Climate change: Water shortages in England 'within 25 years'

Dropping a retired diplomat into the job of heading an environment agency was bound to have amusing results.  And so it has.  Sir James knows not even the basics of science.  The idea of England running out of water, for a start, could pass as a joke.  Visitors to England get the impression that it never stops raining there.

Greenies have however been doing their usual tricks in obstructing water infrastructure improvements such as dam building.  So reticulating the water to Britain's immigrant-swollen population could be problematical.  But that is on the head of the Greenies, nobody else.

And global warming has absolutely nothing to do with it.  A warmer world would evaporate more water off the oceans and that would come down as INCREASED rainfall.  Sir James must not have done even High School physics to be unaware of that


Within 25 years England will not have enough water to meet demand, the head of the Environment Agency is warning.

The impact of climate change, combined with population growth, means the country is facing an "existential threat", Sir James Bevan told the Waterwise Conference in London.

He wants to see wasting water become "as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby".

"We all need to use less water and use it more efficiently," he said.

Sir James Bevan was appointed chief executive of the Environment Agency - the public body responsible for protecting the environment and wildlife in England - in 2015 after a career as a diplomat.

He told his audience that, in around 20 to 25 years, England would reach the "jaws of death - the point at which, unless we take action to change things, we will not have enough water to supply our needs".

SOURCE





Populist Party That Ran Against Climate Hysteria Wins Largest Bloc In Dutch Election

A new populist Eurosceptic party has achieved the remarkable feat of going from zero seats to becoming the largest single party in the Dutch Senate in a single election, as a young politician likened to a “Dutch Donald Trump” beat seasoned professionals in Wednesday’s poll.

Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy party, which has gained attention for its Euroscepticism, campaigned against open borders politics and against what he calls “climate-change hysteria,” winning 86 seats across the Dutch regions.

The victory put his party ahead of even the ruling mainstream conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which achieved 80 seats.

The Forum was founded in 2016, and this is the first regional election the party has contested.

Remarkably, in some Dutch regions Forum was so unexpectedly successful it won the right to appoint more elected members than they actually have registered candidates living in those areas.

The regional seats translate through the Dutch constitutional system into seats in the appointed upper house Senate. The party will have 13 seats, making them the largest group — and robbing the governing VVD of their majority.

Speaking to Dutch media, leader Thierry Baudet said he was willing to support the establishment parties in government but would demand a “change of course” in certain policy areas, specifically mass migration and government spending on climate change policies.

Showing the party’s newfound power, Baudet even demanded the resignation of several key cabinet ministers, including those responsible for home affairs and immigration, in return for support.

Unlike other countries where establishment parties have totally ruled out working with populist insurgents, even when they hold seats key to establishing a working government, the Netherlands’ centrist-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Thursday he would be willing to consider working with Forum to keep the government in power.

Wednesday’s election came just two days after what is now understood to have been a terror attack in the Dutch city of Utrecht, which some media commentators both inside the Netherlands and without have said may have influenced the way people chose to vote.

Baudet himself was criticized after the attack for continuing his election campaigning, while others called off rallies.

Speaking on the campaign trail, Baudet attacked the governing parties for their role in contributing to the circumstances surrounding the attack, including “naive and lax” policies on open borders and criminal justice.

Arguing that despite decades of warnings about the impact of mass migration, “nothing has changed on this road we are following, with hundreds of thousands of people still coming here,” Baudet warned Dutch voters. “If we don’t choose a different course on Wednesday, [events like this week’s shooting] will happen much more often.”

Criticizing the Prime Minister, he said: “We are being destroyed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us… Successive Rutte governments have left our borders wide open, letting in hundreds of thousands of people with cultures completely different to ours.”

Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reports several news sources have likened the “television genius” Baudet to U.S. President Donald Trump, who connected directly with voters through social media, bypassing the legacy mainstream media.

The unexpected degree of success for Forum reflects and reinforces a broader trend across Europe which sees populist parties giving an authentic voice to concerns held by voters at the expense of traditional, established parties.

This trend is broadly anticipated to continue in the European Union’s parliament elections, with as many as one in four voters across the continent expected to vote populist.

SOURCE




The Consequences Of Andrew Cuomo’s Climate Agenda Hit Close To Home. His Home

The unintended consequences of Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s global warming crusade are hitting close to home — literally.

Utility Consolidated Edison put a moratorium on new natural gas hookups across parts of Westchester County, which includes Mount Kisco where Cuomo’s residence is located, according to The New York Times.

Con Edison’s decision is no surprise to energy experts critical of Cuomo’s blocking of major gas pipelines and the banning of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in New York.

“Governor Cuomo has been mandating the Green New Deal Dream in New York, and now it’s turning into a nightmare for people forced to pay twice as much for oil heat instead of natural gas,” Daniel Kish, a distinguished senior fellow at the free-market Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Local officials and businesses worry the utility’s decision will derail major development projects that will rely on natural gas for heating. It also means homes looking to get off relatively expensive heating oil will have to wait.

“It’s just a question of how people are going to be able to heat their homes and cook their food with the energy that’s available right now,” Con Edison spokesman Michael Clendenin told The Times Thursday.

The natural gas moratorium was announced in January and went into effect March 15, sparking a rush to get applications for natural gas hookups filed before it was too late.

Cuomo banned fracking in 2014 after years of study and delay. Cuomo said the risks to New York’s groundwater and public health were too great, despite Pennsylvania moving ahead with extracting oil and gas from shale.

In the years since, Cuomo’s administration has blocked major natural gas pipeline projects. At the same time, however, natural gas was becoming an increasingly important part of New York’s electricity and heating mix.

Cuomo’s policies have made environmental activists happy, and he’s not done yet. Cuomo’s in the midst of pushing his own “Green New Deal” plan to push more solar and wind power onto the grid.

Cuomo’s goal is 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. Current state law mandates 50 percent renewable electricity — hydropower, solar and wind — by 2030. About 28 percent of the state’s electricity comes from renewables, mostly hydroelectric dams.

However, most of New York’s electricity comes from natural gas and nuclear power. Also, millions of households rely on natural gas for heating during winter.

Pipelines are needed to get natural gas to customers, energy companies say, and there currently aren’t enough to reliably meet demand, especially during harsh winters.

Con Edison said Cuomo’s policies have chilled construction of new pipelines in the region. Two counties in Massachusetts have also had moratoriums on natural gas hookups since 2014 due to a lack of pipelines.

“The market changed,” Clendenin told The Times. “Investors were no longer willing to take the risk.”

The pipeline bottleneck in New York has also put pressure on New England states that heavily rely on natural gas. Harsh winter conditions in recent years have brought the region’s grid to the brink, including during winter 2017/2018.

“The Northeastern States are cutting their own throats and their leaders are doing it with a green knife,” Kish said.

In response to Con Edison’s moratorium, New York state offered roughly $250 million in incentives to reduce energy use and install green energy heating equipment. Public utility regulators are also looking into Con Edison’s decision and could overturn the moratorium.

However, Cuomo’s office blamed Con Edison’s poor planning for the natural gas shortfall.

SOURCE




ABC's ‘World News Tonight’ Covers Superbloom, Ignores End of California Drought
 
California’s “Mediterranean climate” gets attention when it can be used to leverage panic over climate change and when people’s lives and properties are at risk. But the broadcast networks have proved that when it cycles back around thanks to a wet winter, they won’t always report it.

If a wildflower superbloom hadn’t sprouted in California and drawn thousands of visitors, it’s doubtful any of the three evening news shows would have actually announced California was finally out of its long drought. None of the three did a standalone drought story, and ABC failed to report the end of the drought in spite of covering the wildflower bloom.

USA Today reported on March 15, that the entire, enormous state of California is now officially out of drought for the first time since 2011. That was the word from the U.S. Drought Monitor on March 14. But on the six nights after the Drought Monitor announced that good news for California, ABC's World News Tonight skipped the drought altogether — even when it covered the “superbloom mania” on March 18.

