Monday, December 31, 2018



10 Worst Climate-Driven Disasters Of 2018 Cost $85 Billion

Where is the evidence that ANY of these events were driven by climate change?  There is none. It's all supposition. Below is all that the PDF underlying the report below had to say about causation:

"All of these disasters are linked with human-caused climate change. In some cases scientific studies have shown that climate change made the particular event more likely or stronger, for example with warmer oceans supercharging tropical storms. In other cases, the event was the result of shifts in weather patterns - like higher temperatures and reduced rainfall that made fires more likely - that are themselves consequences of climate change.

2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record, with average global temperatures nearly 1°C above the pre-industrial average. The warming trend is clear, with the last four years the hottest on record, and matches scientific projections of the results of human emissions of greenhouse gases. This report highlights some of the disastrous consequences of this warming that are already striking."

It's just Warmist boilerplate, treating theory as fact and assuming that correlation is causation in the usual Warmist non-scientific way. There is no scientific way a connection to any of the events COULD be demonstrated after the fact.


U.K. charity Christian Aid just published its 2018 report Counting The Cost: A Year of Climate Breakdown in which they analyze the economic impact of climate change-driven weather events over the past year.

Founded in 1945, Christian Aid is an organization that works to eradicate global poverty. As indicated by research inspired by the principles of Effective Altruism, ending radical poverty is one of the three cause areas that we should prioritize in our philanthropic efforts.

Christian Aid's report highlights once again how devastating the economic impact of climate change may be. All 10 events identified by the charity caused damage of over USD 1 billion, while four of them cost more than USD 7 billion each.

All of these disasters can be connected to human-driven climate breakdown. As a substantial body of research highlights, the number of extreme weather events is increasing worldwide and this can be linked to climate change. For example, warmer oceans can supercharge tropical storms.

Significantly, these 10 events affected rich and poor countries alike. However, Christian Aid emphasizes how in many developing countries the human cost of climate change can be much higher than the financial cost.

SOURCE





Climatologist counters climate-disaster predictions with sea-level report

For years, climate prognosticators have warned that human-caused global warming is fueling catastrophic sea-level rise, but now climatologist Judith Curry is rocking their boat.

In her latest paper, Ms. Curry found that the current rising sea levels are not abnormal, nor can they be pinned on human-caused climate change, arguing that the oceans have been on a "slow creep" for the last 150 years - before the post-1950 climb in carbon-dioxide emissions.

"There are numerous reasons to think that projections of 21st-century sea level rise from human-caused global warming are too high, and some of the worst-case scenarios strain credulity," the 80-page report found.

Her Nov. 25 report, "Sea Level and Climate Change," which has been submitted for publication, also found that sea levels were actually higher in some regions during the Holocene Climate Optimum - about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.

"After several centuries of sea level decline following the Medieval Warm Period, sea levels began to rise in the mid-19th century," the report concluded. "Rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. It is concluded that recent change is within the range of natural sea-level variability over the past several thousand years."

Such conclusions are unlikely to find favor with the global-warming movement, or within the academic climate "consensus," where some experts have predicted that mean sea level could rise by five to 10 feet by the end of the 21st century.

Then again, Ms. Curry is accustomed to making waves. The former chair of the Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, she represents one of the biggest names on the so-called "skeptic" side of the climate debate, the counterweight to Penn State climatologist Michael Mann, who leads the "warmist" camp.

She said the problem is that the disaster scenarios are driven by the most extreme forecasts of carbon-dioxide emissions, known as RCP8.5, which she and other critics have described as so extreme as to be implausible.

"[President] Trump, he said something about people talking about the extreme scenarios - well, they are," Ms. Curry told The Washington Times. "Consideration of extreme scenarios has some value, but they're portrayed as the expected outcome, and that's really not useful."

She argued that a more appropriate estimate would be about 0.2 to 1.5 meters, or six inches to five feet, and that anything over two feet is "increasingly weakly justified." Mean sea level has risen by about seven to eight inches since 1900.

By lending her prestige to the sea-level debate, she could chill the rash of lawsuits filed by cities and counties in California, Colorado and New York-as well as the state of Rhode Island - calling for oil-and-gas companies to pay billions in damages associated with future coastal flooding.

Ms. Curry agreed that there is a human-caused component to the problem, but said it has more to do with the earth sinking than the oceans swelling.

"In most of those cases where they're suing, half of the sea-level rise is really from the land sinking, rather than anything that the ocean is doing," she said. "If you look at Galveston and New Orleans, much more than half is caused by sinking. And this comes from geologic processes, it comes from landfills on wetlands."

She cited groundwater withdrawal in the Chesapeake Bay area, which has also caused sinking.

"That's really underappreciated, this whole issue of problems with coastal engineering that we've caused that have made things worse," Ms. Curry said.

Challenging her sea-level conclusions are scientists like Mr. Mann. In a June debate with Ms. Curry at the University of Charleston in West Virginia, he argued that the latest models show that "ice sheets can collapse more quickly than we thought."

"If you had asked us five years ago what the best estimate was of the sea level rise we could see by the end of the century, we would have told you three feet," he said, adding, "Well, now if you ask us, we have to say, it may be closer to six to eight feet."

She and Mr. Mann have sparred before. At a March 2017 congressional committee hearing, he denied calling her a "climate science denier, to which she retorted, "It's in your written testimony. Go read it again."

"I think he's learned that there's a lot of backlash when he calls me a denier, so he calls me a contrarian," said Ms. Curry with a laugh. "And I don't think he's really mentioned me much lately. I think he's been burned."

She said she doesn't believe her findings on sea-level rise are particularly controversial, saying that they jibe with those of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"It's pretty well-documented in the literature," said Ms. Curry. "I frame the problem a little different, and my conclusions are a little different than some people, but this has been pretty well-documented and supported."

Ms. Curry left academia in January 2017 for a host of reasons, one of which was the "craziness" associated with the politics of the climate-change debate. She moved to Reno and has since devoted her energies to her company, Climate Forecast Applications Network.

Her clients include the federal agencies and companies in the energy and insurance business seeking answers on the risks associated with climate change. After a lifetime spent in the ivory tower, she said she finds the real-world work rewarding.

"When there's something that really depends on the outcome and the understanding of this information, rather than just using it as a political tool to drive policy, it's really a different ballgame," she said. "People making real decisions, people spending real money - their companies could be hurt by getting things really wrong in either direction. So that's what I'm trying to help with."

Given that nobody wants to be labeled a "denier," what does she prefer to be called? That's an easy one.

"I'm a scientist. And I regard it as my job to continually reevaluate the evidence and reconsider my conclusions. That's my job," Ms. Curry said. "And some people don't really want scientists. They want political activists. But if you want a scientist, give me a call."

SOURCE





EPA targets Obama crackdown on mercury from coal plants

The Trump administration on Friday targeted an Obama-era regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying the benefits to human health and the environment may not be worth the cost of the regulation.

The 2011 Obama administration rule, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion clean-up of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

Overall, environmental groups say, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in roughly the last decade.

Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities and other birth defects in children, among other harm. Coal power plants in this country are the largest single manmade source of mercury pollutants, which enters the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.

A proposal Friday from the Environmental Protection Agency would leave current emissions standards in place. However, it challenges the basis for the Obama regulation, calculating that the crackdown on mercury and other toxins from coal plants produced only a few million dollars a year in measurable health benefits and was not warranted.

The proposal, which now goes up for public comment, is the latest Trump administration move that changes estimates of the costs and payoffs of regulations in arguing for relaxing Obama-era environmental protections.

It's also the administration's latest proposed move on behalf of the U.S. coal industry, which has been struggling in the face of competition from natural gas and other cheaper, cleaner forms of energy. The Trump administration in August proposed an overhaul for another Obama-era regulation that would have prodded electricity providers to get less of their energy from dirtier-burning coal plants.

In a statement, the EPA said Friday the administration was "providing regulatory certainty" by more accurately estimating the costs and benefits of the Obama administration crackdown on mercury and other toxic emissions from smokestacks.

Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, condemned the move.

The EPA has "decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" after the successful clean-up of toxins from the country's coal-plant smokestacks, Carper said.

He and other opponents of the move said the Trump administration was playing with numbers, ignoring what Carper said were clear health, environmental and economic benefits to come up with a bottom line that suited the administration's deregulatory aims.

Janet McCabe, a former air-quality official in the Obama administration's EPA, called the proposal part of "the quiet dismantling of the regulatory framework" for the federal government's environmental protections.

Coming one week into a government shutdown, and in the lull between Christmas and New Year, "this low-key announcement shouldn't fool anyone - it is a big deal, with significant implications," McCabe said.

