity Fair that there was an urgent need for solutions on climate change, adequate health care and income inequality. When News Corp’s local news arm, which also publishes The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun, was criticised globally for its coverage of the Australian bushfire crisis in January, Mr Murdoch broke ranks and accused the global media empire of promoting climate denialism.

News Corp’s local newspapers have previously been accused by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd and former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull of running partisan campaigns against them. Lachlan Murdoch is close to former conservative Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, according to people who know him.

A spokesperson for Mr Murdoch and his wife told The Daily Beast in January that the couple were “particularly disappointed” in the bushfire coverage by News Corp’s Australian news outlets.

Columns by Melbourne writer Andrew Bolt and Sky commentator (and The Australian Financial Review columnist) Rowan Dean in the tabloids and former ASX chairman Maurice Newman in The Australian have described climate change as a "cult" and "a socialist plot".

In a broadcast on News Corp-owned Sky News, Bolt criticised the "constant stream of propaganda" on the ABC about the climate crisis.

"Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known," the spokesperson said in January.

Three former executives of News Corp, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age at the time that Mr Murdoch’s statement was unsurprising given his views on climate change and his difficult relationship with his brother, Lachlan, are well known.

"James and Lachlan are ideologically apart and will continue to be," one of the former executives said, while another said Mr Murdoch was looking to intentionally distance himself from the scrutiny his family was receiving. But the timing of Mr Murdoch’s abrupt exit on Friday is interesting given the fast-approaching US election.

Several weeks ago Mr Murdoch and his wife each contributed more than US$615,000 to a fundraising committee for former Vice President Joseph Biden, who is hoping to fight for the presidency against US President Donald Trump at the upcoming election. His resignation also follows the release of the BBC documentary The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty.

Ironically several people familiar with the family’s thinking believe Mr Murdoch has left at a time when the company is subtly watering down its support of Mr Trump. Some of its key mastheads including The Australian are also adopting a more centrist political approach, according to people familiar with the matter.

Whatever the motive, James' decision puts an end to his tumultuous professional relationship with his father and brother Lachlan, who has long been considered Rupert’s favourite.

James has fallen in and out of favour with his father over the years but until 2011, was considered the heir apparent to the family’s media empire. According to people familiar with the Murdoch family, James is also considered to be most like his father.

"James is like his father, News Corp people believe," Michael Wolff wrote in 2008. "He's aggressive, implacable, focused, remote, fit, precise. His father is obviously proud, even perhaps slightly afraid of him."

But the disastrous News of The World scandal in 2011, which occurred while James was running News Corp’s holdings in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, rattled his position in the family empire and challenged his relationship with his father. While he was later appointed chief executive of 21st Century Fox, his older brother’s position as family heir was made apparent in 2018 following the announcement of the family’s $US52.4 billion sale of 21st Century Fox to Walt Disney, when he was named chief executive of what would be known as Fox Corporation.

A 20,000 word piece in The New York Times last year said the two brothers were barely on speaking terms.

James Murdoch will not leave the board without a large sum of money. While he will no longer receive board fees, he still made more than $US1 billion from the Walt Disney acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which was completed early last year.

James Murdoch flagged he would make climate change-focused investments with his earnings from the Disney merger and step away from the family business. He continues to hold shares in News Corp.

SOURCE 





Watching CO2 feed the world

By David Wojick

Watching a child grow is seeing carbon dioxide in action. Plants turn CO2 into the food we eat to live and grow on. “You can't live on air” is a common saying but that is just what we do; we live on air and water.

Few people appreciate this amazing fact, that CO2 in the air is the global food supply. Our meat, fruit and veggies, also our candy and ice cream, milk and wine, are built almost entirely from carbon dioxide and water. Everything we eat and drink.

There is also a bit of nitrogen, to make protein, plus a bunch of trace minerals and vitamins, but you and I are basically composed of processed H2O and CO2.

We should be very thankful that this CO2 food supply is increasing every year, along with our hungry mouths. Instead the climate alarmists want to reduce it, supposedly to make the weather better. This is truly stupid. Carbon dioxide is feeding the world, more every year. The last thing we want to do is reduce the global food supply.