CBS Evening News took until March 19, to mention the state was drought-free, saying in its tease: “The drought is over and the desert comes alive.”

CBS correspondent Jamie Yuccas opened the story saying, “Seven years, California is drought-free and the earth is celebrating,” before going on to report record crowds and Instagrammers getting too close to the flowers for their pictures.

NBC Nightly News was the earliest evening newscast to announce the end of the drought.

Sunday anchor Kate Snow said, “A sign of spring now with truly stunning pictures from southern California. It’s called the superbloom, following weeks of rain, California has finally emerged from its drought and wildflowers have begun to blossom. These poppies are drawing crowds of thousands of people.”

The end of the drought is good news for California, at least for now.

“If we have a few more years of this, then maybe our groundwater conditions will be in much better shape and we might be in a better shape to deal with another potential drought, which will come, Stanford University’s director of urban water policy Newsha Ajami told USA Today. “California has a Mediterranean climate so we do experience a lot of ups and downs in our weather conditions.”

In 2017, when winter storms also helped California pull out of the most severe drought category — “exceptional drought” — the broadcast networks barely acknowledged the change. Only NBC’s Today mentioned it between Jan. 24, and Jan. 31, of that year.

The liberal media claimed for many years that droughts like the recent, protracted drought in California was due to man-made climate change. They also portrayed it as unusual, labeling it “historic” in more than 60 percent of their California drought stories in early 2014. But according to some experts, they were wrong about claiming it was “historic” and unprecedented that year.

NOAA scientist Martin Hoerling disputed the assessment in a 2014 New York Times op-ed, saying California’s drought “resembles the droughts that afflicted the state in 1976 and 1977. Those years were at least as dry as the last two years have been.”

Although he accepted that global warming occurred, he argued in that op-ed that “scientific evidence does not support an argument that the drought there is appreciably linked to human-induced climate change.”

ABC, CBS and NBC also connected “hundred-year forest fires” and “periods of severe drought” to climate change in many morning and evening shows in the spring of 2014, without questioning that supposed link. Some other media even claimed it would go on getting worse for a very, long time. Wired magazine warned in May 2016, “California’s Drought is Probably Forever.”

SOURCE





Most 2020 Dems Blow Off Carbon Offsets: ‘No One Is Ready To Walk The Walk’

They are not even pretending to believe in oncoming castastrophe

Sen. Bernard Sanders suffered criticism last year after he flew on a greenhouse-gas-spewing private jet to campaign during the midterm elections. …

On Thursday, Mr. Sanders said he’ll keep going, pledging to offset his carbon emissions for his 2020 presidential campaign. […]

But the other 2020 Democratic hopefuls, who like Mr. Sanders call global warming an existential crisis, have been slower to put their money where their mouth is.

After inquiries from The Washington Times, only one — the campaign of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg — said it would consider proactive steps to make up for the dirty business, carbon-speaking, of a campaign.

“He’s pledged not to take contributions from the fossil fuel industry, and we’re looking into ways to reduce the carbon footprint,” said Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith.

Every other campaign contacted by The Times ignored the inquiries, making it anyone’s guess how seriously they will take their emissions.

Even Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is making climate change the centerpiece of his campaign, wouldn’t say whether he will offset his carbon.

Carbon offsets are projects such as planting trees to suck carbon from the atmosphere, converting dirty power sources to cleaner ones, or capturing methane emissions from landfills.

Companies seek payments from those spewing carbon, promising to use the money to fund offset projects.

Native Energy, the company Mr. Sanders uses, says it can offset the half-ton of carbon emissions from 1,000 miles of short-haul airplane travel for $8.55.

Offsets were the rage a decade ago, with several high-profile presidential campaigns promising to pay for their emissions during the 2008 race, including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

Combined, federal campaigns in 2008 paid major offset providers, including Native Energy and Climate Trust, a total of $230,917, according to federal records.

In the 2012 presidential cycle, when there was no Democratic presidential primary race, expenditures on carbon offsets ran slightly more than $2,000.

The payments to major offset companies increased in the 2016 cycle but at $14,347 remained dramatically below the 2008 level.

After being spotted flying a private jet to campaign events in 2016, Mrs. Clinton promised to offset her emissions, but no record of payments can be found. Her campaign repeatedly ignored questions about the failure in 2016.

Ironically, the Clinton Global Initiative has funded a carbon offset operation.

Only Mr. Sanders and fellow Vermonter Rep. Peter Welch consistently make large expenditures on carbon offsets.

The lack of personal action has not stopped other candidates from complaining about the looming catastrophe.

“Climate change is the most serious threat to humanity today, and we need immediate and bold action to address it,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, said Americans have a “final chance” to act or face a climate apocalypse in 12 years.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts proposed rebuilding all of the country’s infrastructure in a way that deals with climate change.

“The urgency of the moment on climate change cannot be overstated. It’s upon us and we need to make a change and make change fast. And that means in part rebuilding our power grids, our entire infrastructure system. We need to harden against the coming storms. Underpasses and overpasses and bridges. We need a 21st-century infrastructure that accounts for coming changes in climate, and we need it fast,” she told National Public Radio.

Mr. Inslee called for an “all-out national climate mobilization” to defeat climate change.

“Sounds like most Democratic candidates want to talk the talk of the Green New Deal, but no one is ready to walk the walk,” said Michael McKenna, an energy lobbyist and Republican Party strategist.

SOURCE

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Climate change's fingerprints are on U.S. Midwest floods: scientists

It's just speculation.  There is no way you can show a causal link. A good comment received from Patrick Moore:  

"I am so sick of what are supposed to be sane people claiming that climate change has "fingerprints". That is in Sherlock Holmes and FBI cases, not in rainfall and hurricanes. Fingerprints are real things that one can observe with their eyes. What do the "fingerprints of climate change" look like? Are they "invisible"? If so how did the "scientists" see them?

Also "I don't think it's a starring role, but it's a strong supporting role," is a completely ridiculous metaphor for a grown scientist to be mouthing about a weather event."

Scientists speak in numbers that can be checked.  How do you check "supporting role"?

And a good comment from Tony Heller:

"The reason the atmosphere is saturated, is because of the cold air – which can hold less moisture. This is something most science students learn in high school, but apparently our top PhD climate scientists are unaware of it.

Sea surface temperatures are also mostly below normal west of the US.  The claims by the climate scientists have no basis in reality, which is standard practice for their profession"

Climate change played a hand in the deadly floods in the U.S. upper Midwest that have damaged crops and drowned livestock, scientists said on Thursday, while a Trump administration official said more homework was needed before making that link.

The "bomb cyclone" that dumped rain on Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri and killed at least four people now threatens a wider region downstream of swollen rivers and smashed levees.

Manmade greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the oceans and making the air above them more humid, scientists said. When a storm picks up and eventually spits out that moisture, it can be devastating for people caught below.

"The atmosphere is pretty close to fully saturated, it's got all the water it can take," said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Big storms like the bomb cyclone and Hurricane Harvey, which smacked Houston in 2017 with record downpours, are where the impact of climate change can most clearly be seen, he said, adding that climate change's fingerprints were all over the recent storm.

"I don't think it's a starring role, but it's a strong supporting role," said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally-funded office, of climate change's role in the Midwest floods.

He said the bomb cyclone was carrying vast amounts of moisture from the Pacific up to 1,500 miles (2,400 km) away.

Wehner said the flooding was consistent with projections in a government report issued last November, the National Climate Assessment Volume II, that said climate change would boost costs in industries from farming to fisheries and energy production by increasing the frequency of powerful storms.

That report, mandated by Congress, was compiled by 13 federal departments and agencies, but was called inaccurate by the White House.

President Donald Trump has cast doubt on mainstream climate change science and announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement, an international accord to fight climate change, saying it is too costly.

The White House National Security Council has also been considering the formation of a panel to assess science used in military and intelligence reports, which have angered Trump by concluding climate change poses a national security threat.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the link between climate change and the storm.

'FOOL'S ERRAND'

Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at the National Centers for Environmental Information, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that the type of heavy precipitation that immediately led to the upper Midwest floods is generally increasing over time.