SOURCE





Nancy Pelosi revives special House committee on climate change

She aims for Green votes -- and screw the workers

The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, has appointed the Florida representative Kathy Castor to lead a special committee on climate change that will be reinstated in the new Congress.

The climate panel is similar to one that Pelosi created when Democrats last controlled the House, from 2007 to 2011. It was eliminated when Republicans took the majority.

Pelosi, the likely House speaker, said Castor brings experience, energy and "urgency to the existential threat of the climate crisis" facing the US and the world. Castor is set to begin her seventh term representing the Tampa Bay area and serves on the energy and commerce committee.

"Congresswoman Castor is a proven champion for public health and green infrastructure, who deeply understands the scope and seriousness of this threat. Her decades of experience in this fight, both in Florida and in the Congress, will be vital," Pelosi said.

Castor said in a statement that she was honored to lead the panel and pledged to "act with urgency to reduce carbon pollution" and "unleash" American ingenuity to create clean-energy jobs.

"The costs of the changing climate and extreme weather events pose greater risks every day to American families, businesses and our way of life," Castor said. She added that the new panel "will tackle the crisis head on. Failure is not an option."

The membership and exact scope of the panel remain to be determined, but Pelosi said it would play a key role in shaping how Congress responds to the threat of global warming while creating good-paying, "green" jobs.

The Maryland representative Steny Hoyer, the incoming House majority leader, said last week the climate committee would probably not have legal authority to demand documents under subpoena. But he added that he did not think the panel would need subpoena authority, since experts will be "dying to come before them".

Climate scientists and other experts "are going to want to testify", Hoyer said. "I think they'll want to give the best information as it relates to the crisis."

The Democratic representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and other progressives, have pushed for a "Green New Deal" that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy such as wind and solar power. She and other leaders say the climate panel is a key platform to advance the green agenda.

SOURCE





Australia: There's no such thing as a happy Greenie. The plastic bag ban is only the beginning

Six months ago it didn’t seem possible that Australians would ever give up the convenience of single-use plastic shopping bags.

But watching shoppers pack up their groceries at a nearby Woolworths Metro, it’s clear that the bag ban has worked.

During the busy lunchtime rush this month, there are definitely some people still buying the thicker 15c bags available at the checkout but most people either had their own bags or were choosing to carry their groceries without a bag.

One woman who was juggling a tub of yoghurt, carton of mini-cucumbers and a salad, told news.com.au that she would definitely have taken one of the old grey bags before but didn’t want to pay for one to transport her lunch back to work.

Even though she said she often forgot to bring her own bags, at least a third of her fellow shoppers had remembered to bring one. Only a handful of the approximately 50 shoppers bought the 15c bags. Other shoppers also improvised and were seen tucking lemons into handbags and microwave meals into backpacks.

While the major retailers won’t reveal how many of the thicker 15c bags they were now selling, this month Coles and Woolworths revealed their bag ban had stopped 1.5 billion thinner plastic bags being dumped into the environment.

A news.com.au Facebook poll also indicated most people were remembering to bring their own reusable bags.

Tim Silverwood, co-founder of Take 3, told news.com.au that anecdotal evidence suggested there were less of the thinner bags making their way to Australia’s waterways.

“During our clean-up activities in NSW and Queensland there’s definitely less thin grey shopping bags, according to our volunteers,” Mr Silverwood said. “I think we are all starting to realise now that it doesn’t take that much change to make a big difference.”

He said the success of the bag ban was a great opportunity to take the war against plastic to the next level. This includes passing legislation in NSW to ban bags as well, reduce the use of the thicker bags and to follow the example of the European Union, which has plans to phase out or reduce 10 types of single-use plastic items.

The National Waste Report 2018 released in November showed that just 12 per cent of plastic in Australia was recycled. About 87 per cent was sent to landfill.

Each state and territory approaches waste and recycling differently. There are container deposit schemes in all states except Tasmania and Victoria but only ACT, South Australia and Victoria have a landfill ban.

NSW is the only state or territory not planning to introduce a plastic bag ban. In NSW, Woolworths and Coles have voluntarily phased out the bags but Jeff Angel of the Boomerang Alliance said a ban was still needed because a lot of smaller stores like chemists and food outlets continued to give out the lightweight bags.

Mr Angel wants the supermarket giants to reveal how many of the thicker 15c bags were being used as there was anecdotal evidence they were also ending up in the litter stream and landfill.

The thicker bags are 55 microns thick instead of 35 microns so there is more plastic in them.

Western Australia’s environment minister Stephen Dawson recently revealed his intent to target the use of thicker bags — the type that Myer uses for example — as the next step. “I think it would be a gradual phase-out, just as we’ve done with say microbeads,” Mr Dawson said.

There are also many other forms of plastic that could be tackled and Australia is already behind in this area.

The European Commission has moved to ban or reduce 10 types of single-use plastics by 2030.

If approved, littering by these items will be reduced by more than half, avoiding environmental damage which would otherwise cost €22 billion ($A34 billion). It will also avoid the emission of 3.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

These products are the top 10 most found single-use items on European beaches and make up 43 per cent of total marine litter.

The items that will be targeted include food containers, cups for beverages, cotton buds, cutlery/plates/stirrers/straws, sticks for balloons/balloons, packets and wrappers, beverage bottles, tobacco product filters and sanitary towels/wet wipes among European Union countries.

Items like cotton buds made with plastic would be replaced by sustainable alternatives while there will be an attempt to reduce the consumption of things like food containers.

The commission will also tackle fishing gear, which makes up an extra 27 per cent of marine litter.

European Union countries have recognised the damaging impact plastics can have and the costs of cleaning litter up as well as the losses for tourism, fisheries and shipping.

Due to its slow decomposition, plastic accumulates in seas, oceans and on beaches. Plastic residues have been found in sea turtles, seals, whales and birds, but also in fish and shellfish, meaning humans could also be consuming them. There are estimates that mussel-loving Europeans could be consuming up to 11,000 microplastics in a year.

Mr Silverwood said the 10 items being banned in Europe were also regularly found during clean-up activities in Australia, although the container deposit scheme was helping to reduce the number of beverage containers.

He said Australia should introduce measures similar to the European Union, to tackle other types of single-use plastics.

SOURCE

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Sunday, December 30, 2018


Trump Administration Distorts the Facts On Climate Report

Below is the opening salvo from a "fact check" report.  The big trouble is what they accept as facts.  In prophecy there are no facts, only opinions, and the claim that we can know what the climate will be like in a hundred years  is a delusion and a fantasy.  Paranoid schizophrenics have been locked up for less.

So what do they describe as facts?  Basically, anything that Warmists say -- including the output of models with no known predictive skill. The article is in other words an opinion check, not a fact check

Since the National Climate Assessment dropped on Black Friday, members of the Trump administration have inaccurately attacked the report for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario. The EPA has also suggested — without evidence — that the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario.”

The report — which is the product of 13 federal agencies and more than 300 governmental and non-governmental experts — is legally required to be produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP, which issued its first assessment in 2000. It details how climate change is already affecting the country, from increased temperatures and flooding to more frequent hurricanes and large wildfires. It also looks at potential future consequences on the environment, infrastructure, human health and the economy.

President Donald Trump has largely dismissed the report. When asked about the assessment, the president has minimized the impact of human activity on climate change and made unrelated claims regarding the cleanliness of U.S. air and water, as we’ve written previously.

But more specific critiques came from administration officials and White House representatives.

For example, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters released a statement to us that downplayed the report by claiming it “is largely based on the most extreme scenario,” adding, “we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections.” She also noted that the next climate assessment “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Many of these talking points were reprised by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders during a White House briefing on Nov. 27, when she said the report “is based on the most extreme modeled scenario,” is “not based on facts” and is “not data-driven.” Instead, she said, the report is “based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”

In an interview with the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 27, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also referenced the scenarios, saying “it appears they took the worst scenarios and they built predictions upon that.” He added, “It should be more probability.”

Zinke, who has since resigned, also said “there is some concern within the USGS” about the climate report, referring to the U.S. Geological Survey, without providing any evidence.

Finally, acting Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler said at a Washington Post Live event on Nov. 28 that he “wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors, ‘Take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’” The EPA press office then doubled down on Wheeler’s speculation, issuing a press release that said the Obama administration “pushed” the “worst-case scenario'” and citing the Daily Caller’s reporting as proof of such manipulation.

These claims, however, are false, exaggerated or unsubstantiated:

SOURCE 





Democrats’ ‘Green Raw Deal’ Will Deliver Only Socialism And Misery

wind turbine energyDemocrats will try to flex their new-found electoral muscle in Congress by pushing for what has been described as the “largest expansion of government in decades.”

It’s called the Green New Deal, and it promises to be a major economic disaster if it ever becomes American law.

