Bimbo gives scientific advice

Only problem:  It isn't scientific.  She has no idea of the regulatory hurdles businesses have to get over in order to release a new product.  And her usage "linked to" can mean anything.  Let me do some of it:  Christie Brinkley is a Communist. I have no idea if she is or not, but now I've said that other writers can accurately say: "Christie Brinkley has been linked to Communism".  Easy, isn't it?  How to prove nothing in one easy lesson

Supermodel Christie Brinkley is speaking up about Monsanto, genetically engineered foods, or GMOs, and the role these controversial crops play in our health.

The 61-year-old’s new book, Timeless Beauty, provides insights on living a healthy lifestyle. One topic she’s particularly concerned about is food and how Big Food impacts our lives.

“I think there are so many issues with our food industry that are blatantly disrespectful to our planet and us as individuals,” Brinkley told FoxBusiness.com.

Brinkley spoke of the threat of monocultures on the honey bee population, in which enormous tracts of a single type of GMO plant such as corn or soy appear to make it hard for pollinators to thrive.

“The bees are suffering right now and without the bees—well, Einstein said when the bees go, the next thing that goes are people,” Brinkley said.

In response to Brinkley’s statement, Monsanto told FoxBusiness.com:

“We were surprised to hear Ms. Brinkley’s comments. Honeybees are essential in agriculture. Monsanto’s own fruit, vegetable, canola and alfalfa seed businesses depend on healthy pollinators to be successful. We have made significant investments in collaborations and research for the betterment of honey bee health. All GMO crops are tested for potential impact on honey bees, as was glyphosate herbicide. These products, when used as intended, do not impact honey bee health.”

Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup, kills every plant except for the genetically modified (“Roundup Ready“) plants that are designed to grow right through it. While neonicotinoids are usually pegged as a chief culprit to the country’s devastating honey bee decline, scientists have linked the monarch butterfly decline to the near eradication of the milkweed, a critical food source decimated by Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller.

Glyphosate formulations have also been linked to a slew of negative human health effects, including cancer. Monsanto denies these allegations.

During Brinkley’s interview with FoxBusiness.com, she also made it clear that she’s an advocate of GMO-labeling, something that nearly 90 percent of Americans are in favor of.

“What I don’t like about GMOs is that we’re the guinea pigs. The testing—if there’s testing—we’re the ones doing the testing and that is not fair and furthermore it’s not labeled so we don’t know if we’re the ones eating them,” Brinkley said.

“All the time we’re finding various links and I want my food pure and it can be done,” Brinkley added. “Monsanto and these giant companies are just taking over and their disrespect for our health and our rights is really maddening.”

Brinkley, who is a vegetarian, eats organic food but recognizes that not everyone can afford it.

“The more we all join in and demand organic foods, the better off that we’re going to be because every day they’re linking the chemicals, insecticides, pesticides and herbicides to men becoming sterile and with women it could be linked to the breast cancer epidemic that we’re seeing,” Brinkley said.

Brinkley also suggested other ways we can learn more about what’s in our food. “One way that’s very easy to get involved is for people to Google Monsanto and read about what’s going on,” she said.

She urges people to sign online petitions and have discussions about GMO food labeling, and to “make yourself heard so we can clean up the food industry and know what we’re eating.”

Brinkley is not the only celebrity involved in the contentious GMO food fight. Musician Neil Young dedicated his entire last album to taking on big corporations like Monsanto.

SOURCE





Terrorism and a cold winter refugee crisis

A brutal cold spell could kill refugees. Paris COP21 delegates need to discuss this climate issue

Paul Driessen and Joe D’Aleo

Even after the latest Paris massacres – and previous radical Islamist atrocities in the USA, France, Britain, Canada, Spain, India, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and elsewhere – politicians absurdly say hypothetical manmade global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity. In reality, fossil fuel contributions to climate change pose few dangers to people or planet, and winters kill 20 times more people than hot weather.

After being assured snowy winters would soon be something only read about in history books, Europe was shaken by five brutally cold winters this past decade. Thousands died, because they were homeless, lived in drafty homes with poor heating systems, or could not afford adequate fuel.

