Plenty more where that came from



The list of faltering or already failed Green Energy companies:

Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
Solyndra ($535 million)*
Beacon Power ($43 million)*
Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower ($1.2 billion)
First Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
Amonix ($5.9 million)
Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
Abound Solar ($400 million)*
A123 Systems ($279 million)*
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
Johnson Controls ($299 million)
Schneider Electric ($86 million)
Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
ECOtality ($126.2 million)
Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
Range Fuels ($80 million)*
Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
GreenVolts ($500,000)
Vestas ($50 million)
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
Navistar ($39 million)
Satcon ($3 million)*
Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*

More HERE





The disgraceful episode of Lysenkoism brings us global warming theory

Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin.  He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants, which sharply contradicted Mendelian genetics.  As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic of theories of the then rising modern genetics.

Under Lysenko’s view, for example, grafting branches of one plant species onto another could create new plant hybrids that would be perpetuated by the descendants of the grafted plant.  Or modifications made to seeds would be inherited by later generations stemming from that seed.  Or that plucking all the leaves off of a plant would cause descendants of the plant to be leafless.

Lysenkoism was “politically correct” (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with certain broader Marxist doctrines.  Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living under socialism would be inherited by subsequent generations of humans.  Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man.

Also Lysenko himself arose from a peasant background and developed his theories from practical applications rather than controlled scientific experiments.  This fit the Marxist propaganda of the time holding that brilliant industrial innovations would arise from the working classes through practical applications.  Lysenko’s theories also seemed to address in a quick and timely manner the widespread Soviet famines of the time arising from the forced collectivization of agriculture, rather than the much slower changes from scientific experimentation and genetic heredity.

Lysenko was consequently embraced and lionized by the Soviet media propaganda machine.  Scientists who promoted Lysenkoism with faked data and destroyed counterevidence were favored with government funding and official recognition and award.  Lysenko and his followers and media acolytes responded to critics by impugning their motives, and denouncing them as bourgeois fascists resisting the advance of the new modern Marxism.

The V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced on August 7, 1948 that thenceforth Lysenkoism would be taught as the only correct theory.  All Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenkoism.  Ultimately, Soviet geneticists resisting Lysenkoism were imprisoned and even executed.  Lysenkoism was abandoned for the correct modern science of Mendelian genetics only as late as 1964.

The Theory of Man Caused Catastrophic Global Warming

This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science in regard to the politically correct theory of man caused, catastrophic, global warming.  That theory serves the political fashions of the day in promoting vastly increased government powers and control over the private economy.  Advocates of the theory are lionized in the dominant Democrat party controlled media in the U.S., and in leftist controlled media in other countries.  Critics of the theory are denounced as “deniers,” and even still bourgeois fascists, with their motives impugned.

Those who promote the theory are favored with billions from government grants and neo-Marxist environmentalist largesse, and official recognition and award.  Faked and tampered data and evidence has arisen in favor of the politically correct theory.  Is not man-caused, catastrophic global warming now the only theory allowed to be taught in schools in the West?

Those in positions of scientific authority in the West who have collaborated with this new Lysenkoism because they felt they must be politically correct, and/or because of the money, publicity, and recognition to be gained, have disgraced themselves and the integrity of their institutions, organizations and publications.

The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is supposed to represent the best science of the U.S. government on the issue of global warming.  In January, the USGCRP released the draft of its Third National Climate Assessment Report.  The first duty of the government scientists at the USGCRP is to produce a complete picture of the science of the issue of global warming, which is what the taxpayers are paying them for.  But it didn’t take long for the Cato Institute to do the job of the USGCRP with a devastating line by line rebuttal, The Missing Science from the Draft National Assessment on Climate Change, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2012, by Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, Robert C. Balling, Mary J. Hutzler & Craig D. Idso.

Check it out for yourself if you dare.  Both publications are written to be accessible by intelligent laymen.  See which one involves climate science and which one involves political science.

All the climate alarmist organizations simply rubber stamp the irregular Assessment Reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  None of them do any original science on the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.  But the United Nations is a proven, corrupt, power grabbing institution.  The science of their Assessment Reports has been thoroughly rebutted by the hundreds of pages of science in Climate Change Reconsidered, and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, both written by dozens of scientists with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and published by the Heartland Institute, the international headquarters of the skeptics of the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.

Again, check it out for yourself.  You don’t have to read every one of the well over a thousand pages of careful science in both volumes to see at least that there is a real scientific debate.