The chemistry is complex but the facts are simple (and miraculous). Plants use the energy of sunlight to transform CO2 and water into their food. They both live and grow on this food, just as we do. Animals eat the plants and each other, then we eat both. Thus we all live on processed carbon dioxide.

It is no accident that we exhale water and carbon dioxide. We are simply completing what is called the carbon cycle when we do this. Our bodies use some of the CO2 based food for the energy they need to live and this returns the carbon dioxide and water to their original form. All living things exist this way.

Carbon cycle: CO2 (+ water) in ­> Life­> CO2 (+ water) out.
Life is a CO2 based miracle.

It is a tragedy of ignorance that almost no one knows about this miracle. I have seen school lessons that actually teach the carbon cycle without mentioning carbon dioxide. They talk as though plants get their food from the ground, not the air.

Even worse, CO2 is demonized as air pollution. The world’s food supply cannot be pollution. How stupid is that!

To correct this ignorance it might be useful to label our foods with the amount of carbon dioxide they embody. We already label them for calories, fat, vitamins and such. People should learn how much CO2 they eat every day and be thankful for it.

Water is plentiful in most places, but carbon dioxide is scarce everywhere. For every million molecules of air only about 400 are CO2. That plants can actually find and consume these scarce molecules is amazing in itself. That all life ultimately feeds on these molecules is even more amazing.

A hundred years ago there were less than 300 molecules per million but happily that number has increased steadily. Plant productivity has increased accordingly, helping to feed our growing population. This is called the greening of planet Earth.

The climate alarmists have people calculating their so-called “carbon footprint” which is how much CO2 they cause to be generated. Everyone should be proud of their carbon footprint; it is helping feed the world. Make it bigger, not smaller.

For more on the miracle of carbon dioxide, check out the CO2 Coalition. For a lot of the science see the CO2 Science website.

SOURCE 




An electric Hummer!

Just a folly

Side profile images of the upcoming reborn Hummer have been revealed by General Motors in the US overnight. And before anyone is wondering why GM is reviving a brand that symbolised gas guzzlers and excess, it's worth noting these will be fully electric vehicles.

In a video posted to the GMC website, the silhouettes of a twin cab pick-up and an SUV wagon can be seen.

A clay sculpting of the car, and a body shell, are also shown at various points during the video.

The clip includes purported vehicle performance figures which, if true, will be quite phenomenal.

GMC claims the new Hummer will have “up to” 1000 horsepower (745kW) and 11,500 foot-pounds of torque (15,591Nm) – although a final motor torque figure is still to be announced, we should expect it to be in the neighbourhood of 1000 to 1500Nm.

A 0-60mph (96.5kmh) acceleration time of 3 seconds is claimed, which would make it one of the fastest cars on the road, let alone being a quick time for a pick-up truck.

For context, a new Porsche 911 does the 0 to 100kmh dash in about 4 seconds and a V8 Holden Commodore took about 5 seconds to complete the same feat.

The vehicle’s initial launch was postponed earlier this year, however according to GM the car will now be available for pre-order sometime from September to December this year.

General Motors says production will begin at a US factory in 2021, but did not provide more specific timing.

The new Hummer is just one of several high profile upcoming electric trucks coming from General Motors and other rivals.

The Rivian R1T is expected to go into production in early 2021, while the Tesla Cybertruck will likely follow later in the year.

The Ford Electric F-150 is scheduled for a mid-2022 launch, and will be followed by the Nikola Badger.

The production schedules of all five vehicles have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

However, it is clear US customers will soon be spoiled for choice of full size electric pick-ups within the next few years.

SOURCE 




The Democrats' Jihad Against Hydroxychloroquine and for a green new deal

The COVID-19 global pandemic knocked America's robust economy back on its heels. As states cautiously re-open, President Trump has been laser-focused on supporting small businesses and getting our nation to work. However, in Washington, D.C., with 51 million people out of work, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats, and their connected cronies have abused SBA loans. They have snuck numerous provisions into emergency bills under the cover of COVID-19.