But trying to link the role of climate change to an individual event is a "fool's errand" akin to trying to determine the cause of a car crash while the wheels are still spinning, he told reporters on a conference call.

More research needs to be done to find a definitive answer on climate's link to the floods, Arndt said.

NOAA officials said on the call they expect the floods to continue through May and get more dire as snow melts and water continues to flow downstream.

Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, agreed that climate change likely made the Midwest floods worse.

But he said that investments in levees and other infrastructure to deal with changes have not kept up, making communities more vulnerable.

"People have developed infrastructure for the way the climate was in the past, and haven't really been able to evolve to the climate of now and the future," said Wuebbles.

SOURCE





Time running out to prevent the Green New Deal

One of the centerpieces of the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda is the rescission of the Clean Power Plan that was put into place by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2015 under former President Barack Obama. Comprising in part the new and existing power plant rules by the EPA, the Obama plan was to reduce carbon emissions by retrofitting existing coal power plants and making the costs of building new ones so onerous that nobody would dream of it.

By and large, the Obama policy was a “success,” if by success we mean that existing coal plants were taken off-line and replaced with natural gas, and the new plants being built run on natural gas.

In 2007, coal-generated electricity made up 49 percent of the total U.S. grid, while natural gas was just 21 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In 2018, after Obama, now natural gas makes up 35 percent of the grid, and coal is down to 27 percent.

What made this overreach possibility — a de facto ban on new coal power plants and a major incentive to convert existing ones to natural gas — was the 2009 carbon endangerment finding by the EPA, defining carbon dioxide as a harmful pollutant under the terms of the Clean Air Act.

To address this war on coal, the EPA has now come back with a plan to modify the standards under the new power plant rule, while still imposing emissions reductions, doing so in a manner that is actually technically feasible and achievable. Instead of limiting new larger power plants to 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, which the agency said was too onerous to be met, it will make it 1,900 pounds.

As for existing plants, the EPA proposes for states to decide for themselves how to reduce carbon emissions. If states fail to produce a plan, then the EPA will give them one.

Both of these proposals would certainly be a step in the right direction and afford more latitude to meet emission reduction targets but they still accept the central premise that carbon dioxide is a harmful pollutant and must be addressed under the Clean Air Act. They leave the carbon endangerment finding in place, creating an opening for future administrations to come back and just do the same thing again — or worse, implement something like the Green New Deal, which ambitiously contemplates getting to net zero carbon emissions within 10 years.

This minimal progress being made is not unexpected. It is a lot harder to rescind regulations and have courts sustain that rescission than it is to water them down a bit via a modification. In 1983, the Supreme Court unanimously decided in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association v. State Farm Mutual that in rescinding a regulation, the agency must provide a reasoned analysis, “for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency does not act in the first instance.”

This leaves every rescission subject to judicial review, where you have to prove not only that rescinding the regulation in question is rational based on the statutory scheme, but prove that enacting it was irrational to begin with. The problem in this case is that the Supreme Court already decided in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 that carbon dioxide could be regulated under the terms of the Clean Air Act even though the law never contemplated doing so.

In other words, it was “reasonable” based on the 2007 Supreme Court ruling to implement the carbon endangerment finding and so too were the Obama rules that sought to reduce carbon emissions within the statutory scheme. If the Trump administration simply rescinded the regulations, it would likely face an uphill battle in court, since ultimately the question would boil down to persuading the Supreme Court to second-guess itself in the 2007 ruling or not.

If the courts were to block an attempt to rescind the regulations, it could be argued the Trump administration had squandered an opportunity to clarify them instead into something that would at least allow for new coal plants to be built and save a dying industry.

On the other hand, it is a good question whether it would be worth the risk of losing to rescind the regulations in this case. Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote in the majority opinion in the 2007 case, a 5 to 4 decision, and is no longer on the Supreme Court. This might be the best, last opportunity to revisit the carbon endangerment finding.

Other avenues of potential remedy appear to be cut off at the moment. Congress could have addressed this issue in 2017 and 2018 when Republicans controlled majorities in both chambers of Congress, and clarified the terms of the Clean Air Act either by reforming the statute or by defunding implementation of the Obama era regulations but that was not even attempted — it would have likely stalled in the Senate failing to get to 60 votes and the GOP Senate had already foreclosed the possibility of eliminating the filibuster — and so President Trump is left with what he can do under limited discretion the agencies have to modify the existing regulations.

Unfortunately, what that means is that to prevent something like the Green New Deal from being implemented via regulation, Republicans will have to win every election from now on. In the least, the GOP would need to win back the House in 2020 and hold the Senate and White House. To prevent the Green New Deal, the Clean Air Act needs to be reformed to rule out carbon emissions regulations or else the Supreme Court needs to go back on its 2007 decision.

What it really comes down to is even with these new regulations, will investors want to risk building a new coal power plant, knowing that it’s just one election away from being shut down again? The coal industry may need more permanent protections via law. The regulations keep changing.

Also, the President’s Commission on Climate Security is an important step to addressing whether such onerous regulations are even necessary, as it will take a second-look at the science behind man-made climate change. But it is Congress that really needs to act.

Arguably, under the existing statutory and regulatory scheme and judicial precedent, Democrats already have everything they need to one day implement the Green New Deal via regulation, effectively banning carbon emissions by making carbon capture requirements so onerous nobody can comply with them. Do we really want to sit around and wait and see if they are successful in jamming it through the regulatory process and the courts — and consigning the U.S. to economic oblivion?

SOURCE





The ‘Green New Deal’ Is Breaking the Left Apart

Since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, working-class union members have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. The left claimed to advocate workers’ rights and was seen, rightly or wrongly, as the party who fought for the little guy.

Well if it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now—times have changed.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency, aided by tens of thousands of Obama voters in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, was the first sign of a political realignment.

Now, the “Green New Deal” is highlighting these cleavages in stark terms, with the nation’s largest union organization forcefully coming out against it.

Last week, the AFL-CIO sent a letter to the bill’s lead sponsors—Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.—expressing its opposition to the proposal on behalf of the 13 million workers the union represents.

“The Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy. It is not rooted in an engineering-based approach and makes promises that are not achievable or realistic,” wrote the AFL-CIO’s energy committee.

“We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered.”

The AFL-CIO is absolutely right. The $93 trillion Green New Deal would bankrupt this country while throwing millions of Americans out of work. Unemployment and deficits would skyrocket, and energy shortages would plague our electric grid. These socialist policies would wreak havoc on our freedom and way of life, as they have done throughout history.

Proponents of the Green New Deal argue that all of these jobs will be replaced by “green” energy jobs, but it is unreasonable to expect these magical “green” jobs to even come close to replacing the millions of quality jobs we have in the energy industry right now.

This letter will not soon be forgotten. It represents a major shot across the bow of the far left by the working class of the traditional left. It’s made even more significant by the fact that Ocasio-Cortez has made a concerted effort to woo the labor movement.

Included in the Green New Deal resolution is a pledge to create “high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages.” Ocasio-Cortez also called for “strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain.” In other words, she took great pains to pre-emptively appeal to labor unions.

But the AFL-CIO correctly realized that her pledge is nothing more than hollow words. You cannot throw millions of people out of work and expect new jobs to fall from the sky.

That the AFL-CIO would attack her signature policy proposal with such critical language signals just how deeply workers feel threatened by it. And it is more evidence that big labor’s influence on the left is waning.

Major Democratic figures are lining up behind the Green New Deal, even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and billionaire Michael Bloomberg express unease about it. It’s clear where the left is moving—and who’s being left out.

The union’s 13 million members are a vital grassroots asset for the left. In previous years, locking down this support would have been near the top of any Democrat’s priority list. Democrats still need their support. The question is whether they care enough about retaining that support to pull back from Ocasio-Cortez’s climate extremism.

If they choose the path of the Green New Deal, they will likely be rudely awakened to find that their once-reliable base has left them behind for a president who speaks to their needs.