The editors of the once respected journals of Science and Nature have abandoned science for Lysenkoism on this issue as well.  They have become as political as the editorial pages of the New York Times.  They claim their published papers are peer reviewed, but those reviews are conducted on the friends and family plan when it comes to the subject of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.  There can be no peer review at all when authors refuse to release their data and computer codes for public inspection and attempted reconstruction of reported results by other scientists.  They have been forced to backtrack on recent publications relying on novel, dubious, statistical methodologies not in accordance with established methodologies of complex statistical analysis.

Formerly respected scientific bodies in the U.S. and other western countries have been commandeered by political activist Lysenkoists seizing leadership positions.  They then proceed with politically correct pronouncements on the issue of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming heedless of the views of the membership of actual scientists.  Most of what you see and hear from alarmists regarding global warming can be most accurately described as play acting on the meme of settled science.  The above noted publications demonstrate beyond the point where reasonable people can differ that no actual scientist can claim that the science of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming has been settled or that there is a settled “consensus” that rules out reasonable dissent.

Indeed, 31,487 U.S. scientists (including 9,000 Ph.Ds) with degrees in atmospheric Earth sciences, physics, chemistry, biology and computer science have signed a statement that reads: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” See here.  Some consensus.

Real science, of course, is not a matter of “consensus,” but of reason, with skepticism at its core.

The Decline and Fall of the Theory of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming

The alarmist claims of the UN’s IPCC are ultimately based not on scientific observations, but on unvalidated climate models and their projections of future global temperatures on assumptions of continued increases in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the burning and use of fossil fuels.  The alarmists are increasingly in panic because the past projections of the models are increasingly divergent from the accumulating actual temperature records.  Those models are not real science, but made up science.  And no way we are abandoning the industrial revolution as the Sierra Club is hoping based on model fantasies and fairy tales.

The Economist magazine, formerly in lockstep with the Lysenkoists, shocked them with a skeptical article in March that began with this lede:

    “OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, ‘the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade. . . .’”

Reality is not complying with the alarmism of the UN’s global warming models, just as it refused to do for Trofim Lysenko.  Remember all that hysteria about melting polar ice caps and the disappearing ice floes for the cute polar bears?  As of the end of March, the Antarctic ice cap was nearly one fourth larger than the average for the last 30 years.  The Arctic ice cap had grown back to within 3% of its 30 year average.  (The formerly declining Arctic ice was due to cyclically warm ocean currents).  Global sea ice was greater than in March, 1980, more than 30 years ago, and also above the average since then.

Remember the alarm about the rising sea level?  Yeah, that has been rising, as it has been since the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago.  Just exactly as it has been, at the same rate.  And anyone you know that has been scared by this alarmist propaganda has been successfully played by whatever media the fool has been relying on.

More HERE




Al Gore in Hollywood

Joe Biden must have dressed up in his best Al Gore, Jr. suit for a Beverly Hills global warming pep rally, as the man who “invented the Internet” bemoaned that a modern day Thomas Paine would struggle to get his pamphlet “Common Sense” to the masses today due to the high cost of television airtime.

Is this the same Al Gore, who used his influence to get his environmentalist television station  Current TV carried by most major cable networks, only to sell this access to Al Jazeera, which is owned by the Emir of Qatar?

Apparently, the Hollywood crowd is not as disillusioned with Gore who made a cool $100 million on the deal to sell television access to U.S. markets to the very Middle Eastern oil interests as his former staff at Current TV where the sense of betrayal was palpable when the sale was announced.

Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the politician who would have been president if he had only won his home state of Tennessee, the very fact that Mr. High Tech apparently hasn’t noticed that the printing press has been replaced by this little www thing is stunning.

In 1776 when Thomas Paine wrote and published “Common Sense,” it went viral selling almost 100,000 copies at a time when the colonies only had 2.5 million people.  This made the pamphlet the largest selling book in the history of the U.S. on a per capita basis.

And the 48-page booklet was a game changer.  By writing in a style that was familiar to the average colonist and using familiar Biblical references to the God fearing populace, Paine’s work transformed American attitudes toward independence laying the groundwork for Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that was finalized just six months later.

George Trevelyan’s History of the American Revolution highlighted the importance of Paine’s work writing: “It would be difficult to name any human composition which has had an effect at once so instant, so extended and so lasting [...] It was pirated, parodied and imitated, and translated into the language of every country where the new republic had well-wishers. It worked nothing short of miracles and turned Tories into Whigs.”

Today, Paine would not have been limited to a printing press or a television broadcast, his work would be a viral YouTube video that would reach millions based upon its powerful message and presentation.

