Warmist Nimrods did NOT die in the Arctic because of thin ice

Two Arctic ice researchers presumed drowned after unseasonably high temperatures

That's what Amy Westervelt, in The Guardian of Saturday 2 May said.  To quote:

“Police have called off the search for two Dutch scientists. Unusually thin ice likely played a role in their presumed death in the Canadian Arctic this week.

Researchers Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo are presumed drowned after they appear to have broken through the ice while on a scientific expedition.

In a voicemail on Tuesday, Dutch researcher Marc Cornelissen, founder of Cold Facts, an organization supporting scientific research in Polar Regions, laughed at his predicament. He explained that unexpectedly warm weather had forced him and fellow explorer Philip de Roo to complete that afternoon’s skiing in the Canadian Arctic in their underwear.”

SOME COLD HARD FACTS FOR “COLD FACTS” AND THE GUARDIAN

George Land (georgeland00009999@gmail.com) points out below that there was no thin ice for the Nimrods to fall through. They died of carelessness and ineptitude:

The nearest weather station to the accident site is 200 km to the south at the airport in Resolute, Nunavut Territory. The temperature there on Tuesday the 28th April rose to a high of -9°C (16°F) the low was -12°C (10.4°F), light snow fell throughout the day. There were light winds out of the east. The previous day was very sunny with a high of -8°C (17.6°F) and a low of -13°C (10.4°F).  The airport is in a sheltered cove on the south end of Cornwallis Island. The skiers were 200 km (124 mi.) to the north on the open ice (of Penny Strait?).

Currently the ice thickness in the Strait varies from 2 meters (6 feet) to 5 meters (16 feet). The nearest “open” water is a tiny patch in the Mackenzie delta about 1100 kilometers away. Open ocean is over 2,000 km away near Nuuk, southern Greenland. There is still minor ice cover on Lake Superior 3,300 km to the south. Total global sea ice cover at the time was about 1 million square km. above the mean.

All land expeditions to the Bathurst Island area are carried out in April, after the sun reappears but before spring makes ice travel hazardous. Spring arrives in early July. The ice is perfectly safe in April except for occasional leads (cracks) caused by winds, tides and currents. These three elements are amplified in narrow straits.

“Shore leads” form between the drift ice and a shoreline. “Flaw leads” form between fast ice (frozen onto the seafloor or shore) and the drift ice.  Leads form and heal throughout the year, temperature is not a factor.  It is likely that the skiers experienced overheating while pulling sledges on Monday afternoon in bright sunshine and a “mild” temperature of -8°C. There was a fresh breeze in the hamlet of Resolute most of that day; such a breeze can shift ice, which could open a lead, and then cover it with snow.

The skiers were pulling sledges from the front and may not have been tied together. To defend their needless deaths while performing a grossly negligent publicity stunt, they have been described as scientists or experienced polar explorers and “researchers”.

One cannot fall into a lead on the beaches of Antarctica. A tourist trip to Antarctica hardly qualifies someone to travel over sea ice on the opposite pole. The so-called Cold Facts support team lodged in a warm hotel room in Resolute attempted to send a rescue flight but it was grounded for days by a blizzard.

They opted for a ground attempt by snowmobile. Did they believe they were rushing out onto a melting ice sheet? Did the government plane refuse to land at the accident site because of “poor ice conditions”, or did the blizzard and numerous pressure ridges or the possibility of a hidden lead discourage them? Did they even have skis?

Take a look at Resolute (or any other Arctic village) on Google earth. The tank farms for diesel and gasoline storage are huge, almost as big as the town sites.  Petroleum makes it possible for people like the Cold Facts team to live comfortably in the arctic. Perhaps next year they can go in their underwear and go solar due to global warming.

The Guardian story says that the thin ice and open water was encountered 200 km south of Bathurst Island.  That puts the “drowning” site in the middle of Prince of Wales Island.

More and more frequently neophytes from outside this country are coming here to sail the Northwest Passage or photograph the last polar bear or make a phony claim to have rowed to the pole. They get stuck in the ice or eaten by an extinct bear or they drag a rowboat over ice to where the magnetic pole used to be in 1996.

All of this nonsense by these nimrods costs money.  The territorial Government has a tax base of perhaps 15,000 people. The search and rescue costs are too much for the locals and their semi‑autonomous status.  Rich, over‑privileged, misinformed kids from suburban Amsterdam or London are imposing unnecessary costs on a struggling regional economy for political grandstanding. This is the Arctic equivalent of defacing ancient artifacts on the Nazca Plateau. It’s all lies all the way down.

