Small hiatus

I have just got out of some rather extensive day surgery so am feeling a bit worn down.  I expect to be back in a day or two

JR

UK: When US top brass links climate change to political instability, the world needs to listen

By NICHOLAS SOAMES.  Soames is old, a Tory Grandee, a demon driver and a friend of both The Prince of Wales and Robert Mugabe. He barks at women. So the fact that he believes Warmist generals about global warming is no surprise.

The allegations he refers to are just that: Unproven allegations. There is no demonstrable link between recent African droughts and global warming. The droughts did however occur during an El Nino, which shifts rains from one place to another so that is by far the most probable cause of the droughts

Saying that "drought causes" something is in any case dumb and ignores the complexity of a causal chain.  Australia has severe droughts more often than not but no Australian farmers have so far become Muslim terrorists.


As the wells ran dry around Lake Chad, Boko Haram tightened their grip. An extreme drought, made worse by record temperatures, helped push farmers with nothing left to lose into the arms of Islamic extremists.

These new recruits would go on to help terrorise the region with bombings, abductions and assassinations.

This was just one of the chilling examples I heard last week from a visiting delegation of three and four-star US military men who came to London to deliver a stark warning to MPs and Peers on the growing security risks posed by climate change.

Climate change does not cause conflict. Yet in areas of political instability it is the equivalent, to quote Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, formerly of the Royal Navy, “of pouring a bucket of petrol on a smouldering fire.”

Extreme weather events like severe droughts are increasingly linked to climate change, and the subsequent crop failures...

SOURCE




Pruitt 'guaranteeing' debate on climate science soon

The conservative Heritage Foundation might have just previewed the Trump administration's arguments against climate science.

U.S. EPA appears to be close to unveiling its program to question mainstream research on global warming, referred to as a "red team" exercise, and several candidates for that role cast doubt on the extent of climate change at the Heritage Foundation yesterday.

One theme they expressed is that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels should no longer be considered a pollutant but instead an essential ingredient in maintaining a global population boom. They described potentially catastrophic impacts of human-caused warming as "alarmism."

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt could announce the red team within weeks, according to Bob Murray, a key ally of the administration and the CEO of Murray Energy Corp. The coal boss said in an interview at yesterday's event that he has been personally pushing Pruitt to challenge the endangerment finding, the scientific underpinning for past and future regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Murray, who met with Pruitt last week, said the administrator told him the red-team debate is imminent. Pruitt also said the exercise is the first step toward a possible challenge to the endangerment finding, Murray told E&E News.

"They're laying groundwork for it, they want to do this red, blue study, debate on science before we get there," Murray said of the endangerment finding. "I said, 'You need to get it done; if you don't get it repealed, you're going to have this climate agenda forever. It needs to be repealed.'"

Murray added of Pruitt: "He's not guaranteeing me. He's guaranteeing to do the red-blue climate debate and then go from there."

The Trump administration has been aggressive in its efforts to rescind policies restricting greenhouse gases. It's working to reverse the Clean Power Plan, which sought to cut power-sector emissions 32 percent by 2030, and President Trump has announced a withdrawal from the global Paris climate accord.

But the administration has stopped short of promising to challenge the endangerment finding. That stands to be a major fight in the courts, and many administration officials anticipate defeat. Yet if President Trump skips that fight, he would anger staunch conservatives who see the endangerment finding as the cornerstone of future climate regulation.

"We're going to have a mess until that endangerment finding is overturned," Murray said.

The red-team, blue-team exercise is coming early next year, Pruitt said recently. It will pit a team of skeptical researchers against the findings of mainstream scientists. Critics have said the exercise could cherry-pick data in an effort to elevate doubt and give unequal weight to skeptics.

An EPA spokesman said there are "no updates" when asked about the timing of the exercise.

One panel at the Heritage Foundation event yesterday could offer a prelude to the scientific arguments that would be pursued by the red team. Several skeptical scientists picked apart the general consensus of their peers, who say humans are warming the Earth at an unprecedented pace. The panelists claimed that the attention given to rising global temperatures is overwrought. Craig Idso, who founded the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, said the world food supply will fall short of demand by 2050 unless more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

Roy Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said researchers who could be selected for the red team have met a few times in recent weeks in different cities. He said more government research needs to be conducted on the natural causes of climate change. That could be done if congressional budget appropriators divert a portion of the research funding for human-caused climate change toward research on natural causes.

"There are chaotic variations internal to the climate system, and that is something that has been totally swept under the rug," Spencer said. "The red team could look at all kinds of things, but if I'm part of the red team, that would probably be the top thing I would emphasize."

The researchers, all of whom are possible candidates for the red team, attacked the findings of mainstream science that humans are the primary cause of climate change. They criticized climate models, laughed at former Vice President Al Gore's advocacy and portrayed the vast majority of colleagues in their field who disagree with them as "alarmists."

The "smoking gun" that could undo the endangerment finding is to find flaws in the climate models, said Pat Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. He said yesterday's panel is a prelude to the red team and an attack against the endangerment determination. He cautioned EPA against using researchers with extreme positions.

"The red team members are going to have to be very carefully selected," Michaels said. "My fear is that red team will have this tinge of 'Oh, there is no such thing as global warming; there is no such thing as carbon dioxide greenhouse gas effect.' If the red team goes there, it might as well be considered that they are working for the blue team."

Scientific consensuses are often wrong, said William Happer, an emeritus physics professor at Princeton University and a contender to become Trump's science adviser. He criticized the "preening virtue signaling" of environmental groups and compared the attitude of those who craft climate policy to lawmakers who were swept up in the temperance movement before Prohibition was enacted.

"Climate models don't work; they're predicting much more warming than has been observed," Happer said.

Richard Lindzen, a retired meteorology professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, blamed "climate alarmism" on educated elites who don't want to admit their limited understanding of science. He said fossil fuels will benefit humans and that reduced Arctic sea ice will open the Northwest Passage.

After a lunch from Chick-fil-A, Murray shared the Heritage stage with Bud Brigham, who founded several successful hydraulic fracturing companies.

As Brigham sat silently, Murray largely blamed policies by the Obama administration for the decline of coal, rather than the natural gas boom associated with fracking. Murray said that despite the Trump administration's efforts, financing for coal projects is extremely hard to obtain. He said he abandoned a project last week because he failed to find funding. He blamed it on climate science, socialists and liberal policies.

"The global alarmists, the politics is still shutting us down in spite of the Trump administration's efforts. It is still getting worse; they are winning," Murray said.

SOURCE




Are Big Wind firms actually “Subsidy Miners”?

Eco-activists enamored by alternative energy technology have long touted the potential for wind farms as a source of power.

However, it appears that the industry’s promises may be full of hot air.

Take, for example, the funding for many projects. Many Americans are now coining the term “Big Wind” for wind farm installation firms who collude with government employees to obtain subsidies and funding for large-scale projects.

Instead of being “clean energy providers,” the companies behave like “subsidy miners.”

With good reason, numerous upstate towns are actively fighting the encroachment of Big Wind. To cite just one recent example: Last month, the Watertown City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the development of eight industrial wind-turbine projects totaling 1,000 megawatts of capacity, because the projects could impair military training capabilities near Fort Drum.

Over the past decade or so, members of [Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACENY)] — some of America’s biggest subsidy miners — have collected $18.7 billion in federal and state subsidies. The burgeoning backlash against Big Wind means a growing group of rebellious New York towns stand between [ACENY Executive Director Ann] Reynolds’ members and even more taxpayer gravy.

The $18.7 billion sum was obtained by matching ACENY’s membership roster with data from Subsidy Tracker, a program run by Good Jobs First, a Washington-based government-accountability organization. That $18.7 billion includes all federal grants, tax credits, loans, loan guarantees and state subsidies.

The subsidies are corrosive. They encourage wind-energy companies to use legal action to bully rural landowners and small towns.

New Yorkers aren’t the only one challenging the eco-activist blessed energy source. In Indiana, Cass County property owners are asking the county for a chance to speak out on a proposed wind farm.

…”There’s just too many unanswered questions on this,” said Cass County property owner Brenda Rusk.

She is one of several people worried about the impact of a proposed wind farm.

“Just possibilities of things that could go wrong,” Rusk said.

Rusk said she’s been contacted multiple times about contracting her property. She said British based company RES is working to put turbines between 600 and 840 feet tall near Royal Center.

To give some perspective, White County turbines are only about 300 feet tall.

“I don’t feel like signing a contract with this kind of a close proximity to us,” said Rusk. “I just think it’s too much for that much height.”

Citizens in the deep blue state of Minnesota have forced a new project to locate half of the new units to Iowa, based on complaints related to sound.

[Dorenne] Hansen and other residents are fighting to stop the Freeborn Wind Farm project in Freeborn County southeast of Albert Lea.

“I want quiet and dark nights, not the noise and red flashing lights on top of wind towers,” she said. “We did not choose to live out here to be next to an industrial park.”