It could happen again, with even worse consequences. “Millions of desperate people are on the march,” Walter Russell Mead recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Sunni refugees driven out by the barbarity of the Assad regime in Syria, Christians and Yazidis fleeing the pornographic violence of Islamic State, millions more of all faiths and no faith fleeing poverty and oppression without end.”

Where are they heading? Mostly not into neighboring Arab countries, most of which have yanked their welcome mats. Instead, if they’re not staying in Turkey, they’re going north to Europe – into the path the extremely cold “Siberian Express” has increasingly taken. Germany alone could face the challenge of feeding and sheltering 800,000 to 1,000,000 freezing refugees this winter.

If a blast of frigid Siberian air should hit, temperatures in parts of eastern and northern Europe and the western Former Soviet Union could become 70 degrees F (39C) colder than cold spells in much of the Middle East. During the coldest Siberian outbreaks, it gets as lethally cold as -40F (-40C).

Northern and eastern Europeans are largely acclimated to such cold. However, for refugees from regions where winters average 20 to 30 degrees warmer, makeshift houses or tents will make their sojourn a bone-chilling experience. Europe’s exorbitant energy costs, resulting from its obeisance to climate chaos credos, could make this an even worse humanitarian crisis.

However, to listen to the UN, many world leaders, environmental NGOs, scientists from the climate alarm industry, and their sycophant media – especially on the eve of their Paris 2015 global warming summit – threats from cold weather are not supposed to happen. Just 15 years ago, the German paper Spiegel proclaimed, “Good-bye winter: In Germany bitter cold winters are now a thing of the past.” That same year, a British Climate Research Unit scientist said “children aren’t going to know what snow is.”

The media dutifully repeated similar claims each year, until unbelievably cold, snowy winters began hitting in 2008/09. In December 2010, England had its second-coldest December since 1659, amid the Little Ice Age. For five years, 2008-2013, snow paralyzed travel in England and northern and western Europe. Not surprisingly, the same media then blamed manmade global warming for the harsh winters.

In reality, natural Atlantic Ocean cycles lasting around 60 years control winter temperatures in Europe and Eastern North America. When the North Atlantic warms, “blocking high pressure systems” largely prevent warm Atlantic air from reaching Europe.

There is also a strong correlation between the sun’s geomagnetic activity and these blocking-induced cold winters in Europe. The five brutally cold winters ending in 2012/13 had the lowest level of solar geomagnetic activity in the entire record, dating back some 90 years.

When the North Atlantic is warm and the sun’s geomagnetic patterns are weak, these blocking patterns keep warmer Atlantic air out of Europe. Frigid air from off deep snows in Siberia can then more easily invade from the east, bringing sub-zero cold and heavy snows. That’s what happened from 2008 to 2013.

The ocean and solar factors eased in 2013, and the last two years have seen more Atlantic air and milder winters. However both solar and ocean patterns are starting to return to the situation where cold invasions are more likely. That could usher in nasty surprises for the Middle Eastern refugees.

Even this year’s early winter October cold brought news stories about Syrian children becoming sick amid exposure to colder weather than they were used to. In Austria, adults and children alike were already complaining about the weather and wishing they could go home.

In fact, cold weather kills 20 times more people than hot weather, according to a Lancet medical journal study that analyzed 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. It should be required reading for the 40,000-plus bureaucrats, politicians, activists and promoters who will soon descend on Paris, to enjoy five-star hotels and restaurants while blathering endlessly about dire threats of global warming.

They should ponder the fact that the Lancet study reflects normal societies in peaceful countries. Even there, many more people die each year during the four winter months than in the eight non-winter months. Indeed, there even the United States experiences some 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year.

In the United Kingdom, the winter death rate is about twice as high as in the USA: excess winter deaths range up to 50,000 per year – due to the UK’s poorer home insulation and heating systems, and much higher energy costs caused by its climate and renewable energy policies.

The refugees’ excess winter death toll could well be even greater, due to the high cost of European energy and the migrants’ extreme poverty, poor nutrition, inadequate clothing and blankets, preexisting diseases, and makeshift housing: tents, trailers and other dwellings that have little or no insulation or central heat.

Systematic misinformation about the dangers of fossil fuels and hot versus cold weather has helped make this crisis much worse than needs be. Climate alarmists will thus bear the blame for thousands of avoidable deaths among refugees this winter, especially if the Siberian Express invades once again.