Those who think the Green New Deal is just a political ploy or a Democratic Party marketing gimmick for hipster millennials are in bad need of a wakeup call.

The Democrats’ plans will deliver soaring federal spending, a near doubling of U.S. taxes, declining standards of living, and even more debt on top of the already-massive $21 trillion we’ve piled up.

As The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch reports, “More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the ‘Green New Deal’ as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as ‘economic, social and racial justice.'” No doubt more will sign on in the coming weeks.

The scary thing is that the public, which knows next to nothing about the details of this plan, like it.

A poll conducted by Yale’s Program on Climate Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication this month shows that 92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans backed the plan.

But calling it a Green New Deal is really a misnomer. It’s really a starter package for turning our mostly free-market economy socialist. And no, that’s not hyperbole.

Green New Deal = Socialism

The GND starts with moving the energy grid to 100% renewable energy, something that will take highly efficient fossil fuels and replace them with highly inefficient “renewables” at a cost of about $5.2 trillion over 20 years.

But that’s not all. Not by a long shot.

The plan also wants job guarantees for those who lose their jobs due to the Green New Deal. That will be a lot of people. No estimate on that, but its cost too could go into the trillions.

But those who push this plan also seek a guaranteed minimum income and universal health care. Although those have nothing to do with “green” anything, it merely reveals that the real goal isn’t “green” at all — it’s socialism.

It turns out some have already researched the issue and made estimates of the costs.

The Mercatus Center last July looked at socialist Sen. and Venezuela admirer Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, which the Democratic Party seems on its way to supporting.

It would cost just under $33 trillion over a decade, in addition to what we already pay for health care. The sums involved are staggering.

An Enormous Price Tag

Meanwhile, hedge fund manager and guru Ray Dalio estimates that a guaranteed minimum income of just $12,000 a year would cost $3.8 trillion.

So let’s do the basic math. Those two programs alone would cost $7.1 trillion a year. That compares with total federal spending in 2018 of $4.2 trillion.

That means at current levels spending would have to increase by 170%. So would taxes, by the way.

We wonder, are all those people who think a Green New Deal is a really nifty idea understand that?

Speaking of taxes, one of the favorite ways to fund this green socialist scheme is through a national carbon tax, which Democrats have already introduced in Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a $25 per ton carbon tax would be a $1.1 trillion per year tax increase. “The carbon tax bill is a massive and continually ratcheting national energy tax,” reported the nonpartisan Americans for Tax Reform.

Not only would it be economically destabilizing and create massive inefficiencies in our economy, costing us hundreds of billions in output a year, but it also would expand the federal government’s reach into every private pocketbook and every American business.

We’d be Greece, without the charming ancient ruins.

That the main political force behind this fiscally insane plan is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the just-elected, extreme-far-left New York congresswoman, shows just how foolish it is.

She hasn’t served a single day in Congress, and yet desperate Democrats have lined up to follow her lead. It only shows how utterly bereft of common-sense the party has become.

Once the party of the middle-class and working Americans, it is now a party of academic elites, faux revolutionaries, and billionaires. It’s completely out of touch with real people and the real economy.

A ‘Green Raw Deal’

We repeat: Don’t be fooled. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the environment, and everything to do with socialism. Ocasio-Cortaz says the Green New Deal is about “social and racial justice.”

No, it isn’t. It’s a Green Raw Deal that will impoverish millions, destroy businesses and jobs, and end individual rights as we now know them.

Simply put, the socialism at the heart of this “new deal” amounts to centralized control of the economy and the people who work in it.

For the record, countries that adopt socialist policies have a knack for suddenly finding themselves in an unexpected run of “bad luck” that lasts decades. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Cuba all come to mind.

Sure, we know it will go nowhere in the GOP-dominated Senate. But what about after 2020? Americans better think long and hard before taking this hard left turn. It’s a road that leads to nowhere.

SOURCE 





Weather Forecasters Warn of Impending Danger as US Climate Skeptics Upend UN Climate Summit

KATOWICE, Poland—TV weather forecasters who understand the potential dangers of climate change are well-positioned to educate the public and spur them to take action, participants said in a panel discussion at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held here earlier this month.

A major theme at the conference—widely known as COP24—was that severe remedial measures are needed to mitigate rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions before severe weather conditions can take hold.

The meeting, which ran from Dec. 2 to Dec. 14, took its inspiration from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which released a new report in October that concluded limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—rather than 2 degrees Celsius—between now and 2030 would be beneficial to human populations and ecosystems.

But the report’s Summary for Policymakers also said that “rapid,” “far-reaching,” and “unprecedented” changes would be needed across society to achieve this reduction in the rate of increase in temperature.

Enter Climate Without Borders, an organization founded in 2017, which brings together about 140 weather presenters (as the forecasters are commonly referred to outside the U.S.) from 110 countries.

Jill Peeters, a Belgian weather presenter, started the group when she placed all her weather contacts into a WhatsApp group. From there, it grew into an organization devoted to sounding the alarm about extreme weather and climate change.

Peeters, who took part in the panel discussion on Dec. 4, told her audience that science is on the side of weather presenters who are willing to engage the public about emerging dangers associated with climate change that’s already in motion.

“TV weather presenters are seen as a trusted source,” she said. “We are backed up by science, and this is the basis of our communications.”

The weather forecasters who helped found Climate Without Borders have the ability to reach about 375,000,000 people, according to the group’s website.

The Daily Signal asked Peeters during the question-and-answer session whether she had any reaction to the so-called “yellow vest” protests that first erupted in Paris prior to the start of the COP24 meeting. The yellow vest protests are directed at French President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon tax policies, which have raised the cost of fuel across the country.

“I’m in Belgium, so I could see this up close, and it is a tough situation,” she said. “It can be a challenge to reach people, but that’s what we are trying to do as weather presenters. We are trying to be climate communicators.”

The aim of Climate Without Borders is mostly to try to identify and communicate what the problem is, rather than advancing specific policy proposals, Chi-Ming Peng, a weather presenter from Taiwan, explained during the panel.

Jaroslaw Kret, a weather presenter in Poland, discussed the challenges of communicating with different audiences.

“Some countries have more ‘deniers.’ Some countries have less ‘deniers,’” he said. “Some countries are more educated. Some countries are less educated.”

COP24 participants were widely critical of President Donald Trump and his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated at the COP21 meeting in Paris and adopted in December 2015.

Trump critics in attendance included the U.S. Climate Action Center, which operates under the #WeAreStillIn hashtag that was prominently displayed in the COP24 exhibit hall. The center draws from a coalition of cities, counties, tribes, faith groups, and colleges and universities that support the Paris Agreement, which calls on participating countries to curb their carbon emissions.

But Craig Rucker, the president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit based in Washington that favors free-market solutions to energy policy, told The Daily Signal that Trump “made the right call” in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

He also pointed to updated scientific research from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change challenging the findings of the U.N. report, which was released at a media event in Katowice during the COP24 conference.

“The only consensus on climate change that exists is among those in the ‘climate alarmism’ movement,” Rucker said. “There are a growing number of scientists from across the global who point to natural influences as what drives climate, and not human activity.

“The policies that the U.N. is pushing in the name of climate change would be very harmful to average people. That much is made evident by the protests in France,” he added.

Marc Morano, publisher of the Climate Depot website, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, called on Poland and other countries to follow Trump’s lead and withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

“Poland should get out of this treaty and stand up to the United Nations and the European Union,” Morano said in an interview. “Poland could start a movement that begins to unravel this treaty, which will do nothing for the climate, while raising energy prices across the board.”

Morano, the author of the “Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” described Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement as a form of “daring diplomacy” that should be emulated.

The Daily Signal contacted the media spokesperson for the COP24 presidency seeking comment on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change’s report and the position of U.S. climate change skeptics but did not receive a response.

In many respects, climate skeptics operate at a disadvantage, Rucker said, because they are up against the media, Hollywood, and a public education system that advance what he calls “alarmist theories” on climate.

Although 195 countries that are parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the language of the climate change agreement during the December 2015 COP21 meeting in Paris, the agreement has not been fully implemented.

At the conclusion of the COP24 meeting, almost 200 countries agreed on a rulebook for curtailing global warming that would lead to full implementation of the agreement.

Chile is set to host the COP25 meeting in late 2019. Brazil had initially been selected as the host country, but incoming President Jair Bolsonaro has said he may withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement.

SOURCE 





2018 The First Year Ever With No Violent Tornadoes In The US

Despite dire predictions of a necessary increase in severe weather events due to climate change, 2018 is poised to become the first year on record with no violent tornadoes in the United States, the Washington Post reported.