…Poor perception of an existing wind farm in Freeborn County, the Bent Tree project north of Albert Lea, has helped feed opposition to Freeborn Wind.

Complaints against Bent Tree by some local residents prompted the PUC to take the uncommon move of ordering a noise study. The results in late August showed that Bent Tree exceeded noise levels at certain times.

Green energy advocates seem very dismissive of the prevalent complaints about sound levels made by residents around wind farms.

Sleeplessness and headaches are the most common complaints about wind farms from nearby residents, according to a 2009 study by the Minnesota Department of Health.

Wind farms have also drawn complaints about inaudible infrasound, or low-frequency sound, which can pass through walls easier than higher-frequency noise and can also be accompanied by vibration, the health department study said.

The health department has not updated its report. But James Kelly, an environmental-surveillance manager at the department, said he’s “unaware of any significant studies that would cause us to rethink the statements we made in 2009.”

Who are the locals going to believe, Big Wind and their climate justice advocates or their own lying ears?

SOURCE



Cosmic Rays, Solar Activity Have Much Greater Impact On Earth’s Climate Than Models Suggest

The impact of changes in solar activity on Earth’s climate was up to seven times greater than climate models suggested according to new research published today in Nature Communications.

Researchers have claimed a breakthrough in understanding how cosmic rays from supernovas react with the sun to form clouds, which impact the climate on Earth.

The findings have been described as the “missing link” to help resolve a decades long controversy that has big implications for climate science.

Lead author, Henrik Svensmark, from The Technical University of Denmark has long held that climate models had greatly underestimated the impact of solar activity.

He says the new research identified the feedback mechanism through which the sun’s impact on climate was varied.

Professor Svensmark’s theories on solar impact have caused a great deal of controversy within the climate science community and the latest findings are sure to provoke new outrage.

He does not dispute that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have a warming impact on the climate.

But his findings present a challenge to estimates of how sensitive the climate is to changes in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Professor Svensmark says his latest findings were consistent both with the strong rise in the rate of global temperature change late last century and a slowdown in the rate of increase over the past 20 years.

‘’It gives a physical foundation to the large body of empirical evidence showing that solar activity is reflected in variations in Earth’s climate,” a media statement accompanying the scientific report said.

“For example, the Medieval Warm Period around year 1000AD and the cold period in the Little Ice Age 1300-1900 AD both fits changes in solar activity,” it said.

“Finally we have the last piece of the puzzle of why the particles from space are important for climate on Earth,” it said.

The study reveals how atmospheric ions, produced by the energetic cosmic rays raining down through the atmosphere, helps the growth and formation of cloud condensation nuclei — the seeds necessary for forming clouds in the atmosphere.

More cloud condensation nuclei mean more clouds and a colder climate, and vice versa.

“Since clouds are essential for the solar energy reaching the surface of the Earth the implications are huge for our understanding of why climate has varied in the past and also for a future climate changes,” the statement said.

Professor Svensmark said it had until now wrongly been assumed that small additional nucleated aerosols would not grow and become cloud condensation nuclei, since no mechanism was known to achieve this.

The research team tested its ideas experimentally in a large cloud chamber.

Data was taken over a period of two years with total 3100 hours of data sampling.

Professor Svensmark said the new results gave a physical foundation to the large body of empirical evidence showing that Solar activity is reflected in variations in Earth’s climate.

“This new work gives credit to a mechanism that is much stronger than changes in solar irradiance alone,” Svensmark told The Australian.

“Solar irradiance has been the only solar forcing that has been included in climate models and such results show that the effect on climate is too small to be of importance,” he said.

“The new thing is that there exists an amplification mechanism that is operating on clouds in the atmosphere,” Svensmark said.

“Quantifying the impact of solar activity on climate from observations is found to be 5-7 times larger than from solar irradiance, and agrees with empirical variations in cosmic rays and clouds,” he said.

“This can therefore also explain why climate over the last 10,000 years correlates with solar activity, “Svensmark said.

“On time scales of millions of years there are much larger changes in the cosmic rays that has nothing to do with solar activity,” he said.

“So, this is an independent test of the mechanism and even here beautiful correlations are found,” he said.

But the Nature Communications paper says “the theory of ion-induced condensation should be incorporated into global aerosol models, to fully test the atmospheric implications.”

Professor Svensmark said since solar activity increased in the 20th century, part of the observed warming is caused by the sun.

“The logical consequence is that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is smaller than what climate models suggest which is 2-4 deg C for each doubling of CO2, since both CO2 and solar activity has had an impact”, he said.

SOURCE





You can't win:  EVERYTHING supports global warming

Snowfall on an Alaskan mountain range has more than doubled since the start of the industrial age, a new study has revealed.

The Alaska Range now has an average of 5.4 metres (18 feet) of snow per year - up from an average of 2.4 metres (eight feet) per year from 1600-1840.

According to the researchers, this increase in snowfall is evidence that climate change can trigger major increases in regional precipitation.

THE STUDY

Researchers analysed two ice core samples collected at 13,000 feet from Mount Hunter in Alaska's Denali National Park.

Their analysis revealed that the Alaska Range now has an average of 5.4 metres (18 feet) of snow per year - up from an average of 2.4 metres (eight feet) per year from 1600-1840.

The study suggests that warming tropical oceans have driven the increased snowfall by strengthening the northward flow of warm, moist air.

The study by researchers from Dartmouth College, the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire, shows modern snowfall levels in the Alaska Range at the highest in at least 1,200 years.

Dr Erich Osterberg, lead author of the study, said: 'We were shocked when we first saw how much snowfall has increased.

'We had to check and double-check our results to make sure of the findings.'

The research was based on an analysis of two ice core samples collected at 13,000 feet from Mount Hunter in Alaska's Denali National Park.

SOURCE

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

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Global warming is not the only area where there is a crooked scientific consensus: Cholesterol and statins

The cholesterol/statins hoax is by now just about unwound.  Skeptics will see many parallels to what happens among warmists.  The video below is very thorough so takes over an hour to watch but it is a fascinating tale in human venality



I have been blowing the whistle on the cholesterol nonsense for years See e.g. here




‘Solar monster’ sparks suburban scrap in Boston



A retired couple might echo that lament after installing a ground-mounted grid of energy-soaking panels — dubbed “the solar monster” by one city councilor — that has pitted neighbor against neighbor and sparked a vitriolic war of words.

“It’s a foreign body, basically,” said Mary Downing, scowling as she looked at her neighbors’ carbon-friendly tower. “We don’t want to be out on the deck in the summer, by the pool, and see that thing.”

“That thing” is a stack of 20 solar panels that turns with the sun each day and powers the four-bedroom home where Lola and Richard Eanes live.

It hums rather than rumbles, moves a foot or two several times a day, and shuts down for the night.

“We have grandchildren, and we’ve been thinking about climate change and what has to be done to reduce energy,” said Lola Eanes, a former private investigator who unveiled the unit last December. “It’s a plus for the environment.”

But on Putnam Street, a thickly settled stretch of older homes 20 miles north of Boston, neighbors have railed against the eco-friendly structure as if it were a landfill, saying its unsightly appearance offsets any environmental gains.

“It’s a gross injustice. I couldn’t be more upset about it,” said Ted Downing, echoing his wife’s objections. “It’s so unresidential.”

Neighbors have complained to Beverly officials, who say the tower does not violate any city regulations. And they have brought their complaints to the Eaneses, who have been taken aback by the angry reaction.

“They ganged up on me,” Lola Eanes said. “It’s a new thing, and maybe they don’t like change.”

Eanes said the complaints have ranged from the expected to the outrageous, including fears that the panels might emit cancer-causing radiation, cause massive erosion, interfere with Beverly Regional Airport, and emit a blinding glare.

Nonsense, Eanes said.

“What right do they have to call this an eyesore? Even the state wants everybody to go solar,” she said. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

And it’s a boon for the budget. The couple paid for electricity only from June through September, four months when they turned on the air conditioning and circulated the water in their pool, Eanes said. Even then, the bill was far lower than the $350 to $500 a month they had paid before.

But neighbors condemn the tower as an out-of-place blemish that will depress property values and tarnish the neighborhood’s character. Going green is great, they say. Just find another way to do it.

“It’s not that we’re against solar, but it belongs on the roof,” Mary Downing said.

Neighbors also complained that they weren’t warned about the plan.

The Eaneses “didn’t say one word about what they were doing and how they were doing it,” said Bill Soares, whose bedrooms face the panels. “One day I came home, and there were surveyors poking around, and I asked them, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

He didn’t like their answer. They were laying the groundwork for a 21-by-16-foot gray, metallic grid supported by an 11-foot tower wrapped in faux-greenery. It’s only the second residential solar tower in Beverly, but its placement is what irks neighbors most.

“It is located physically closer to four other homes than the owner’s home,” Soares said. “I hold both the city and the Eaneses accountable for that callousness, lack of concern, and unsympathetic attitude toward the neighbors.”