The Paris climate conferees need to focus on humanity’s real and immediate dangers: this rapidly growing refugee crisis, abysmal EU economies and job losses – and the billions worldwide who still lack the adequate, reliable, affordable energy required to end their crushing poverty, malnutrition, disease and early death, by ensuring clean water, proper sanitation, modern hospitals, lights, refrigerators and plentiful food. The climate conferees must address the following much more pressing questions.

How is climate change more important than safeguarding refugees who are already suffering from cold weather? Should conferees be focused on hypothetical future manmade climate chaos, while EU nations squabble over who will take how many refugees and potential terrorists, amid a possible winter crisis? What contingency plans do they have for another bout of frigid weather possibly invading the continent?

When a million refugees are freezing in squalid conditions with inadequate shelter, food, heat, clothing and medical care, and 1.3 billion people still do not have electricity – why would the world commit to spending billions on alleged future global warming catastrophes? As Bjorn Lomborg puts it, why would the world also want to give up nearly $1 trillion in GDP every year for the rest of this century, to avert a total hypothetical (computer modeled) temperature rise of just 0.306 degrees C (0.558 F) by 2100?

Where will the money come from to combat growing war and terrorism, aid the millions displaced by these horrors, rebuild devastated cities, put millions of people back to work, and bring electricity and better lives to billions of others – if we continue this obsession over global warming? Do humans really play a big enough roll in climate change to justify these incomprehensible price tags? Where is the actual evidence? Not computer models or press releases – the actual evidence?

It would be an unconscionable crime against humanity, if the nations gathering in Paris implement policies to protect our planet’s energy-deprived masses from hypothetical manmade climate disasters decades from now, by perpetuating poverty and disease that kill millions more people tomorrow.

These are the real reasons climate change is a critical moral issue. We need to we recognize that, and stop playing games with people’s lives. We must acknowledge that horrific computer model scenarios do not reflect planetary reality – and must not guide energy policy.

Via email




After Paris Attacks, Global Warming Activists May See Mass Events Canceled

Last Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris may force the cancelation of large public events linked to the upcoming U.N. climate conference – to the dismay of global warming activists who hoped to avoid that outcome.

On Monday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that public events surrounding the conference will not go ahead due to security considerations.

Speaking to the RTL radio station, Valls confirmed that the conference itself will happen, since not doing it would amount to “abdicating to terrorists.” But he also said that planned demonstrations, concerts and festivities will be canceled.

President Obama, other world leaders and tens of thousands of delegates are expected to descend on Le Bourget, 10 miles from the city center, from Nov. 30-Dec. 11 for what is known in U.N. jargon as COP21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change).

Such gatherings have always been accompanied by large civil society events, including protests by green activists generally unhappy with the negotiations and outcome.

This year’s plans had included a November 28-29 “climate march” in the central city, which organizers predicted could draw up to 200,000 participants. The same day will see similar events in cities around the world.

Also planned for the day COP21 closes on December 12, were mass acts of “civil disobedience” including human chains and occupation of public spaces, both in Le Bourget and central Paris.

On Tuesday, a representative of Climate Coalition 21 that is organizing the march, said consultation with authorities was continuing in the hope that the event can go ahead, and “we will continue to ensure the security of all participants is guaranteed.”

Beatrice Héraud said while organizers had expressed solidarity with the victims and families of the terror attacks in Paris on Friday and Beirut on Thursday, the “struggle for climate justice does not stop.”

“We have a duty to stand up and continue to fight for a just and liveable planet for all,” she said.

“While taking into account the exceptional circumstances, we believe that COP21 cannot take place without the participation or without the mobilization of civil society in France,” Héraud said.

‘Determined disobedience’

The organizers of the civil disobedience actions on December 12 – dubbed the “climate games” – say they are “considering our options for mobilizations and actions in Paris” in the aftermath of the attacks.

Nicolas Haeringer, a campaigner with one of the organizing groups, 350.org, wrote in response to the terror attacks that the Paris climate conference is “in a sense, a peace summit – perhaps the most important peace summit that has ever been held.”

“We don’t yet know what Friday night’s events mean for our work in Paris. The coalition on the ground is committed to working with the French authorities to see if there is a way for the big planned march and other demonstrations to safely go forward. We fully share their concerns about public safety – just as we fully oppose unnecessary crackdowns on civil liberties and minority populations.”