Just last month the Guardian had displayed supreme hypocrisy in claiming that David Rose, a writer for the Mail on Sunday, “is known for his inaccurate and misleading climate change coverage.” The Guardian regularly publishes hatchet jobs on Dr. Willie Soon, implying he is not a serious scientist. “Cold Facts” is probably a front for the WWF and possibly underwritten by the Guardian as well. Now its founder is dead.

These unfortunate bumpkins were neither scientists nor researchers; they were cannon fodder in a disgustingly corrupt political stunt. Instead of effusive praise and a fictional hagiography, the Guardian should pay for a recovery effort so the families can take them home.

Via email





Hollywood's Climate Hypocrites

Hollywood and global-warming panic have always been a natural match. After all, who can tell you better to cut back on your wasteful ways better than a high-flying multimillionaire movie star with the carbon footprint of a Tyrannosaurus rex?

It’s never mattered that the stars have all the scientific expertise of Pee-wee Herman. They’re just so good-looking and famous, who cares? PBS broadcast a 10-hour series in 1990 entitled “Race to Save the Planet.” The show’s host was Meryl Streep, who proclaimed: “By the year 2000 … the Earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there will be enormous calamities in a very short time.”

Oops.

It’s bad enough that they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s worse that they’re sheer hypocrites while preaching their nonsense. A private jet burns as much fuel in an hour as a car does in a year. The 48,000-pound Gulfstream G550, which can fly from Chicago to Rome with 15 passengers, burns through more than 400 gallons of fuel per hour.

Exhibit A is Leonardo DiCaprio, who lectures, “If we don’t act together, we will surely perish.” Radar Online reported in April that DiCaprio boarded a private jet six different times within six weeks last year. But the charade continues. A partnership between DiCaprio and Netflix was announced in March to create yet another series of propagandist environmental documentaries.

The Media Research Center has a new report on “Climate Hypocrites and the Media That Love Them.” Take Julia Roberts, who recently made a video for Conservation International playing a big role: “Some call me nature. Others call me Mother Nature. I’ve been here for over four and a half billion years. 22,500 times longer than you. I don’t really need people, but people need me. Yes, your future depends on me. When I thrive, you thrive. When I falter, you falter. Or worse. But I’ve been here for eons. I have fed species greater than you, and I have starved species greater than you.”

The loathing of the human race is a constant green theme. But it’s not hard to find photos of Roberts climbing in and out of private jets. In fact, for a while she even co-owned a private jet.

Woody Harrelson is such a tree-hugger that he told CBC News in Canada that he’d “like to see it get to the point where we never use trees to make paper because to me it’s just a barbaric way to make it. … It’d be nice to just stop using the forest.” But at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, when Harrelson realized that he had left his vegan belt and shoes behind, he had them flown to France from California.

At least John Travolta offers self-awareness, that when he said global warming is a “very valid” issue, he added “"I’m probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.” Travolta owns five jets and has flown tens of thousands of miles in the air. He thinks the answer may be “other planets,” a natural suggestion for a Scientologist.

These celebrities don’t take tough questions well. When asked about DiCaprio’s hypocrisy, actor Mark Ruffalo shot back: “Oh, brother, that is a question you shouldn’t be asking here today because that defies the spirit of what this is about.” He added that anyone who attacks DiCaprio is “a coward or an ideologue” because “Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice carries farther than any one of those politicians, even the president.”

If that’s true, blame a star-dazzled media elite that never cares one whit about hypocrisy.

SOURCE






Heartland Replies to Jeffrey Sachs

Joe Bast



On May 3, Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and “special adviser” to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, wrote a commentary condemning global warming “deniers” that appeared on a Catholic website called Pewsitter. Since he takes aim specifically at The Heartland Institute, a reply seems to be in order.

Sachs wrote about an event convened by Pope Francis on global warming and sustainability at the Vatican in Rome the prior week. Observing that only alarmists and advocates of population control – most notably, Jeffrey Sachs – were on the program, I decided Heartland should send some real scientists and other experts to Rome to provide a different opinion.

We created a webpage at https://www.heartland.org/Vatican-Environment-Workshop where we posted news releases and opinion-editorials expressing our concern that the pope was being misinformed and offering links to more reliable scientific research and commentary on Christian views toward the environment. Following the event and safe return home of our delegation, we posted all the presentations and video from the event on the website.

Our presence generated extensive worldwide press attention. We were able to reach millions of people with our simple message that “climate change is not a crisis.”

The Vatican and United Nations seemed shocked that anyone would criticize their bias or the lack of scientific credentials of their speakers. Peter Raven, a speaker at the summit, devoted several minutes of his remarks to commenting on our presence, and now Sachs’ essay appears to be part of the UN’s effort at damage control.

