The lying never stops.  Now krill are being used to push Warmist nonsense

If you read carefully below, you will see that it's only warming in the Western Antarctic that is at issue.  So if the warming is due to climate change why is the much greater bulk of the rest of Antarctica remaining stable and even gaining glacial mass?  Easy.  The Western Antarctic warming is NOT due to climate change.  It is now well-known that there is extensive vulcanism at both poles -- localized in the South mainly in the Western Antarctic. It is subsurface volcanoes that are causing the localised warming of the Western Antarctic, not CO2 emissions

'Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic': But now the decline in numbers of the tiny crustaceans caused by climate change is killing penguins

Penguins, seals and whales in the Southern Ocean are being threatened by a declining krill population caused by climate change and melting Antarctic sea ice.

The inch-long crustaceans are considered the 'basis' of the Antarctic food chain and use sea ice to protect themselves and feed from the algae that grows from it.

Penguin-watchers say the krill are getting scarcer in the western Antarctic peninsula, under threat from climate change and fishing

The inch-long crustaceans are considered the 'basis' of the Antarctic food chain and use sea ice to protect themselves and feed from the algae that grows from it

'Krill is the power lunch of the Antarctic. It's a keystone species for everybody,' group leader Ron Naveen said.

Sea temperatures on the peninsula have risen by three degrees in the past 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature said the threat of declining krill populations was significant and claims 300,000 tons of krill is caught annually and used for farmed fish and 'Omega 3' oil supplements.

However, Norwegian fishing company Aker BioMarine said the amount of krill caught by humans is comparatively small, with just 0.5 per cent of the 60 million tons eaten each year by sea creatures.

SOURCE




Huge coral reef discovered at Amazon river mouth



More evidence of how poorly understood coral reefs are.  Warmists are dogmatic that recent bleaching on the Northern part of Australia's GBR is due to global warming but who knows? This recent discovery was apparently a huge surprise.  There were not supposed to be corals in that location.  So it shows how little we actually know about how corals work

What it does show is that corals are highly adaptable and can survive a lot of challenges.  It might also be noted that there are benthic corals in Icelandic waters that get no sunlight at all.  They have become filter feeders.  Some of the South American corals may be that too

Yup. Science is settled.

Scientists astonished to find 600-mile long reef under the muddy water in a site already marked for oil exploration
Scientists were ‘flabbergasted’ to discover the Amazon reef as coral usually thrives in clear, sunlit tropical waters.
A huge 3,600 sq mile (9,300 sq km) coral reef system has been found below the muddy waters off the mouth of the river Amazon, astonishing scientists, governments and oil companies who have started to explore on top of it.

The existence of the 600-mile long reef, which ranges from about 30-120m deep and stretches from French Guiana to Brazil’s Maranhão state, was not suspected because many of the world’s great rivers produce major gaps in reef systems where no corals grow.

In addition, there was little previous evidence because corals mostly thrive in clear, sunlit, salt water, and the equatorial waters near the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, with vast quantities of sediment washed thousands of miles down the river and swept hundreds of miles out to sea.
But the reef appears to be thriving below the freshwater “plume”, or outflow, of the Amazon. Compared to many other reefs, the scientists say in a paper in Science Advances on Friday, it is is relatively “impoverished”. Nevertheless, they found over 60 species of sponges, 73 species of fish, spiny lobsters, stars and much other reef life.

SOURCE  





How Manitoba’s ‘green’ power dream became a nightmare of runaway costs

Since the early 2000s, Manitoba’s NDP government has committed the province’s power system to expand and profit from the fight against global warming. With the federal government now developing a national energy plan with the same objectives — and Manitoba’s NDP fighting for re-election on Tuesday — there’s no better time to take stock of the provincial government’s efforts over the last 15 years.

And the results so far are clear: power sold at a loss to U.S. buyers, calls for federal subsidies, new debts and losses for Manitoba Hydro, a less-diversified power supply, and expensive rate hikes forecast to keep rising for the next 20 years. The few winners have been contractors and construction unions and some northern First Nations.

It started with an experiment to replace the fossil-fuel-power that back-up Manitoba’s hydro-electricity with wind power in the province’s gusty south. After that ended up too costly, the government turned its attention to the Far North.