City officials said no notification or public hearings were required, but neighbors argued that common courtesy should count for something.

The dispute is linked to the odd layout of the Eanes property, a “pork-chop” lot with a narrow strip of land that runs hundreds of feet from the street to the couple’s home. The tower stands on that strip.

Some of the neighbors, once friendly, no longer speak with the couple. The rift might be permanent.

“We have a place in New Hampshire and get up there on weekends, so we really don’t have much to do with them,” said Richard Eanes, a former plaster contractor.

Compared with his exasperated neighbors, Eanes was diplomatic.

“I’m stuck with the property value diminished. I’m stuck with looking at the thing. And I’m stuck with a neighbor who paints the other neighbors as obstructionists,” Soares said. “It’s infuriating.”

For her part, Lola Eanes said the real eyesore is the drooping telephone poles that line the streets.

“None of them stand completely straight. Some of them have large transformers on them. Some of them have coils of tangled wires attached, and they are all sagging,” Eanes said. “Can these opposing neighbors really say that my sleek solar array with underground wiring to my home is less attractive?”

Sleek solar array or solar monster, the tower may be the last of its kind in Beverly, said city planner Aaron Clausen. The City Council is expected to review draft regulations early next year that could prohibit large, ground-mounted panels from front yards.

Whatever the outcome at City Hall, the “solar monster” of Putnam Street is here to stay, Lola Eanes said.

“We’re not fighting anymore. It’s there, it’s done,” she said, waving away the criticism with a flick of her hand. “It's really been quite a ride.”

SOURCE




Reducing Antiquities Act land grabs

Special interests blatantly misrepresent President Trump and Interior Secretary’s actions

Paul Driessen

Acting on recommendations by Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, on December 4 President Trump significantly reduced the size of two enormous areas in Utah that Presidents Clinton and Obama had set aside as limited-access, no-development zones under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Mr. Trump’s action reduced the Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments from a combined 3.2 million acres (the size of Connecticut) to 1.2 million acres (slightly smaller than Delaware).

Utah residents and elected officials applauded the move as long overdue. The Patagonia and North Face outdoor apparel companies, environmentalist groups, and various liberal politicians and news outlets branded the action a desecration, claimed President Trump “stole” the lands from the American people, and launched coordinated and hyperventilated disinformation campaigns.

In reality, the actual thefts were masterminded and conducted by previous White House officials, in cahoots with radical environmentalists. Employing the immense power of the federal government, they took valuable state lands, multiple private lands and property rights, and a private company’s most valuable asset (America’s largest clean coal deposit) without any compensation whatsoever.

The Antiquities Act was intended to protect areas of historic, prehistoric or scientific value, and lands designated as monuments were to be “the smallest size compatible with the proper care and management” of objects or sites to be protected. Its goal is to safeguard fossils, unique plants and habitats, Native artifacts and sites, geologic structures and special scenic areas from damage, desecration and looting.

The first national monument ever designated (the 1,347-acre Devils Tower) respected the law’s language and intent, as have most designations since then. However, in recent decades presidents have increasingly used the act to circumvent Congress and replace proper legislative processes with executive decrees. They established enormous de facto wilderness areas with the stroke of a pen – usually with little or no consultation with people and elected officials in communities that would be most severely impacted.

It is these abuses that Messrs. Zinke and Trump sought to correct. In so doing, they followed decisions by Presidents Coolidge, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Taft and Wilson, who also reduced the size of previous monument designations. The Utah changes address arguably the greatest onshore Antiquities Act abuses.

President Clinton designated the 1,880,461-acre Grand Staircase Escalante Monument in large part to make a billion-dollar coal deposit off limits, by preventing any roads from reaching it. The action was quietly engineered by Katie McGinty, his White House Environmental Policy Office director, in collaboration with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Even Mr. Clinton was not fully aware of what he was signing, and Ms. McGinty totally blindsided Utah Governor Michael Levitt, who (like every other citizen and official in Utah) knew nothing about the massive land lockup until it was a done deal.

(For all the sordid details, read chapter 12 in Cracking Big Green or chapter 4 in Undue Influence.)

President Obama designated the 1,351,849-acre Bears Ears NM three weeks before leaving office, largely to make still more energy, mineral and other resources off limits to exploration and development. He too did so without prior consultation with Utah’s governor, congressional delegation or residents. Offshore marine national monuments now total 760 million acres – 7-1/2 times the size of California!

Monument designation means exploration, drilling, mining, timber harvesting, motorized vehicles, and even grazing and gathering firewood are prohibited. People’s property rights, lives, livelihoods, living standards and life savings are grievously affected. The entire tax, job and revenue base of communities, counties and states is impacted. Thousands of acres of state “school sections” – which states are granted at the time of statehood to finance schools – are made off limits, with no compensation.

That’s real thievery. At the very least, this demands careful consultation with the people who live there, and negotiations with their representatives to ensure that all these interests are considered and addressed. Stroke-of-the-pen monument decrees callously circumvented all these constitutional, legal and ethical safeguards. They ensured that valuable property was taken without due process or just compensation.

Taken together, the original Grand Staircase and Bears Ears Monuments were far larger than the combined acreage of Utah’s Bryce and Zion National Parks. They are in addition to Utah’s three other national parks, six other national monuments, four national recreation and conservation areas, hundreds of miles of national trails, 31 national wilderness areas, and millions of acres in other restrictive land use categories – in a state where the federal government still owns 61% of all the land.

Compare that to states east of the Mississippi, where federal agencies own, manage or control just 0.3% of Connecticut and Iowa, and 0.6% of New York, for example. People and officials in these states have no inkling of what it is like to live in Western states where 30% to 80% of all lands are federally owned.

Even more important, the remaining Utah monument areas are still huge. From Bears Ears, the new Shash Jáa monument is 130,000 acres (three times the size of Washington, DC) and Indian Creek is 72,000 acres (almost twice DC). From Grand Staircase Escalante, the new Grand Staircase is 210,000 acres (one-third of Rhode Island); Kaiparowits is 551,000 acres (81% of RI); and Escalante Canyons is 243,000 acres (36% of RI). To suggest that these monuments are now too small to safeguard their unique habitats, scenic areas, fossil sites, antiquities and Pueblo ruins is simply absurd – and disingenuous.

Imagine the Fish & Wildlife Service or other federal agency “protecting” one-half of Rhode Island or Delaware as a monument or endangered species habitat, to safeguard a Native American village site, small meteorite crater, scenic river valley, or rare fish, frog or bird habitat – on the bogus ground that making a smaller area off limits to human activity would leave it open to depredation.

That’s what Utah was dealing with – along with claims that a single mine, oil well, road, ranch, town or other sign of humanity’s presence … in areas the size of Rhode Island, Delaware or even Connecticut … would forever destroy the “wilderness character” of the entire area. This is what drives environmentalist activism and decades of pre-Trump federal land management policy. It’s deplorable and intolerable.

In reality, all areas removed from highly restrictive “national monument” status remain under the management and protection of multiple federal agencies and regulations. They are not being “stolen,” given to Utah or private interests, opened to rapacious looting and development, or left defenseless.

In stark contrast to the way Presidents Clinton and Obama designated the two original monuments, these decisions to reduce their size were made only after numerous extensive meetings and consultations, over a six-month period, with local residents and leaders, tribal and inter-tribal members and delegates, local, county and congressional representatives, environmental groups and many other parties.

If any of these or other people and organizations want official wilderness or park status for any of these areas that have been returned to traditional “multiple use” management and protection – they can and should utilize the legislative processes required by the Constitution, Wilderness Act and other laws. Any other approach would be improper, unconstitutional, illegal, unethical and dismissive of local interests.

On a related front, federal arrogance and heavy-handedness took the Obama era war on coal to the Navajo Nation. Citing specious climate change, health and “viewshed” justifications, regulators issued what were effectively execution orders for the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station and its associated coal mine –destroying two pillars of the precarious Navajo economy and living standards. In league with radical greens, they also scuttled plans to build the proposed state-of-the-art Desert Rock coal-fired power plant.

As in the case of huge Utah national monument designations, Navajo families and tribal leaders were deliberately and systematically excluded from the decision-making and property confiscation process.

This is the regulatory culture and mindset that President Trump and Secretary Zinke are trying to change. For doing so, they are meeting fierce resistance and disinformation from Patagonia, North Face and their allies. Shoppers might want to keep this in mind when thinking about what to buy for holiday gifts.

Via email





UK: The criminals, crackpots and extremists who have poisoned anti-fracking camp protests

Protesters claim that they represent communities near the fracking drilling sites But analysis shows that only around a quarter ever lived nearby before joining And convicted criminals and extremists are also involved

Anti-fracking protest camps in two areas of the country have been infiltrated by violent criminals, drug users, wild conspiracy theorists and ‘professional’ political activists, a Mail on Sunday investigation reveals today.