Sachs did not attend our press conference or any of the presentations our experts made the following day. To our knowledge, none of the persons scheduled to speak at the “summit” chose to attend our public events. Nevertheless, Sachs writes: “the libertarian Heartland Institute, supported over the years by the Koch brothers, mounted a fruitless protest outside of St Peter’s Square.”

The Heartland Institute has received just $25,000 from a single organization, a charitable foundation, affiliated with “the Koch brothers” during the past 15 years. Our annual budget is approximately $7 million. Even that small gift was earmarked for our work on health care reform, not global warming. Why does Sachs mention “the Koch brothers” unless his intention is to smear an independent organization by falsely implying a much larger or somehow improper level of support from some singularly unpopular billionaires?

Our press conference and seminar were not a “protest.” We weren’t on the street waving signs or shouting slogans. Our speakers were highly qualified and their writing and speaking relating to the pope and the Catholic Church were respectful and focused narrowly on the science, economics, and politics of climate change.

The dishonesty in Sachs’ reference to The Heartland Institute would be startling, coming from a person of Sachs’ stature, if this sort of misrepresentation of facts weren’t so common in the debate over climate change. President Barack Obama sets the tone, comparing global warming realists to members of the “flat earth society” and rather ominously calling on his supporters to “hold climate change deniers’ feet to the fire.”

In fact, those who say global warming is a man-made crisis gave up arguing the science and economics behind their campaign long ago. They now rely only on exaggeration, lies, and ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagrees with them.

Sachs is correct about one thing: The Heartland Institute is indeed a libertarian organization. We are devoted to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic issues. We make it very clear on our website and in interviews that it was this perspective that led us to examine the science behind the global warming scare. That examination led us to become (in the words of The Economist) “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism of man-made climate change.”

Sachs says some “free-market conservatives … have followed their ideology to the point of denying well-established science.” He seems blind to the possibilities that the science is not “well-established” or that his fellow socialists and “progressives” have themselves fallen prey to this malady. What else explains their refusal to admit there has been no warming for more than 18 years, that real data show no increase in extreme weather events, and that the benefits of using fossil fuels outweigh the costs, by orders of magnitude, even including the vastly inflated costs attributed to climate change that might occur centuries from now?

Sachs has had a long and distinguished career as an academic and in various government agencies, but on this issue he is letting his liberal ideology cloud his judgment. His short essay reveals a disturbing lack of knowledge about climate science and compassion toward the billions of people in the world who will be harmed by the UN’s plans to make energy more expensive and less reliable.

Sachs ends his essay with a call to people of all faiths to “fulfill our moral responsibilities to humanity and to the future of Earth.” That responsibility starts with truth-telling. Sachs and his colleagues on the left haven’t reached the starting line yet.

SOURCE





Shining a Light on the Darker Side of Solar

In today's edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Managing Editor of Environment & Climate News H. Sterling Burnett speaks with Michi Iljazi. Iljazi is the communications and policy manager for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. The Taxpayers Alliance has a subsidiary called SolarSecrets.org which is dedicated, in their words, to "shining a light on the darker side of solar power."

Iljazi points out that the U.S. benefited immensely from the creativity, innovation and prosperity-generating power of the free enterprise system. Yet corporate welfare and corporate cronyism are eclipsing genuine capitalism and threatening innovation and prosperity -- and the solar industry is right in the center of the corporate handouts.

The Taxpayer Alliance's new study, “A House of Cards:  Solar Energy’s Subsidy-Based Business Model,” in particular shines light on how much the solar industry has received in subsidies over the past five years and how much money it is losing every year. In addition it exposes the sleazy business practices of one company in particular, SolarCity?

SOURCE. (Podcast at link)





Iowa Should Embrace Frac Sand Mining

Lansing, Ia., is located near sizeable deposits of the highly specialized sand used for hydraulic fracturing. The growing demand for this sand, commonly referred to as "frac sand," has spurred a mining boom that has created thousands of high-paying jobs throughout Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, Lansing and other northeastern Iowa communities have largely missed out on the sand mining boom because local governments, citing environmental concerns, have enacted restrictive ordinances and moratoria severely limiting the growth of the industry. The scientific evidence suggests local officials should embrace, not prohibit, sand mining.

Sand mining has fewer environmental impacts than other types of mining. This is a key reason why Bob Lima, the state geologist for Iowa, recently told Winneshiek County supervisors, "If you just come in and dig sand out, there is very little risk to the water," noting there would be more impact from processing sand. Lima suggested trout fishing would not be harmed by sand mining because the St. Peter sandstone layer is not a big supplier of water to trout streams.

