Climategate leaker: Our civilization is being destroyed by lying "science" elitists

The first two "Climategate" email disclosures sent shock waves through the arrogant, imperialistic "manmade catastrophic climate change" power structure - and awakened the world to just how little "science" was behind the global warming scare . and the incessant demands that we tear down the hydrocarbon energy foundation of our economy, prosperity and living standards. And those two disclosures were just 5,000 emails apiece!

Now Mr. FOIA (as the purveyor of climate alarm dishonesty calls himself) has sent a massive cache of 220,000 encrypted emails to selected friends, who will gradually decode and distribute them. We can only imagine what sordid new details will emerge. He also issued a statement, explaining why he decided he had to make the world aware of the depravity he had discovered.

Ron Arnold

"What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multi-decadal natural fluctuation? They'll kill us probably."

This private musing between two climate scientist colleagues first surfaced along with a whole raft of embarrassing material in 2011, when the anonymous Climategate leaker who calls himself "Mr. FOIA" leaked his second set of emails from Britain's disgraced Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. Now, Mr. FOIA has emerged for a third time, sharing with the world not only his entire batch of 220,000 encrypted emails and documents but also, for the first time, his thoughts.

Mr. FOIA had previously released two batches of 5,000 files each in 2009 and 2011. This enormous third batch went to a network of friends for decoding, sorting and publication.

The first and second email batches contained conversations among "scientists" who appear to have dishonored a once respectable discipline, documenting that their claims of a "man-made global warming crisis" look exactly like deliberate contrivances for academic career gain, research funding and positions of political power in "the cause."

Some big-name players are playing games with people's lives and livelihoods.

Biggest Player. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the scientific panel whose reports contain the work of Glimategate figures - and are highly politicized and publicized to increase fear of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW): "imminent catastrophic man-made climate change." Many horrendously expensive and needless local, state, federal and international policies have flowed from IPCC's flawed reports.

Most Powerful Symbol. Professor Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick Graph" was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report. It alleged that global temperatures were flat for a thousand years before 1900, but then radically increased because of AGW. The chart looks like a hockey stick, a long straight line that bends sharply upward at the end. With recent IPCC admissions that temperatures have not increased for at least the past 16 years, the curve has now plunged downward to become as flat as the rest of the hockey stick, which is where public trust in climate science is headed.

The Game. "The game is communicating climate change; the rules will help us win it," says an astounding, horrifying UK government-funded booklet leaked by Mr. FOIA titled "The Rules of the Game: Evidence base for the Climate Change Communications Strategy." Written by the UK public relations firm Futerra for six UK agencies - including The Carbon Trust - for use by ethics and public relations tone-deaf scientists,

"The Rules" teaches sophisticated behavior change tactics, including: "Climate change must be `front of mind' before persuasion works" . "Link climate change mitigation to positive desires/aspirations" . "Beware the impacts of cognitive dissonance" and "Use emotions and visuals" (e.g., scare people with the Hockey Stick Graph). It treats the public like gullible idiots who can be frightened and manipulated by seemingly trustworthy scientists to believe in AGW. For a long time, it worked.

The Team. Phil Jones, head of the CRU; Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office (the national weather service, originally the Meteorological Office) was joined by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis section head of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Tom Wigley, also of NCAR; and the litigious Penn State University Hockey Stick originator, Michael Mann.

James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute, sums their actions up this way." The team consciously distorted and actively suppressed critical knowledge, then furiously tried to hide their actions by conducting a vicious smear campaign to discredit critics."

Consciously distorted: NCAR's Wigley once complained to Mann, "Mike, the Figure you sent is very deceptive . there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.."

Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office warned Phil Jones, head of the CRU: "Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere, unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary.. I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run."

Suppressed critical knowledge: Phil Jones wrote, "I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working on the IPCC 5th  Assessment Report would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get - and has to be well hidden. I've discussed this with the main funder [the U.S. Department of Energy] in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data." The U.S. government was colluding with the hiders, who received tens of millions of dollars over the years.

Jones wrote to Mann, "Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith Briffa re AR4 [the IPCC 4th Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. . We will be getting Caspar Ammann to do likewise."

Tom Crowley, a key member of Mann's global warming hockey team, showed crass disregard for the lying and hiding: "I am not convinced that the `truth' is always worth reaching, if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships." It's more important to keep the career back-scratching team happy.

The distortion, spin, suppression and smear campaign went on for years. In fact, the revelations sparked a furious "hide the lies" denial campaign that ironically calls skeptics "deniers." What the skeptics actually deny is that there has been much honest science involved in the IPCC process; that there is any evidence to support claims that we face an imminent climate crisis; and that humans are primarily responsible for weather and climate variations that have always been controlled by hundreds of complex, inter-related natural forces and processes.

"Hide the lies" generated lawsuits between climate science "believers" (what kind of real science requires belief?) and skeptics of "dangerous man-made planetary warming" - along with ridiculous conspiracy theories such as "Big Oil hired evil hackers in a plot to discredit angelic climate scientists."

Mr. FOIA denies these absurd allegations in his 3.0 message. "I took what I deemed the most defensible course of action, and would do it again," he said. "That's right; no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn't plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere."

"The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science - on the contrary," Mr. FOIA continued. "I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact." Reveal what he had discovered, or keep it to himself and let the lies continue?

Didn't he fear discovery? "When I had to balance the interests of my own safety, the privacy and career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades ... millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. ... the first two weren't the decisive concern."

Why did he do it? His answer was both angry and anguished: "Climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material `might' .... The price of `climate protection' with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations," he wrote. "We can't pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it's not [taking] away from something and someone else."

That's the most important statement so far in the decades-old climate debate: You're forcing us backward into poverty and ignorance - for nothing, except to further your careers, funding and power.

Less than a week later, London's Mail on Sunday newspaper ran an outraged feature based on the British Meteorological Office's recent admission that global surface temperatures haven't risen in more than 15 years. Citing a chart of predicted and actual temperatures, the Mail noted: "Official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed. The graph on this page blows apart the `scientific basis' for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. The chart shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions. The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data."

Is it improper to label the people responsible for this costly, miserable catastrophe as "eco-thugs"? And should we worry that the latest no-real-energy "energy security" proposal from the White House is telling us that President Obama has become America's "Eco-thug in Chief," who will continue to peddle fraudulent science and nearly worthless renewable energy to further his agenda? It's worth pondering.

A set of pro forma "investigations" claim to have exonerated PSU's Mann. The internal PSU inquiry - with no impartial truth-seekers involved - was not going to harm their grant-getting cash cow Mann; instead, it whitewashed the evidence to ensure the preferred conclusion. Professional science groups that relied upon public funding for their financial survival fell in line behind a huge Tom Sawyer campaign of "exoneration." There was no exoneration.

Summaries presented in court filings for the case of American Tradition Institute v. University of Virginia and Michael Mann - which demands release of Michael Mann's emails - say, "Mann has never been exonerated.. Exoneration requires investigation; investigation requires pursuit aimed at discovering material facts.  Mann's employer since 2005, Penn State University, has conducted no such thing. Neither has the University of Virginia."

The same conclusion applies to the UK's Muir Russell and Oxburgh inquiries, which didn't even mention Mann, because they were "investigating" only employees of the CRU.

I asked Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and attorney in the ATI v. UVa/Mann lawsuit for his take on the leaker's message. He told me, "Whatever prompted `Mr. FOIA,' I take it as a statement that, so far, the courts have failed us, as have our political institutions - and he has concluded that those in the public who have resisted the climate industry agenda should now have a chance to review these taxpayer-financed records, which are the subject of a remarkable campaign to subvert transparency laws."

We ourselves can't avoid blame for the science disaster uncovered by Mr. FOIA. As Peter Foster of London's Financial Times noted, we didn't heed President Dwight Eisenhower's warning. "Most people are aware of Ike's warning in 1961 about the military-industrial complex," Foster wrote. Our fatal error was to ignore what he said next: "In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." [emphasis added]

Americans won't take captivity. It's time to demote our climate masters to our humble servants. We won't kill them. But we should sentence them to prison - or Siberia, where they'll wish the climate was warming.

Via email




Flagship German Daily DIE WELT Stuns Germany: "Scientists Warn Of Ice Age", Cites New Peer-Reviewed Russian Study

Mentioning the lethal "100-year, record-smashing" spring cold and snow spreading across Europe over the past month has for the most part been avoided like the plague by Germany's mainstream media. The silence over the record cold and frost, which has killed thousands and cost billions, has been ear-ringing.

Yet some leading dailies are breaking ranks, and have begun to examine the phenomenon critically and openly.