Policing the protesters, who frequently resort to ‘direct action’ such as blocking roads to hold up shale gas drilling, has cost local taxpayers almost £4 million this year and led to more than 400 arrests.

The protesters claim on their websites that they represent communities near the drilling sites and are protecting them from the dangers posed by fracking.

But analysis of those arrested shows only about a quarter had ever lived nearby until they joined the camps.

Many genuine locals – including those opposed to fracking – have vehemently condemned the protesters and the disruption their tactics cause.

At Kirby Misperton, near Malton in North Yorkshire, they have formed an anti-protester protest group, which already boasts more than 800 members.

And last week it emerged that on seven separate occasions, protesters in Lancashire made bogus 999 calls to the ambulance service, claiming they had been injured by police – but then refused to go to hospital, saying they were unhurt. Meanwhile, traffic chaos caused by protesters has delayed the response to genuine emergencies at least twice.

However, the protest camp residents have been applauded by visiting celebrities and Left-wing politicians, including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

Ms Lucas told demonstrators at the fracking site at Preston New Road near Blackpool that they were on the ‘right side of history’.

She claimed that ‘direct action’ was necessary because they had ‘tried the democratic process and it hasn’t worked’.

When he visited, Mr McDonnell said he would ‘take back a message to Parliament and my colleagues that we need to give you all the support we can’. Throughout his career, Mr McDonnell has frequently called for direct action to achieve political change: after this year’s Election, he claimed it was needed to ‘bring down the Government’.

Inquiries by this newspaper have revealed:

At the Lancashire camp, protest leaders include individuals convicted of both violent and sexual assault, and a man with robbery and battery convictions who has used social media to incite vigilante attacks against a paedophile;

At Kirby Misperton, the camp was co-founded by Stephen Peers, who was given a three-month jail sentence in 2014 for an assault on his wife and later jailed again for illegally filming court proceedings;

His co-founder Ian Crane is a conspiracy theorist who hosts weekly internet TV shows in which he proclaims terrorist outrages such as 9/11 and recent attacks in London were the work of the British and American governments;

Mr McDonnell and Ms Lucas were briefed about allegedly ‘oppressive’ policing in Lancashire by a man who insists he is a ‘Jedi Knight’. Although his real name is Daniel Nye, he will only answer to the name ‘Master Lion’;

Posts on a Facebook page by protesters in Lancashire say a woman there was taken to hospital after taking a Class A drug ‘cooked up’ on site by another resident, while in Yorkshire, posts contain references to an alleged sexual assault.

Fracking – a method of producing natural gas by fracturing rocks deep underground using water pumped under pressure – has not taken place in Britain since 2011, when a test at another site in Lancashire by gas exploration firm Cuadrilla caused two minor tremors.

It was not until this year, following years of planning inquiries and legal battles, that Cuadrilla began to drill again at Preston New Road, where it has permission to conduct limited test fracks. Only then will it be known whether the area contains gas in viable quantities.

Rival firm Third Energy will conduct similar tests at Kirby Misperton. At both sites, the planning process will have to start again before the drillers can move to commercial production.

By the summer of 2017, there were three separate camps at Preston New Road and two camps at Kirby Misperton. Some residents have been arrested up to nine times for taking part in direct action protests.

A favourite tactic is ‘locking on’ – two protesters lie on the tarmac outside a site entrance with an arm inside a plastic pipe, their wrists locked to a metal rod driven through it. The pipe is wrapped in layers of concrete, so cutting them free is extremely difficult.

Another method is ‘slow walking’ – creeping very slowly in front of a lorry headed for the site. Yet another is ‘lorry surfing’ – climbing on top of a truck and refusing to come down, rendering it immobile.

At Kirby Misperton in October, protesters managed to break into the drilling site, where they climbed the rig and let off flares.

More than 100 police officers have been needed on some days at both sites – requiring some to be drafted in from other parts of the country.

 Superintendent Richard Robertshaw, who is heading the police operation in Lancashire, said: ‘Lock-ons cause maximum disruption. They require teams of specially equipped and trained officers to cut the protesters out without injuring them and it can take hours.’

He said the protesters know that they will be arrested and convicted. But invariably they are charged with a minor offence for which they will usually be given a conditional discharge.

He added: ‘The level of crime is low, but the level of disruption is very high. The protesters will say their intention is to make the development of fracking so painful and expensive that Cuadrilla won’t want to stay in this market.’

The cost for local taxpayers is also high. In August, the Lancashire operation alone cost more than £1 million and the total for the year will top £3 million. In Yorkshire, where the protests started later, the cost will be a further £800,000.

Sometimes protesters post live video feeds on social media which make it clear some have behaved aggressively to police. Supt Robertshaw said: ‘Officers have been briefed to expect a high level of verbal abuse. We have tried to be as understanding as possible to them exercising their right to protest.’

Fracking opponents from the political mainstream – such as Mr McDonnell and Ms Lucas – have claimed police tactics are oppressive. But when Lancashire engineer Brent Crossley asked friends to sign a letter to the chief constable expressing support for police, he quickly gathered 350 signatures.

He said yesterday: ‘The protesters are incredibly antagonistic. If you criticise them on social media, you will be bombarded with threats and abuse. They cause chaos on the roads. They say fracking will affect local house prices but they’re affecting them far more. The camps have become a permanent feature. I don’t see how they get away with it.’

Around Kirby Misperton, Ryedale Against Antisocial Protesters started only a month ago but now has more than 800 members – including some who oppose fracking.

Resident Ruth Hardie said: ‘I’m not in favour of fracking but we’re surrounded by protesters. ‘It’s a beautiful village, with three roads in and out – and they control two of them.’

She revealed that last month, her daughter, 11, contracted appendicitis. She only just managed to get her to the GP for an emergency appointment where the doctor diagnosed her condition and sent her to hospital, because the protesters began a lock-on in the middle of the village. After the operation, they narrowly missed another lock-on, which would have forced the sick child to walk home. She said: ‘We’re moving because of the protesters. I don’t feel safe here any more.’

Last Thursday, Kirby Misperton protesters disrupted a Ryedale district council meeting, forcing it to be adjourned – the third time they have disrupted a local or county council meeting in the past month.

Janet Sanderson, a Conservative member of both bodies, said they were ‘interfering with the democratic process – and whether you’re for or against fracking, that is unacceptable’. She said she had been jostled by protesters when she tried to take her seat, and when one councillor had tried to restore order, they had ‘yelled abuse’.

Most of those convicted of offences arising from the protests do not have convictions for other types of crime. But this newspaper has established from official court records that some do. For example, Preston New Road regular Adam Loughlin, alias ‘Bibbs Bloc’, was convicted of a sexual assault and placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years in 2013. And last week, he boasted on Facebook of his ‘special’ advent calendar containing several varieties of super-strong cannabis.

Meanwhile, fellow protester Ben Deevoy – who has convictions for robbery and battery – was jailed last year by magistrates for incitement after posting a video on social media urging viewers to help him attack a man convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Deevoy said on the video: ‘He’s a paedo and he’s walking the streets. These f****** mugs must be taken off our streets… let’s find him, because I’m going to put my nut on his head and my steel toe-capped boots in his b****. Get me his address please guys.’

After a month in prison, Deevoy won his appeal – a judge ruled she did not believe anyone would have helped him conduct the attack.

Later, Deevoy posted a video of himself intimidating staff at a Blackpool hardware store he claimed was linked to Cuadrilla.

Another person arrested at Preston New Road is Sarah Boyle. In 2016, she was given a suspended jail sentence for causing actual bodily harm. She lured another woman to a Fleetwood flat and, according to prosecutors, ‘tortured’ her, burning her face with a lit cigarette and causing further burns to her legs with a stun-gun.

Lancashire Labour MP Graham Jones told The Mail on Sunday it was time to crack down on unlawful protests: ‘I’m neither for nor against fracking. But it seems evident these protests have been hijacked by some unsavoury characters from outside Lancashire. They disrupt the lives of local people and, it would appear, are intent on provoking the police and wasting taxpayers’ money.’

A Third Energy spokesman said: ‘In recent weeks, we have seen a period of sustained illegal protest by a small group, many of whom do not live locally. The cost of policing has sky-rocketed, and the wellsite operators have also incurred significant security costs.’

Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan added: ‘People have a right to protest lawfully. But what we have seen over many months are disruptive, dangerous and unlawful direct actions that have, for the most part, been organised and conducted by a hardcore of professional out-of-town protesters.

‘Several of these individuals have criminal records for offences that have nothing to do with fracking or legitimate political dissent.’

SOURCE





Advanced Nuclear Finds a More Welcome Home in Canada

Canadian regulators announced that Terrestrial Energy has completed the initial phase of a design review for its molten-salt nuclear power plant, giving the Ontario-based company a small early lead in the race to commission the first commercial fourth-generation reactor in North America.