Its first big green initiative there was the 200-megawatt Wuskwatim dam built on the Burntwood Diversion near Thompson. Approved in 2004, the project was expected to cost $900 million and rake in profits from exported power to the U.S. When it was finished eight years later, the capital cost including necessary transmission, came in at $2 billion. After all that, the cost of generating and conveying power came in at roughly 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, but buyers are now willing to pay only around three cents per kilowatt-hour.

The rise of fracking and the collapse in natural gas and spot electricity prices, combined with American solar and wind subsidies and better U.S. energy efficiency all killed any hopes for the “green premium” that Manitoba had banked its renewable-power plan on. And yet Wuskwatim’s failure would not deter the NDP government from pursuing yet more costly additional northern hydro-electric and transmission projects.

After a review and a recommendation from Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board, the government did at least suspend immediate plans for the massive northern hydro dam, Conawapa, planned with about seven times the capacity of Wuskwatim. But it continues to barge ahead with the ongoing construction of the 695-megawatt Keeyask dam, and its massive new meandering transmission line, which runs through valuable farmland. The dam is currently estimated to cost $6.5 billion; the transmission line another $4.6 billion. Given recent experience, it’s possible they could end up costing almost twice as much.

And the government…will see a windfall from the levies it imposes on the utility, leaving ratepayers with decades of higher bills to cover those costs.

Some First Nations have done well thanks to these projects. To win their backing, the government gave them hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-construction inducements, along with one-third equity interests in Wuskwatim and Keeyask, acquired through no-risk loans from Manitoba Hydro.

And the government, as Manitoba Hydro’s sole shareholder, will see a windfall from the levies it imposes on the utility, leaving ratepayers with decades of higher bills to cover those costs. The Public Utilities Board’s review revealed that the provincial government could expect at least $25 to $30 billion of additional levies over the next five decades if these, and various other parts of Manitoba Hydro’s expansion plans all go ahead. The provincial levies include capital taxes, debt-guarantee fees, and water rentals, in addition to normal payroll and income taxes on contractors and Hydro employees and provincial sales taxes levied on consumer and business bills.

But for Manitobans themselves, the green future is looking dark. Thirty per cent of provincial households are lower income and the province has seen no major new industry spring up in 15 years. Meanwhile, there is downward pressure on domestic demand due to rising prices; export prices and demand are in the doldrums; and Manitoba Hydro is already sitting on 30 per cent more generation and transmission capacity than the province’s power demands actually require.

Back when oil was over $100 a barrel, then Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer frequently asserted that hydro-generated electricity was Manitoba’s oil. His government crowed about the “Manitoba Advantage” of cheap, green hydro power. Even as export prices and volumes fell, his successor, Greg Selinger, ignored the changing economics and continued to accept massive over-budget construction costs. That “advantage” is now fading fast, while Manitoba Hydro’s debt becomes instead an albatross around the province’s financial neck.

SOURCE




Senators Target U.S. Funding for Kerry’s Prized UN Climate Change Programs

Taking aim at one of Secretary of State John Kerry’s most cherished causes, a group of Republican senators is warning him that the administration will violate U.S. law if it does not cut off funding to the U.N.’s climate change agency and affiliated entities in response to its recent admission of the “State of Palestine.”

In a letter to Kerry, 28 senators pointed out that the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decision to admit the Palestinians should trigger a funding cutoff in line with a 1994 law.

That’s what the administration – reluctantly – did in 2011 when the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization became the first U.N. agency to admit the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) as a member. The administration has been trying since then to obtain congressional waiver authority to enable it to restore funding to UNESCO, without success.

This time the target is bigger – and even closer to Kerry’s heart. Not only the UNFCCC is in the Republican senators’ crosshairs, but also the affiliated Green Climate Fund (GCF), whose aim is to help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to various phenomena blamed on climate change.

While the administration has requested $13 million for the UNFCCC in fiscal year 2017, President Obama has pledged $3 billion to the GCF over four years. The first $500 million of that pledged amount was transferred on March 7.

Many Republican lawmakers also oppose the administration’s domestic and international actions on climate change, including its efforts to circumvent Congress in committing the U.S. to the Paris agreement.

When the administration transferred the first $500 million instalment of the promised $3 billion to the GCF last month, Barrasso questioned how what he called the “handout to foreign bureaucrats” could be justified in the current economic climate.

Challenging a State Department official during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Barrasso also noted that Congress had not authorized or appropriated any funding for the GCF, and charged that the payment violates legislation which prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom said in response the department had “reviewed our authorities and made a determination that we can make this payment to the Green Climate Fund.”