Time will tell if major Democratic figures buckle on their support of the Green New Deal, but one thing is clear—we are living in fluid, ever-changing political times.

SOURCE






Bill Expanding Electric Vehicle Tax Credits Would Mean $99 Million Less for Colorado’s General Fund

Legislation expanding Colorado’s tax incentives for electric vehicles could mean over $99 million less in revenue for the state’s general fund at a time when Democratic lawmakers are looking for ways to raise tax revenue.

The current electric vehicle tax credits offered for purchase or lease of electric or hybrid vehicles is scheduled to be reduced, then phased out by 2022. House Bill 1159 would increase the tax credits offered for 2021, the last year the credits are offered under current law, and extend the credits through 2025.

But the tax credits offered in HB 1159 would mean the state’s general fund loses out on $99.2 million in revenue, according to the estimate in the bill’s fiscal note.

The fiscal note, prepared by the nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff, estimates the credits offered through the bill will average more than $4,500 in 2021 and 2022 and more than $2,800 in 2023 through 2025.

The Independence Institute called the legislation "fiscally irresponsible" in a blog post, considering that Democrats in the state are looking for ways to raise tax revenue to fund several policy proposals.

Colorado Democrats have proposed overhauling oil and gas regulations in the state, a move that opponents say would hurt one of the state’s top industries and a key source of tax revenue.

Governor Jared Polis signed an executive order in January mandating that more electric vehicles be made available in the state.

Steve Pociask, president and CEO of the American Consumer Institute, questioned the effectiveness of electric vehicles in an email.

"When compared to conventional vehicles, the empirical evidence shows the reduction in electric vehicle greenhouse gas emissions to be greatly overstated," he said. "In addition, these vehicles are more costly to purchase than conventional vehicles, and they produce other sources of pollution, such as increased toxicity to humans, as well as terrestrial and freshwater life, due to the mining and production of nickel, graphite and cobalt used in batteries."

The bill passed the House Finance Committee last week and was referred to the Appropriations Committee.

SOURCE





Climategate +10 Years: Global Warming Scare On Life Support

The global warming hysteria was reaching a crescendo in the lead up to the climate confab in Copenhagen in 2009 when a civic-minded person released the Climategate emails, deflating the whole thing. Those emails were concocted from the fevered imaginations of the scientists involved.

Nigh on 10 years have passed since then and we are currently experiencing another peak in the hysteria that seems to be coordinated worldwide. But why? Why now?

The global warming scientists have plenty of time on their hands and plenty of money. Idle curiosity would have got some to have a stab at figuring out what is going to happen to climate.

Do they see an imminent cooling and they have to get legislation in place before that is apparent?

The passage of those ten years has given us another lot of data points on global warming. There are now 40 years of satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature and this is how that plots up for the Lower 48 States:



What the graph shows is the departure from the average for the 30 years from 1981 to 2010. The last data point is February 2019 with a result of -0.03 degrees C.

So we have had 40 years of global warming and the temperature has remained flat. In fact, it is slightly cooler than the long term average.

Is it possible to believe in global warming when the atmosphere has cooled? No, not rationally. Is it possible for global warming to be real if the atmosphere has cooled? Again no.

Now let’s look at carbon dioxide, which was supposed to be driving global warming, if it’s even happening.

A lab high up on Mauna Loa in Hawaii has been measuring the atmospheric concentration since 1958. As it is the annual change in concentration that is supposed to be driving global warming, let’s see how that plots up:



What it shows is that the driving effect has been in a wide band from 1979 when the satellites to measure temperature went up but the trend is flat. Think about that – No trend since 1979 in CO2 levels.  Level just fluctuate up and down in rough balance. If CO2 increase was ever going to happen it would have happened by now.

The opposite of global warming is global cooling. What are the chances of that? Pretty good in fact.

Only one graph is needed to show the potential for that – the aa Index which is a measure of the Sun’s magnetic field strength. Records of that have been kept since 1868:



The second half of the 20th century had a solar magnetic field strength that was 50% higher than that of the last 60 years of the Little Ice Age. That ended in 2006.

We are now back to the solar activity levels of the 19th century and that will bring the sort of climate our forbears had then.

And so it has come to pass. January-February had record cold over North America. Seemingly the polar vortex was everywhere because Japan also had record cold.

Waiting for global warming to happen is like Waiting for Godot. It is never going to happen and the wait is getting beyond tedious.

In the meantime, there is no evidence for global warming and the opposite is happening, as shown by the record cold we have just experienced.

It is time to stop giving global warmers the benefit of doubt – they are loons. That includes Rick Perry [Energy Secretary].

SOURCE

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

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

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Should there be wind farms in Adirondack park

John Droz has been putting up a big defense against a proposal to put wind turbines up in Adirondack park. A paleoclimatologist has criticized Droz's arguments.  The criticisms are however puerile --- pathetically unscientific.  They reveal how desperate warmists are that they have to resort to such non-sequiturs.  John Droz provides a link to his rebuttal at the foot of his comments below

Here’s a brief chronological history:

1) The Adirondack Park (in upstate NY) is the largest park on the continental US (6 million acres). It is an extraordinary place that has unparalleled natural beauty. I’ve been a lifetime resident of the Park, so I have plenty of first-hand experiences with most of it. As an environmentalist, I’m a Park protector.

2) The Park is overseen by a powerful NYS agency, called the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). They establish a wide assortment of zoning rules, etc. that cover the entire Park. In general these are beneficial. For example, to date, industrial wind energy and solar are both prohibited. Excellent!

3) Political activists are pushing the APA to change their renewable energy restrictions. Their ultimate goal is to get industrial wind energy into the Park. As a feeler, in November the APA proposed this Renewable Energy Policy.

4) I then immediately sent the APA a 12-point objection to their proposal. (I have yet to hear any response back from them.)

5) In addition, to make citizens aware of this profoundly anti-environmental plan, I wrote a layman overview of the situation, which was published in some Adirondack newspapers.

6) After that was seen, I was asked by the editor of the well-respected bi-monthly Adirondack Explorer magazine to submit commentary for a feature they have, where major issues are debated. I submitted the con-piece about the APA’s proposed renewable energy policy. It came out a few weeks ago.

7) A NYS paleoclimatologist, Dr. Curt Stager, took issue with my Adirondack Explorer commentary, and last week got a lengthy op-ed published (attacking my competence, etc.).

8) I just finished a response to Curt’s polemic— and submitted it for publication, today. I’m sharing a slightly longer version with you, as I thought you might like to see a rather impassioned exchange between scientists about some of the key Global Warming issues.

There are multiple things to learn from this exchange. Although this is a moderate amount of reading, it’s an interesting, informative discussion of the Global Warming matter — making some points rarely seen.

Global Warming is THE issue of our times. After reading this you’ll have a much better understanding of this whole matter, and what’s really going on.

The rebuttal





Oil leases broke the law by not assessing climate impact, judge rules

The ruling temporarily blocks drilling on about 300,000 acres of land in Wyoming until the Trump administration does its climate homework. All oil and gas drilling on federal lands — of which the Wyoming land is but a tiny part — accounts for something in the neighborhood of 10% of total U.S. carbon output. That is to say Contreras, an Obama judge, blocked drilling on account of emissions roughly equivalent to a few cow farts. This isn't about, as Contreras opined, "the national, cumulative nature of climate change." It's about judicial overreach, trampling the law, and obstructing Trump

A federal judge ruled that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing in the West.

The decision late Tuesday by US District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington could have sweeping implications for President Trump’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management "did not sufficiently consider climate change" when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling in 2015 and 2016, under the Obama administration. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on roughly 300,000 acres of land in the state.

The initial ruling in the case brought by two advocacy groups, WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility, has implications for oil and gas drilling on federal land throughout the West. In the decision, Contreras — a Barack Obama appointee — faulted the agency’s environmental assessment as inadequate because it did not detail how individual drilling projects contributed to the nation’s overall carbon output. Since greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change, the judge wrote, these analyses did not provide policy makers and the public with a sufficient understanding of drilling’s impact, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

"Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land before irretrievably committing to that drilling," he wrote.