According to Post weather writer Ian Livingston, while record-breaking, 2018 is not altogether exceptional, since “there have been downtrends in violent tornado numbers both across the entire modern period and when looking at just the period since Doppler radar was fully implemented across the country in the mid-1990s.”

The year will not only set a record for zero “violent” tornadoes — those ranked EF4 or EF5 on a 5-point scale — but will likely also set a record for the fewest “intense” tornadoes (F/EF3+). With just three days to go, 2018 has seen only 12 intense tornadoes in the U.S., three fewer than the record-holding year of 1987, which had 15.

Unsurprisingly, the number of tornado deaths in 2018 is also remarkably low at ten and could also turn out to be a record.

Climate alarmists will have to scramble to explain to the public how the declining number of intense tornadoes is really caused by global warming, which they will undoubtedly do.

In past years, everything from cold winters to warm summers was blamed on climate change — everyone’s favorite whipping boy — and this latest phenomenon should prove no different.

In 2015, Susan Rice suggested that climate change was partially responsible for the war in Syria and Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed government-imposed energy rations on climate change as well.

In 2017, extremely cold temperatures in vineyards of western New York state were attributed to climate change, while in 2018 Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration argued that “climate change” is the driving force behind the massacre of thousands of predominantly Christian farmers at the hands of Fulani herdsmen.

In September, climate prophet Al Gore told fans in San Francisco that watching the nightly news “is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation” as severe climate events become a daily affair.

Not to be outdone, California Gov. Jerry Brown, an “evangelist” for global warming, blamed climate change for California wildfires, adding that climate skeptics were responsible for the deaths of California residents.

“Managing the forests in every way we can does not stop climate change,” he said. “And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years.”

SOURCE 





Australia, get ready to sweat your way through the weekend as extreme heatwave sets in

"Extreme heatwave"??? This is utter BS.  The BoM have been pushing out these warnings for most of December but all we are having is a normal summer.  The normal mid-afternoon summer temperature where I live in Brisbane is 34C and we are not even up to that.  It is 31C at the time of writing at 3pm on Saturday 29th.


Australia will experience a sweltering close to the year, with temperatures soaring above 40C throughout the nation over the coming days.

The post-Christmas heatwave shows no signs of easing, with warnings in place across parts of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

If the heat’s getting you down, we have some bad news: the relief could be more than a week away.

“We’re in the middle of a heatwave at the moment in much of Australia,” Sky News’ Chief Meteorologist Tom Saunders told news.com.au. “Today is day five of the heatwave and there’s no sign of a cool change before New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Day will be day nine of that heatwave.

“We won’t see a cool change until the middle of next week — it could be after that or another full week.”

Severe to extreme heat conditions are expected to extend through South Australia, as well as southeast NSW, eastern Victoria and parts of central Queensland.

Up to 70 per cent of NSW will experience high fire dangers, from the southern half of the state up to the Queensland border.

The Bureau of Meteorology has also issued strong wind warnings from the Batemans Coast up to the Macquarie region over the next two days.

Sydneysiders may as well camp out on the beach over the next few days, with tops of 30C today, 31C on Saturday and 34C on Sunday.

The city’s Greater Western region is in for an even more brutal time, with tops of 42C in Penrith tomorrow and 41C on Sunday.

Brisbane will see tops of 30C over the weekend, with very little chance of rain — which means it’s the ideal time to head to the water.

SOURCE

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

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

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Monday, December 24, 2018



Is skiing dead due to global warming?

What America-centred rubbish below!  America is not the globe.  Switzerland last year had record snowfall and 89 Swiss ski resorts are already open this year.  And in the winter just past Australian ski resorts got the best snow depths for 14 years.  There is NO global trend to less snow


Last winter’s low snow year and unseasonably warm temperatures across much of the American West meant a bad year for business for some ski resorts, and also left many of us wondering whether skiing would even be possible in the warmer world we’re getting as we continue to pump out greenhouse gases.

“Our recent modeling suggests that under a high emissions scenario, skiing could be very limited to non-existent in parts of the country by the end of this century, particularly in lower elevations — such as the northeast, Midwest and lower mountains around the West,” says Cameron Wobus, lead author on a 2017 study projecting climate change impacts on skiing across the U.S. “Things look better mid-century, so this dire future for skiing isn’t imminent — and things also look much better under a more aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation scenario, so this future also isn't inevitable.”

According to Wobus’ research, ski resorts in the Pacific Northwest have the most to fear, with predicted losses of 80 percent or more of the ski season. Ski resorts in the Northeast also won’t fare well as we warm. The relatively good news is that the ski resorts in the intermountain west should face “less severe losses” due to their higher elevations.

SOURCE 





It Was 10 Years Ago Al Gore Predicted The North Polar ice Will Disappear In 5 years: Guess What?

Gore made the prediction to a German audience on December 13, 2008. Al warned them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”

The Gateway Pundit reports:

This wasn’t the only time Al Gore made his ice-free prediction. Gore had been predicting dire scenario since 2007. That means that the North Pole should have melted completely five years ago today.

Former Vice President Al Gore references computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose virtually all of its ice within the next seven years. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” said Gore.

In January 2006, Al Gore pushed the theory that “within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return” and “a true planetary emergency” due to global warming.

Of course, this turned out to be nothing more than a lunatic conspiracy.

At least 8 Dire Predictions from the movie never happened – not even close.

SOURCE 






Unrealism on top of unrealism

Unrealism both about global warming and the prevalence of criticism of it.  Christiane Amanpour interviews a tired-looking Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian.  On video here:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/12/21/amanpour-rusbridger-breaking-news.cnn/video/playlists/amanpour/

Towards the end of the interview --- around the 16:45 mark -- they get to climate change.

AMANPOUR:  . . MSM is failing on Climate . .

RUSBRIDGER: Well it's obviously the biggest story of our times. This is an existential threat to our species. There's no story that's bigger than that. And, it's a rather urgent story. And yet you don't see it very often on the front pages or on the bulletins. And even even when you do see it often dripped with skepticism about the evidence. So that's the failure of journalism. And the reason why it's so dangerous you've sort of seen on the streets of Paris. Political leaders are going to have to do uncomfortable things, and if the population have not been in any way prepared for that story, or worse, has been told to disbelieve it, that's the kind of disaster for democracy and the species. And so, I think that journalism has to step to the plate and take this story more seriously.

He must not be reading, and reading about, the same major MSM media outlets that we're familiar with; Global warming is front page all the time, and any skepticism is simply not allowed. Need to tie them both to a chair in front of their desktop (film it) and ask them to show us where the MSM is 'dripping skepticism."  That would be a great clip to play .





Parachutes do NOT save the lives of people who jump from aeroplanes, claim sarcastic scientists in a study designed to reveal how flawed 'research' can be

Parachutes do not save the lives of people who jump from aeroplanes, or so a study suggests. In a trial of 23 volunteers, all participants somehow survived being hurtled out of a plane - even those without parachutes.

But the sarcastic scientists didn't mention until 16 paragraphs into the study how the volunteers jumped a mere 0.6m off a stationary aircraft.  The scientists argued their lighthearted trial highlights how misleading research can be.

Writing in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, they added accurate interpretation requires a 'complete and critical appraisal of the study'.

The 'Look Before You Leap' study was carried out by scientists at Harvard and led by associate professor of medicine Dr Robert Wayne Yeh.

Although written in good fun, the scientists hope their findings will prompt people to read studies in full rather than taking a 'cursory reading of the abstract'. 

To carry out the study, the scientists approached adult passengers on a commercial plane mid-flight to ask if they would be willing to parachute in the future.

The researchers admitted they found it tricky trying to find people willing to hurtle thousands of feet through the air without a parachute.

In response, they allowed 11 of the volunteers - which they opened up to their friends and family - without protection to jump just 0.6m, which the researchers called a 'minor caveat' in their study design.

They wore an empty North Face or other branded rucksack, while the 12 other participants were given parachutes.

The jumps were carried out at either the Yankee Air Museum in Belleville in Michigan or Katama Airfield in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

None of the study's participants - whether they wore a parachute or not - died or were injured within five minutes or 30 days of the jump.

'This largely resulted from our ability to only recruit participants jumping from stationary aircraft on the ground,' the scientists wrote.

The researchers revealed the parachute did not deploy for all 12 of the volunteers because of the 'short duration and altitude of falls'. 

They sarcastically described their study as groundbreaking'.

And they added it 'should give momentary pause to experts who advocate for routine use of parachutes for jumps from aircraft in recreational or military settings'.

They wrote in the BMJ that, should the results be reproduced in future trials, it could save the global economy billions of dollars spent annually on parachutes to 'prevent injuries related to gravitational challenge'.