For example veteran journalist Ulli Kulke at German flagship daily Die Welt today has stunned the rest of the German mainstream media with a piece titled Scientists warn of ice age.

Kulke writes that recently a growing number of scientific publications have been appearing in leading journals, and that they have been challenging the simplistic "one dimensional CO2 explanation" for climate change and showing that even the unlikely "doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration by 2050 would not have dramatic effects."

Kulke writes:  "Yet, papers with such content, even though they have passed the peer-review process, do not make any headlines. But they have been becoming much more frequent recently."

Increasingly it seems more and more scientists are now seeing huge opportunity in overturning one of the most ballyhooed scientific hypotheses of modern time, funding be damned.

In the Die Welt piece, Kulke asks if the record cold and snow over much of the northern hemisphere "is just a coincidence". The odds are increasing that it is not, and that it's not for nothing that a growing number of scientists are becoming friendly to other explanations and that the body of evidence supporting a combination of explanations is taking shape quickly. Kulke writes that it is therefore no surprise that 2 Russian scientists have recently joined the ever more thunderous chorus of alternative explanations on what drives climate. He writes:

"It's probably no coincidence that ever louder scientific opinions warning of an imminent ice period are coming also from Russia. Vladimir Baschkin and Rauf Galiulin have recently recognized the ice age possibility in a study. Both biogeochemists - a discipline that also includes the study of the Earth's atmosphere - have written a study for the Research Institute Vniigaz of the Gazprom concern, an address of course that cannot be said is free of lobbyists. However, their arguments are underpinned by findings that are gaining more and more acceptance from independent science: solar activity is weakening considerably - to an extent that was last seen several hundred years ago, the Little Ice Age, according to scientists."

Kulke writes that not only is the CO2-science for explaining climate change one-dimensional, but that also only looking at changes in solar irradiance is completely inadequate. The sun's fluctuating magnetic activity and its impact on the Earth's atmosphere, direct and indirect, though not well understood, are proving to have a far greater influence on the Earth's climate than many are willing to admit. This is all being backed up by leading research institutes such as CERN in Geneva and the Danish National Space Institute of Denmark.

SOURCE





Coldest Easter EVER for Britain: Arctic misery set to last a week as temperatures drop to -15C

BRITAIN is braced for the coldest Easter on record with the bitter Arctic blast showing no signs of easing.  Another week of freezing temperatures, gales and snow is forecast as the UK shivers in the chilliest spring for 50 years.

Heavy snow showers and strong winds have swept through the country causing mayhem on the roads, closing schools and downing power lines.

The extreme cold is thought to have caused the deaths of at least four people including two men, aged 25 and 33, at the weekend. Forecasters said the mercury was likely to fall below -10C (14F) this week but windchill could make it feel like -15C or colder across swathes of the country.

Central and northern regions have been worst hit with several inches of snow in many places and drifts several feet deep.

Thousands of homes in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Cumbria were yesterday without electricity for a third day as emergency crews struggled to restore supplies. Roads which became blocked on Friday were still impassible.

The Met Office issued severe weather warnings for ice today across much of the country.

With daytime temperatures likely to struggle above freezing, they last night extended a level-three cold weather health alert to Thursday, warning of a risk to the elderly and vulnerable.

They added that "heavy snow" threatens the Midlands and the South on Easter Saturday as a band of rain moves in from the Atlantic hitting cold air over the UK.

Forecaster Andrew Sibley said: "It is going to remain bitterly cold through the week with easterly winds keeping temperatures below freezing at night and just above during the day.

"There are likely to be more wintry showers along the east coast as this weather persists throughout the week.  "There is also going to be the problem of icy conditions on the roads as there is not likely to be any thaw in the next few days."

Forecasters have warned that next weekend could bring the lowest Easter temperatures since records began.  The record currently stands at -9.8C (14.4F) at Lagganlia, near Aviemore in Scotland, on Easter Monday 1986.

Jonathan Powell, forecaster for Vantage Weather Services, said: "We are expecting bitterly cold conditions right through the week and into next weekend.

"Temperatures are on course to beat the record low for Easter, sinking well below -10C in many parts of the country, possibly hitting -15C in the wind.  "This is all going to go on for quite some time, possibly until after Easter. It is a very grim and wintery picture."

SOURCE




Global Warming Causes Warmer, Wetter Winters Say Met Office (in 2007)

 

Rest of article here

The winter of 2006/07 was a warm and wet one for the UK.  Interviewed by the BBC, Met Office meteorologist Wayne Elliott had this to say:-

"It is consistent with the climate change message. It is exactly what we expect winters to be like - warmer and wetter."

Perhaps he should have added - "except when they are colder and drier".

SOURCE





Have politicians had a mental blackout?

There's a real risk of energy shortages in Britain, yet still the political class is obsessed with cutting fossil fuel use

`Britain faces gas supply crisis as storage runs dry', warned Reuters last week. Unseasonably cold weather has meant that demand for gas has shot up just as it should be going down with the arrival of spring. Just to add a little spice to the warnings, tens of thousands of homes were left without power as blizzards knocked out power lines in Northern Ireland and Scotland. A taste of things to come?

As it goes, the claim that gas supplies could run out by 8 April is very much a worst-case scenario. There is normally plenty of supply, from a combination of the North Sea, Europe and shipments of liquefied gas coming from countries further afield, particularly Qatar. Nonetheless, it is daft that a modern, highly developed economy like the UK should even be discussing such things. That we are is the product of years of inertia in central government and an obsession with self-imposed greenhouse-gas emissions targets.

So perversely, just as a set of circumstances was emerging that showed how close to the wind the UK is sailing on energy security, Britain has been closing power stations. For example, on Friday, Didcot A power station in Oxfordshire was disconnected from the National Grid after 43 years. The 2,000-megawatt plant got the chop because it burns coal. Older coal plants are being phased out under EU regulations. Indeed, according to Alistair Buchanan, the boss of energy regulator Ofgem, 10 per cent of the UK's electricity generating capacity is due to be switched off this month.

Buchanan notes the speed at which plant closures will now kick in: `If you can imagine a ride on a rollercoaster at a fairground, then this winter, we are at the top of the circuit and we head downhill - fast. Within three years, we will see the reserve margin of generation fall from about 14 per cent to less than five per cent. That is uncomfortably tight.' In fact, some of those coal plants are closing ahead of schedule because their remaining operating hours have been used up quickly to take advantage of low coal prices. At a time when complaints about domestic energy costs are getting louder and louder, we are turning our back on the cheapest form of power available.

We've known for quite some time that there was the potential for a major shortfall in energy supplies. Coal and nuclear stations have been shutting but alternatives have fallen short. Wind is expensive to build and intermittent in operation. At some of the coldest periods of the year, wind supply can fall to nearly zero. Renewable UK celebrated the fact that wind produced a record proportion of UK electricity in 2012 - but it was still just 5.5 per cent of the total. New nuclear stations should be being built now, but years of political indecision mean that not a single new plant has actually got agreement yet. Even now, suppliers are haggling with government over guaranteed prices, though planning permission for Hinkley Point C - a new station on the site of two older nuclear reactors - has at least been approved. Nonetheless, it will still take eight to 10 years to build the plant.

Producing new domestic supplies of fuel is also being stymied by the government's overly cautious approach to shale gas. There are certainly substantial supplies under Lancashire, but overreaction to any safety issue is delaying exploitation. The latest hold-up is the need for an environmental assessment and concerns about the effect on wintering birds. (The latter hold-up is odd, since wind turbines are known to kill a lot of birds, with a disproportionate effect on raptors like eagles and vultures.) Even if shale gas finally gets the green light, significant supplies are still years away.

Another worry has been storage. While France, Germany and Italy hold around three months' worth of gas in reserve, the UK holds just 19 days. Given that the Lib-Con government's energy policy relies on burning a lot more gas in the next few years - cleaner than coal, much more reliable than renewables and cheaper than nuclear - storing gas will become much more important in the future. That's not so much because the UK might actually run out, but because in the future, as the FT`s Nick Butler points out, we're more likely to buy gas on the open market as and when we need it. If we don't have reserves, we'll be forced to pay whatever the price is at any particular moment rather than being able to wait for short-term fluctuations to pass.

The underlying problem is that the successive governments have been caught between a rock and a hard place. In normal circumstances, energy policy would be easy: pick the cheapest and most reliable sources of energy. On that basis, coal wins hands down. It's cheap and it's very flexible to use. No wonder King Coal is back with a vengence worldwide - not just in fast-developing countries like China and India, but also in Germany, which is burning more coal to make up for its decision to close its nuclear power stations. In the UK, gas would come second and we might add in hydro and nuclear to ensure diversity of supply.