To be sure, it’s a very early step in what will be a long regulatory process, the first of three phases in just the “pre-licensing” review. All the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has really said is that the company has demonstrated it intends to comply with regulatory requirements, while noting that the company has a lot more to do to prove that its conceptual designs will operate safely in the real world.

It will be at least the later part of the next decade before any Terrestrial reactor will be up and running. But industry observers say the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s nod represents an important step toward building a next generation of safer nuclear plants that could be cheaper to build and operate, and would meet a broader range of market needs.

“It’s the biggest milestone since we formed the company, and an industry milestone as well,” says Simon Irish, chief executive of Terrestrial, which has selected the Canadian National Labs in Chalk River, Ontario, as the site of the first plant.

The news is also notable as one more example of another nation forging ahead on the molten-salt technologies first developed decades ago in the United States. China is pursuing an ambitious and accelerated thorium-fueled molten-salt reactor, as MIT Technology Review previously reported, and so is the Netherlands nuclear research center NRG (see “Fail-Safe Nuclear Power”).

Meanwhile, fourth-generation-reactor companies such as London-based Moltex Energy and Advanced Reactor Concepts of Delaware have also opted to pursue early regulatory approval in Canada.

There are certainly efforts under way in the United States to pursue molten salt and other advanced nuclear technologies, including projects at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory and the university’s spinout Transatomic (see “Nuclear Energy Startup Transatomic Backtracks on Key Promises”). But so far, no known molten-salt projects have submitted a design certification application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (although NuScale is pursuing approval for a small modular reactor).

So why are things moving faster overseas?

While the U.S. nuclear review process is considered the “gold standard” on safety, some startups and researchers believe it’s not adequately accommodating of advanced technologies. A specific critique is that the commission doesn’t offer the early feedback that would let companies properly assess regulatory risk before investing hundreds of millions of dollars in further design and development.

The Canadian process is better defined and offers a series of earlier official reviews, says Ryan Fitzpatrick, deputy director of the clean-energy program at the think tank Third Way. The commission evaluates designs on the basis of broader safety principles rather than specific technological requirements, which offers greater flexibility for the varied set of emerging technologies, he says.

There have been some efforts to improve the U.S. review process. In March, the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bipartisan Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which would require the NRC to establish a regulatory framework for licensing advanced nuclear reactors. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, in recent public appearances, has also highlighted the importance of pushing forward nuclear technologies, particularly small modular reactors—marking a rare area where the Trump administration is actively promoting a source of carbon-free energy.

Terrestrial’s 190-megawatt integrated molten-salt reactor combines several promising advanced nuclear approaches. Using molten salts rather than water to dissipate heat from the fission process is considered inherently safer, because it allows the reactor to operate at ambient atmospheric pressure. This lowers containment costs and enables cooling even when the system loses power (see “MIT’s Nuclear Lab has an Unusual Plan to Jump-Start Advanced-Reactor Research”).

The IMSR is also a small modular reactor. That means the components can be mass-produced in factories and shipped to their final site, promising to lower construction costs and risks (see “Small Reactors Could Kick-Start the Stalled Nuclear Sector”).

Terrestrial is a technology developer and design vendor. It hopes to get its plans preapproved through regulatory agencies and license its technology to other companies that will construct and operate the plants.

CEO Irish says he’s confident the company will be able to address the areas of work highlighted in the review, improving predictions about the behavior of the reactor core and collecting additional data on safety margins and operating performance.

The company’s U.S. affiliate has also begun early regulatory discussions concerning an advanced small modular reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, but it doesn’t plan to submit a licensing application until late 2019.

Many energy experts say the world is going to need far more nuclear power to address the escalating threat of climate change, simply because it’s a carbon-free energy source that doesn’t face the intermittency limitations of renewables like solar and wind.

But the industry has languished amid widespread public safety concerns, massive project costs and risks, high-profile boondoggles, and challenging regulatory requirements (see “Meltdown of Toshiba’s Nuclear Business Dooms New Construction in the U.S.”). Nevertheless, hopes are growing that advanced reactors can overcome some of these issues, helping to restore momentum in the sector.

“Advanced reactors are definitely a big part of getting nuclear to meet its full potential and pull its weight in the climate fight,” Fitzpatrick says.

SOURCE

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

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

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Unrestrained romanticism is not dead

The guff below could have been written by a Nazi writer.  Nazism also had a romanticized vision of a marvellous small-farmer past. Some people will never learn.

Their key paragraph below is this one:

"The industrial food chain is using at least 75 per cent of the world’s agricultural land and most of agriculture’s fossil fuel and freshwater resources to feed barely 30 per cent of the world’s population. Conversely, more than 500 million peasant farms around the world are using less than 25 per cent of the land – and almost no fossil fuels or chemicals – to feed 70 per cent of humanity."

It is one of the sillier attempts to lie with statistics. It makes no mention of HOW MUCH food different farming systems produce or how much effort goes into producing it.  It may be true that 25% of the land feeds 70% of the people but it does so only via back-breaking labor that leaves little time for anything else and in the end provides on a bare minimum of food most of the time. For the rest of the time it produces famine.  It is no model for any sane person.

I think that tells you how good the rest of their statistics below are.  It's just a prolonged fantasy


Industrial agriculture isn’t the efficient beast it’s made out to be. Peasant farming, not industrial food production, is the way to feed the world, argue Pat Mooney and Nnimmo Bassey

The solution for both climate and food sovereignty is to dismantle the global industrial agri-food system (which we call the ‘industrial food chain’) and for governments to give more space to the already growing and resilient ‘peasant food web’ – the interlinked network of small-scale farmers, livestock-keepers, pastoralists, hunters and gatherers, fishers and urban producers who, our research shows, already feed most of the world.

The industrial food chain is using at least 75 per cent of the world’s agricultural land and most of agriculture’s fossil fuel and freshwater resources to feed barely 30 per cent of the world’s population. Conversely, more than 500 million peasant farms around the world are using less than 25 per cent of the land – and almost no fossil fuels or chemicals – to feed 70 per cent of humanity.

Aside from burning vast quantities of fossil carbon, industry is also wasting money that could be directed to supporting equitable agroecological production while still lowering food prices for the world’s marginalized consumers.

The statistics are staggering. Consumers pay $7.5 trillion each year for industrially produced food. But between a third and half of this production is wasted along the way to the consumer or at the table: spoiled in the field or in transport, rejected from grocers because of blemishes, or left on the plate because of over-serving.

The total food overproduced each year is worth $3.8 trillion – a combination of $2.49 trillion worth of food waste and $1.26 trillion of over-consumption (see footnote 191 of the report). Burgeoning waists worldwide also have both human and economic costs.

When the wider environmental damages – including contaminated soils and water, greenhouse gas emissions – are added to the health and social impacts, the harm done by the industrial food chain is almost $5 trillion (see footnote 193). For every dollar consumers spent in supermarkets, health and environmental damages cost two dollars more.

Added to the amount spent by consumers, this makes the real cost of industrial food $12.4 trillion annually.

Policymakers negotiating the future of food and climate may wonder if it is possible to make such a dramatic change in our food production. Peasants may feed 70 per cent of the world’s population now but can they adapt quickly enough to climate change to feed us in 2100? Which system, the industrial food chain or the peasant food web, has the track record, innovative capacity, speed and flexibility needed to get us through the unparalleled threat of an unpredictable climate?

The answer is clear. Take experience: over the last century, the industrial food chain has not introduced a single new crop or livestock species to production but has cut the genetic diversity of our crops by 75 per cent, reduced the number of species by about one third, and reduced the nutritional value of our crops by up to 40 per cent. The peasant web has introduced 2.1 million new plant varieties where industrial agriculture has only introduced 100,000 over the same time frame.

The industrial food chain works with only 137 crop species and five main livestock species. Stunningly, 45 per cent of the industry’s research and development targets just one crop: maize. By contrast, the peasant web is breeding and growing 7,000 different crop species and 34 livestock species – like the alpaca, ñandu, and guinea pig.

Peasants also have the track record of dealing with new conditions quickly and effectively. Recent history is replete with evidence that peasant producers – before there were telegraphs or telephones or railways – have adapted new food species (through selective breeding) to an extraordinary range of different climatic conditions within the span of only a few human generations

The peasant web is breeding and growing 7,000 different crop species and 34 livestock species – like the alpaca, ñandu, and guinea pig

This process of seed and knowledge sharing from farmer to farmer is how maize spread across most of the regions of Africa and how sweet potatoes were planted everywhere in Papua New Guinea from mangrove swamps to mountain tops – all in less than a century – and how immigrants brought seeds from Europe that were growing across the Western Hemisphere within a generation.

When we compare the track record of the industrial food chain to the peasant food web we must conclude that our century-long experience with the chain shows that it is just too expensive, and it can’t scale up. Meanwhile, with almost no support from governments, the peasant food web is already feeding 70 per cent of us (see page 12) – and could do much more, while producing drastically less greenhouse gas emissions than industrial methods.