When pointing out flaws in the research, the scientists accepted there 'could have been a lower risk of death or major trauma because they jumped from an average altitude of 0.6m on aircraft moving at an average of 0 km/h.

But they wrote: 'It will be up to the reader to determine the relevance of these findings in the real world.'

They later added the results 'might not be generalisable to the use of parachutes in aircraft traveling at a higher altitude or velocity'. 

The researchers also wrote: 'The PARACHUTE trial satirically highlights some of the limitations of randomized controlled trials.

'Nevertheless, we believe that such trials remain the gold standard for the evaluation of most new treatments.

'The PARACHUTE trial does suggest, however, that their accurate interpretation requires more than a cursory reading of the abstract.'

SOURCE 




Coal is Australia’s most valuable export in 2018

Coal will replace iron ore as Australia’s most valuable export this financial year as supply concerns lead to a steep price rise for the core commodity.

The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s latest Resources and Energy Quarterly report said thermal and coking coal export values would reach $67 billion in total in 2018-19, slightly higher than iron ore's $61 billion in value.

Coal leapt over iron ore as supply concerns ratcheted up the price. It is the first time coal has overtaken iron ore in value since the mining boom five years ago.

Australia is also expected to overtake Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2019, buoyed by increasing export values, which grew from $31 billion in 2017-18 to $50 billion this financial year.

The Department was more optimistic in its forecasts than its reports released earlier this year, broadly lifting earnings expectations across most commodities for 2018-19.

It increased total export earnings by about $12.1 billion compared to the previous quarter’s forecasts and tipped earnings to reach a record high of more than $264 billion in 2018-19.

“The weaker Australian dollar, high coal prices and rapid growth in LNG exports are driving the strong figures,” it said. The weak exchange rate added about $7.4 billion to export values, “while higher-than-expected coking coal and iron ore prices account for the rest of the gain", the report said.

Coal's rise comes despite growing public opinion against the mineral, particularly for thermal coal which is used in power generation. There has been less opposition to coking coal as it is used to make steel.

Indian miner Adani has faced a massive backlash from the public and the Queensland state government as it attempts to develop the Carmichael thermal coal mega-mine in Queensland, while many Australian banks are now refusing to provide loans to develop new thermal coal mines in Australia.

Despite achieving a record year, lower demand from China would see earnings fall in 2019-2020 to $241 billion, although this would still be the second highest year on record.

Chief economist Mark Cully warned the ongoing trade war ignited by US President Donald Trump against China posed a threat to export growth. “The world is nine years into the post-GFC recovery, and the peak of the current cycle has clearly passed,” Mr Cully said. “Trade tensions between the US and China are magnifying economic risks. “The key risk to the commodity outlook thus lies in the ‘double whammy’: the potential dual impact of growing trade tensions and a slowdown in economic activity.”

Mr Cully said the rate of decline depends if China could maintain a steady rate of growth.

Coal and iron ore’s growth is forecast to come to an end in 2019-20, although LNG will remain relatively flat.

Coking coal values will drop about $10 billion, falling from a record high of $41 billion this year down to $30 billion next year. Supply disruptions had pushed the price up to $US220 a tonne in the last quarter of the year, well above the 2018 average price of $US207 a tonne. This average price is forecast to fall sharply next year to $US145 a tonne.

Thermal coal will see a less dramatic fall, slipping about $5 billion from $26 billion down to $20 billion in value. Declining Chinese demand will see the price fall from around $US105 a tonne in 2018 down to $US74 a tonne in 2019.

Iron ore prices are expected to slide from $US57 a tonne this year down to $US53 next year before stabilising at about $US51 a tonne in 2020. This is due to declining Chinese demand coupled with an oversupplied market. This will drive down export earnings from $61 billion this year down to $57 billion next year.

LNG will stay flat, dropping from $50 billion down to $49 billion in value. The decline will be driven by falling prices, despite export levels rising from 62 million tonnes in 2017-18 to 78 million tonnes in 2019-20.

SOURCE 

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

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

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Sunday, December 23, 2018


Progressive House Democrats Warn Colleagues Not To Stand In The Way Of A ‘Green New Deal’

The progressive bloc of House Democrats supporting a “Green New Deal” have a warning for their more moderate colleagues: Don’t get in the way of creating a “strong” climate committee.

“I think it’s in the political self-interest of people like Frank Pallone to be supporting a strong select committee,” said Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna, Politico reported Thursday.

“If I were looking at the politics and the movement and how strong the movement is, I’d be out there cheerleading for creating a strong committee and saying I look forward to working in partnership with that committee,” Khanna said.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone and other top Democrats oppose creating a House climate change committee, preferring to shepherd any related legislation through the existing committee structure. Global warming wasn’t a top issue in the 2018 elections, but liberal Democrats are pushing for the House to put a major emphasis on the issue in 2019.

Khanna and Democrats supporting the so-called “Green New Deal” want a House climate committee that’s just as strong as others, meaning subpoena power and the authority to introduce bills

The “Green New Deal” being pushed by incoming New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is backed by more than 40 Democrats. The plan calls for a House committee to draft “Green New Deal” legislation to move the U.S. to 100 percent green energy.

Pallone will chair the Committee on Energy and Commerce in 2019. He and other incoming committee chairs plan to hold hearings and introduce their own bills on global warming when they take the gavel next year. These incoming chairs don’t see the reason to create a whole new committee on the matter.

“In part, I think it may actually delay what the progressives are trying to achieve,” Pallone said in November.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supports reviving a House climate panel, but indications are so far that it would likely lack subpoena power. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t seem to mind the panel not having subpoena power, but environmental activists weren’t satisfied.

Activists with the Sunrise Movement at least twice protested in Pelosi’s Capitol Hill office in support of the “Green New Deal.” Ocasio-Cortez joined activists occupying Pelosi’s office in November, but still supports Pelosi’s bid for speaker next year.

Khanna, a “Green New Deal” supporter, said empowering a House climate committee with subpoena powers would help other committees.

“We’ve got to get the committees to realize that they are winners by empowering a new committee — not losers — and stop the Washington mindset of hanging onto turf,” Khanna said.

Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who is set to chair the Committee on Rules next year, told reporters the exact makeup of the committee is still up in the air. McGovern supports the “Green New Deal.”

“I’ve got until January 3,” McGovern said. “There are ways to achieve all the goals that have been put out there within the existing structures.”

SOURCE 





City Al Gore Featured in Movie Is Losing Millions After Going 100% Green Energy

The city of Georgetown, Texas, was praised by the left for switching to green energy, but they paid the price by losing millions of dollars.

Georgetown began powering its city on green energy in April 2017 and budgeted $45 million to fund it, according to the Statesman.

Unfortunately for Georgetown, their renewable energy bill ended up being $53.6 million, according to City Manager David Morgan.

The city was able to reduce the $8.6 million extra to $6.8 million through savings but was forced to pay the rest through reserves in the city’s energy fund.

Former Vice President Al Gore had praised Georgetown and featured the city in his 2017 film, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” The Daily Caller reported.

During Gore’s visit to Georgetown in 2016, he said that the city was demonstrating how “affordable” and “predictable” renewable energy is.

“And one thing that Georgetown demonstrates to these other places that are just beginning to think about it is that the power supply is not only more affordable the cost is predictable for at least 25 years into the future and really beyond that,” Gore said.

So much for predictable. If that was the case, Georgetown wouldn’t have lost millions of dollars in unanticipated costs.

“It’s costing them big time,” vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Bill Peacock, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “This doesn’t appear to be the first time they’ve lost money, just the first time it was big enough to have to go public with it.”

As a result of the extra costs, Georgetown is now seeking to renegotiate their wind and solar contracts.

However, one Georgetown resident, Richard Gottlieb, brought up a good point: Energy companies might not be willing to negotiate a new deal considering the amount of money they’re making from the contracts. “Why would you negotiate? You have the city over a barrel,” Gottlieb told the Statesman.

Georgetown’s renewable energy mistake highlights one of the major problems with wind and solar energy: It’s not affordable, despite what Gore says.

One example of this is California, which will require solar panels on all homes built after 2020.

The state’s solar panel requirement will increase the cost of building homes in California by $10,000.

A solar panel can add thousands of dollars to the cost of a home, but the California Energy Commission says it all pays off in the long run.

Another example can be found in Virgina, where newly-built wind turbines will cost taxpayers $300 million.

Without extremely generous government subsidies, solar companies would struggle to even stay afloat.

It looks as though Gore might have been wrong about renewable energy’s affordability and predictability.

SOURCE 




                                                                                                                                                                               

Germany's green transition has hit a brick wall

Even worse, its growing problems with wind and solar spell trouble all over the globe

Oddvar Lundseng, Hans Johnsen and Stein Bergsmark

More people are finally beginning to realize that supplying the world with sufficient, stable energy solely from sun and wind power will be impossible.