However, the tunnel vision in the UK about climate change has massively complicated the issue. The UK parliament has committed itself - in what may well be the most expensive and boneheaded act of all time - to cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. So now the aim is to wind down coal use, while boosting wind power, with gas and nuclear as awkward compromises. But there has been such regulatory indecision that every option has been made more expensive. Big energy companies are now unwilling to invest in any particular energy source for fear that a new set of ministers will change the rules all over again. In future, UK consumers are not only paying extra for green energy but are forking out for an effective governments-can't-make-a-decision surcharge, too.

To put the tin lid on this ironyfest, this morning we had Sir John Beddington, the government's soon-to-retire chief scientific adviser, complaining that the problem of climate change was not being taken seriously enough. In a country experiencing its coldest March weather for decades, with power stations closing, energy prices rising and serious questions being asked about future security of supply - and all in the context of the fact that global temperatures have plateaued for the past 16 years - it is more the case that climate change has been taken too seriously.

That is not to let the political class off the hook. From the economy to energy production, the inability of governments to act decisively has become a material force in its own right, which holds back society. The real problem with UK politics today is that there's somebody home but the lights are off - and if the situation continues, that won't just be metaphorically.

SOURCE




Burning books, burning witches, burning corn

History is littered with ideology gone awry.  The most recent example? Burning corn as a substitute for fossil fuels in an effort to mitigate anthropogenic climate change (which supposedly has a negative impact on the production of crops such as corn).

This is about as logical as publicity-stunt burnings of Harry Potter books because of objections to the contents within, which only results in more people buying and reading the books to find out what got the book-burners so inflamed in the first place.

With Harry Potter it was the fantasy world of witchcraft and wizardry. With corn ethanol it is the fantasy world of agriculturally damaging climate change.

A few years ago, a paper was published in the prominent scientific journal Science by Stanford's David Lobell and colleagues that reported that human-caused global warming over the past 30 years resulted in a slowdown in global crop production. Modeling the climate response of the world's four largest commodity crops-corn, rice, wheat, and soybeans-Lobell's team calculated that as a result of rising temperatures and precipitation changes, global crop production was about 3 percent less than it otherwise would have been.

But consider this: The United States produces about 36 percent of the world's corn. And about 40 percent of U.S. corn is used to produce ethanol for use as a gasoline substitute in an attempt to lower net carbon dioxide emissions from driving and reduce climate change. Globally, corn makes up 30 percent of total worldwide production of the four crops studied by Lobell's group.

Multiply all these percentages out, and you get that the United States is burning a bit more than 4 percent of global crop production in an attempt to mitigate a climate-driven loss of 3 percent of the global crop production.

How crazy is that, you may ask?  About as crazy as burning witches because of climate change and associated crop failures (a popular pastime* during the Little Ice Age).

To make matters worse, the 3% slowdown in crop production (we use "slowdown" because during the 1980-2008 study period the total production of the four crops examined by Lobell et al. increased by about 75 percent, so global crop production is actually booming in the face of climate change), that calculation does not take into account the fertilization effect for crops of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from our burning of fossil fuels).

When Lobell et al. made a rough estimate of the benefits of additional carbon dioxide, the slowdown dropped to less than 1 percent.

And even this less-than-1 percent impact was described by Lobell et al. as perhaps being "overly pessimistic" because it did not fully incorporate long-term adaptive farming responses to changing climate conditions (i.e., farmers are not as dumb as statistical models make them out to be).

What this means is that even under overly pessimistic scenarios, we still currently burn more than 4 times as much grain as climate change has taken away. Thinking about this in future terms, if we observe twice as much climate change from 2010 through 2038 as we did from 1980 to 2008 (Lobell's study period), all we would have to do is stop burning half as much ethanol as we do now to make up for the entire global climate-related crop reduction.

The irrational fear that climate change will lead to global crop failures is risible. Burning crops to alleviate that fear will ultimately condemn the perpetrators to permanent laughingstock status, alongside those fanning the flames under witches, warlocks, and other objectionable words.

SOURCE

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

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Global Warming Policy Foundation Accepts Royal Society Offer For Meeting

It is worth going to the original of the press release below and reading the letters linked there.  Sir Paul is an angry man and makes some ill-founded assertions  -- which Lord Lawson refutes in his letter.  Warmists have good reason to be angry, of course.  Reality is very unkind to them.  It will be interesting to see if the offered meeting happens.  I predict not.  The GWPF would just have to put up the formidably well-informed Lord Monckton as a questioner and any Warmist would run a mile -- JR

London, 25 March: On behalf of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lord Lawson has accepted an offer by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, who has offered to arrange a meeting between the GWPF and climate scientists.

In a recent letter to Lord Lawson, the GWPF chairman, Sir Paul suggested that the Foundation needed more mainstream and expert climate science advice and offered that the Royal Society “would be happy to put the GWPF in touch with people who can offer the Foundation informed scientific advice.”

In his response, Lord Lawson writes that he is “happy to accept your offer to arrange a meeting and look forward to hearing from you about this.”

“I hope this marks the start of a more productive dialogue with the Royal Society,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the Director of the GWPF.

Letter By Sir Paul Nurse to Lord Lawson

Letter By Lord Lawson to Sir Paul Nurse

see also: Lord Lawson’s initial letter to Sir Paul Nurse

SOURCE




Earth hour





It's the Greenies who have the money


The Greenpeace fleet includes the state of the art yacht Rainbow Warrior III.  "Mucking about in (expensive) boats" is what Greenpeace is all about

Envirofundamentalist organizations such as Greenpeace and the WWF often like to talk about the enormous sums Big Oil has at its disposal to counteract their activities. But a comparison done by American University professor Matthew Nisbet shows that the revenues generated by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, pale in comparison with such organizations as Greenpeace and the WWF.

In 2011 the World Wildlife Federation Network generated US$800 million, four times more than the API ($203 million). Greenpeace also clearly beat the API with revenues almost the double:

"Even more relevant are the figures reported for Greenpeace Worldwide, which according to the annual report represents the combined budget of Greenpeace International and its affiliated national and regional organizations. In this case, Greenpeace brought in global revenues of €241 million (US$336 million) and spent approximately €159 million on program activities (US$221 million) and €77 million on fundraising (US$107 million) across countries.-

Greenpeace global revenue also compares well to that of major U.S. industry associations which we commonly think of as having inconceivably large budgets. Consider that in 2009, the American Petroleum Institute generated $203 million in revenue and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $214 million in revenue from its industry members.

Germans are contributing most to Greenpeace funding, but the Dutch are the leading per capita donors.

At the global level, Greenpeace employs nearly 2,200 staff, with 1,039 based in Europe and 314 in the U.S and Canada. As displayed in this graph from its annual report, Germany is the leading source of the organization’s worldwide fundraising followed by the U.S., Netherlands, and Switzerland.

As big in scope as Greenpeace Worldwide might be, it still is smaller than at least one other multi-national environmental organizations. Consider that in 2011, the World Wildlife Federation Network, which includes the U.S. based World Wildlife Federation and affiliates in 80 other countries, generated €575 million in revenue (US$800 million) and employed 5,000 staff worldwide."

SOURCE





Challenge to John Beddington’s Climate Alarm

The UK Government’s chief scientist has warned time delays in the climate system means that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere now will determine the weather the world experiences for the next 25 years. The head of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), however, said he is sceptical about anyone being able to predict what the weather would be like in the future

Sir John Beddington said climate change is one of the things he has been trying to bring to the Government’s attention but believes it is not talked about enough. He also noted the climate and weather we’re experiencing now comes from greenhouse gases that were in the atmosphere 25 years ago.

He said the international community’s failure to agree binding targets for cutting carbon emissions meant problems were being stored up for the future. He told BBC Radio 4: “They may reach agreement and they may start to reduce greenhouse gases in the next five years, or it may be a little longer. But they are still climbing and when that increase is reversed, we will be left with the weather and the climate for the next 25 years from whenever that happens.”

Sir John added: “You can think about mechanisms… carbon dioxide, carbon capture and storage, those things are very withdoing. But I kind of emphasise more on the time delays. I think the key here is this is sort of a simplistic way of thinking about it, that’s a nice indicator. But there are other things going on. For example, one of the results of the climate analyses is saying we do except more variability and we are seeing more variability… The Arctic is likely to be warming more than other parts of the planet. So I think that the issue in a sense needs to be taken out of a very simple, simplistic thing.”

He said the world faces huge problems of food, water and energy security as global population increases, which will be inevitable in the near future.

The head of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), however, said he is sceptical about anyone being able predict what the climate would be like in the future.