Kerry, who has championed the climate change issue for decades, said after the Paris accord was struck that he did not believe Americans would ever elect as president a candidate who did not support the international climate change effort.

“I don’t think they’re going to accept as a genuine leader someone who doesn’t understand the science of climate change and isn’t willing to do something about it,” he said.

SOURCE




Scientists Build a Better Incandescent Light Bulb… Six Years After Last US Factory Closes

The bureaucratic way to save power is about to be superseded by a better method -- a technological innovation

Six years after the last incandescent light bulb factory in the U.S. shut down due to strict new federal energy conservation standards, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a technological breakthrough that could make incandescent bulbs twice as energy-efficient as their replacements.

MIT researchers discovered that by wrapping the filament of an incandescent bulb with a “photonic crystal,” they could “recycle” the energy that was typically lost as heat to create more light.

The new technique “makes a dramatic difference in how efficiently the system converts electricity into light,” said the research team led by MIT professors Marin Soljačić, John Joannopoulos and Gang Chen.

Their results were published online in the January edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“The heat just keeps bouncing back in toward the filament until it finally ends up as visible light,” MIT post-doctoral researcher Ognjen Ilic explained. “It reduces the energy that would otherwise be wasted.”

In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which set new energy conservation standards for lighting fixtures and other products by 2014 in order to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The “new light bulb law”, as it was called, required “25 percent greater efficiency for household light bulbs that have traditionally used between 40 and 100 watts of electricity,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The stringent new standards effectively prohibited the manufacture of most ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the U.S. As a result, GE shuttered the last domestic incandescent light bulb factory in the nation in 2010, laying off 200 workers in Winchester, Virginia.

Since then, incandescent bulbs have been largely replaced with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diode (LED) lamps. In February, GE announced that due to poor sales, it would no longer make or sell CFLs – which contain mercury - in the U.S., and will focus on the more expensive, but longer lasting LEDs instead.

But a new generation of incandescent bulbs could be twice as energy efficient as LEDs without the drawbacks, including higher initial cost and “inconsistent” white light.

“Whereas the luminous efficiency of conventional incandescent lights is between 2 and 3 percent, that of fluorescents (including CFLs) is between 7 and 15 percent, and that of most commercial LEDs between 5 and 20 percent, the new two-stage incandescents could reach efficiencies as high as 40 percent,” according to a press release from MIT.

The MIT researchers noted that the greater increase in energy efficiency also comes with “exceptional reproduction of colours and scalable power.”

In February, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) introduced the Energy Efficiency Free Market Act of 2016 (HR 4504), which would prohibit states and federal agencies from adopting “any requirement to comply with a standard for energy conservation or water efficiency with respect to a product.”

“This legislation eliminates the overreaching arm of the federal government that continues to force itself into the household of the American consumer,” Burgess said. “When the market drives the standard, there’s no limit to how rapidly manufacturers can respond when consumers demand more efficient and better-made products.”

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), commercial and residential users in the U.S. used 412 billion kilowatthours of electricity for lighting in 2014. Lighting accounted for 15 percent of their total electricity use.

SOURCE





Energy Sec.: ‘Legislative, Economy-Wide Approach’ Needed To Reduce CO2

Fairly cautious stuff.  The Greenies will not be much pleased

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz says he believes the U.S. can achieve it’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2025, but will need “more arrows in the quiver” and “will require a legislative, economy-wide approach” in the future.

Moniz made the comments at the Christian Science Monitor Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. There he discussed the 2005 U.N. international climate change agreement and what the U.S. will have to do to meet it’s goals in greenhouse gas reduction of roughly 27% below 2005 levels.

“I think we have the tools to meet something like a 2025 goal,” Moniz said. “But again the very deep de-carbonization is going to require more arrows in the quiver and ultimately, I believe, will require a legislative economy-wide approach.”

Moniz was asked if he thought the risks of failing to reach the 2025 greenhouse gas emission goals were political or technical.

“I think we have the technologies in hand combined with good policy, but policy I’m not talking now about - what I think we eventually need, which will be an economy-wide approach to carbon reductions and a legislative approach,” Moniz said.

“But I mean policies like, continuing to promulgate efficiency standards whether it’s for appliances, equipment or vehicles, buildings – etcetera. Things of that type, I think we have the tools that we need to meet something like the 2025 goal.”

SOURCE

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