The most terrifying sign of Democrats' plans is their embracing the previously dismissed "Green New Deal," which was a radical environmental proposal from self-described socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the third-ranking House Democrat, was too honest by admitting his party wants to use billions in COVD-19 rescue funds to "restructure things to fit our vision."

Democrats are showing their cards of enacting this left-wing dream legislation in pieces through the tax code. It is time to sound the alarm, and conservatives must carefully watch the latest developments.

Democrats are focused on tax-bills because they only take a simple 51-majority vote in the Senate, utilizing "budget reconciliation" rules. First, this was tried with the so-called "Moving Forward Act" a $1.5 trillion spending bill full of radical environmentalist plans.  Also, there were additional disturbing provisions in the highway reauthorization pork-barrel bill, including green-tax credits, which extends and expands credits for wealthy homeowners with solar panels, storage devices, energy-efficient windows, and geothermal converters until 2025.

Once presented as "temporary" tax incentives, it is clear Democrats never want these green handouts to affluent taxpayers and highly-profitable renewable energy companies to end.

The truth is, America does not need new environmental regulation. We, along with other industrialized nations, can lower carbon emissions and still generate massive growth. Dozens of the world's largest companies have reduced carbon emissions by 12 percent, and major oil companies report their methane emissions have declined by 40 percent while oil production is steadily increasing. America needs free-market innovation, not manipulative tax code changes, and job-killing policies, especially during a pandemic!

As Ryan Ellis of the Center for a Free Economy correctly observes, as COVID-19-related legislation continues to be rushed through Congress this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump must stop all sneaky "Green New Deal" tax provisions.

We are not out of this pandemic, but the American people can overcome any obstacle.  Using disaster and death to enact an extreme agenda must stop. Let's re-elect President Trump, make real progress on ending the pandemic, and get Americans back to work.

SOURCE                                                                           

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Green Prince Of Darkness….Exposed

Today we have a new Green Prince poised to plunge the western world into a self imposed darkness.  This Prince first creates the fiction that Carbon causes climate change, then adds the fable that green energy exists which can dispel this nonexistent problem.  The entire range of ‘green solutions’ are all nonsensical.  We’ll limit this discussion to just solar cells and batteries, saving bio-fuels and windmills for another time.

    The Sun Gives Us Nothing for Free

As alluring as the premise may be, the promise of solar energy is not free.  The first solar cell was created in 1883 by Charles Fritts using a sheet of Selenium with thin Gold facings.  The Sun radiates approximately 1000 watts per square meter at maximum.  The Fritts cell produced 10 watts per square meter or 1% efficiency. The Russell Ohl patent of 1946 is considered the first modern solar cell.  Today’s solar panels are high purity Silicon with a light doping of Phosphorus and Boron to provide breaks in the Silicone for electron movement.

The Universe is a radiation chamber with EMR and particle emissions from all concentrated mass, and decay particles from individual atoms.  Solar radiation strips protons from Nitrogen atoms, creating Carbon-14.  Stripping exposed electrons is even easier.  Silicon has four rather stable outer shell electrons in an orbit that can hold eight electrons.  Boron has five outer-shell electrons, and Phosphorus has only three.  Silicon forms a cubic crystal grid, and slightly impure Silicone matrix sheets can then be embedded with Boron and Phosphorus atoms.

When exposed to sunlight, the Boron atom losses it’s easily excited fifth electron, which travels the Silicon matrix using the Phosphorus “hole” to the conducting collection grids on both sides of the photovoltaic cell and permanently exits the cell.

Only segments of the solar spectrum activate this flow and it must be captured on both sides of the panel to create a circuit.  The required capture grid blocks some of the incoming energy and the net result is 10% efficiency, or approximately 100 watts per square meter, and only within limited ambient temperature ranges which prohibit lenses or mirrors for simple amplification.

Efficiencies as high as 40% are available with exotic materials, but then one must address the ‘high cost of free’, which applies to every ‘green’ technology.  Silicon, Phosphorus and Boron are common elements, but to mine, refine and bring on line has a cost.  That cost is reflected in ‘cost payback’ of 5 to 7 years depending on the system and level of government forced subsidy.  But these costs are based on low cost carbon based energy systems providing these materials.   Regardless, this is a ONE-TIME, ONE-WAY EROSION PROCESS with a total system life of less than 20 years.