Director Benny Peiser said: “No one knows whether next winter will be warm or cold or average, no one knows whether next summer will be hot or wet or dry. It’s very, very difficult to make long-term predictions and therefore, I remain rather sceptical about the reliability and accuracy of these kind of speculation. They are pure speculation, they are not based on any hard facts, it’s an assumption.”

Dr Peiser added setting an international target would be the only way to limit emissions. However, he said that would not happen as it would mean countries like China and India would have to stop exploiting fossil fuels.

“It would mean to stop their economic growth and development. They can’t afford that. The negotiations have been going on for 20 years and they have been against it. So just because John Beddington says Government should take action doesn’t mean anything for them. It’s business as usual… They are using cheap energy because it’s the only way to develop”, he said.

He suggested Governments need to spend more money on preparing for extreme weather conditions and be more resilient.

“The only realistic and pragmatic approach to the issue of climate change and extreme weather events like droughts or flooding is to make countries throughout the world more resilient so that they can cope better. If you can heat your home in the cold winter, then that’s not a big problem. If you can cool your home in a hot summer, then that’s not a problem. If you have houses that can withstand storms, then we don’t have a problem.

SOURCE




Warmist loses a bet

Oliver Letwin, David Cameron’s chief policy adviser, has conceded defeat in a £100 climate policy bet with Nigel Lawson which they had agreed four and a half years ago.

Towards the end of a climate debate between the two Conservative heavy-weights in the July 2008 issue of Standpoint, the following exchange took place:

Oliver Letwin: Nigel can’t know whether there is going to be a successor to Kyoto.

Nigel Lawson: Well, look, there’ll be an international agreement in the sense that there will be platitudes. The acid test is: will there be an agreement to have binding cutbacks for all participants on their carbon emissions? Instead of arguing about it, we could have a wager on it.

Oliver Lewtin: I’d be very happy to have a wager, and I offer you a £100 bet that before either of us is dead, whichever is the first — our estates can pay — we will see a very substantial agreement on carbon reduction.

Nigel Lawson: But I don’t think I want the bet to be “in my lifetime” because I’d like to get the £100. I’m sorry it’s such a modest amount you’re prepared to wager — it shows how unconfident you are — but I would like to be able to collect before I die. So I think we should say “by the time Kyoto runs out”, because there is meant to be no hiatus; there is meant to be a successor to Kyoto. So “by 2012 we will have the agreement” — maybe I’ll die before then, of course —but 2012 is the acid test.

Oliver Letwin: On the same basis, Nigel, I’m perfectly willing to take that bet too. The reason I’m willing to take the bet is that I know that the only way it can be made to happen is if we try to make it happen and if we build up the moral authority to make it happen by taking the steps ourselves.

The original Kyoto agreement which set binding CO2 emissions targets for 37 developed nations only ran out on the 31st of December 2012. There has been no new international agreement on CO2 emissions reduction, let alone a ‘substantial’ one. In the meantime, Canada, Russia and New Zealand have officially abandoned the Kyoto Protocol while Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have threatened to abandon it as well.

Oliver Letwin has now conceded that Lawson has won the bet.

Lord Lawson comments:

“I made the bet because I knew I would win. It has always been blindingly obvious that the positions of Europe, the United States and China were much too far apart for a truly global successor to Kyoto to be negotiable.”

“Oliver Letwin is one of the nicest people in politics, and one of the cleverest. It is, however, disconcerting that UK climate change policy - which makes no conceivable sense in the absence of a binding global agreement – has been based on the advice of someone so totally divorced from any understanding of practical realities.”

SOURCE




Dumb as a Potato: Cold Winters Caused by Global Warming

I’d say that “You can’t make this stuff up” except that obviously you can make this stuff up.

The Grauniad offers a laughable new argument that lack of Arctic sea ice is responsible for cold winters. Here it is:

“The sea ice is going rapidly. It’s 80% less than it was just 30 years ago. There has been a dramatic loss. This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic,” said Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science.

According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.

“This is what is affecting the jet stream and leading to the extreme weather we are seeing in mid-latitudes,” she said. “It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south"

Got that? Sure? Read it carefully, because we’re now dealing with such an incredible level of stupid that I’ll need to break it down to deal with it. So commit this argument to memory.

Okay. The Stupid. Part I: “The sea ice is going rapidly. It’s 80% less than it was just 30 years ago”  -

The Guardian is quoting a researcher here who is directly contradicting the UK Met Office’s own Chief Scientist, as quoted in their own article. In effect, you can take your pick of which fact to believe in at any given point:

"She [Julia Sligo, Met Office Chief Scientist] also said that suggestions the volume of sea ice had already declined by 75% already were not credible. “We know there is something [happening on the thinning of sea ice] but it’s not as dramatic as those numbers suggest.”

The problem, she explained, was that researchers did not know the thickness of Arctic sea ice with any confidence."

What conclusions should we draw when the Guardian quotes one “Scientist” who is making a claim that another, senior scientist, has previously slammed as “not credible”?

SOURCE




An accurate forecaster

Who Is America’s Best Climate Prediction Expert? It’s a fair enough question, given all our government and the mainstream media have been telling us about the threats we all face from climate change (a.k.a. man-made global warming).

With twenty five years and tens of billions of dollars spent by the US government alone on understanding what the causes and effects of climate change are, surely someone has risen to the top in terms of making accurate climate change predictions, right?

According to any number of internet searches, there is one person who may well rank number one in this question of who the best American climate prediction expert is. He has risked it all in publishing his predictions on line, with the science to back it up for all to see, and critique. In doing so, this lone researcher has been subjected to the ‘slings and arrows’ of the established scientific community and those who have invested so much capital, political power and personal prestige at making sure manmade global warming and its experts come out on top.

Despite being heavily criticized for years, this person has amassed an impressive list of major climate predictions that as of today makes him one of the best if not the best climate expert in the Americas. However he is not as you may surmise, on the list of the thousands of researchers the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) has been using for its many climate reports. He is not a solar physicist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and definitely does not work for NASA’s Goddard center where much of the US media gets its manmade climate info. He is not on the staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or any of its several centers that deal extensively with climate change research. He is not a PhD professor at some prestigious university and also is not working for the Department of Defense or any national science agency.

In fact, this maverick among climate researchers is a single individual with a courageous band of other scientists from around the world who have, with little funding to speak of have been operating out of a small office with no special interests assisting from either side of the climate debate. Yet this team, led by this one person have routinely beat the best US government science agencies and the United Nations (UN) for the past six years in telling us what the Earth’s climate is doing and what it will do in the future.

Mr. Casey has had a distinguished career in any case. A former White House space policy adviser consultant to NASA Headquarters and a space shuttle engineer with a major aerospace contractor, he is no stranger to tackling and solving tough problems. For example, after the space shuttle Challenger accident in January 1986, NASA brought him in to chair an internal investigation into the breakdown in quality and space flight safety systems that were at the heart of the tragedy.

Many years later in 2007, while doing some solar physics research he stumbled on a curious pattern among sunspots that would prove to be the most important problem he had ever confronted – what causes climate change and what is the planet’s next climate era going to be like? A few months later after completing his research, he made several a startling announcements to the world. In April and May of 2007 he said:

1. Global warming was about to end, within three years!

2. The Sun was going to begin a “solar hibernation” beginning with the next solar cycle #24 (which began in 2008). This hibernation would result in a record reduction in the energy output of the Sun.

3. The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans were about to begin a long term drop in temperatures lasting for decades.

4. A new cold climate era was beginning that posed a serious threat to all with the potential to bring global crop damage and loss of life through starvation, cold weather fatalities, and social upheaval on a historic scale.

He proposed that a new climate theory which he called the “Relational Cycle Theory” or simply the “RC Theory” should replace the greenhouse gas theory of manmade climate change and asserted that the Sun and not mankind was the primary cause of climate change.

His announcement and predictions at that time were received with hostility reminiscent of that Galileo received by the Catholic Church when he said the Sun was at the center of the solar system instead of the Church’s opinion that the Earth was. Once more, by saying the Sun was at the center (of climate change) and not the Earth (not mankind), he immediately was attacked by all sides of the global warming debate including conservatives and liberals. He was slandered and demeaned by members of the established scientific community, some of whom were reaping windfall research grants to study man’s emissions of CO2. So called ‘authorities’ at prominent internet science blog sites were equally as unkind. The most prominent science periodicals and many in the media as well as the government did even worse – they ignored him!

Even Casey admits his timing was bad for his predictions by saying, “My announcements and predictions could not have come at a worse time. Both presidential party candidates were saying manmade global warming was real and they were going to fix it. Al Gore and the UN were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in alerting the world to the effects of man’s industrial emissions on the climate. Many former friends stopped returning may calls or emails. My message was one that no one wanted to hear.”