Germany took on that challenge, to show the world how to build a society based entirely on “green, renewable” energy. It has now hit a brick wall. Despite huge investments in wind, solar and biofuel energy production capacity, Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families.

Germany has installed solar and wind power to such an extent that it should theoretically be able to satisfy the power requirement on any day that provides sufficient sunshine and wind. However, since sun and wind are often lacking – in Germany even more so than in other countries like Italy or Greece – the country only manages to produce around 27% of its annual power needs from these sources.

Equally problematical, when solar and wind production are at their maximum, the wind turbines and solar panels often overproduce – that is, they generate more electricity than Germany needs at that time – creating major problems in equalizing production and consumption. If the electric power system’s frequency is to be kept close to 50Hz (50 cycles per second), it is no longer possible to increase the amount of solar and wind production in Germany without additional, costly measures.

Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to major energy losses and forced power exports to neighboring countries (“load shedding”) at negative electricity prices, below the cost of generating the power.

In 2017 about half of Germany’s wind-based electricity production was exported. Neighboring countries typically do not want this often unexpected power, and the German power companies must therefore pay them to get rid of the excess. German customers have to pick up the bill.

If solar and wind power plants are disconnected from actual need in this manner, wind and solar facility owners are paid as if they had produced 90% of rated output. The bill is also sent to customers.

When wind and solar generation declines, and there is insufficient electricity for everyone who needs it, Germany’s utility companies also have to disconnect large power consumers – who then want to be compensated for having to shut down operations. That bill also goes to customers all over the nation.

Power production from the sun and wind is often quite low and sometimes totally absent. This might take place over periods from one day to ten days, especially during the winter months. Conventional power plants (coal, natural gas and nuclear) must then step in and deliver according to customer needs. Hydroelectric and biofuel power can also help, but they are only able to deliver about 10% of the often very high demand, especially if it is really cold.

Alternatively, Germany may import nuclear power from France, oil-fired power from Austria or coal power from Poland.

In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants.

Furthermore, if the AC frequency is allowed to drift too high or too low, the risk of extensive blackouts becomes significant. That was clearly demonstrated by South Australia, which also relies heavily on solar and wind power, and suffered extensive blackouts that shut down factories and cost the state billions of dollars.

The dream of supplying Germany with mainly green energy from sunshine and wind turns out to be nothing but a fading illusion. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world.

However, the Germans are not yet planning to end this quest for utopian energy. They want to change the entire energy system and include electricity, heat and transportation sectors in their plans. This will require a dramatic increase in electrical energy and much more renewable energy, primarily wind.

To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy. Germany might import some of this balancing power, but even then the scale of this endeavor is enormous.

Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels. This is simply not sustainable or ecological.

Construction of solar and wind “farms” has already caused massive devastation to Germany’s wildlife habitats, farmlands, ancient forests and historic villages. Even today, the northern part of Germany looks like a single enormous wind farm. Multiplying today's wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.

In reality, it is virtually impossible to increase production by a factor of 15, as promised by the plans.

The cost of Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) is enormous: some 200 billion euros by 2015 – and yet with minimal reduction in CO2 emission. In fact, coal consumption and CO2 emissions have been stable or risen slightly the last seven to ten years. In the absence of a miracle, Germany will not be able to fulfill its self-imposed climate commitments, not by 2020, nor by 2030.

What applies to Germany also applies to other countries that now produce their electricity primarily with fossil or nuclear power plants. To reach development comparable to Germany’s, such countries will be able to replace only about one quarter of their fossil and nuclear power, because these power plants must remain in operation to ensure frequency regulation, balance and back-up power.

Back-up power plants will have to run idle (on “spinning reserve”) during periods of high output of renewable energy, while still consuming fuel almost like during normal operation. They always have to be able to step up to full power, because over the next few hours or days solar or wind power might fail. So they power up and down many times per day and week.

The prospects for reductions in CO2 emissions are thus nearly non-existent! Indeed, the backup coal or gas plants must operate so inefficiently in this up-and-down mode that they often consume more fuel and emit more (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide than if they were simply operating at full power all the time, and there were no wind or solar installations.

There is no indication that world consumption of coal will decline in the next decades. Large countries in Asia and Africa continue to build coal-fired power plants, and more than 1,500 coal-fired power plants are in planning or under construction.

This will provide affordable electricity 24/7/365 to 1.3 billion people who still do not have access to electricity today. Electricity is essential for the improved health, living standards and life spans that these people expect and are entitled to. To tell them fears of climate change are a more pressing matter is a violation of their most basic human rights.

Via email





Fraud In The National Climate Assessment (Part 2)







Ruinous Australian energy policy is all pain with no gain

The Liberal Party has torn itself apart for a decade on climate and energy policy, and it is going to continue to do that next year as it battles crucial state and federal elections. The NSW moderates, who have taken over the state branch with an insidious brand of factionalism and patronage, are like the Blob from the 1950s sci-fi movie: spineless, pointless and smothering everything in their path. No one knows what the moderates stand for; most adroit at targeting those in Liberal ranks who espouse conservative values and policies, they echo Labor and leftist attacks on the Coalition and shrink from debate except against their own.

Their electoral legacy is there to behold: a minority federal government wallowing in the polls, a Victorian opposition trounced by a hard-left Labor government shrouded in scandal, and a NSW government facing the prospect of defeat despite presiding over an economy and infrastructure agenda that is the envy of the nation.

Federally, the 2016 electoral ­result tells the story. The Coalition has not been usurped by a rampant Labor Party. Rather, the right of centre has fractured, with One Nation and other minor parties and independents reaping the benefits. Labor has benefited from this mainly through preferences rather than a boosted primary vote — until the open warfare in Liberal ranks after the knifing of Malcolm Turnbull. Bill Shorten is the luckiest Australian since Steven Bradbury; he looks set to take a political victory that is the equivalent of winning the crucial last set of a Wimbledon final by receiving four double faults.

Don Harwin is the latest so-called moderate to display political and economic ineptitude, undercutting the re-election chances of his own team and the Morrison government, such as they are. As NSW Energy Minister, he proposes zero net emissions for his state by 2050 and accuses the Morrison government of ­refusing to build this target into national policy because of the federal Liberal Party’s “climate wars”.

Needless to say, he is portrayed as a hero by Labor, the Greens, the ABC, much of the Canberra press gallery and the vested corporate interests of the energy sector.

Harwin is unlikely ever to be asked, let alone answer, the obvious questions. Why would NSW reduce emissions to net zero? How could this benefit the planet when global emissions are rising? What would it cost? Who would pay? Has he commissioned a cost-benefit analysis? Why does NSW export cheap energy to the world in the form of coal but baulk at further use of this resource itself? Will his policy reduce or curtail global temperatures? What science and technology will be available to deal with these issues in 2050? How will people on fixed and low incomes deal with higher electricity prices? How will the reliability of supply be guaranteed? And, if voters really wanted to pursue such futile, risky and expensive climate gestures, why wouldn’t they just vote Labor or Greens?

It is difficult to grasp why Liberals would not focus on price and reliability to protect jobs, support families and underpin economic opportunity. This should be core business for those interested in mainstream politics.

If Harwin, Turnbull or anyone else could point to a looming crisis that could be averted by compromising our energy needs, then it might be worth considering. But they have to do better than the familiar mantra, seldom interrogated, that climate change is real and we must do something about it now. Those who claim to back a scientific approach often lack ­rational arguments. It seems silly to have to go through the basics but perhaps we should. Most of this debate is stuck in a superficial reverb about a dire crisis and a proposed response without justification of either.

As we know, the effect of global warming is a matter of considerable ongoing research, assessment and contention. Average temperatures have risen by about a ­degree during the past century but the climate stubbornly has refused to behave in accordance with the alarming models produced by most scientists. We have no control sample; we don’t know whether the planet would have warmed, cooled or hovered like a wine fridge were it not for the emissions we have produced, mainly in the second half of that 100 years.

While scientific consensus tells us increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to produce greater warming, there is legitimate debate about the extent, detrimental effects, benefits and the relative role of other variables in a changeable climate system.

Appropriate responses based on science and economics range from business as usual to ­abandoning mitigation in favour of adaptation. Technological ­developments are bound to play a major role in everything from cutting emissions to adapting to a warmer world.

Given bureaucrats and politicians have decided through the Kyoto and Paris processes that emissions reduction is the goal, there should be detailed debate about what policies can best deliver that outcome. When it comes to fixed power generation, this is a dilemma where there actually is a silver bullet — if we decided we ­urgently needed emissions-free, reliable electricity, we know how to get it. The fact nuclear energy is largely ignored in this debate tells us much about the agenda and real urgency, or lack thereof.