Contreras did not void the leases outright, but instead ordered BLM to redo its analysis of hundreds of projects in Wyoming.

Western Energy Alliance president Kathleen Sgamma, whose group is one of the defendants in the case, said in a phone interview that she was confident the ruling could be overturned on appeal. She noted that the Obama and Trump administrations had conducted similar climate analyses in their leasing documents and that it was impossible to predict the cumulative impact of these auctions because just under half of all federal land leased for drilling is eventually developed.

"This judge has ignored decades of legal precedent in this ruling," she said. "The judge is basically asking BLM to take a wild guess on how many wells will be developed on leases, prematurely."

Jeremy Nichols, who directs WildEarth Guardians’ climate and energy program, said in a phone interview that the decision would force the administration to reveal how its policies are helping to fuel climate change. He said his group would now take steps to try to block federal oil and gas lease auctions scheduled for next week, which encompass 560,000 acres of western land.

"It calls into question the legality of the Trump administration’s entire oil and gas program," Nichols said. "This forces them to pull their head out of the sand and look at the bigger picture."

Federal oil, gas, and coal leasing — both on land and offshore — accounts for a quarter of America’s total carbon output, according to a report issued last year by Interior’s US Geological Survey. Oil and gas drilling accounts for about 40 percent, or 500 million metric tons, of that total.

Even if Contreras’s decision stands, however, it may not block the administration’s energy agenda altogether. While BLM would be required to disclose the overall climate impact of its leasing decisions, it could potentially still go ahead and open those lands up for development.

While the Interior Department began to take into account the climate impacts of federal oil, gas, and coal leasing toward the end of Obama’s second term, Trump administration officials jettisoned those plans right after Donald Trump took office. Interior lifted a moratorium on federal coal leasing in 2017 and is working to overhaul a 2016 guidance that requires federal agencies to assess the global climate impact of their policies.

Trump and several of his top deputies have dismissed recent federal findings that the United States and other countries must curb their carbon output in the next decade or face potentially disastrous consequences from climate change.

SOURCE 





Media FOIA Requests to EPA Spiked After Trump Election, Data Reveal

The number of Freedom of Information Act requests the Environmental Protection Agency received from mainstream outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post spiked immediately after Republican President Donald Trump took office, according to a Free Beacon analysis of FOIA requests by the media from 2013 to the present.

The figures, obtained through the government's FOIA online database, reveal a clear increase in requests for information from the agency once Trump was elected president.

The New York Times, for example, made just 13 FOIA requests during the four years of Obama's second term, sending 3 in 2013, 1 in 2014, 7 in 2015, and 2 in 2016. The number of FOIA requests the Times sent for Obama's entire second term was nearly quadrupled in the first year of Trump's presidency alone, when the Times sent 59 FOIA requests to the EPA.

Reporters at the Times have made 100 FOIA requests since Trump took office just over two years ago, a 669 percent increase of the number of FOIA requests it made during the four years of Obama's second term.

Reporters at the Washington Post sent just a single FOIA request to the EPA during Obama's entire second term, and have sent 43 FOIA requests to the agency since Trump took office.

The sharp increase in FOIA requests to the EPA was also apparent at Politico (15 requests in Obama's second term, 198 since Trump took office), The Hill (20 requests in Obama's second term, 67 since Trump took office), CNN (25 requests in Obama's second term, 47 since Trump took office), Buzzfeed (18 requests in Obama's second term, 38 since Trump took office), and ABC News (4 requests in Obama's second term, 32 since Trump took office).

The other outlets included in the analysis of mainstream media were the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, MSNBC, Reuters, Daily Beast, The Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal.

Among them, only Bloomberg sent a consistent amount of FOIA requests in the final years of the Obama administration, when the EPA released major proposals such as the Clean Power Plan and its new Waters of the United States rule.

EPA administrators have attracted attention during both administrations. Toward the end of the tenure of Obama's first EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, it was revealed that she had been conducting official business using the alias "Richard Windsor." She denied that it was part of an effort to evade federal record keeping laws.

Under the watch of Jackson's replacement Gina McCarthy, it was revealed that an agency employee was habitually watching porn on his government computer. The porn-watcher remained on the payroll for months.

Trump's first appointed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigned last summer after a series of revelations regarding his misuse of agency funds.

SOURCE 





Is Recycling Really Saving The Planet Or Is It Just A Scam?

It looks like your crazy retired hippie neighbor who rummages through your waste bin every day will soon be out of business. No longer will he be able to sell several bags of Coca-Cola cans for top penny because the aluminum recyclables market is shrinking in size and profitability. Well, at least you won’t have to watch somebody go through your trash anymore as you stand on your front porch drinking coffee.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the price of used aluminum has cratered 30% over the last 12 months because the demand has dissipated. Despite social pressures, metal producers, aluminum rollers, automobile and airplane manufacturers, and others are scrapping used cans from their business models. As a result, used soda pop cans are piling up in scrap yards.

Liberty Nation Reports:

This is part of a much broader downturn in the recycling industry, including paper and plastic, driven by Chinese tariffs and heightened standards in recyclables’ purity. For years, Beijing had been the epicenter of this market, thanks to an immense infrastructure and greater capacity to process recycled goods. There is now a crusade among developed markets to find new buyers of aluminum, paper, and plastic.

But this is evidence of one inconvenient truth for the green puritans: Recycling is a waste.

Recycling Is Garbage

The argument for recycling is not grounded in fact, science, or economics. If we had an honest discussion, it would conclude with abandoning the blue bins and tossing out our garbage instead. The true cost of this initiative exceeds its benefit since it does not return a financial profit – aluminum used to, but now we’ve learned otherwise.

The environmental practice uses three times more resources than disposing of waste in a landfill. The cost to recycle is around $150 per ton, compared to $28 to throw trash in a landfill. Curbside recycling costs 55% more than other methods, and the environmental impact is greater because there are more trucks on the road. Recycling two popular products – newspapers and glass bottles – is more harmful to the environment; newspapers need to be deinked with chemicals and states ship their glass bottles to other jurisdictions.

Ultimately, we’re using more energy to recycle than it would take to start from scratch, and all these efforts are in vain since most of the stuff in blue bins still ends up in a landfill anyway.

The predictable counterargument to this is that we’re running out of landfill space, alluding to media footage of trucks filled with garbage with nowhere to go. It is true that the number of landfills is decreasing, mainly due to NIMBYism and political pressure from supposed tree huggers, but the size of existing and proposed landfills is increasing.

Today, there are approximately 2,000 landfills in 48 states that manage more than half of all solid waste in the nation, and about a third are privately owned. Landfills are marketed as hazardous wastelands that pose threats to the environment and dangers to public health. This isn’t remotely true because developers have transformed your grandfather’s landfills into state-of-the-art facilities, comprising plastic liners, redundant clay, and collection systems. Moreover, modern-day landfills are turning into energy hubs as they produce pipeline-quality natural gas and methane gas.

Overall, it is estimated that holding all the country’s garbage for the next 100-plus years would require a landfill of 10 miles in length and 255 feet in height.

Power Of Prices

One of the recycling elite’s chief arguments is the scarcity of natural resources. However, a lot of conventional wisdom on what is scarce is arbitrary. The best way to determine if a natural resource is threatened is by using the pricing system.

If the price of a resource is gradually increasing (without inflation), then the natural source is becoming scarcer. On the other hand, if the price is plunging, there is an abundance of this good. What have we learned over the last century? The average price of raw materials has tumbled 75%.

The same economic reasoning can be applied to landfills. If what they say is true, and we are running short of landfill space, then the cost of dumping our trash would skyrocket. But it hasn’t. Do you know what has? Recycling, which is why more municipalities are dumping their programs or raising fees.

Going Through The Motions

In Aldous Huxley’s seminal Brave New World, children are brainwashed by the government from the time they can understand speech. Using a form of hypnopaedia – learning while asleep – the powerful bureaucrats incorporate a whisper box into their plans, repeating slogans and messages pertaining to conformity and sex. This information is eventually ingrained into their minds and memories.