To be clear, ‘peasant farming as usual’ is not an option. Climate change will mean our over 10,000 years of agriculture has to deal with growing conditions that the world hasn’t seen for three million years.

There is no reason to be sanguine about the problems ahead.

Peasants can scale up if the industrial chain gets off their backs. Governments must recognize peasants’ rights to their land and seeds and support fair, peasant-led rural development and trade policies. We need to cut waste and shift our financial resources to strengthening the peasant food web and both tackling climate change and ensuring food sovereignty.

SOURCE



How One City Plans to Fight Climate Change on Its Own. With help from Nordic experts, a city in Northern England is moving toward creating the most energy-efficient homes on the planet

How amusing.  Past attempts at putting up highly "sustainable" buildings have all been disastrous -- with big cost overruns, leaking roofs, utilities that don't work etc.  I look forward to hearing the outcome of this project


The Scandinavian firm, White Arkitekter, is working in tandem with urban developers Citu to design a plan Leeds where the apartments and homes become among the most sustainable in the world.

The Scandinavian firm, White Arkitekter, is working in tandem with urban developers Citu to design a plan Leeds where the apartments and homes become among the most sustainable in the world.

While there’s a (mostly) global consensus on the need to address climate change at the state level, municipal solutions to improving energy efficiency seem to be governed not by orthodoxy but by experimentation.

To that end, one neighborhood in the northern English city of Leeds is moving toward a sustainable future with a little help from Nordic experts. Envisioned as a collaborative project between Sweden’s White Arkitekter and environmentally conscious U.K. development firm Citu, Leeds’s dedicated “Climate Innovation District” will repurpose an old industrial brownfield to create a green, open community centered around 500 of the most energy-efficient apartments and homes you’ll find anywhere on the planet.

White Arkitekter designed the mixed-use neighborhood with a Scandinavian love of efficiency in mind. All necessary services like schools, offices, and healthcare facilities will be located within easy walking or cycling distance from the more than 500 apartments and homes that will eventually be built on the site.

Their plan also calls for ample green and social spaces, making it easier for residents to interact and play, all while mitigating the air quality and urban heat island issues that plague stodgier city neighborhoods.

Built on the bones of apartment complexes created by White Arkitekter and local firm Ollier Smurthwaite Architects, the district’s one- to four-bedroom bedroom units will be outfitted by Citu with some of the most sustainable, carbon-neutral design elements in the world. Featuring rainwater collection, solar paneling, and green roofs on the outside as well as smart-home technology and heat recovery systems on the interior, it all “represent[s] a pioneering new approach to house building in this country, which is one of the biggest causes of carbon emissions,” according to a statement by Citu founder and managing director Chris Thompson.

SOURCE





How to Talk to a Science Denier without Arguing

In summary:  Don't mention any scientific facts.  That at least is what he describes himself below as doing.  That's quite a confession in its way

It’s the holiday season, which means plenty of opportunities for uncomfortable interactions with friends and family who are science deniers, from people who believe the moon landing was faked to those who believe vaccines cause autism or who think that humans did not cause significant global climate change. How can you deal with such science deniers effectively?

My close friend invited me to her house for Thanksgiving, where I sat across the table from her cousin Sam. Learning about my research on promoting truthfulness in our society, he proceeded to denounce what he called the “climate change hoax” as a vast attack by liberals on businesses. He told me how his dad lost his job at a factory that moved to Mexico, placing blame on government regulations—including pollution control—that made it too expensive for the plant to operate in the Columbus, Ohio, where Sam lives.

By the end of our conversation over that meal, he accepted the validity of the science on climate change. Sam is one of many people who updated their beliefs during conversations with me, including prominent ideologically-oriented talk show hosts. Recently, I published a book on this topic, The Truth-Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide. One of the strategies described there can be summarized under the acronym EGRIP (Emotions, Goals, Rapport, Information, Positive Reinforcement), which provides clear guidelines on how to deal with Sam and other people who deny the facts, in science and other life areas.

What Not To Do

Our typical response is to respond by presenting the facts and arguing about the quality of the evidence. However, studies suggest that doing so is generally not effective in changing people’s minds on charged issues. Research on the confirmation bias shows that we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conforms to our beliefs. Our emotions are much more powerful than our reason, and we tend to go with our guts when perceiving new information.

Moreover, research on a phenomenon called the backfire effect shows when we are presented with facts that cause us to feel bad about our identity and worldview, we tend to dig in our heels and refuse to accept the facts. In some cases, presenting the facts actually backfires, causing people to develop a stronger attachment to their incorrect belief.

Don’t Argue, EGRIP Instead

If someone denies clear facts, you can safely assume that it’s their emotions that are leading them away from reality. While gut reactions can be helpful, they can also lead us astray in systematic and predictable ways. We need to deploy the skill of empathy, meaning understanding other people’s emotions, to determine what emotional blocks might cause them to stick their heads into the sand of reality.

In Sam’s case, it was relatively easy to figure out the emotions at play through active listening: anxiety about job security, compounded by his dad’s experience. I confirmed my suspicions by using curiosity to question Sam—who was in his junior year in college—about whether he was concerned that government protections would inhibit his ability to find a job, and he answered “you’re damn right I’m worried about that.” You will have to figure out based on the context of each individual situation the relevant emotions at play.

Next, establish shared goals for both of you, crucial for effective knowledge sharing. With Sam, I talked about how we both want people to secure jobs in the current uncertain economic environment, and he strongly agreed. I also said how we both want him and his friends and family—who were all around us at the Thanksgiving dinner table—to stay healthy, and he agreed as well.

Third, build rapport. Using the empathetic listening you did previously (a vital skill in promoting trusting relationships), echo their emotions and show you understand how they feel. In the case of Sam, I told him I understood his feelings of worry and anger. I also told him I was worried about his health and the health of other students, due to the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by pollution.

Finally, I added that we should always orient toward the facts, wherever they may lead, and added that I—along with thousands of other citizens—took the Pro-Truth Pledge as a public signal of commitment to sharing accurate information, and welcomed him to hold me accountable. He appreciated that opportunity, and it built my credibility in his eyes.

Fourth, move on to sharing information. Here is where you can give the facts that you held back in the beginning. Since Sam’s concerns had to do with economic issues, I focused on the money rather than the science. I talked to him about how while I did not know the specifics of his dad’s situation, I could truthfully state that the government sometimes makes unwise policies that result in harmful outcomes.

Next, I pointed out to him how the number of clean energy jobs in Ohio is growing, and much quicker than overall job growth; given bipartisan support, this trend will likely continue. Then, I highlighted how since manufacturing jobs like the one his dad had aren’t coming back, he could secure a good financial future for himself in the green energy field after college.

Likewise, he would also help protect his health and the health of his friends and family around the dinner table. As a bonus, he wouldn’t have to deny scientific studies. After all, as I told him, the scientists are simply finding data, and it’s government officials and business leaders who decide what to do with it.

The key here is to show your conversation partner, without arousing a defensive or aggressive response, how their current truth denialism will lead to them undermining in the long term the shared goals we established earlier, a research-driven approach to addressing thinking errors.

Sam was surprised and moved by this information. He agreed that green energy might well be a good future for him. He confessed he was feeling mental strain due to denying scientific findings, and was relieved to see that believing in science did not have to mean he would not find a job.

I offered positive reinforcement for his orientation toward the facts, praising his ability to update his beliefs. Positive reinforcement is very valuable as a research-based tactic of encouraging people to change their identity and sense of self-worth to align with truthfulness through associating positive emotions with doing so.

Think of how much better your holiday dinner could go if you use EGRIP instead of arguing!

SOURCE





Global Warming: Fake News from the Start

President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change because it is a bad deal for America. He could have made the decision simply because the science is false, but most of the public have been brainwashed into believing it is correct and wouldn’t understand the reason.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and indeed the leaders of many western democracies, though thankfully not the U.S., support the Agreement and are completely unaware of the gross deficiencies in the science. If they did, they wouldn’t be forcing a carbon dioxide (CO2) tax, on their citizens.

Trudeau and other leaders show how little they know, or how little they assume the public know, by calling it a ‘carbon tax.’ But CO2 is a gas, while carbon is a solid. By calling the gas carbon, Trudeau and others encourage people to think of it as something ‘dirty’, like graphite or soot, which really are carbon. Calling CO2 by its proper name would help the public remember that it is actually an invisible, odorless gas essential to plant photosynthesis.

Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is arguably the most misinformed of the lot, saying in a recent interview, for example, that “Polluters should pay.” She apparently does not know that CO2 is not a pollutant.

And, like many of her political peers, McKenna dismisses credentialed PhD scientists who disagree with her government’s approach, labelling them “deniers.” She does not seem to understand that questioning scientific hypotheses, even scientific theories, is what all scientists should do. That is why the official motto of the Royal Society is “Nullius in verba,” Latin for “Take nobody's word for it.” Ironically, the Society rarely practices this approach when it comes to climate change.