Allamakee County enacted an impossibly restrictive ordinance on sand mining, which for all intents and purposes prohibits sand mining in the county. Less onerous regulations would have allowed sand to be mined in an environmentally responsible way.

In addition to environmental concerns, the Allamakee County ordinance cites concerns the tourism industry in the area could be threatened by increased traffic caused by mining. In places like Lansing, however, tourism jobs are generally low-paying, seasonal jobs providing only part-time work for full-time residents.

Until all the storefronts in Lansing and other northeastern Iowa cities no longer have signs that say "Space Available," local governments should reconsider their unscientific opposition to sand mining.

SOURCE





Australian Greens leader leaves behind a team in turmoil

A move away from extreme Leftism coming?

FORMER GP Richard Di Natale was elected unopposed as the new leader of the Greens on Wednesday - but don't be fooled.  The obscure senator won thanks to a secret plot that will actually leave the party even more divided.

That plot - and that division - is part of the troubled legacy of Christine Milne, who quit on Wednesday as leader after only three years.

Forget the media praise for Milne, whose resignation surprised even party founder Bob Brown.  She actually cemented the Greens' reputation as zealots incapable of compromise, blind to the terrible price of their pure politics.

Milne refused to use her party's huge power over the Gillard Labor government to change the border policies that lured 1200 boat people to their deaths.

She helped to extract from the Gillard government a $10 billion clean energy fund that won't actually change the world's temperature.

Since the Abbott Government's election, Milne also helped Labor to block spending cuts in the Senate, claiming "we won't have a bar of the nonsense around the whole Budget repair story", despite government now spending nearly $1 billion a week more than it collects.

With Milne it was all about seeming, not achieving.

She became so obsessed with the alleged wickedness of Prime Minister Tony Abbott that she even helped the Senate to block the Government's planned rise in the petrol excise levy, even though Greens' policy calls for taxes on fossil fuels. The result: Milne's Greens appealed to a permanent minority of Australians who get high on moral outrage - but they frightened off the rest.

Indeed, Milne was hammered in her one election as leader, in 2013. The Greens' Senate vote fell from 13.1 per cent to only 8.65, with just four senators added to the six elected in 2010. In the Lower House the Greens only retained Adam Bandt's seat of Melbourne.

The polls suggest some recovery since, but nothing in Milne's leadership showed the party would go anywhere fast, despite the unwavering support of the ABC and many academics.

Now it is up to Di Natale to find a way out of Milne's dead end. He has advantages. He's more reassuring and more pragmatic than Milne.  "I am not an ideologue," he insisted on Wednesday. "I follow the evidence."

He even hinted he would change Milne's irrational opposition to the petrol excise increase and broaden the Greens' appeal. He said his interests weren't just global warming and the environment, but Medicare, healthcare, multiculturalism and "social justice".

But can he bring his team with him?

Di Natale's first problem is his low profile. Half the Greens MPs are better known.

In fact, the ambitious Bandt is the party's best media performer, yet was on Wednesday humiliatingly replaced as deputy leader by Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters.

Bandt later implied he'd just wanted to prepare for the arrival of his baby, but he seems instead to have been knifed.

Milne refused to comment on claims by angry Bandt supporters that she'd given Di Natale and Ludlam advanced warning of her resignation so they had time to stitch up a leadership deal that froze out the unsuspecting Bandt.

Di Natale also wouldn't comment, yet gave the game away when a journalist asked if he'd discussed standing for leader with his family.  "I had a long chat with my partner, Lucy, and the impact it is going to have on my life," he blurted, before realising his mistake and adding: "I was talking to Lucy six months ago."

He then admitted "someone may have been disappointed by the outcome" before Milne hastily terminated their press conference.

His deal with Ludlam may have given Di Natale the leadership, but it's also created a powerful rival and brake. Ludlam in return wasn't just made co-deputy but chairman of the parliamentary party.

Nor do the divisions end there. Milne and Brown long fought to contain the rise of "watermelon greens" - Greens MPs who are actually socialists.

The ultimate watermelon is Lee Rhiannon, a former communist trained in the Soviet Union who backs a boycott of Israel and fights to protect the CFMEU, a construction union accused of corruption by the royal commission into trade unions.

Sure enough, Rhiannon on Wednesday tweeted her objection to the way Di Natale was chosen.  "Members should have a vote," she protested, knowing a ballot of members would favour radical candidates like her.

Does this seem a happy team of big huggers - one able to negotiate out of Milne's cul de sac and deliver Kumbayah at last?

SOURCE

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