Similarly, millennials were indoctrinated in elementary school with bad information relating to waste and recycling, as well as the annoying jingle from public service announcements. As these millennials enter adulthood, recycling has become a religion for their households, and anyone in the neighborhood who refuses to conform is a planet-hater and worse than Adolf Hitler.

Remember, kids: Recycle. Reduce. Reuse. And close the loop! Recycle. Reduce. Reuse. And close the loop!

At this point, we’re going through the motions. It is something we have always done. Recycling allows folks to act like they’re in an episode of Care Bears: It gives us the impression we’re saving the planet, and it makes us feel superior to those who don’t recycle. It’s like Starbucks customers who think they’re better than Dunkin’ Donuts patrons.

Recycling doesn’t save resources, doesn’t help the environment, and doesn’t help us save money. It is based on a trash heap of lies.

SOURCE 





What Americans can learn from Venezuela

Venezuela is teetering on the brink of collapse. The nation’s political system is shattered, as tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, urging President Nicolás Maduro to resign. And it makes sense why: their economy is in utter shambles.

In 2018, inflation exceeded 177,000 percent, decimating the country’s currency, the bolivar. A cup of coffee, valued at $0.50, now sells for over 800 bolivars. Over 10 percent of Venezuelan children are suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition. The situation is so dire that Venezuelans have taken to eating rats, dogs, and zoo animals to stop from starving.

This tragedy is occurring even though Venezuela is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world. The country has an estimated $14.3 trillion worth of natural resources. It has enormous oil and natural gas reserves and is the world’s third largest producer of coal. How, then, has Venezuela managed to turn such an abundance of riches into extensive crippling poverty? To any student of history, the answer is clear: socialism.

Indeed, Venezuela’s energy crisis is a textbook example of what happens when the government attempts to run sectors of the economy. Following his election in 1998, former President Hugo Chavez socialized the country’s various industries, transforming its multi-faceted economy into a glorified, state-led gas station. By 2014, Venezuela had become an economic one trick pony, with the sale of oil accounting for 95 percent of the country’s export profit. But those profits were not being given back to the people. True to form, Venezuela’s socialist government squandered $1.3 trillion in oil revenue through mismanagement, waste, excess, and outright corruption.

Venezuela’s ongoing crisis is a scathing indictment of socialism’s tendency toward misuse and disarray, especially when it comes to the economy’s energy sector. Properly managed, natural resources can be an incredible asset for any country, but in the government’s hands, they fuel economic destruction. And while recent events have highlighted the tragic failure of socialistic authoritarianism in Venezuela, we mustn’t be so naïve to assume that America is immune to such mismanagement.

American leftists are already dismissing the Venezuela experiment as “not real socialism” and pushing the narrative that “true socialism” would work in the United States. But these individuals fail to recognize that socialism’s problems aren’t quarantined to South American countries. They are endemic of a system that prioritizes government control over free markets.

Perhaps, then, we just need an example that hits a little closer to home.

In the 1970s, the United States faced an energy crisis of its own. Through most of the decade, the oil cartel OAPEC instituted an embargo against the U.S., leading to massive oil shortages and price increases of up to 350 percent. Panicked, the Carter Administration turned to big government as the solution to the country’s energy sector vulnerability. In 1978, the legislature passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), a law whose unintended consequences are being felt now more than ever.

The original intent of PURPA was to encourage the increased production of renewable energy. It did so by establishing the government as an effective monopoly over the production and sale of renewable energy projects. These government-mandated projects set price controls for public consumption at “reasonable rates for the public interest,” and forced electric companies to purchase renewable energy at specified costs from the PURPA facilities.

Much like the results of Venezuela’s effort to nationalize its energy sector, the effects of PURPA on the United States have been quite devastating. What the government once deemed a “reasonable rate” for the cost of energy production currently exceeds the market rate by 300 to 400 percent. Not only does that lead to higher prices for consumers, but it also disincentivizes renewable energy production completely. According to the testimony of a utility representative, “utilities with large amounts of [PURPA-required] power on their system often must curtail or even shut down less expensive, more economic generation or be in violation of PURPA.”

The United States is not immune to government inefficiency and failure. Whether it be in Venezuela or the U.S., people suffer when top-down, government mandates are imposed on entire sectors of an economy. Big government is inherently unstable and only functions as long as the economy has wealth to burn. Once the coffers run empty, the system falls apart.

Thankfully, America has not reached the point of no return. But as the left’s slow march toward socialism begins to pick up steam, the risks of economic catastrophe only intensify. America, much like Venezuela, simply can’t afford socialism. And as a growing tide of young liberals seeks to embrace big government as the solution to societal ills, we must take this lesson to heart.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

The Green New Fascist Deal

The Nazis were the originators of the cult of sustainable development that is now so widespread these days

By Mark Musser

The “Green New Deal” is a fascist utopian plan written by environmentalist lawyers that is purportedly designed to tackle the global warming apocalypse which capitalism, particularly of the American kind drunk on fossil fuels, has precipitated through economic recklessness and colonial racism. CO2, a trace gas measured in parts per million, is the primary culprit of a semi-apocalyptic global warming crisis that can only be averted through an all-wise cadre of Democratic green lawyers. That such utopianism, political legalism, and apocalypticism is presented as hard science demonstrates the general madness of the present time that is largely rooted in the Social Darwinian scientism of the 1800s, wherein German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was peddling a racist political biology together with strong ecological values that he characterized as Monism -- which speaks of a monistic oneness or holism with nature along totalitarian lines that modern science was supposedly offering the constituents of the Second Reich. While Haeckel coined the term “ecology” in 1866, he mixed racial eugenics with his environmentalism. Today, environmentalism proffers anti-humanism, population control, ecological totalitarianism, and indigenous multicultural tribal racism that “The New Green Deal” is chock full of.

Austrian Nazi forester Guenther Schwab (1904-2006) was one of the most successful original popularizers of apocalyptic environmentalism in the 1950s and 60s, which included the CO2 global warming scare. Thanks to the great success of Schwab’s writings, real green Nazis like Werner Haverbeck, August Haussleiter, and Werner Vogel, among others, helped him lay the foundations for the German Green Party in the late 1970s. Yet, it was German researcher Hermann Flohn (1912-97) who took the global warming theory that had been bandied around by earlier European researchers and gave it teeth to increasingly bite its way into the main storyline of the West as the 20th century drew to a close. Flohn is considered to be one of the most critically important climate scientists of the 20th century, whose research merited a number of prestigious awards.

Flohn’s very German odyssey actually began in 1941, when he published an article on global warming titled, “The Activity of Man as a Climate Factor” during the dizzying heights of Nazi rule. The Dust Bowl years of the 1930s on the American plains was an exceptionally warm period that prompted environmental discussion among many Nazis at the time, who deemed such an ecological disaster as a symptom of diseased industrial capitalism which had ruined the soil. While Flohn was not a Nazi Party member, he received his doctorate in 1934 and began work for the German Meteorological Service at a time when National Socialism was attempting to bring into line German universities within its ideological purview. Later, Flohn became the Luftwaffe’s chief meteorologist under green Nazi Hermann Goering’s watch. The great irony is that the global warming of the 1930s came to an abrupt halt (which lasted until 1975) just in time for the 1941 invasion of Russia when the Wehrmacht essentially froze to death just outside the gates of Moscow.

During the war, it stands to good reason that Flohn’s high atmospheric weather research would have not only placed him in close proximity with high-altitude Nazi human experiments, but probably also would have put him in regular contact with Werner von Braun and his SS rocket boys. After the war, Flohn continued to ratchet up the CO2 global warming scare as more dangerous than even nuclear energy. Such connections seem to suggest that the global warming apocalypse may have been originally introduced in a targeted way into American research labs through Operation Paperclip, when SS Nazi and German scientists were imported into the United States to help Uncle Sam build rockets to compete in the Cold War. The SS was the greenest arm of the swastika.