Now six years later much has changed. Scientists outside the US and not tied to US politics or US government research funding began to take notice of his work. In June of 2011 when he published his internationally acclaimed climate science book, “Cold Sun,” it included some of the strongest endorsements yet seen from other scientists for a climate book. Other scientists have called his work “…simply a great work!” or “…adds a brilliant page to the history of science…,” or “…this is an Earth-shattering book!”

Here we are in early 2013 and his diligence in getting his word out about what is really happening with the climate for all to read has led to Mr. Casey becoming the most often quoted and referenced on the web on the subject of climate change to a cold era. He still sees a few lingering critics repeat personal attacks and derogatory remarks from 2008 but no one has countered any of his science. They can’t!

Other scientists have joined his team and are actively cooperating with him in their own countries by trying to alert their countrymen to the dangers of the coming cold climate. His prominent and vocal stance on the next climate change has made it easier for others to now come forward to make similar predictions. Past researchers who made such forecasts many years before Casey are now seeing a resurrection from the dusty science journals where their research was buried and are once again seeing the light of day.

Because of his success in climate prediction, other scientists from around the world in earthquake research have now asked him to help in the great humanitarian cause of saving thousands of lives yearly by finally predicting the world’s largest quakes well in advance. As of December 2012, this new group has already had some success!

He is now frequently called on to do interviews and speak to large groups of interested citizens on his RC Theory, his book “Cold Sun,” and most importantly how to prepare for the coming difficult cold climate.

In March of this year Mr. Casey stepped up the gain on describing what is happening with the Earth’s climate by publishing the Global Climate Status Report (GCSR) ©. This heavily researched and data filled resource he and his supporting scientists have published, is intended for all individuals and leaders who want to have a different perspective on climate change from the one they have been receiving from the government and the media. As Casey puts it, “Too long now our people and our leaders have been given only one side, the wrong side, of the climate change story. With the regular publication of the GCSR, anyone can now have a single source for the true status of the Earth’s climate rather than the heavily politicized version we have been force fed for twenty five years now.”

But what about the accuracy of his predictions?

Why should he be on our list of candidates for America’s best climate researcher? This one is easy. All his predictions, as disruptive and controversial as they were in 2007, have now either come to pass or are about to! This remarkable record according to internet searches is without peer. Casey acknowledges this by commenting, “No other climate researcher that I can find has such a public record for similar major climate predictions. There is nothing predicted by the UN-IPCC, NASA or NOAA from 2007-2008 that comes even close to what I was forecasting. In fact they all said that global temperatures could only go up for the foreseeable future and yet as I correctly predicted, they have been dropping.”

But, there is something else.

Among his major predictions he made a very specific one of a detailed scientific nature that goes far beyond simple chance that some may ascribe to it. In early 2007, he contacted NASA’s top solar physicist to discuss what Casey believed was a significant error by NASA in predicting the behavior of the Sun during the next 11-year solar cycle (cycle #24). Casey said at the time that NASA was, “way off” in its calculations for the peak year and level of activity for the next solar cycle. NASA was at the time saying cycle #24 was going to be of record high level of activity and as measured by sunspot count would be at least 145 average sunspot count, likely much higher, and peaking in 2011. Casey, on the other hand, said his math showed the peak would be in 2012 and would be no more than 74 sunspots at peak. In other words Casey told NASA they were more than 100 % in error! The NASA opinion in a joint conference with NOAA scientists went the same. They all said cycle #24 was going to be one of the most energetic ever.

This month, NASA, after making downward adjustments with NOAA every year since 2007, have now issued their latest forecast for cycle #24. Guess what? Now in the peak period for cycle#24, NASA says the peak will be this year, in 2013 with an average of 70 sunspots plus or minus 18 with a likely final cycle average of 69 sunspots! It looks like Casey has done it again – he has beat the US government best scientists on predicting the very complicated nature of the Sun’s behavior to an astounding level of accuracy! And he did it with a shoe string budget by himself, compared to these science agencies who had thousands of researchers, state of the art advanced computers and billions of dollars at their disposal.

According to one of Casey’s now growing number of supporters in a recent email, a Mr. RV said “In 2007 you said the (cycle#24) peak would be in 2012 and the sunspot count would not be greater than 74, half of what NASA was saying…Your prediction turned out to be SPOT ON! Congratulations on your prediction. That was nothing short of awesome.”

But what about the peak in 2013 as NASA now predicts. Casey said the peak of activity would be in 2012. Actually he got that call right also, Casey elaborates with, “ Most except a few solar physicists are not even aware that the typical 11-year solar cycle has a double peak, the first being the primary followed a year or two later by a lesser secondary peak. We then average the two as the cycle winds down and we are certain both peaks have passed. If we look at a chart of sunspots for cycle #24 we did in fact have the primary peak in late 2012 as I predicted.”

When it comes to picking America’s best climate prediction expert there are also some intangibles I think we should consider. The first that comes to mind is how tough a challenge was it for the researcher to make his predictions? Were they easy to make scientifically, or were they controversial and likely to bring the researcher much criticism? It takes a lot of endurance to last out a solar cycle and maintain one’s opinion in face of incredible public, media, scientific, and political opposition.

Second is purpose. Casey from the outset has said his goal and that of his company, SSRC is to do what they could to alert the people to the next climate change so they can be prepared for what he calls a “life altering event.” He never expected to get rich as many “warmists” have by pushing manmade climate change. He has on the contrary, spent all he had keeping his research going and the lights on in his little office. As to purpose, Casey reflects on a quote from his book “Cold Sun,” by George Elliott, by saying, “I think Elliott was right with his question, ‘What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?’ ”

Is there any doubt. Casey gets my vote. He is not only America’s best climate prediction expert, but he is also among America’s best, period!

SOURCE

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

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Obama Overreach Includes Energy

Following the Conservative Political Action Conference—known as CPAC—it has been reported that the faithful feel discouraged, dispirited, and defeated. Dr. Ben Carson, who emerged from the Conference as the new conservative darling, has stated that America is heading for failure. Generally, I agree. However, I see a chink in the armor.

The alliance of the environmental lobby and big government advocates have been winning—Obama is back in the White House, the new cabinet members seem worse than the last, and the Keystone pipeline has become a battle line. With the victory, however, they’ve perhaps gotten over confident and pushed too hard. They’ve had a series of losses that have put them on the defense—and everyone knows, you win on the offense.

Their losses haven’t made headline news—making them easy to miss, and the alliance is not likely to beat a hasty retreat, but looking at them added together, I see an opening for a breakthrough.  In case you missed them, here are some of the recent reversals they’ve received:

 *       On March 20, the Supreme Court shot down “overzealous greens” that hoped to “hobble the logging industry by reclassifying rural storm water runoff under the Clean Water Act’s ‘point source’ standards, which require costly federal permits.” The Court ruled: “more effective regulation could be done by states and state foresters.”

 *       On March 19, the Obama Administration scrapped “a series of graphic warning labels on cigarette packages that were blocked by a federal appeals court”—a win for the “tobacco industry’s free-speech rights under the First Amendment.” Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, says the FDA won’t be deterred from implementing stronger warning labels.

 *       Senator Dianne Feinstein’s gun-ban bill became a victim of friendly fire when, in a March 18 meeting, Majority Leader Harry Reid notified a “frustrated Feinstein” that her assault-weapon ban “wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill.” The exclusion means “almost certain defeat” but, according to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s Ladd Everitt, it has “fired up gun violence prevention advocates.”

 *       On March 15, hyper-liberal Bill Maher had an epiphany on his HBO show Real Time. In a conversation with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, regarding Paul Ryan’s budget, Maher announced that rich people “actually do pay the freight in this country.” He continued, calling the taxes the rich pay: “outrageous” and “ridiculous.” He warned his liberal friends: “you could actually lose me.”

 *       Facing the reality of a nuclear attack, on March 15 the Obama administration announced a reversal on missile defense. In 2009, Obama killed the Bush administration’s plans for 14 US ground-based long-range missile interceptors—which are now, in opposition to the “Democratic Party’s long aversion to any kind of missile defense,” playing catch up. Missile Defense advocates are now vindicated.

 *       Government overreach received a setback on March 11, when “a judge threw out New York City’s ban on supersized sugary drinks.” Judge Milton Tingling said the soda ban “would not only violate the separation of powers doctrine, it would eviscerate it.” And, that has the “potential to be more troubling than sugar sweetened beverages.”

The list could continue to include NBC’s ratings fall and Obama’s sudden shift in relations with Republicans, but you get the idea.