Mistakes such as those made by McKenna are not surprising considering that the entire claim of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was built on falsehoods and spread with fake news.

The plot to deceive the world about human-caused global warming gathered momentum following creation of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). After spending five days at the U.N. with Maurice Strong, the first executive director of UNEP, Hamilton Spectator investigative reporter Elaine Dewar concluded the overarching objective of the IPCC was political. “Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the global governance agenda,” wrote Dewar.

The political agenda required ‘credibility’ to achieve the deception. It also required some fake news for momentum. Ideally, this would involve testimony from a scientist before a legislative committee.

U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO) was fully committed to the political agenda and the deception as he explained in a 1993 comment, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing…”

In 1988 Wirth was in a position to jump start the climate alarm. He worked with colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to organize a June 23, 1988 hearing where Dr. James Hansen, then the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), was to testify. Wirth explained in a 2007 interview with PBS Frontline:

“We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So, we called him up and asked him if he would testify.”

Hansen did not disappoint. The New York Times reported on June 23, 1988:

“Today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.”

Specifically, Hansen told the committee,

"Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming...It is already happening now"

Hansen also testified:

"The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now...We already reached the point where the greenhouse effect is important."

Dr. John S. Theon, Hansen’s former supervisor at NASA, wrote to the Senate Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.”

Hansen never abandoned his single-minded, unsubstantiated claim that CO2 from human activities caused dangerous global warming. He defied the Hatch Act that limits bureaucratic political actions, and, in 2011, was even arrested in a protest at the White House against the Keystone XL pipeline, at least his third such arrest to that point.

Wirth, who presided at the hearing, was pre-disposed to believe Hansen and told the committee:

''As I read it, the scientific evidence is compelling: the global climate is changing as the earth's atmosphere gets warmer. Now, the Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend and how we are going to cope with the changes that may already be inevitable.”

So, like Trudeau and other leaders duped by the climate scare, Wirth has either not read or not understood the science. In fact, an increasing number of climate scientists (including Dr. Ball) now conclude that there is no empirical evidence of human-caused global warming; there are only computer model speculations that humans are causing it and every forecast made using these models since 1990 has been wrong.

More than any other event, that single hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee publicly initiated the climate scare, the biggest deception in history. It created an unholy alliance between a bureaucrat and a politician, that was bolstered by the U.N. and the popular press leading to the hoax being accepted in governments, industry boardrooms, schools, and churches across the world.

Trump must now end America’s participation in the fake science and the fake news of man-made global warming. To do this, he must withdraw the U.S. from further involvement with all U.N. global warming programs, especially the IPCC as well as the agency that now directs it—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Only then will the U.S. have a chance to fully develop its hydrocarbon resources to achieve the president’s goal of global energy dominance.

SOURCE




Here's How Many People Have Left the EPA Since Scott Pruitt Took Over

The Environmental Protection Agency has shrunk considerably since Scott Pruitt took over as administrator. In fact, the agency is back to President Reagan-era staff levels.

Over 700 EPA personnel have either retired, quit, or taken voluntary buyouts since Pruitt took over, Think Progress found after combing through federal employment statistics. Some are quitting in "disgust."

“There has been a drop of employees of 770 between April and December. While several hundred of those are buyouts, the rest of those are either people that are retiring or quitting in disgust,” Kyla Bennett, director of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told ThinkProgress. “Is that number higher than it would normally be? I think it is.”

Liberals were outraged over Pruitt's nomination last year, labeling him a "climate skeptic" and criticizing his ties to the fossil fuel industry.

SOURCE

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

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

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A mechanical engineer tries to use commonsense to discredit  climate skepticism

His name is Rich Brager.  His effort is below and shows how shallow his understanding of the issues is.

My first smile was his credulous belief that scientific fraud is "pretty rare".  I wonder how he explains that in both psychology and medicine up to two thirds of all findings have recently been found to be unreplicable?  The level of fraud may vary but its frequency shows that treating scientists as an authority is naive.  The only authority is the facts.

And his idea of how scientists work is also idealized.  He says:

"They learn by failure. They formulate new ideas based on their previous test results. They hone and fine tune their ideas until they can achieve success"

But Warmists don't do that. They have a theory they stick to come hell or high water.  Take their basic theory that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to increasing global temperatures.  So from 1945 t0 1975 when CO2 levels rose strongly, global temperatures rose strongly too.  Right?  But they didn't.  They were effectively static for all of those 30 years.  Some people call it the "long hiatus".  So how do warmists explain that stark contradiction of their theory?  They don't.  They just mumble "special factors" and go on as if nothing to disturb their theory had happened.

Mr Brager goes on to compare the science that goes into his beloved motor cars with climate science and says that because motor cars work well, climate science must be right too.  That is a rather large non-sequitur for starters but its basic error is to assume that climate scientists proceed the way other scientists do.  They don't.  I have just pointed out an example of that but let me give another one:

It is a normal scientific courtesy for scientists to make their raw data available to other scientists so other scientists can re-analyse it and (hopefully) show that the analyses done by the original author were correct and adequate.  New analyses could even reveal new insights not picked up by the original author.

But Warmists NEVER do that. They refuse point blank to make their data available to others.  That immediately evokes supicion that their data may not show what they say it shows. And on one occasion when some very important data was left lying around where skeptics could access and analyse it, the whole "hockeystick" edifice built on it collapsed.  They have good reasons to hide their data.

Mr Brager clearly needs to do some reading.  He could start by googling "unreplicable findings"


Science deniers seem to be everywhere. You can read about them in the papers virtually every day. They are in the news all the time. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has assigned a disproportionate number of jobs requiring scientific knowledge to science deniers. Very sad, very dangerous.

What are they denying? The topics include climate change, evolution, vaccination as well as a number of other topics. So why are the deniers deniers? Of course, there is no single reason. They often cite instances where scientists were fraudulent with their scientific information. Since scientists are also human, this does happen sometimes but fortunately, it is pretty rare.

Sometimes they say that the scientists have just made errors in their scientific analysis. This can also happen, but many non-scientists just don’t really understand how science works. Scientists learn by pushing the envelope of knowledge and by testing their ideas. They learn by failure. They formulate new ideas based on their previous test results. They hone and fine tune their ideas until they can achieve success.

I think many science deniers are very selective in their denials, almost hypocritical. They agree with and love science every time they go to their garage and start their modern car. The science that goes into designing and manufacturing a modern car is borderline unbelievable. You name it, it is there: material science, chemistry, thermodynamics, electronics, robotics, anatomy (think driving position, location of controls), physics, etc., etc. And they all work together so seamlessly that you don’t give it another thought while you commute to work.

And you science deniers could care less about the science that goes into your cell phones, GPS’s and microwave ovens. They all work “like magic”, but they are not magic. They are science at work. And work they do.

So do scientists of different stripes (physicists, chemists, weather scientists, biologists, etc.) go about their work in completely different ways?

Although their fields of study may differ wildly, their scientific methods are remarkably the same. They design their tests, gather their data, review their data, rerun tests as necessary, use statistical methods in analyzing their data, search for similar research by others, present their finding to other experts. Final reports are peer reviewed and critiqued. New and amazing findings are made.

So let’s pick on climate change deniers for a second. Do you think climate scientists are dumber than automotive scientists? Do you think their techniques are inferior to cell phone scientists? Or is your own understanding of climate science just not as good as your understanding of how your cell phone works? Or just because your political party needs to support big energy, climate change shouldn’t be real? Or what? Please help me understand.

So you deniers, make sure you have some real good scientific knowledge before you deny. Think about what Isaac Asimov (scientist and science fiction writer) said about anti-intellectualism. He stated that anti-intellectualism is “nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

It is not.

SOURCE

Comment from a reader:

This has got to be one of the screwiest posts that I have every read ....and to think it was published by a Mechanical Engineer.

He truly misses a single most important point....the people promoting man-made Global warming have not performed a single scientific experiment that demonstrates that CO2 will cause the temperature of the atmosphere to rise and if one should take a look at the last 50 years a true scientist would conclude that CO2 either has little or no effect.

All that I have seen is the pointing at all kinds of false findings and claiming these to be evidence of global warming.....rising sea levels, glaciers melting, loss of polar ice, polar bear demise, more violent storms, droughts, crop failure, insect migration, disease, correlation of temperature to CO2 concentrations, and on and on.

Any scientist would take a step back at the failure of any of these prediction to come true.




Germany To Open Another New Coal Power Plant

German utility Uniper will start up its Datteln IV hard-coal fired power station in the fourth quarter of 2018, it said in slides for an analyst and investor call on Thursday, having previously planned to start it in the first half 2018.

The 1,050 megawatts plant in western Germany has been held up for years by intense legal battles with environmentalists as Germany seeks to move away from coal-fired electricity long-term.