Solar cells produce only Direct Current, which is electric power by the migration of electrons, and in typical PV cells is only 1.5 volts.  Alternating Current creates a voltage, but transfers power as a wave, rapidly cycled between positive and negative, with little actual electron migration.  The first municipal Edison power systems were DC, but transmission loss and multiple voltage issues prevented success, and the Tesla-Westinghouse developed three-phase AC system became the driving force for modernization.

Converting DC to AC involves a conversion loss in an inverter, boosting to higher voltage and converting to more efficient three phase causes additional losses due to the Carnot Cycle. If you connect a hydro-turbine to a pump, you can only pump a portion of the water flowing from a dam into water pumped back to the dam.  If you use the hydro-turbine to generate electricity, then use an electric pump to pump water back ablve the dam, then the losses are even greater.  The combined losses converting 1.5 volt DC to usable 50 kV, three phase transmissible AC power is forever technically impossible.

Ignoring just these physical limitations, supposed science leading publications like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Discover, regularly show fanciful space based systems where vast arrays of solar panels, positioned around the planet, beam “sustainable” microwave energy back to Earth based antennas to provide 24 hour service.  Never mind all the limitations above, now add the Carnot loss converting to microwaves on both ends of this system.  Limitations to the field density of this transmission would require massive antennas, or large, “no fly zones” for humans, and instant on the fly cook zones for any stray birds.

To overcome solar wind and lunar gravity changes, these microwave transmitters would require constant realignment, or the transmissions would wander off the receiving antenna.  The fact that this science fiction is presented as anything other than TOTAL FICTION, is proof that these publications are all “pop” and no science.

Much like paying your Visa bill with your Master Card, this parasitic ‘clean’ energy cannot provide the ‘spare’ energy to avoid ‘dirty’ energy.  There is a constant loss of electrons in this system and power production erodes over time until, at twenty years, they are useless.  The Silicon sheets are protected with glass covers which require periodic cleaning and are subject to damage from hail and wind debris.

Solar cells efficiency is also a function of azimuth angle and reduces with higher latitudes, and seasonal tilt angle.  Systems with tracking ability have higher efficiency, but not recoverable installation costs.  You get progressively less energy at the poles, precisely at the time when you need the MOST energy.  To have usable power over extended periods requires a storage system. The most common of these is the battery, which is the heart of that ‘other’ planet saver.

   Dream Green Machine

Soon Electric Vehicles, aka EVs, will replace the nasty internal combustion engine and humanity will be in harmony with the Universe.  The transition technology in this race is the hybrid auto and the front runner is the Toyota Prius.  This undeniable marvel has a 120 pound Nichol-Metal Hydride battery that costs $3500 to replace or approximately $20 per pound.  There again, a cost based on carbon energy providing the material production.

The ‘Metal Hydride’ portion of these batteries includes the rare Earth elements of Lanthanum, Cerium and Neodymium.  These required green components do not willingly join the green cult movement.  To have your treasured EV, this planet must be mined and those elements must be extracted and refined.

Due to chemical erosion thru use, these batteries have an eight year or 100,000 mile warranty period.  You can save $450 per year on gasoline if you spend $450 per year on a battery.  You can walk forever up the down escalator and still get nowhere.  There is no way to improve or even ‘sustain’ our carbon-based life forms without expending some geologically stored carbon energy.

To the blue-green Hollywood Eco-Smurfs and Na’vi wannabe’s, we are NOT living on a green Pandora that needs rescue from the evil RDA mining company.  Humanity will not be saved by mythical noble savages or a forced return to a primitive life style.  It took most of the nineteenth century to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics.  It took most of the twentieth century to apply those laws to the benefit of society.  There will be no solutions to problems in the twenty first century that do not comply with these laws.

Curiously missing from the Climatology degree plan is any mention of Thermodynamics.  Avoidance of these Laws must give license to break these Laws.  Thus clouds can have a negative factor during the day, with their pesky ‘albedo’ effect reflecting sunlight back into space and then just hours later have a positive effect by blanketing the warmth at night….a reflector or greenhouse at the whim of a Climatologist.