“Marita,” you might say, “this is an interesting list, and I get your point, but you write on energy, and none of this has anything to do with energy.”  Here are some similar setbacks to the left’s energy agenda:

 *       Going back a couple of months, on January 25, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a unanimous decision, found that the EPA was projecting far too much production of cellulosic ethanol and mandating the exaggerated fuel standards—confirming that “EPA’s renewable fuels program is unworkable and must be scrapped.” The nonexistent-fuel requirement is costing refiners $8 million dollars in fines paid to the federal government—which are passed on to consumer—due to the unreasonable 2012 mandate.

 *       Last month, regulators met in California “hoping to hash out a solution to the peculiar stresses placed on the state’s network by sharp increases in wind and solar energy.” The state is “running low on conventional plants, such as those fueled by natural gas” and now “it doesn’t have the right mix.” Utility executives are predicting rolling brown outs as early as this summer. Other states with high dependence on wind and solar resources face similar problems.

 *       “In a preemptive move to protect against possible court challenges,” “an early step toward President Barack Obama's second-term goal of cutting emissions linked to climate change has hit a snag.” Reported on March 19: “The Obama administration is weighing changes to a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule to limit emissions at new power plants.” The EPA’s rule would “essentially ban new coal-fired power plants”—which “may not withstand legal scrutiny.”

 *       On March 20, another Solyndra-esque, government-funded solar panel manufacturer embarrassment came to light. SoloPower began the first round of layoffs just months after opening with a high-profile ribbon cutting and is now “selling some of its equipment through a third party and is attempting to restructure its $197 million federal loan guarantee.” The story shows that “politicians are proving to be lousy venture capitalists with this and other green energy subsidies.”

Again, this sampling of stories illustrates the cause for my optimism.

In war, and we are in a war, when one side sees signs of weakness, it is time to act and exploit the vulnerabilities; go on the offensive. The weapons we have are social media, email, and our telephones. Here are some of the battles we could win if we join in the fight for American jobs, economic growth, and affordable energy.

 *       The Keystone pipeline is in the news again due to the recently released State Department report that concludes that it is environmentally safe. The pipeline, alone, has the unique ability to create jobs without taxpayer monies, spur economic growth in the states it will cross and other states that will participate in construction support, and lower the cost of gasoline through increased supply. We all need to add our “comments.” Tell the State department to end the four-year delay and approve the Keystone pipeline.

 *       Anti-surface mining ads running in Tennessee on March 19 are just the latest in the war on coal. The war is raging against coal mining—which provides good paying jobs for thousands of Americans—and against coal-fueled power plants with 300+ scheduled for closure in the next few years and no possible replacement. We need an energy policy that works for each locale rather than one-size-fits-all requirements. For example, in New Mexico, we have coal-fueled power plants built right next to a coal mine, yet EPA regulations are shutting down five of the nine units. Likewise, West Virginia has an abundance of coal, and they, too, are closing plants. In the Pacific Northwest, hydropower is efficient, effective, and economical, but environmental groups are forcing their removal. Call or email the White House and tell the Obama administration to make good on the “all of the above” promise and not limit or mandate specific electricity sources.

 *       Due to the combination of new technology and new applications of sixty-year-old technology, America now has an abundance of natural gas. Many markets across the globe need our natural gas—which could be liquefied and shipped worldwide and help the US trade deficit. In a free market, companies should be allowed to sell their products to the highest bidder, but due to trade agreements and the slow approval process of applications to build new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals, this boost to the economy is being stifled. LNG exports are one of the few issues that truly have bipartisan support—yet, environmentalists oppose them and the Department of Energy has been dragging its feet on LNG export applications. Contact your Senators and Representative and tell them to oppose legislation that would limit LNG exports.

There is more we could do, but together these simple steps—passed on to everyone you know through Facebook, Twitter, and your personal email list, and acted upon—can serve as our forlorn hope (the first wave of soldiers attacking a breach in defenses). Let’s band together with a common strategy, a surge, that can turnaround the current direction and make America great again

SOURCE



   
   
UK's coldest spring since 1963 claims 5,000 lives: Pensioners worst affected - and experts say final toll could be 'horrendous'

Global warming wanted

Freezing Britain's unusually harsh winter could have cost thousands of pensioners their lives.

This month is on track to be the coldest March for 50 years – and as the bitter Arctic conditions caused blackouts and traffic chaos yesterday, experts warned of an 'horrendous' death toll among the elderly.

About 2,000 extra deaths were registered in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years.

And for February, 3,057 extra deaths were registered in England and Wales compared with the five-year average for the month.

Campaigners at Age UK, which says 26,000 people die needlessly in winter every year, said the current weather could prove deadly for thousands more.

Director general Michelle Mitchell said: 'Colder, harsher winters tend to lead to an increase in life-threatening conditions such as heart attacks and strokes which in turn leads to a high rate of excess winter deaths.

'For every one degree drop in average temperature, there are around 8,000 extra deaths.'

The Office for National Statistics said the extra death rate 'could be to do with the prolonged period of cold weather we've been experiencing.' But it cautioned that it was too early to make an absolute link. The March figures are still provisional.

Malcolm Booth, chief executive of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, said that last month almost 700 of his members had died, compared with 250 last year.

'If our membership is a representative sample that was replicated across the general population, then we could be looking at a horrendous number when all the figures are in,' he said.

'An increase in fuel costs and the extended winter means that more people are going to suffer, and more will be unable to afford to eat and heat their homes. It's a scary prospect.'

It is not just pensioners who are at risk. The body of a 27-year-old man who went missing while walking home from a night out was found in deep snow in farmland near Burnley, Lancashire, yesterday afternoon. Police said the man would not be named until all family members had been informed.

Chief Inspector Derry Crorken of Burnley Police said: 'Early indications suggest that it is a very tragic incident where a young man has been out with friends and has become caught up in the weather last night on his journey home.  'I would urge people to only go out if it is necessary.'

Blizzards and power cuts wreaked havoc across large parts of the country yesterday, leaving snowdrifts of up to 15ft in Cumbria and night-time temperatures plunging to -7C (19F) in the Pennines. Power lines were down in Northern Ireland, Scotland and North Wales, leaving 50,000 homes without electricity.

Ulster was hardest-hit, with 29,000 properties without power and 1,000 without water.

The transport network was also crippled. East Midlands, Leeds, Robin Hood (Doncaster) and Humberside Airports were all forced temporarily to close runways for snow and ice to be cleared.

Train services in the North-West were severely hit and even major roads were treacherous. In Cumbria 70 people were put up in a school after being stranded in their cars on the A595.

In North Wales, the Red Cross was brought in to transport vital medical staff to hospitals in 4x4 vehicles because the snow had made roads off limits to normal cars.

The M62 near Rochdale was closed for a time but gritters were out to ensure the route between Manchester and West Yorkshire remained open overnight.

Yesterday's sporting programme was also badly hit, with Northern Ireland's football World Cup qualifier against Russia called off for the second time in 24 hours as Belfast's Windsor Park was unplayable. Elsewhere, seven Football League games in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the North were cancelled and race meetings at Doncaster and Newbury were abandoned. Theme parks at Alton Towers and Drayton Manor Park closed, too.

The Environment Agency had 59 flood alerts in place last night, covering the Midlands, East Anglia, the south east and the south west.

Hundreds of schools were forced to close on Friday and many were expected to remain closed tomorrow, causing headaches for parents.

Weathermen forecast that the harsh conditions would gradually diminish over the coming week but a biting wind from the east would ensure temperatures remain at 4-6C (39-42F), well below the seasonal average of 11C (52F).

Greg Dewhurst of the Met Office said: 'While the rain, sleet and snow will peter out, it will still feel very cold because of strong easterly winds. The signals are that temperatures will start to return to normal after Easter.'

The weather is also taking its toll on retailers, especially fashion chains where spring lines are remaining on the racks. For DIY chains and garden centres, this is normally one of the most important months. But Mandy Murphy of the British Retail Consortium said: 'Bad weather could feed through to sales being poorer than hoped for over the big bank holiday weekend.'

It is all in stark contrast to the  same time 12 months ago, when sunbathers swamped beaches as temperatures hit 22C (71F), sparking fears of a possible drought.

SOURCE






It’s payback time for Britain's insane energy policy

An obsession with CO2 has left us dangerously short of power as coal-powered stations are forced to close

As the snow of the coldest March since 1963 continues to fall, we learn that we have barely 48 hours’ worth of stored gas left to keep us warm, and that the head of our second-largest electricity company, SSE, has warned that our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time. It seems the perfect storm is upon us.

The grotesque mishandling of Britain’s energy policy by the politicians of all parties, as they chase their childish chimeras of CO2-induced global warming and windmills, has been arguably the greatest act of political irresponsibility in our history.