In this newspaper on Thursday, Bjorn Lomborg, a lonely voice of sanity in this debate, offered one of the pithiest and most important observations about global warming. “It is not the end of the world,” he said. It is funny because it is true and is at odds with the zeitgeist of catastrophism. From Al Gore to Tim Flannery, from last week’s Carols Against Coal to Shorten and Harwin, there is a never-ending procession of Chicken Littles to frighten our kids, poison our politics and burden our economies. Yet no scheme to make Australian households and businesses pay more for power will enhance the planet’s future. These policies exist primarily to trumpet the fashionable sensibilities of their spruikers.

Because we share one atmosphere, no nation sensibly would take a policy decision without considering what is happening in the rest of the world. This is where the overzealous activism of people such as Harwin, Shorten and the Greens is exposed as foolish and debilitating. We have turned our advantage of cheap and abundant energy into a competitive disadvantage. Power prices have increased an average of 70 per cent in real terms across the past decade, and low-income households now spend 10 per cent or more of their income on electricity.

Prices have been driven largely by the cross-subsidisation of renewables, leading to duplicated generation, additional transmission and mothballing of cheap power generation. Additional costs hit taxpayers directly from budget expenditure on grants and rebates for renewable schemes.

The Renew Economy website has estimated the additional investment at $60 billion. Some of this would have been required to replace or upgrade existing plants to increase capacity, but most was unnecessary except to promote renewables and reduce emissions.

Resultant financial pressure on families, businesses and industry has stifled spending and investment. Direct job losses have come from closure of coal-fired generators in South Australia, Victoria and NSW, and there have been indirect job losses in manufacturing, aluminium and steel plants where power costs have been a factor.

Reliability has been compromised too — South Australia left itself so reliant on interstate dispatchable generation that when its interconnector to Victoria was tripped, the entire state was blacked out for the first time in its history. The direct hit on its economy was calculated at $367 million and it triggered an extra $500m in state government spending on diesel generators and batteries to protect against future vulnerability.

Balanced against these costs are the benefits. So far, they amount to nil. The latest international data has global carbon emissions growing at 2.7 per cent annually, or by more than twice the total annual emissions from Australia. So, the amount of emissions we aim to cut annually by 2030 are being added by the rest of the world (mainly China and India) every four weeks.

For all our pain, there has been precisely no gain. Those countries that have reduced emissions are mainly those enjoying side benefits from economic decisions — switching to gas, using abundant hydro or nuclear. While dumping Paris, the US has lowered emissions from power generation by using fracked gas.

Other nations increase emissions as they lift people out of poverty. In Asia, the subcontinent and Africa, hundreds of millions of people only now are starting to enjoy the improvements in quality of life, longevity and prosperity that flow from abundant and ­affordable energy.

Australia alone has turned climate and energy policy into an economic millstone and political suicide bomb. Harwin, with the assent of Premier Gladys Berejik­lian, seeks escalation of economic hardship while driving wedges into the single largest and most damaging policy schism in the Coalition. Genius.

The NSW moderates think they will appeal to the enlightened denizens of their state and reap political benefits, wrongly interpreting the Wentworth by-election and Victorian election results as demands for a green-left consensus. The Coalition exists to be a beacon of economic good sense and pragmatism. It came into office in the 2013 landslide on the back of Tony Abbott’s campaign to axe the carbon tax and lower electricity prices. It forgot its mission after the Blob elimin­ated Abbott.

SOURCE 

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

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

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Friday, December 21, 2018



Another attempt to kill the "Pause"

It is perfectly proper to re-analyse an existing body of data, though the analysis is likely to be of interrest only if all steps in the reanalysis are revealed. Revising the data itself, however, is an intrinsically dubious enterprise -- particularly if each revision to the data leads to a result more satisfactory to  theory in circumstances where the original data were not in line with theory

But that is the situation with Warmism. The actual climate data conflict strongly with the global warming theory.  Particularly pesky was the apparent stasis in temperature during the first 14 years of C21.  CO2 levels rose but global temperatures did not. And that is a fatal flaw.  CO2 molecules don't have a little timer in them that tells them when to reflect heat.  They just start reflecting whatever heat they are going to heat immediately they arrive in the atmosphere. So C21 temperatures should have reflected rising CO2 levels but did not.

So the C21 pause is basically quite fatal to Warmism.  But that doesn't dent the beliefs of Warmists of course.  They set about finding a way around the problem.  And data revision is one possibility.  Reanalysing the existing data is harder but is also sometimes attempted.

The first such data revision was by Thomas Karl, the former head of a major NOAA technical center.  He noted that the data on ocean temperature was pretty wobbly and applied "corrections" to it which tended to show that the "missing" C21 heat was still generated but had been swallowed up by the oceans. Why the oceans started doing that only at the turn of the century was unexplained.

There were however enough infelicities in Karl's work to disturb  even a lot of Warmists.  It was a too obvious "fix" with too little attention to all the data.  The work was, in a word, too open to derision.  So some prominent Warmists, including Michael Mann got together as co-authors of the Fyfe paper, which re-admitted a C21 temperature slowdown.  The Fyfe paper was however a ramble rather than a proper scientific report and ended up admitting that they did not know why the slowdown occurred, though various theoretical explanations were suggested.  They spoke of "the EMBRYONIC field of decadal climate prediction" in their conclusions.

But now a gaggle of the old hands have tried again in an article headed by Risbey and including in its co-authrs Stefan Rahmstorf, who believes that temperature changes of thousandths of one degree are significant. The paper claims that "pauses" in warming are common and the early C21 pause is therefore wrongly focused.  They present analyses that give results very different from results presented in hundreds of other papers.

An obvious reason why they get different results is that they use data "through 2016", where 2016 was the height of the El Nino effect. So they include natural warming into CO2-based warming, a handy conflation but a completely illegitimate one

In a second article by Lewandowsky, Michael Mann and others, much the same gaggle of authors rely on a fresh lot of data from the Arctic.  But that is very suspect. There is furious volcanic activity under the Arctic sea-ice, particularly along the Gakkel ridge -- so attributing warming there to atmospheric influences is very tendentious.  The fact that the Arctic warms irregularly and is often out of sync with temperatures elsewhere is in fact pretty clear evidence that temperatures there are not part of anything global.  Incorporating Arctic data into atmospheric climate models is therefore simply unscientific.

Below is a credulous presentation of the latest shenanigans


The United Nations panel of climate science experts mentioned it in a 2013 report, scientists have published more than 200 papers analyzing it, and climate deniers said it was proof that climate change didn't exist, but in reality the global warming "pause" or "hiatus" never occurred.

That is the conclusion of a pair of studies, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, based on statistical reassessments of a recent 10-year period that appeared at the time to evince a flattened warming curve.

These are the latest of several assessments to caution that the hiatus theory has no real significance either for climate science or for science-based policy. Even so, they seem unlikely to stamp out the discussion, which has become a deeply embedded meme in some circles.

"In hindsight, with current GMST [Global Mean Surface Temperature] datasets, there is no statistical evidence for a 'pause,'" concluded one of the two studies, which reassessed temperature monitoring from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The second study, which focused on what appeared to be a difference in observed temperatures and earlier projections from climate models, reached a similar conclusion.

"There was a natural slowdown in the rate of warming during roughly the decade of the 2000s due to a combination of volcanic influences and internal climate variability, but there was no actual 'hiatus' or 'pause' in warming," Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and an author of the climate modeling study, said.

A Lack of Arctic Data

The notion of a pause in warming from approximately 1998 to 2012, was fueled in part by incomplete data and erroneous projections that have since been corrected, the studies conclude.

It's long been obvious that if there had been any blip in the trends it was temporary. The years that followed have hit new temperature records. And new evidence has made clear why some were fooled.

Scientists know, for example, that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the planet as a whole, but there weren't enough temperature observations from the Arctic in the early 2000s to accurately measure the changes that were occurring there. As a result, data sets on global temperature tended to omit the Arctic until recently, when researchers came up with a better way to extrapolate data from the region.

"We simply didn't have all the information available at the time," Stephan Lewandowsky, a researcher at the University of Bristol and lead author of the climate modeling report said.

Natural phenomena, including increased volcanic activity and decreased solar activity, also masked human-caused warming during the late '90s and early 2000s, seemingly deviating from what climate models had projected, Lewandowsky said.

SOURCE 





Call for Human Self-Extinction

I heartily support this call -- as long as the deed is voluntary.  In which case only those who believe in it will discontinue themselves -- thus ridding us a of a pack of nuisances

As the world's 2.2 billion Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah sent by God the Father to save mankind from sin and death, The New York Times has published an article calling for mankind to be eradicated from the earth.