Even as early as 1935, Nazi Germany was the greenest regime on the planet. Their ecological projects worked hand in hand with their wild Social Darwinian biological programs connected to eugenics and scientific racial hygiene. Cleaning up the blood also included cleaning up the environment. Indeed, Nazi biologist Ernst Lehman defined fascism accordingly, “We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole... This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”

Out of such a Nazi holistic nature-based worldview came a number of environmental laws that preceded their more overt racial laws. In 1933, the Nazis passed a strict animal rights law. In 1934 they passed a hunting law.  Along similar lines, the Nazis also introduced sustainable forestry practices, and essentially became the very originators of what is today called sustainable development that included a great concern for recycling. Even the Four-Year Nazi war plan was to be guided by sustainable development concerns. In 1935, the Nazis passed the totalitarian Reich Nature Protection Act which opened the door to ecological regulation over private property.

That same year, American deep ecologist Aldo Leopold visited Nazi Germany to witness their strong emphasis upon green programs they had just put in place. While Leopold had some criticism of the Nazi efforts, he was very complimentary as he said they were not just talking about environmental problems, but actually doing something. Leopold also dragged home the “Never cry wolf” cult to America as Nazi Germany was the first country in the world to protect wolves. In other words, the western bridge between postmodern socialism/fascism and environmentalism originally rooted in the early German green movement of the 1800s was built by National Socialism in the 1930s, long before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

With no small irony, the present strong relationship that currently exists between modern environmentalism and left-wing labor unions was essentially born in Nazi Germany. In June of 1933, green Nazis Rudolf Hess and Walther Schoenichen absorbed many of the environmental groups of the Weimar Republic under Werner Haverbeck’s Folk-Race National Character and Landscape Bund that was a subdivision of the German Labor Front. The German Labor Front thus adopted the greens into their political organization. Nazi architect Albert Speer was proud of his environmental accomplishments as the green builder of the Third Reich who was also another leader of the German Labor Front.

After the war, while biding his time in Spandau prison, Hess often discussed the problems of the free market economy with Speer. Speer had worked under Hess as they were both essentially in charge of Nazi public works projects. Speer noted that Hess loved to critique American capitalism which he called liberal democracy as a form of sickness, “Again and again he comes to me with examples of overconsumption in the United States. He happily notes reports of misguided investments in the market economy, collects examples of land speculation, criminality, bad posture in children and health damage caused by canned foods.”

Hess even came up with a cockamamie sustainable development plan he shared with his fellow Nazi prisoners in 1951. Since highway lamps were being placed above roadways, Hess thought it would be unnecessary for cars to turn their headlights on at the same time. Energy could thus be saved by turning off the headlights when highway lamps were burning. Speer remarked, “This would save current he maintains, and the erection and maintenance of the floodlights could easily be financed out of the money thus saved. I object that the car’s generators would be running anyhow, to supply the current to the spark plugs. He dismisses that; the generator could shut off automatically as soon as the battery was charged. Thus, energy would be stored, fuel saved, and this saving could be spent on financing the illumination of highways.” Such a madness certainly presages the anti-car renewable energy sentiments that have become one of the trademarks of the modern green movement -- that is also playing no small role in the Green New Deal as well. In short, to characterize the Green New Deal as fascist is no metaphor.

SOURCE 





Associated Press spouts pure Climate Propaganda

Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein has made another attempt to convince the public of global warming, but his latest analysis has climate scientists once again refuting his claims.

On Tuesday, Borenstein and Nicky Forster cited AP analysis that found hot temperature records in the U.S. were being broken twice as often as cold temperature records. He concluded that this is “a clear sign of human-caused climate change.”

Borenstein and Forster wrote:

“The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal. Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high-temperature records than low.”

The AP Piece went on to cite various climate scientists:

“The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.”

The AP piece concluded:

“The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones.”

But the scientists he cited don’t speak for all climate scientists. Some, in fact, are dismissing his “clear sign” analysis. Climatologist John Christy told me that Borenstein framed the data wrongly:

“The occurrence of both record highs and record lows is declining. Record-low events are simply declining more rapidly than record highs. The drop in record lows is associated with development around the weather stations, which causes low temperatures to increase more than highs for a variety of reasons.”

Most climate change activists cite the greenhouse gas theory—that man-made gases are causing changes to the Earth’s temperature. Christy noted that this theory predicts an increase in frequency of record-breaking temperatures. Yet the exact opposite is happening in the U.S.—the frequency of those temps is declining.

The cause? Christy says it’s likely “urbanization and natural variability.”

He added: “I’ve actually done this same analysis for the 682 [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] stations with at least 105 years of record since 1895. It is clear that the occurrence of both record high and record lows has declined since 1895, thanks to many records set from the 1920s to 1954.”

He continued:

“The AP … is spinning the story by only noting that record lows are fewer than highs now—but the real story is that in the U.S., both extremes are falling. This is consistent with the decline in number of days greater than 100 [degrees] Fahrenheit (or 105 Fahrenheit or 95 Fahrenheit, etc.). The differential decline in record temps is inconsistent with [greenhouse gas] theory, which predicts an increase in record highs and higher TMax in general.”

Climatologist Roger Pielke Sr. expressed skepticism of the AP analysis as well:

“Without assessing the role of increased urbanization and other land-use changes … changes in atmospheric aerosols overhead, microclimate around observing site, changes in heights of observations, and concurrent trends in surface air humidity, it is not robust to attribute any changes in extreme temperatures to just human-added atmospheric CO2.”

He added: “We have published on each of these subjects but work remains mostly ignored.”

Borenstein’s claims are also countered in the peer-review scientific literature. A 2018 analysis found that multiple recent studies and long-term data refuted claims that there had been an increase in heat waves. In addition, a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology found that U.S. extreme heat waves have decreased since the 1930s.

It’s also important to note that recent temperatures are not at all unusual, with 2018 continuing a several-year cooling trend. The media-hyped “hottest year” claims do not hold up to scrutiny. Princeton physicist Will Happer ridiculed such claims and explained that “alleged record warmings are tenths of a degree or less, comparable to the statistical error.”

Borenstein, the chief climate reporter for the Associated Press, has a long history of promoting dubious climate claims and essentially lobbying the public to “believe” that man-made climate change is a dire emergency and that government “solutions” are needed.

Americans who rely on the Associated Press for climate news and information are being misinformed. The AP is serving up nothing short of rank climate propaganda.

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Coal's decline could mean more power shortages

As the need for electricity to power the nation’s digital economy grows, coal is no longer playing a primary role, and that’s problematic, because it undergirds the electric grid and is the most reliable source of energy.

Without coal plants that supply base-load power on demand, large parts of the United States, from the mountain states to the mid-Atlantic and southeast, will become more vulnerable to power shortages and increases in electricity costs. With the loss of more than 600 coal units in less than 10 years, coal’s share of the nation’s electricity generating capacity has dropped from almost half in 2007 to 30 percent today, and it’s expected to fall even further.

Rapid decline in the number of coal plants and commensurate growth in natural gas and wind and solar power will result in a loss of fuel diversity. A study by IHS Markit warns that the U.S. is “moving away from the cost-effective mix of fuels and technologies and toward a less reliable, less resilient, and less efficient diversity” energy portfolio and, if nothing is done about it, the cost of electricity would increase by $114 billion per year, the average retail price of electricity would increase by 27 percent, and a loss of reliability could increase electricity outages, resulting in added costs of $75 billion per outage hour.

A sense of urgency is evident in a recent appeal by senior executives at four large utilities for changes in the electricity system that would enable some coal and nuclear power plants to continue operating. Wholesale electricity markets, the utility executives said, need to place a value on the production of large quantities of electricity by coal and nuclear plants around the clock, safely and reliably, when needed. Coal and nuclear plants contribute the fuel and technology diversity that is one of the bedrock characteristics of a reliable and resilient electric sector, the executives said.