Climatologist can ignore the specific heat and thermal mass of the entire planet and provide a computer model PROVING that the trace human portion, of a trace gas, in the trace portion of the Earth mass that is the atmosphere, is the single greatest climate forcing factor.  They can then empower this three atom molecule the unique ability to radiate in a reverse flow in opposition to all proven Thermodynamic Laws.  This is lawless behavior, which is by definition, criminal behavior.

SOURCE 






Trump Administration Proposes Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rule for U.S. Manufactured Aircraft

The administration of President Donald Trump has announced it is imposing standards for aviation greenhouse gas emissions on domestic airplane manufacturers, a move intended to comply with the standards set by the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), of which the United States is a member.

The global standard was adopted by the ICAO governing council in 2016, and endorsed by all ICAO member states as an international standard in 2017.

The announcement to set domestic limits on aviation emissions was a bit unexpected from the Trump administration, which has generally avoided international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions.

The standard announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires all airplanes designed by domestic airplane manufacturers on or after January 1, 2020 to produce 4 percent less carbon dioxide emissions below levels emitted by aircraft in 2015. The standard also applies to all airplanes in production on or after January 1, 2028—giving U.S. manufacturers a five year longer period to meet the international standards than the 2023 date set by the ICAO. Airplanes currently in-use or that come into use during the intervening period are not required to meet the new standard.

The proposed rule is now undergoing the required review process and comment period, which must be completed before it is finalized and becomes official.

EPA Response

In EPA’s press release announcing the aviation emission proposal, the agency notes ICAO’s standards were developed “with significant input from EPA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and U.S. and international aviation industries.”

Three quarters of the aircraft manufactured in the United States are sold internationally, thus EPA says it proposed making the standard a domestic requirement to ensure consistent standards across the world, and to allow U.S. manufactured planes to continue to compete in the global marketplace.

“This standard is the first time the U.S. has ever proposed regulating greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Along with the Affordable Clean Energy and Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicle rule, this is the Trump Administration’s third major action to take sensible, legally defendable steps to regulate greenhouse gases, while safeguarding American jobs and the economy.”

Environmental Groups Want More

Shortly after the rule was proposed, a variety of environmental groups claimed the rule does not go nearly far enough to combat so-called climate change.

Reuters reports the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) climate legal director, Clare Lockwood, called the proposed rule a “toothless proposal does nothing to meaningfully address the serious problem of airplanes’ planet-warming pollution.” Lockwood went on to say in a CBD press release the rules “are ‘too weak’ to address the severity of the climate crisis.”

Airplane Manufactures Support Regulation

Despite the fact that airplane manufacturers were already improving fuel efficiency and reducing emissions, having improved fleet fuel economy by 40 percent between 2000 and 2019 and having cut carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the past 30 years, Airlines for American (A4A), an aviation industry trade group, said in a press release the rule was necessary to keep international markets open for U.S. manufactured airplanes, because “without the standard, the aircraft would not be able to get critical certifications necessary for international operations.”

“EPA’s proposal to adopt ICAO’s fuel efficiency and CO2 certification standard for newly manufactured aircraft is good for our industry, for our country and for the world,” Nancy Young, A4A vice president, environmental affairs, said the organization’s press release. “Although the U.S. airlines are already driven to be highly fuel- and carbon-efficient, this stringent new emissions standard will help U.S. airlines make a green industry even greener.”

This rule promotes the domestic aircraft industry while also protecting the environment, said Bryan Watt, a spokesperson for Boeing, according to the New York Times.

“[The rule] a major step forward for protecting the environment and supporting sustainable growth of commercial aviation and the United States economy,” Watt said.

Unnecessary, Slippery Slope

It is unclear why a federal regulation is necessary to certify manufacturers meet the ICAO standards, says H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., a senior fellow for The Heartland Institute.

“If American airplane manufacturers are worried they will lose access to foreign markets unless they comply with the international standards, they can just adapt their practices and comply,” said Burnett “Nothing prevents manufacturers of any products sold internationally from meeting a foreign country’s particular standards or international standards in general, indeed they adapt their products and packaging to local markets all the time, so, they don’t need a U.S. law or regulation forcing them to do so.”