In a piece entitled "Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?", Clemson philosophy professor Todd May argues that humanity is a scourge of the planet, and the world would be better without us. He's seemingly taking his cue from Marvel's "Infinity War" and its villain Thanos, who [spoiler alert] wipes out half of all life in the universe for the same reasons May expounds.

What horrific crimes has humanity committed making us worthy of self-extinction? According to May, humans are (1) responsible for the "climate change" that is "devastating ecosystems," (2) increasing population encroaching on the ecosystems of animals, and (3) factory farming animals, causing them "nothing but suffering and misery" before they are slaughtered for food.

In summary, "Humanity, then, is the source of devastation of the lives of conscious animals on a scale that is difficult to comprehend."

Interestingly, May never mentions man's inhumanity to man, as with the Holocaust, or genocide in places like Rwanda, as a cause for concern. No, only cruelty to cows, chickens, and pigs warrants his sympathy, and displacement of the snail darter his wrath. Apparently, the thought of inadvertently impacting a species through our development of the earth's resources for human use, or exercising dominion over animals for human good (i.e., for food or labor) is repulsive to May. But the thought of the global extermination of humanity in order to return the earth to its natural state is perfectly acceptable.

May acknowledges that "nature itself is hardly a Valhalla of peace and harmony," noting, "Animals kill other animals regularly, often in ways that we (although not they) would consider cruel." But he then argues the predatory nature of humans is far worse than any other species. That is, however, a subjective judgment that only humans possess the intelligence to make.

After a philosophical exercise in the relative worth of a human soul, in which he highlights the positive contributions of humanity (an advanced level of reasoning, our ability to create art, literature, music, etc.), he contemplates whether it would be worth saving humanity to perpetuate its positive attributes ... before concluding it would not.

May argues, "Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals. There is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger."

Unless we believe that there is a profound moral gap? Yes, that is exactly what we believe!

Of course, quite hypocritically, May is not quite ready to sacrifice himself to the cause. Instead, he argues that existing humans should take steps to prevent any more humans from coming into the world.

This twisted philosophy finds a welcomed home in the hearts of modern progressives, who have long argued for population control through methods like sterilization and abortion. They paint a bleak, hopeless picture of humanity's future.

In the 1970s, they warned of a "coming Ice Age" that would kill off most of humanity, followed by the dark specter of apocalyptic "climate change," coercing us into abandoning the abundant energy and higher standard of living that comes with industrialization. Harvard biologist George Wald declared in 1970 that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years." Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, argued that due to scarce food supplies "the death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." Ehrlich also insisted that by 1980 "urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution," and he proclaimed "the life expectancy of a man would plummet to just 42 years."

Since then, the global population has more than doubled from 3.7 billion to 7.7 billion, yet rapid advances in technology allow us to grow vastly more food on far less land and with fewer resources, drastically reducing world hunger and poverty. Life expectancy has mostly lengthened, not plummeted. Technology has resulted in cleaner air and water in advanced societies, indicating human ingenuity is the solution, not the problem.

Sadly, it is this contempt for the worth of human life, deeply rooted in the death cult of progressivism, which has truly resulted in unfathomable human (and animal) suffering over the last century. The variants of totalitarian socialism (in which the state is god) have resulted not only in the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust, but in the brutal deaths of more than 100 million people whose communist governments deemed them of no value beyond their labor.

America alone has seen 60 million unborn children slaughtered in abortion clinics since 1973. Around the world, Down Syndrome children are being aborted into extinction, and throughout Europe thousands of the sick, elderly, and mentally ill are being euthanized without their consent.

This is the inevitable result when humans no longer believe human life has intrinsic value. Ironically, those who share May's nihilistic view of humanity bring about the greatest suffering.

Though flawed, mankind is also capable of goodness and self-sacrifice. In our absence, animals would be no less predatory, and nature no more forgiving. With humanity, the earth is capable of breathtaking beauty, kindness, and progress. We think we'll stick around.

SOURCE 





Trump EPA Rolls Back Another Obama Power Grab

Navigable waters is now clearly defined so as not to be Obama's overly broad power grab. 

Once again under President Donald Trump, some semblance of common sense and sane definitional language returned to the U.S. government. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its proposal for replacing Barack Obama’s 2015 power-grabbing redefinition of the Waters of the United States rule.

Under Obama, the EPA widely expanded the Clean Water Act’s definition of navigable waters to include pretty much every conceivable form of surface water — even irrigation ditches and rain-filled potholes. It was a clear and outrageous case of government overreach.

In announcing the change, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained, “Our proposal would replace the Obama EPA’s 2015 definition with one that respects the limits of the Clean Water Act and provides states and landowners the certainty they need to manage their natural resources and grow local economies. For the first time, we are clearly defining the difference between federally protected waterways and state protected waterways. Our simpler and clearer definition would help landowners understand whether a project on their property will require a federal permit or not, without spending thousands of dollars on engineering and legal professionals.”

Predictably, Democrats and environmentalists were quick to misrepresent the definitional change, calling it a “sickening gift to polluters,” the “dirty water rule,” or as Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) laughably insisted, “nothing short of senseless.” In reality, it was the 2015 EPA’s redefinition of “navigable waters” that was senseless.

The announcement garnered high praise from Republicans, however. “The 2015 rule was an expansion of federal power that used bureaucrat-speak to strip landowners of their rights and local governments of their ability to manage waters within their borders,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). “This new approach is the product of doing it the right way — openly, with the input of the American people.”

It should be normal to have clearly written rules with consistently limited definitions that any member of the public can understand without a lawyer. Regulations that are so overly broad that they prevent individuals from knowing if they are in compliance or not are bad, as they have the potential for abuse of power written all over them. Thankfully, the Trump EPA is seeking to clean things up.

SOURCE 





Vatican Wants All Nations To Decarbonize, Stop Using Fossil Fuels

Will they be the first to turn off their lights?

The Vatican has called for the “decarbonization of the current fossil fuel-based economy” in its hard-hitting final declaration for the U.N. climate summit in Katowice, Poland, Wednesday.

Climate change, the declaration states, “is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

The Vatican praised global leaders who “struggled to find the will to set aside their short-term economic and political interests and work for the common good,” finding consensus in a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015.

The summit and its agreements are an example of “multilateral dialogue,” which is critical for combatting climate change, the Vatican stated.

Unfortunately, it continued, the rulebook does not adequately reflect the “urgency necessary to tackle climate change,” which represents “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

Advancing “the dignity of the human person, alleviating poverty by the promotion of integral human development, and easing the impact of climate change through responsible mitigation and adaptation measures go hand in hand,” it said.

The Vatican also called for a reasonable “transition period,” presumably reflecting the time necessary to move from fossil fuels to alternative forms of energy.

Using the language of vocation, the Vatican text says that we are “called” to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

It also urged “much greater ambition” in anti-CO2 programs in order to achieve “the decarbonization of the current fossil fuel-based economy,” which will demand “lifestyle changes.”

When U.S. presidential adviser Wells Griffith spoke on the benefits of clean-burning fossil fuels in a panel discussion on the side of the Katowice summit, he was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers.

“We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability,” Griffith said.

The panel underscored the importance of cheap fossil fuels as a means for developing nations to emerge from poverty.

SOURCE 






Stop Wasting Australia's Dam Water

by Viv Forbes,

The Saltbush Club today accused state and federal governments of wasting water often desperately needed everywhere west of Australia’s Great Dividing Range. The “Saltbush Water Watch” has been established to monitor government action and inaction and report on priorities.

The Executive Director of the new and growing Saltbush Club, Mr Viv Forbes, said “From Adelaide to Longreach we have allowed green subversives to prevent new dam construction and to dictate the waste of water caught in existing dams.”

“Without water conservation the Murray River would turn back into a string of disconnected waterholes every big drought. More reliable fresh water has benefitted humans and nature all along the river.

“Luckily (and predictably), Tim Flannery’s climate alarm forecasts of endless drought has proved wrong, or this area of Australia would now be depopulated.

“The green activists behind the water waste are not pro-environment – they are anti-human. Humans are part of the environment.

“The Saltbush Club is in the process of setting up several “Watch Groups” to investigate, monitor and report on this political war on human activity. It has appointed Mr Ron Pike, “A Bushie from the Back of Barellan” to lead the Saltbush Water Watch.

“Ron has a lifetime of experience of farming, irrigation and politics in the Murray Darling Basin. He was the first farmer to use water from the Snowy Scheme to irrigate his farm in 1961.

Ron says:

“The food we eat, the water we drink and the power we use for most of our endeavours, are available only because previous generations invested their know-how and money for the future. “It is time this generation did the same.”

Via email

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

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

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