With coal, that is just the beginning. Coal has shown the ability to provide additional power during national emergencies. When polar vortexes pushed the grid to its limit during periods of bitter cold, coal plants played a key role in providing resiliency. In contrast, wind and solar power were of no use in meeting demand where it was needed the most. On the peak day of winter demand during the polar vortex in 2018, almost half of the natural gas capacity in the PJM Interconnection covering the midwest and mid-Atlantic could not supply power from natural gas, with 30 percent offline and 20 percent burning oil instead of gas.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory determined that during last year’s unusually cold weather (called a “bomb cyclone”) PJM would have experienced “interconnect-wide blackouts” if coal plants had not been available to meet the increased need for electricity.

This year, at the start of a three-day stretch of sub-zero temperatures, wind turbines from Minnesota to Iowa were providing about half of the region’s power. But when an emergency was declared, just half of the wind generation forecasted to supply power to the grid actually could. When temperatures fell below negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, wind farms automatically started shutting down. Extreme cold can damage different parts of the turbine.

Coal, long viewed through the lens of carbonization, has shown the value of its reliability. Sound policies would help preserve the coal fleet. Federal tax subsidies for renewables and state renewable portfolio standards give other electricity sources a significant advantage over coal. In wholesale markets, subsidies for other electricity sources suppress energy prices and make coal-fuel generation less competitive.

Nevertheless, coal’s benefits are reaching electricity consumers and have fewer negative consequences than most other forms of energy. On average, developing new generating capacity with natural gas or renewables is more expensive than continuing to use existing coal generation. A study by IHS Markit shows that the levelized cost of existing coal generation is $40 per megawatt hour, much less than the levelized cost of a new combined cycle natural gas plant at $68 per MWh or new renewables at $82 per MWh.

Unfortunately, in most markets around the country, electricity is still tilted in favor of natural gas and renewables. Policymakers, in other words, need to take another look at coal.

SOURCE 





America wins with new international cargo ship fuel regulation

An international regulation coming out of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) would both significantly lower pollution levels being generated by the container shipping industry while also benefitting the U.S. oil refining industry and those who work in it.

It is no secret that America’s dismantling of our industrial sector has often times been little more than a transfer of environmental risk from the United States overseas. Foreign countries, like China, with little to no environmental regulations have attracted manufacturers who can no longer afford to compete in the highly regulated U.S., costing our nation jobs and economic wealth. Even with President Trump pushing hard for a better trade deal with China, the trade deficit climbed 17 percent from 2017 to $323 billion last year.

One obvious result of being reliant on overseas markets for the production of goods is that most of those goods are delivered across vast oceans through container and cargo ships. However, it is often lost that there is an enormous environmental cost to these container ships themselves which burn a high sulfur content fuel consisting of an oil refinery sludge known as bunker oil.

Why does this matter?

It is estimated that just sixteen of the largest container ships create more sulfur dioxide air pollution than the 80 million cars that exist in the world — all the while following current International Marine Organization rules. To put the enormity of this into perspective, the three largest shipping alliances in the world have a total of more than 750 container ships under flag, each spewing sulfur dioxide equivalents of a million or more cars into the air.

There is no secret that exporting U.S. factories overseas to China has effectively increased the environmental costs of production for every day goods, but it is stunning that simply transporting those goods around the world is so toxic.

At a time when the Democrat Party agenda has been focused upon ending the internal combustion engine, domestic airline travel and carbon-based electricity generation here in America shifting even more production to heavy polluter countries, it is incredible that a simple regulation on sulfur content in container ship fuel known as IMO 2020 could have such a major positive impact on the world’s air quality.

And here is the amazing part, the engines in the cargo ships are already able to accommodate the upgraded quality fuel, so there are limited conversion costs. While the estimated fuel costs for the container ships will increase by 30 percent, that increase will actually help price in a small part of the environmental costs of overseas manufacturing, putting domestic manufacturers on a slightly more level playing fieldEven better is that international oil industry experts like Torbjorn Tornqvist, CEO at trading house Gunvor have been quoted by Reuters saying, “The big winner in the IMO is actually the United States. They have the most advanced refining system in the world and will take advantage of importing more heavy crude oil and they will export light crude oil that will get a bigger premium.”

That’s right, America’s energy dominance actually is positioning our nation to be economic winners as this regulation goes into effect.

Already a refinery in Louisiana is being expanded to meet the anticipated need to handle the demand, and it can be expected that IMO 2020 will provide a boon for the domestic refining industry and the thousands of jobs it creates.

Not surprisingly, President Trump led U.S. policies that have moved America toward energy dominance have unforeseen dividends as the world moves toward cleaner burning fuel blends.  The resulting investments by U.S. companies to meet the needs of increased domestic energy production will now pay massive dividends in newly created good paying, blue collar jobs as the U.S. becomes one of the major refiners in the world for the new, lower sulfur blend of container ship fuels.

Given the current wave of green socialism that would shut down the United States’ clean, efficient manufacturing economy and transfer the pollution risk to nation’s with abysmal environmental records, it would be wise for our nation’s policy makers to instead embrace the January 1, 2020 IMO fuel regulation by urging that they not be delayed.

The IMO 2020 regulations are a common-sense solution, rather than a pie in the sky socialist dream, which make major strides in cleaning up the world’s air quality without destroying the U.S. economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty worldwide than any other nation in history.  And that is a win-win for the world and America.

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Conn. made the right call keeping Millstone nuclear power plant open

Two New England states, two Democratic governors, two very different outcomes for the climate.

In the early 2010s, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin prodded the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant into an early retirement. All the right people had urged him to do so: Bernie Sanders wanted the plant on the Connecticut River gone. The Conservation Law Foundation said it was “worth more dead than alive.” Ben — yes, part of the eponymous ice cream duo — wanted to shut the plant; Jerry, too.

The consequence of listening to such experts was an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from New England, and a hole in the region’s energy grid that will haunt it for decades. Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up more than the nation’s as a whole, putting the lie to its green self-image.

Fast forward to Friday, when the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, announced an agreement to save the largest nuclear power source in New England, the two Millstone reactors in Waterford, Conn.

“The loss of Millstone would have been catastrophic for our state and our region,” said Lamont in a statement announcing the deal. “The shutdown of the plant would have exposed the New England region to a nearly 25 percent increase in carbon emissions, increased risk of rolling blackouts, billions of dollars in power replacement costs, and the loss of more than 1,500 well-paying jobs.”

The six New England states share a power grid, and Connecticut’s leadership means the region will not lose its single largest source of carbon-free electricity.

The intervention — like a similar deal in New York — was necessary because even existing nuclear power plants are not price competitive with natural gas generators. But that’s only true because of a flaw in the design of the deregulated electricity markets that were introduced in the 1990s, and which didn’t put an adequate price on carbon emissions.

Markets can’t have the last word. If climate change is viewed as an existential threat, then keeping clean power sources from disappearing, even through out-of-market intervention, ought to be common sense. But even ostensibly climate-focused groups in New England keep up a pro forma opposition to nuclear power, as if to honor their roots, or say it’s okay to shut plants as long as they are replaced with renewable power.

But “replacing” nuclear with renewables doesn’t make any sense as a climate policy. To the extent the New England states can add wind and solar power, they should — but it should replace conventional coal and natural-gas fired plants. The region needs to add clean power, but it also needs to keep the zero-carbon sources that it already has in order to avoid treading water.

The fact that Vermont Yankee is gone means that, for decades to come, New England will be those 620 megawatts farther away from a decarbonized power grid than it would have been with the plant online. The impending closure of Pilgrim Nuclear Station in Plymouth will deal a similar setback. Allowing Millstone to retire would have set that goal back even more, and leave Seabrook in New Hampshire as the last nuclear power generator in New England.

Last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that every pathway to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change involved at least some nuclear energy, which provides an always-on complement to intermittent renewable power and requires less land. Most scenarios involve adding more. Taking the UN’s warnings seriously should also mean taking seriously the solutions it says are needed, no matter how unpopular, and it’s a breakthrough that one New England state has.

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