Burnett says, aside from being unnecessary, by adopting federal regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions for the first time ever on the aviation industry, the Trump administration is setting itself up to be forced to impose ever greater emission regulations on a broad range of industries to fight climate change, which Trump has referred to as a “hoax.”

“It is shameful and discouraging that the Trump administration, of all presidential administrations one can imagine, is taking the lead on imposing greenhouse gas limits on aircraft manufacturers,” said Burnett. “There is little evidence humans are causing climate change and this decision plays into the hands of power-seeking climate alarmists, who can now say ‘if aviation greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous meriting restrictions, then cars, cows, factories, and power plants are even worse emitters, so the Trump administration should adopt stricter targets on those rather than rolling back emission reduction plans set under former-President Obama.’”

SOURCE 





EPA Prioritizes Superfund Cleanup Sites Over Climate Change

Not long after the Trump administration made cleaning up Superfund sites a priority for the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler turned his attention to a century-old neighborhood built for steelworkers that sits atop soil with dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic.

Cleaning up the 1,700 residential properties on Pueblo’s southside was originally scheduled to take more than a decade, but Mr. Wheeler and then-Region 8 Administrator Doug Benevento cobbled together the additional $15 million per year needed to cut that timeframe by more than half.

“When I started with the agency in 2018, we knew what the problem was here, we knew what the solution was, but it was slated to take 10-15 years, and I just looked at that and said, that’s too long,” said Mr. Wheeler, who took over as EPA administrator last year. “We needed to get it done faster, and we are.”

The Colorado Smelter site now is slated to be completed in three to five years, part of the administration’s push to fast-track projects on the Superfund National Priorities List where “people live, work and play,” he said.

“This is a new approach we’re taking to Superfund,” said Mr. Wheeler, who toured the site Monday with EPA and local officials. “We’ll have it done by 2023, which means a couple of generations of children will be able to play in their backyard without fear of lead-contaminated soil.”

If the EPA under President Barack Obama had its eye on the sky, seeking to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases in the name of combating climate change, then the agency under President Trump has its hands in the dirt, digging into the unglamorous and often unheralded work of scrubbing polluted properties and spurring community revival.

“There are too many examples of sites around the country that have become stuck and lingered on the list for years, well beyond when they should have been cleaned up and delisted,” Mr. Wheeler said. “President Trump wanted to get these delayed sites unstuck.”

The Superfund National Priorities List is daunting, with 1,335 sites covering everything from old military arsenals to abandoned mines, but Mr. Wheeler said the agency was able to remove all or part of 27 projects last year from the list, the most in one year since 2001.

Even though neighborhoods of single-family homes like Bessemer hardly fit the Superfund stereotype, “they’re not as rare as you would think,” said Mr. Benevento, now associate deputy administrator, who cited the recent remediation of homes near a former vermiculite mine at the Libby Asbestos Site in Montana.

Expediting the Colorado Smelter cleanup creates a domino effect for other Superfund projects, he said.

“By doing this more quickly, we’re saving money for the taxpayer,” Mr. Benevento said.

SOURCE 






Heatwaves Are LESS Frequent and Severe

Heatwaves during recent decades remain far less frequent and severe than was the case during the 1930s – nearly 100 years of global warming ago, reports a new topical summary at the website Climate at a Glance. When climate alarmists react to annual summer heatwaves by claiming they are being caused by global warming, people interested in the truth now have a concise, compelling source for rebuttal.

According to Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves, a majority of each state’s all-time high temperature records were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of global warming ago. Also, the most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

Heatwaves have always been a natural part of the American climate. Global warming will not put an end to heatwaves. However, global warming is not making heatwaves much worse, either, if at all. That is because the lion’s share of the Earth’s modest warming occurs during winter, at night, and closer to the poles.

The graph below illustrates how heatwaves were much more frequent and severe during the 1930s. Also, data show recent heatwaves are well within historically typical ranges.

Like all other aspects of the well-funded Climate Delusion, claims that global warming is causing more frequent and severe heatwaves wilt under the heat of scientific scrutiny.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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