Haeringer said whatever the case, the global climate marches on November 28-29 will go ahead.

Organizers earlier predicted “the largest mass civil disobedience climate justice action that we have ever seen in Europe.”

“Our win is to take the world stage during the COP21 to shift the focus away from the negotiators towards the movements,” organizers said in campaign materials.

“We will show that we are prepared to use determined disobedience and that this is a movement moving forward to escalate actions in 2016,” it added, in reference to tentative plans next May for “bold action targeted at fossil fuel projects that must be kept in the ground and lifting up the solutions we need to take their place.”

‘Offering our love and commitment to a sustainable world’

Meanwhile – despite Valls’ words – organizers of COP21-themed music concerts planned for Paris say they will go ahead.

The shows are by “Pathway to Paris,” which describes itself as “a collection of artists, activists, academics, musicians, politicians, innovators coming together to make our voices heard at the U.N. climate talks in Paris.”

“In light of the recent tragedies in Paris and Beirut, we would like to continue with the Pathway to Paris concerts and bring our voices together in solidarity, offering our love and commitment to a sustainable world,” it said in a statement.

The shows, scheduled for December 4 and 5, are to be held in a concert venue in central Paris – about two miles north-west of the theater where 89 of the 129 victims of last Friday’s attacks were killed.

The aim of COP21 is to achieve, for the first time in more than two decades of U.N. negotiations, “a legally binding and universal agreement on climate” in a bid to keep average temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

That’s the goal which world leaders several years ago decided was necessary to avoid what global warming advocates say will be potentially catastrophic effects on the planet.

SOURCE





When the CIA Worried About Climate Change ....

“Climate is now a critical factor,” the CIA wrote. “The politics of food will become the central issue of every government.” Over the past few years, the CIA saw geopolitical disruptions because of climate and its report, “A Study of Climatological Research as it pertains to Intelligence Problems,” set out to explore the issue. Crops around the world were failing. A flood in Pakistan blanketed 2.8 million acres. Food shortages led to the deposition of a politician in Russia. Rice shortages in Ecuador were destabilizing the country. The report feared that the prime time for growing crops was in the past and hungry countries would stop at nothing to feed.

It was 1974.

After a few hundred years of prime weather, the CIA worried the nation was slipping into the “neo-boreal time period” because the world was … getting colder. These days, the last thing on the U.S. government’s mind is the return of a little ice age because the science has changed, apparently. Still, the report asked the question, “Can the Agency depend on climatology as a science to accurately project the future?” Seeing how the Obama administration is gearing up to attend a Paris summit with world leaders in an attempt to cool the globe’s temperature, the answer is no.

SOURCE





Regulating America out of the oil shale fracking business



Prior to his reelection, President Barack Obama said that the U.S. is the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas.” Like so many things, the President has no problem publically taking credit for what his Administration privately disrupts. Earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued controversial rules on hydraulic fracturing, the very genesis of the domestic energy revolution that is moving the United States toward energy independence. What does that mean for the prices we pay for oil and natural gas?

The BLM’s rules are meant to regulate fracking on federal lands and Indian reservations. However, the BLM controls 260 million acres of surface land, and 700 million acres of mineral rights beneath it, making the rules far-reaching and impactful. This amounts to 100,000 wells on federal land, which is 11 percent of U.S. production, and 5 percent of our total consumption. More than 90 percent of new land-based wells in the U.S. use fracking.

The new rules are currently in limbo after a series of court rulings, but would impose redundant storage and construction standards, which are already regulated by major producing states like Wyoming and Colorado. This, as well as the long permitting process, further obstruct producers from bringing oil and natural gas to market. The existing state processes take less than a week on average, where the federal process takes over eight months.

Compliance with the BLM’s rules would increase the cost $97,000 per well according to industry sources. That would be bad enough, but the rules will also force producers to publically disclose their proprietary processes to all; not just the regulators, but the environmental interests that are trying to sue them out of business. These rules open the door for a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy that their opponents would surely use to stop production.

This would be devastating to the United States economy that is inching closer to energy independence for the first time in years. The fracking boom has increased crude oil production substantially, accounting for 49 percent of American production. Fracking has nearly doubled oil and natural gas production overall, giving consumers relief in an otherwise troubled economy.