The proof of the power of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter is all around us.  Just one year ago, with zero money spent on promotion, the video “If I wanted America to fail” took many in the nation by storm with more the 2.6 million people viewing it — all due to the power of the message and presentation.

For the self-proclaimed “Inventor of the Internet” to not have a clue that his “child” had become the ultimate democratization of communications and was changing the world reveals just how out of touch he has become.

The fact that the professionally vacuous of Hollywood could erupt in applause at the “great” man’s musings about the good old days when Johannes Gutenberg was king reflects just how far out of touch they both are.

Of course, Al Gore is too cool to be stuck in a printing press world when everyone else is tweeting.  That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if, after the diamond encrusted crowd departed, Joe Biden pulled off his Al Gore Halloween mask and laughed out loud at the rubes of Rodeo Drive who bought his drivel.

SOURCE





The U.S. Has Much, Much More Gas and Oil Than We Thought

So the EPA is trying to stop it being accessed

The United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.

In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.

“These world-class formations contain even more energy-resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Jewell said in a statement.

The formations, called Bakken and Three Forks, span much of western North Dakota, the northern tip of South Dakota and the northeastern tip of Montana. The last time the United States Geological Survey assessed this area for its oil and gas reserves was in 2008. But that assessment did not include the Three Forks formation, which explains the substantial increase in the estimates. USGS estimates that these two formations together hold 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered—but technically recoverable—oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The estimates were requested by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., in early 2011. “This is clearly great news for North Dakota and great news for the nation,” Hoeven said in a statement. “It will further serve to enhance our state’s role as an energy powerhouse for the nation.”

The energy boom’s impact on North Dakota’s economy is undeniable. The state has the lowest unemployment in the country, at 3.3 percent.

These estimates don’t necessarily represent oil and gas resources that could be immediately developed or are even recoverable right now. Many factors must align to compel companies to access energy resources, including prices and environmental regulations.

Nonetheless, the data add more hard evidence of America’s energy boom, which was largely unimaginable just seven years ago. The estimates also underline the opportunities, including economic benefits and energy security, and the challenges, especially President Obama’s commitment to tackle climate change, that come with a major fossil-fuel boom.

“Combined with recent declines in oil consumption, foreign-oil imports are less than 40 percent of oil consumed in America,” Jewell said. “That’s the lowest level since 1988.”

Jewell also announced the department will release “within weeks” reworked, draft rules requiring stricter regulations on hydraulic-fracturing operations. She said the earlier version of the draft rules generated enough comments—roughly 100,000—to prompt the administration to allow for a second round of public input.

The symbolic importance of these rules could have a greater impact than their substantive effect. The regulations apply to oil and gas production only on federal lands, a small portion of the total amount of oil and gas produced in the U.S. According to the Interior Department, 11 percent of the natural gas produced in the country is on public lands, as is 5 percent of the oil.

The rules will provide a marker for states to implement individual regulations and for Congress to debate legislation that could create a federal standard.

“We must develop our domestic energy resources armed with the best available science,” Jewell said. “This unbiased, objective information will help private, nonprofit, and government decision-makers at all levels make informed decisions about the responsible development of these resources.”

SOURCE




New Green Scam: Climate Adaptation Specialists — 50,000 in the next decade

“As recently as a decade ago, the word “adaptation” was as dirty as coal in the environmental community.”

Salon.com reports in “Getting Rich Off Global Warming“:

    “I predict there will be 30,000 to 50,000 climate and adaptation professionals in the next decade or so, up from the current low-single-digit thousands,” said Kreeger. “Already we’re seeing environmental studies and MBA programs integrate climate-related work. The ACCO will set standards and provide services, same as any other professional association.” In October, Kreeger will host a three-day “Climate Strategies Forum” at D.C.’s Wardman Park Hotel. Platinum sponsorships cost $25,000 and include a full-page program ad and a speaking slot."

SOURCE




Baffled German Government Concedes! “Global Warming Has Stopped…Warming Pause Is Remarkable…Unexpected”

Green Radio of the Umweltbundesamt – UBA - (German Federal Department of the Environment) recently had a radio interview with Henrik Kirchhof, some climate expert for the UBA I guess. Topic: Why has there been no warming in 15 years?

The host of the interview starts by telling the audience that “climate scientists have come under pressure because the average temperature indeed has not risen in 15 years“. Kirchhof:

    "In the years leading up to the year 2000, the temperature curve rose very sharply. But since then it isn’t rising so, in fact it’s not rising at all, the curve. The average temperature has stagnated at a very high level – we sort of have a plateau, and that during a time when CO2 emissions have risen considerably.”