Three more events last week brought home again just what a mad bubble of make-believe these people are living in. Under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants Directive, we lost two more major coal-fired power stations, Didcot A and Cockenzie, capable of contributing no less than a tenth to our average electricity demands. We saw a French state-owned company, EDF, being given planning permission to spend £14 billion on two new nuclear reactors in Somerset, but which it says it will only build, for completion in 10 years’ time, if it is guaranteed a subsidy that will double the price of its electricity. Then, hidden in the small print of the Budget, were new figures for the fast-escalating tax the Government introduces next week on every ton of CO2 emitted by fossil-fuel-powered stations, which will soon be adding billions of pounds more to our electricity bills every year.

Within seven years this new tax will rise to £30 a ton, and by 2030 to £70 a ton, making it wholly uneconomical to generate any more electricity from the coal and gas-fired power stations that last week were still supplying two thirds of our electricity. Put all this together and we see more starkly than ever the game the Government is playing. It knows that no company would build wind farms unless it is given subsidies that, in effect, nearly double or treble the price of its electricity. The Government will only get CO2-free nuclear power if it promises it an equal subsidy. And now the Coalition is also hell-bent on driving our much cheaper and more reliable coal and gas-fired plants out of business, by imposing a carbon tax that will not only eventually double the cost of their electricity, but also make it impossible for them to survive.

So mad is this policy of “double-up all round” that it is driving even the largest and most efficient power station in the country, Drax, capable of supplying seven per cent of all the power we use, to switch from burning coal to wood chips, imported 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from the US. And how has the Government forced Drax to do this? By giving it a subsidy on wood chips that doubles the value of its electricity, while putting an increasingly prohibitive tax on coal.

This is all insane in so many ways that one scarcely knows where to begin, except to point out that, even if our rulers somehow managed to subsidise firms into spending £100 billion on all those wind farms they dream of, they will still need enough new gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for all the times when the wind isn’t blowing, at the very time when the carbon tax will soon make it uneconomical for anyone to build them.

So we are doomed to see Britain’s lights going out, all because the feather-headed lunatics in charge of our energy policy still believe that they’ve got to do something to save the planet from that CO2-induced global warming which this weekend has been covering much of the country up to a foot deep in snow. Meanwhile, the Indians are planning to build 455 new coal-fired power stations which will add more CO2 to the atmosphere of the planet every week than Britain emits in a year.

Thank you, David Cameron, leader of “the greenest government ever”. Thank you, Ed Miliband, father of the Climate Change Act, the most expensive suicide note in history. Between you, you seem determined to switch off our lights, lock the door and throw away the key. We owe you more than we can say.

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Carbon's Wrongful Conviction

Viv Forbes

Three stubborn facts suggest that carbon is suffering a grave miscarriage of justice.

Firstly, despite all the bleating about humans causing "carbon pollution", man's use of carbon fuels has never managed to create even a single atom of carbon - all he has ever done is move a tiny bit of the Earth's huge store of it around.

Secondly, carbon dioxide gas, the beneficial plant food, is generated whenever carbon fuels and foods are consumed. Despite the "global warming" propaganda, carbon dioxide has zero ability to heat anything. The most it has ever done is to scatter a bit of the radiation energy coming from the sun or from the Earth's warmed surface. This makes Earth more liveable by moderating the daily temperature extremes.

Thirdly, carbon dioxide is always released from the vast oceans when natural global warming occurs. Blaming increased carbon dioxide for global warming is like blaming wet roads for rain.

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New Mercedes face ban from British roads for flouting EU rules on 'green' air-con: Germans say compulsory coolant causes cars to catch fire and explode on impact

Thousands of new Mercedes are set to be banned from sale in Britain after they were declared 'illegal' by the EU.

The German luxury car maker is embroiled in an extraordinary row with EU bureaucrats over a decision to force all car manufacturers to use a new 'green' air-conditioning gas.  Mercedes has raised fears that the new coolant causes cars to catch fire.

But any car maker refusing to install the gas faces a ban on selling cars across the Continent, the European Commission warned this week.

The DVLA and the Vehicle Certification Agency in the UK are poised to suspend any new registration of the luxury German cars if they do not conform to the regulations.

All new Mercedes A-Class hatchbacks, B-Class family cars and SL roadster models will be affected because the manufacturer has failed to agree to the law, which came into effect on January 1.

Most manufacturers have already complied with the directive. But last September Mercedes appealed to delay the implementation of the law.

Internal tests by the company allegedly showed that ten out of 14 cars using the new coolant caught fire when subjected to conditions that simulated the coolant leaking into the engine in a front-end collision.

But the Commission last week rejected the claims and warned it is not possible for new cars to be sold within the EU if they do not conform to the legislation.

Implementing the directive could result in thousands of new cars being left on dealers' forecourts, unable to be registered by the DVLA.

In an update last week, the European Commission said 'controversial' testing techniques by Mercedes were to blame for the findings and the Department for Transport in the UK would be fined if it allowed the company to sell the affected models.

It stated: 'It is not possible for motor vehicles to be registered and marketed in the EU if they are not in conformity with the relevant legislation.'

The Department for Transport said it was monitoring the situation closely, but it could cost Mercedes almost £500 million in lost sales in the UK and more across Europe.

Mercedes predicts sales of about 15,000 A-Class cars this year, which cost from £18,970. About 6,500 £21,000 B-Class models and an estimated 800 of the £72,550 SL models are also expected to be bought by Britons – but all could remain unsold if the DVLA refuses to register them for the UK market.

Older models will be unaffected but from 2017 every vehicle released into the European car market must be installed with the new coolant.

Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, claims its tests show the new air-con chemical is 'highly flammable', poisonous and poses a danger to occupants and rescue services.

The European Commission is now involved in 11th hour talks with Mercedes. Volkswagen, which owns the Audi, Porsche and Skoda brands, has also refused to install the new coolant.

However, the fellow German manufacturer has insisted its engineers have designed a new coolant using carbon dioxide which adheres to the European environmental guidelines and is in advanced talks to use the new variant.

Mercedes claims it has instructed its engineers to design a similar chemical but the Commission denies knowledge of the plans. Critics have accused Mercedes of putting costs ahead  of global climate concerns because the new coolant is more expensive.

Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies, who helped to draft the new law, said: 'This amounts to a declaration of war on Daimler. It is widely believed Daimler is trying to avoid paying extra costs of about £20 per vehicle.

'The Commission's briefing makes clear that new models using the old refrigerant should not be sold.'

Mercedes was last month confirmed as the leading premium brand in the UK. It registered 3,329 new cars in February – up 13.5 per cent on last year.

Professor Thomas Weber, from Daimler, claimed the  company was in the process of producing a new coolant using carbon dioxide which would be approved by the European Commission.

He said: 'Daimler has examined all possible options very closely over recent months and worked with the other manufacturers within the VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) to find a solution that is acceptable to all.

'These efforts have shown clearly that CO2, is by far the most promising solution, as it is environmentally acceptable and safe. We have given our engineers the clear commission to develop the CO2 air-conditioning system.'

A Department for Transport spokesman said: 'The safety of all road users is paramount. However, we have seen no evidence that the air-conditioning fluid in this case poses any risk in appropriately designed vehicles. We continue to monitor this issue and the European Commission is leading a review to ensure a consistent approach for all vehicle manufacturers and purchasers.'

The European Commission said it would not take action against anyone who has bought one of the affected Mercedes models since January 1. But a spokesman said it would continue to appeal to countries to enforce the legislation and ban future registration of all new vehicles that do not contain the new coolant gas.

SOURCE





How a gas goldmine could help Britain end debt nightmare

As you approach Ground Zero of Britain’s potential shale gas bonanza and alight next to a 10,000ft-deep hole dug five miles east of Blackpool, your nostrils are suddenly assailed by the overwhelming smell of methane.

At first, you think there must be some catastrophic failure of a gas pipe deep below, and you wonder if the ‘fracking revolution’ really can be the answer to keeping the lights on and Britain’s houses warm.

But the smell, it turns out, has nothing to do with the drilling of a gas well two miles below Lancashire farmland. The villains are cows in the neighbouring field, making their own, very distinctive, contribution to greenhouse gases.

The pretty village of Singleton is an unlikely setting for what might become Britain’s natural gas bonanza – Galveston, Texas or Qatar it emphatically is not, though Cuadrilla Resources, the drilling company, believes up to 200 trillion cubic feet of gas lies trapped below.

Cuadrilla estimates the value of the gas at £136 billion. It could theoretically satisfy our national gas consumption for 60 years, keeping our central heating boilers going while generating about 40 per cent of the electricity we need.