SOURCE



Revisiting the EPA Endangerment finding

Obama’s EPA used semantic tricks to avoid rigorous scientific evaluation. Is Trump’s EPA more honest?

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt is mulling over how, or whether, to respond to demands from climate skeptics that he reexamine the science that obligates the EPA to issue costly carbon-emission regulations. While he has recently acknowledged that agency staff short-circuited the science review early in the regulatory process, he may not realize that the EPA inspector general’s office flagged this problem years ago, and the agency staff blew him off by means of a preposterous legal fiction that has long been in need of correction

In 2009 the EPA issued the Endangerment Finding, which created a statutory obligation to regulate carbon emissions. In the lead-up to this decision the EPA had published its Technical Support Document. Numerous petitions for reconsideration were subsequently filed with the administrator citing evidence of bias and cherry-picking in this report, but all of them fell on deaf ears

In April 2010, Senator James Inhofe (R., Okla.) asked the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General to review the adequacy of the peer-review process behind the Technical Support Document. The EPA was not happy with what he unearthed

It turns out that the federal government has rules in place governing how the scientific basis for regulations should be reviewed. Guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget issued under the Information Quality Act impose varying requirements depending on the uses to which a scientific assessment will be put. The most rigorous process is for so-called Highly Influential Scientific Assessments (HISA). These are scientific assessments that will, among other things, lead to rules that have an annual economic impact exceeding $500 million.

The inspector general issued a lengthy report in 2011 concluding (pp. 15–22) that the EPA’s science assessment for the Endangerment Finding was highly influential, but the peer-review process fell short of the required standard. It even violated internal EPA guidelines, by failing to publicly report the review results and cutting corners in ways that potentially hindered the work of reviewers.

The EPA argued back, rather brazenly, that their report was not an assessment at all, merely a summary of previous findings by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Climate Assessment, and other reports, and these documents — not any original research by the EPA — underpinned the Endangerment Finding.

The inspector general rejected this argument for several reasons. First, the EPA study clearly was an assessment, since it selected certain lines of evidence for emphasis or exclusion and used data not found in the underlying reports. Second, the guidelines do not allow an agency such as the EPA to rely on peer reviews conducted by outside groups such as the IPCC or the National Climate Assessment team. Third, the inspector general noted (p. 53) numerous occasions when the EPA cited the Technical Support Document as the basis of its Endangerment Finding

The EPA then argued that even if it was an assessment, it was not “highly influential.” Since the Endangerment Finding was being issued on a “stand-alone” basis with no specific regulations attached, the investigation ended without resolution.

Thereafter the EPA proceeded to issue rules like the Clean Power Plan with impacts far exceeding $500 million annually. By declining to designate its science assessment as highly influential, the EPA skirted the need to conduct the required peer review, but in so doing it thwarted the intent of the statutory guidelines and undermined the ethical basis of its actions.

While the courts may not demand that this situation be rectified, Pruitt himself should. Administrative honesty demands it, especially since the determination has large potential economic ramifications. Specifically Pruitt needs to declare that the Technical Support Document was a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment that should have been reviewed as such in the first place, and he should see to it that such a review now takes place

While climate activists may object, they have also spent years insisting that the science is settled, so if they are right, they have no reason to worry about the outcome. And if they are unhappy that this might delay the next round of rule-making, they should direct their ire at Pruitt’s predecessor, who ought to have undertaken the review back in 2011 rather than playing semantic games to justify evading statutory peer-review requirements

Regardless of Pruitt’s views on climate science, he should agree that the regulatory process needs to be honest and procedurally sound. This alone gives him sufficient grounds to initiate the review that was supposed to have been done years ago.

SOURCE





The Renewable Fuel Standard is broken beyond repair

The EPA recently served up its annual reminder of an energy policy we would be thankful to see chucked out with the spoiled leftovers.

The Nov. 30 release of the 2018 biofuels quotas under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) provides an opportunity to examine the mandate’s failures.

The RFS entered our political discourse during the George W. Bush presidency. American petroleum production was in decline, gas prices were climbing and Al Gore was clogging the airwaves to promote his film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

First introduced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later entrenched by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the RFS mandated that by 2022 36 billion gallons of biofuel be produced nationwide and imposed upon fuel refiners a minimum required volume of biofuel — mostly corn ethanol — to be blended into their products. This maze of regulations and directives was crafted with the nominal purposes of disentangling our economy from the volatile Middle East petrostates and weaning us off of greenhouse gas-emitting fuels.

Now, 10 years later our dependence on foreign oil has been thoroughly mitigated — but the RFS doesn’t deserve the credit. Compelled by the high gas prices of the 2000s, American energy producers deployed techniques like hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling to tap enormous stores of oil and natural gas in states as diverse as Pennsylvania, Texas and North Dakota. Prices plummeted and the global market has been so upended that the Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects America will soon be a net energy exporter.

Advocacy for biofuel mandates has persisted despite the sea change in global energy production. The fallback argument is that biofuel is a smarter environmental choice than traditional gasoline because upon burning it emits a lesser volume of greenhouse gases. But even if we grant that an emissions reduction is a laudable goal, this argument doesn’t pass muster. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “available evidence suggests that replacing gasoline with corn ethanol has only limited potential for reducing emissions (and some studies indicate that it could increase emissions).”

Though greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol itself are indeed lower than those from gasoline, that doesn’t tell the whole story. What’s missing is an account of the environmental costs of ethanol’s production.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “(S)ince for some biofuels, indirect emissions — including from land use change — can lead to greater total emissions than when using petroleum products, policy support needs to be considered on a case by case basis.” As the IPCC suggests, ethanol isn’t an obvious emissions winner. Even the Sierra Club has called the biofuel mandate “unsustainable,” describing it as “unconscionable that the EPA continues to turn a blind eye to this burgeoning environmental crisis.”

With both the energy independence and emissions arguments proven untenable, what motivation remains for RFS advocates?

By pulling back the husk, we see that the RFS’s staunchest supporters tend to hail from corn-producing states like Nebraska and Iowa. Corn growers in America’s heartland have much to gain from the increased demand that the RFS creates. The rest of us, on the other hand, hardly give it a second thought. Ethanol’s enduring presence on our energy landscape is a classic example of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. But across the country the RFS burdens each of us in subtle ways.

One example is through taxpayer-funded grants for ethanol infrastructure. Ethanol’s corrosiveness whittles away at gasoline holding tanks and, to cushion the fuel suppliers who would otherwise bear the cost, the Department of Energy doles out cash to upgrade their equipment.

Another unseen burden is that ethanol is a less efficient fuel than traditional gasoline, meaning we can’t make it as far per gallon. According to the EIA, “In general, vehicle fuel economy may decrease by about 3 percent when using E10 relative to gasoline that does not contain fuel ethanol.” This inefficiency means we have to fill up more often and, ultimately, spend more at the pump.

Despite the clear drawbacks of the RFS, the deep-pocketed corn ethanol lobby continues to influence policy in Washington, as the recent EPA announcement shows. Government incursions into energy markets often yield nonsensical results, and the RFS is a prime example. This mandate is costly, unnecessary and corrupt. After more than a decade of RFS distortion, it’s time for us to finally say “no thanks.”

SOURCE



Trump Environmental Nominee Fires Back At Dems Accusing Her Of Plagiarism

Kathleen Hartnett White, nominee to head the White House’s environmental office, has fired back at Democratic lawmakers accusing her of plagiarizing written responses to confirmation questions.

“[I]t should not be a surprise that I share the views of my fellow nominees on a number of issues. In preparing my responses, I sought to reiterate positions already stated that are reflective of my own,” White wrote in response to Senate Democrats.

Democrats on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works accused White of plagiarizing answers in written responses from “received from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum,” they wrote on Tuesday.

Democrats claim to have found 18 instances White “cut and pasted from the written answers of other nominees,” and asked her to respond. President Donald Trump nominated White to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

She fired back, saying two Obama administration officials also used the same verbatim answers to written questions during the confirmation process.

“My understanding is that this is not unusual and was the case for CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in responses provided to you and other senators in their confirmation proceedings,” White wrote in her response letter, a copy of which was obtained by Axios.

Lisa Jackson headed EPA from 2009 to 2013, when she resigned amid uproar over her use of a secret email account. Nancy Sutley headed CEQ from 2009 to 2014. After stepping down, she became chief sustainability office at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Nominees often work with the White House and other federal officials to answer questions in a way that reflects the administration’s policies. It’s not surprising parts of answers are shared between nominees.

Democrats oppose White’s nomination on the grounds she’s a global warming skeptic who worked at a conservative think tank that’s taken money from the fossil fuels industry. Lawmakers grilled White during a November confirmation hearing.

White is an unabashed proponent of fossil fuels, and has contested the notion that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant,” which the Obama EPA determined in 2009. Carbon dioxide is essential to plant life and has actually greened much of the world, she’s argued.

SOURCE

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

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

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