Kirchhof then claims the 15-year period of stagnation is indeed relatively short, and, to add authority to this, Prof. Jochem Marotzke of the warmist Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg provides an audio comment:

    "What we are seeing here is a relatively short-term fluctuation, If one really wants to know how CO2 and global temperature are related, then you have to look at a longer time period.”

Marotzke refuses to say how long, though. We do know that CO2 was at about 280 ppm for 1000 years before the Industrial Revolution, and that during this time the global temperature fluctuated more than 1°C (in sync with solar activity). Of course Marotzke only wants to go back to 1900, as beyond that there is no correlation with CO2.

Kirchhof then adds (my emphasis):

    "…there is no doubt about the greenhouse effect, but even so this warming pause is remarkable because the climate scientists with all their models did not expect this.”

At this point Kirchhof of Green radio of the German Federal Department of the Environment are finally admitting that there are suddenly many more unknowns than they first thought, that the warmist scientists are indeed baffled, and that the science is not settled after all.

At the 2-minute mark, a somewhat surprised host is forced to ask how can it be that the temperature has not risen even though more CO2 is being emitted into the atmosphere. Here Kirchhof, in summary, admits they don’t know why:

    "Yeah, that’s the big question. The scientists here are not completely sure. But there are many possible explanations.”

Many possible explanations? That means they don’t have freaking clue! When it comes to complex systems like climate, it takes years and years of analyses and observation to untangle it all.

Kirchhof:

    "A big role may be played by the oceans, which possibly are absorbing more heat, and so the additional heat is no longer being taken up by the atmosphere but instead is moving into the water. This can be measured. However if these surface water temperatures increased sharply until 15 years ago but now have stagnated, then it means that the ocean is absorbing more heat than it did before. You can suspect this, it’s very plausible, but you cannot prove it because of methodology reasons, says Jochem Marotzke.”

Marotzke:

    "The problem is, although it is plausible, and it is in principle in agreement with model calculations, the problem is that we do not have enough good measurements from the past to say: ‘Ah, back then the deep oceans absorbed less heat and today it is taking in more heat. These observations are simply missing.”

It makes us wonder with so much missing data and so many unknowns, how could they even have dared to think the science was settled a few years ago? Suddenly they tell us they don’t know squat, that they are completely baffled, and that they are scrambling for explanations!

The host then asks Kirchhof if there are other possible explanations. Kirchhof:

    "Yes. For example they have measured that the stratosphere has gotten drier. And when there is less water vapor up there in the stratosphere, then less heat is radiated back down. However, the scientists who have found this out have themselves said this effect is too small and only accounts for a quarter of the stopped warming.”

They can’t find the heat. Unknowns, mysteries, surprises…such is the life of a closed-minded climate scientist. But apart from all that, they are sure of the science.

The host then asks about the remaining three quarters of the heat. Kirchhof plays the aerosol card, which the IPCC loves to play whenever cooling isn’t supposed to happen, like from 1945 to 1975:

    "Yes. there’s also a third theory that sounds plausible for laypeople, namely that more dust particles, ‘dirt’ in everyday terms, is high up in the atmosphere. As a result, less solar radiation reaches the Earth and so as a whole it gets cooler.”

Kirchhof then goes on to say that Chinese and Indian power plants may be to blame for this, and says that polluting the atmosphere is not the way to solve climate change.

The host then brings up the excellent question of how long a pause in warming is necessary before climate scientists really have to rethink their science. Kirchhof:

    "There are in fact prognoses that this plateau could go on another five years, and if that indeed occurs, and meteorologist Jochem Marotzke also says the same, then there is something seriously wrong with the models, also when certain fluctuations cannot be precisely forecast.”

Five more years and all their arguments will disappear. And in ten years the climate scientists are going to be left standing there looking like total asses – because it’s not going to get warmer for another 30 years. The PDO, AMO and sun are all now beginning their cold phases simultaneously. One only needs to look at the past winters to see the first indications. If one major volcano blows then we are very likely back to the Little Ice Age conditions of the 17th century.

Amazingly, the alarmist scientists are looking at everything except what’s really obvious: the sun. Solar activity during the 20th century was at it’s highest level in 500 or more years, but today it is at its lowest level in some 200 years. Gee, you think that could matter? The data clearly show that it did in the past.

More HERE

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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