Before the rules make it out of court alive, there is an opportunity to kill them once and for all. Instead of allowing environmentalists to wage a war of attrition on one of America’s most promising industries, Congress can instead defund the rule in the coming omnibus spending bill for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2016, providing investors and producers the certainty the Obama administration would otherwise deny.

In fact, in the underlying House Interior and Environment appropriations bill, Section 439 would have defunded the rule altogether: “None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce the final rule entitled ‘Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands’ as published in the Federal Register on March 26, 2015 and March 30, 2015 (80 Fed. Reg. 16127 and 16577, respectively).”

Now, House and Senate lawmakers need only carry it over to the next spending bill. Congress has the opportunity to assert their Article I prerogatives, and secure the energy future their constituents deserve, and leaving fracking regs to the states.

As Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford noted in a June statement, “the regulation of hydraulic fracturing should remain a state function. There is no need to grant more regulation of it to the federal government.”

The American people have paid enough for foreign energy, and for the President’s radical environmental policy. It is time that Congress return the favor.

SOURCE




Australia agrees to a long-term climate "goal"

"Strong language about the long-term ambition" has been agreed to. Surely a bit of a laugh.  It actually commits nobody to doing anything.  Just politician-speak, real hot air

The Turnbull government has quietly committed Australia to support decarbonising the world economy as one of the goals for this month's global climate summit in Paris, a move that has drawn applause.

With little fanfare, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed on the sidelines of the G20 gathering with European leaders in Turkey this week that the language of the Paris agreement should agree on a long-term goal to ensure temperatures keep within an increase of 2 degrees on pre-industrial levels.

The terrorism attacks in Paris are also considered to be a reason Australia's shift was largely overlooked.

The Paris agreement "must establish a durable platform for limiting global temperature rise to below 2 degrees, including through a long-term goal, accountability and transparency of contributions, and allowing for strengthening of ambition over time", Mr Turnbull agreed in a statement issued with the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and the President of the European Council Donald Tusk on November 15.

The concession by Australia marks a significant advance on the country's position and stands in contrast to comments made just three weeks ago by Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop that Australia wouldn't back wording supporting a long-term goal being added to the Paris accord because the country does not have a domestic target to cut carbon emissions beyond 2030.

Erwin Jackson, deputy chief executive of The Climate Institute, said the Australian government had previously committed to examine a long-term goal as part of a 2017 review of its climate policies so the statement in Turkey with the EU represented a shift of position.

"This is the first time they have publicly and explicitly supported a long-term decarbonisation signal as a central objective for an outcome in Paris," Mr Jackson said.

"The combination of shorter-term targets and a longer-term goal can facilitate long-term decision making and investment," he said.

"Long-term investment signals are essential in order to ensure innovations and investment in the technologies required to reduce emissions across the global economy."

Sem Fabrizi, the EU's ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, welcomed the Australian position. "The EU wants to work with partners to create political conditions to conclude an effective deal in Paris," Mr Fabrizi said. "So we are extremely pleased to share so many similar objectives with Australia ahead of the Paris climate talks."

The official Australian delegation to Paris has now been given its final negotiating mandate, which is understood to have been agreed to by cabinet in recent weeks.  That mandate will give Australian negotiators a great deal of flexibility on the floor of the summit to sign up to a strong agreement.

That includes the ability to accept strong language about the long-term ambition of any new climate deal, such as a push towards decarbonisation, carbon neutrality or other versions of the theme that are being considered in the talks.

However, how the long-term ambition of the Paris agreement will be expressed in the text is still an open question in the negotiations.

Some major developing countries are understood to be pushing against some of the stronger language on ambition.

A similar debate is understood to have taken place over the wording of the official communiqué for the recent G20 leaders meeting in Antalya, Turkey. Reports suggested India and Saudi Arabia argued against the inclusion of the commonly agreed global goal to keep warming below 2 degrees in the G20 statement, but later backed down.

A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the government would take a "strong and ambitious target of reducing emissions by 26-28 per cent [on 2005 levels] by 2030 to Paris".

"The government has a long-standing commitment to working towards limiting global temperature increases to below 2 degrees," the spokeswoman said. "We are confident that a strong agreement will be reached in Paris."

SOURCE

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