It could do for us now what North Sea oil did in the Seventies. And crucially, shale gas will not leave behind the toxic legacy of our nuclear power programme. We would feel richer again, we would feel at the cutting edge of a revolution and we would lose our baleful sense of energy ennui as Blackpool becomes the new Aberdeen.

So you would have thought the Government and the environmental lobby would be delighted at the news that Britain has exploitable reserves of the shale gas that is propelling America towards energy self-sufficiency and lower carbon emissions. But you would be wrong.

When it burns, shale gas emits half the CO2 of coal, bringing the green targets enshrined in Kyoto and other treaties within sight. Surely even the Lib Dems and their ‘Big Green’ allies, who have profited so handsomely from the billions of pounds of carbon taxes imposed on consumers, would concede this is a breakthrough in achieving the UK’s mandated target of an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050.

Fracking involves firing water into shale rock at very deep levels and at very high pressure to release gas. It does not despoil the landscape in the way coal-mining does. It does not put working men at risk from rock bursts underground, or coat their lungs with coal dust.

Once the well is dug and capped, the plant left on the site of the fracking is deliberately low-level, and scarcely visible from the road as naturally occurring gas is pumped silently into the grid. How could anyone who worries about the planet cavil at this?

Yet Greenpeace, the Green Party, and other environmental interests have responded to the shale gas opportunity as though the carbon-polluted sky had fallen in, and then they have used every trick of the planning regime to obstruct the work of Britain’s shale pioneers.

As we again turn up central heating thermostats to counter the snow  this weekend, there are warnings – now dismissed – that the country might run out of gas we import from Russian and Norwegian fields.

More worryingly, Ian Marchant, chief executive of SSE, Britain’s second biggest electricity supplier, accuses the Coalition of ‘significantly underestimating the scale of the capacity crunch facing the UK in the next three years’ as we close  coal-fired power stations to meet green targets. There is, he adds, ‘a very real risk of the lights going out as a result’.

Even as evidence that the planet is warming melts away like a snowball in late spring – as documented in forensic detail in last week’s Mail on Sunday – the Government is astonishingly complacent in attaching ever more draconian and regressive ‘carbon’ taxes to our utility bills.

One of the main reasons we are suffering a double-dip recession is the loss of revenue from falling North Sea oil production. On top of that, carbon taxes on our utility bills further reduce the spending power that might otherwise drive a consumer-led recovery.

We learned from the Budget statement last week that this year’s growth forecast has been halved to a feeble 0.6 per cent. Government spending and the deficit remain out of control, while debt as a share of the economy is on course to rise from a shocking 75.9 per cent to 85.6 per cent in 2016-17.

Surely George Osborne and David Cameron should be pushing through the exploitation of shale as a national economic imperative?

Yes, there was a passing reference in the Chancellor’s speech to shale gas being ‘part of the future’, and ill-defined promises of local incentives to head off Nimbyist tendencies around the drilling areas.

But there was no sense of urgency,  perhaps because had Mr Osborne shown extravagant support for  a new carbon fuel source, albeit a relatively green one, the Lib Dems would have kicked up a fuss.

The absurdity of the situation is that gas could have been gushing out of the Singleton well, boosting the Treasury’s coffers and getting us through this freezing winter had  our reaction to fracking not been so mealy-mouthed.

In the United States, shale is hailed as a saviour, an engine of growth, the creator of 600,000 new jobs, as Barack Obama said. In Britain, it is dismissed dismally as a threat to the future of the planet.

Officially Britain’s shale gas revolution was put on hold after Big Green managed to whip up a frenzy of contrived fear about two earth tremors in 2011 when Cuadrilla was conducting exploratory fracks. The tremors registered 2.3 and 1.5 on the Richter scale, making the latter some ten billion times less powerful than the 8.9 quake that caused the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

One of the Lancashire tremors occurred on April 1, prompting many locals who had not noticed it to assume media reports to be an elaborate joke.

Years ago, some journalists challenged each other to invent the dullest headline ever. The winner was ‘Small earthquake in Chile, not many dead’. In this case, the headline might have been ‘Two tremors in Lancashire, not many noticed’.

Yet Big Green seized upon these minor seismic events and forced Cuadrilla to suspend fracking operations. The saga of the trivial Lancashire tremors sums up the vacuity of the Coalition’s energy policy. It is not even clear fracking caused the tremors – in America, where tens of thousands of shale gas wells have been sunk, there have been almost no instances of uncontained geological activity.

Shale gas will not transform the energy market here as radically as it has shaken up the market in America, where natural gas prices have more than halved and cheap energy is encouraging manufacturing industries to come home in what has been called ‘re-shoring’.

Here is a carbon-based economic prediction: The American economy will bounce back into robust growth in the next two years, its recovery fuelled by cheap, relatively green shale gas. Meanwhile in Europe, where energy prices are kept high, only stagnation beckons.

In America, you own the gas or oil underneath your property, while in Britain the revenues go to the State, so there is no financial incentive to embrace the shale revolution.

But there is another reason why we  cannot embrace the benefits of abundant, cheap, green energy. Big Green does not want British consumers to have access to cheap shale gas – even if it reduces carbon emissions.

The narrative of the green lobby, and the one endorsed by the Coalition, is that we are running out of fossil fuels and that burning the remaining reserves destroys the planet.

The first proposition is absurd, as ever more vast reserves of shale gas and oil are discovered across Europe, Asia and Australia. The second, we now know, is bogus as the planet has stopped warming.

But the huge taxpayer subsidies to those interests behind wind and solar power are predicated on this narrative. Challenge it with the prospect of cheap and plentiful shale gas and the logic behind all the subsidies for wind and solar power collapses.

Renewable energy is only sustainable if fossil fuels are running out or if the Government taxes them into submission, which appears to be the Coalition’s preferred policy.

Our hills would not be despoiled with vast turbines but for the vast subsidies being handed out to the companies building wind-farms and the bribes to landowners with money expropriated from poor and middle-income earners through taxes and levies on their utility bills.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee has belatedly latched on to the fraud agreed by Ed Miliband when Environment Secretary and now implemented by the Coalition. Two months ago, the committee’s Labour chairman, Margaret Hodge, described the Government’s contracts with wind energy companies as a ‘licence for the private sector to print money at the expense of consumers’.

The contracts are structured in such a way that firms receive the ‘green’ subsidies even if the energy goes unused. The Big Green speculators get a guaranteed return of ten to 11 per cent on contracts which, the committee said, ‘appear heavily skewed towards attracting investors rather than securing a good deal for consumers’.

It is not hard to see why environmental policy so blatantly favours green energy interests. Tim Yeo, Conservative chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, trebles his MP’s salary with his work for three renewable energy and transport firms.

And Lord Deben, chairman  of the ‘independent’, official and influential Committee on Climate Change, pockets unknown amounts as chairman of Sancroft, an environmental lobbying group. Such conflicts of interest would not be tolerated across the Atlantic, where a freer energy market allows shale gas to power up the economy, cut the deficit and reduce bills.

In America, carbon dioxide emissions are falling back to the levels seen in the early Nineties, and per capita emissions are now lower than in the Sixties as power generation shifts from dirty coal to shale gas.

Market forces are making America greener and more competitive. In Europe, ‘green’ policies are making us poorer and our industries less competitive, while only the well-connected insiders of Big Green direct policy – and get rich.

SOURCE



Zealots who will let the lights go out

A well-run state should never be taken by surprise. It should have plans for every reasonable contingency, and then a few more besides. But it is clear that the current blast of cold weather – not that unlikely in March – has exposed huge and worrying gaps in our energy plans.

More significantly, it has shown that the virtual takeover of Whitehall by Green zealots has actively prevented this country from making wise plans for the future.

Experts have been warning for more than a decade that Britain faces a power crisis in 2015, as North Sea gas supplies tail off, elderly nuclear power plants shut down and the EU Large Combustion Plant directive forces the closure of several coal-fired generating stations, one of which was actually switched off forever on Friday, when demand was at its peak.

In an age when so much of our economy and society are wholly dependent on computers, power cuts would be far more damaging than they were in the days of Ted Heath and his Three Day Week.

One obvious and straightforward escape route is available, the swift and widespread exploitation of shale gas, or fracking. As The Mail on Sunday shows today, this has transformed the energy position in the USA, simultaneously cutting costs and reducing carbon emissions.

While Britain cannot expect a boom of the same size, there is no doubt that this country contains substantial shale gas reserves. Yet the Green lobby, for no clear reason, opposes such a move. Ministers must challenge this pig-headed dogmatism, before the lights go out.

SOURCE  

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