An amusing sermon from a true believer, Peter Kraai

He seems to be a passionate believer in global warming but shows zero familiarity with science.  Science depends on numbers and he offers not a single number in support of anything he says. And the things he does say are so vaguely put that you would need a book to critique them all

But one of his assertions that is unambiguously wrong is his claim that only a small part of the Antarctic is melting. Zwally's 2015 study showed that the Antarctic as a whole is cooling, not warming.  And since the Antarctic holds 96% of earth's glacial ice those rising sea levels beloved of Warmists are just not going to happen.  Zwally's findings and many others like them are statistics enough to discredit the whole global warming theory but Mr. Kraai is ignorant of them.  He just believes what suits him.

The way he puffs up his chest as someone concerned for the future of "the children" shows what his motivation is.  He wants to be seen as on the side of the angels and damn the facts.  He is doing virtue signalling, not any serious discussion of the evidence.  His confidence in the truth of his delusions is remarkable, though


To the Editor:

I trust that you have defaulted into printing op-eds from Cal Thomas because you have paid for a contract to do so -- even if the content is tripe or a fable. However, consider the moral of his recent fable ("Apocalypse now and the $6,000 Costco meal," March 15,2018) -- that, despite the decades of massive, peer-reviewed support for anthropogenic climate change, we should listen to charlatans funded by fossil fuel companies and ignore the corrections necessary (and readily available) to provide our offspring with a healthy future. This is indeed immoral.

The book he cites, Marc Morano's "Politically Incorrect Guide To Climate Change," is also scientifically incorrect. Not because there is no truth within, but because it is at least 10,000 respected studies away from the whole truth, and does not contain "nothing but the truth." To say Morano's pamphlet rises to the intellectual rigor of a comic book is to insult comic books; they try to get the science right. Thomas is neither stupid nor uneducated (so he can understand the basic science if he chooses), therefore he must be complacent or venal enough to allow our children's planet to fall further into disrepair.

No competent scientist has ever believed climate change (which, by the way, Cal, includes global warming -- they're not the same) "will destroy all life on Earth." However, neither will any of us deny that, through our obscene and opulent overuse of the world's resources, we have entered into the sixth mass extinction event. Yes, life will continue, but lacking many if not most of the algae, plants, animals and ecosystems that keep our lives viable, beautiful and awe-inspired.

As for climatologists (who interpret multi-year, -century, and -millennia trends rather than tell us what may happen in the sky tomorrow, as Thomas'  meteorologist source John Coleman does), and their predictions, "none of which have materialized":

Ocean acidification, dilution by fresh water, and altered flow of climate-determining currents have materialized.

More flooding from bigger hurricanes (note, Cal, I didn't say more frequent storms) has materialized.

Progressive melting of the great majority of mountain range ice- and snow-caps, glaciers, permafrost and poles (except, Cal, as you stated, a small part of Antarctica) has materialized.

Wars over dwindling water, soil and food have materialized.

Drastically mutated terrestrial growth zones (normally stable for thousands of years) have materialized.

Perhaps most paradoxical about Thomas' indifference to Earth's (and its life forms') chronic degradation is his frequently revisited self-identification as a God-fearing Christian. As God views the destruction perpetrated by fossil fuel apologists on this used-to-be-Eden he created, the Almighty must surely be dusting off his smiting instruments. And I think even Thomas would agree with what Jesus wouldn't do; pat the egocentric and materialistic on the back while suggesting they continue their consumptive ways as the poorest and those least contributory to the global mayhem suffer the most.

But then, I'm only a "climate change fanatic," according to Thomas, willing to set aside my nonessential desires so that subsequent human generations and the other 2 million species can reclaim the unsullied life they also deserve. At least this fanatic can look his children and students in their eyes and truthfully say, "I'm on your side."

SOURCE 





Scott Pruitt Will End EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’ To Justify Regulations

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Pruitt will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules. Such studies have been used to justify tens of billions of dollars worth of regulations.

EPA regulators would only be allowed to consider scientific studies that make their data available for public scrutiny under Pruitt’s new policy. Also, EPA-funded studies would need to make all their data public.

“When we do contract that science out, sometimes the findings are published; we make that part of our rule-making processes, but then we don’t publish the methodology and data that went into those findings because the third party who did the study won’t give it to us,” Pruitt added.

“And we’ve said that’s fine — we’re changing that as well,” Pruitt told TheDCNF.

Conservatives have long criticized EPA for relying on scientific studies that published their findings but not the underlying data. However, Democrats and environmental activists have challenged past attempts to bring transparency to studies used in rule making.

Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith pushed legislation to end the use of what he calls “secret science” at EPA. Pruitt instituted another policy in 2017 backed by Smith against EPA-funded scientists serving on agency advisory boards.

“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rulemaking, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what — rules that were adopted by this agency,” Pruitt explained.

Pruitt’s pending science transparency policy mirrors Smith’s HONEST Act, which passed the House in March 2017. Smith’s office was pleased to hear Pruitt was adopting another policy the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chairman championed.

“The chairman has long worked toward a more open and transparent rule-making process at EPA, and he looks forward to any announcement from Administrator Pruitt that would achieve that goal,” committee spokeswoman Thea McDonald told TheDCNF.

Junk science crusader Steve Milloy also called on EPA to end its use of “secret science” in rule making, especially when it comes to studies on the toxicity of fine particulates in the air.

EPA has primarily relied on two 1990s studies linking fine particulate pollution to premature death. Neither studies have made their data public, but EPA used their findings to justify sweeping air quality regulations.

Reported benefits from EPA rules are “mostly attributable to the reduction in public exposure to fine particulate matter,” according to the White House Office of Management and Budget report. That’s equivalent to billions of dollars.

In fact, one of EPA’s most expensive regulation on the books, called MATS, derived most of its estimated benefits from reducing particulates not from reducing mercury, which the rule was ostensibly crafted to address.

EPA estimated MATS would cost $8.2 billion but yield between $28 billion to $77 billion in public health benefits. It’s a similar story for the Clean Power Plan, which EPA estimated would cost $8.4 billion and yield from $14 billion to $34 billion in health and climate benefits.

Democrats and environmentalists have largely opposed attempts to require EPA rely on transparent scientific data. Said data would restrict the amount of studies EPA can use, but a major objection is making data public would reveal confidential patient data, opponents argue.

“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.

“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said.

Milloy, however, countered and argued it’s a “red herring” to claim that forcing regulators to use public science data would harm patient privacy.

“The availability of such data sets is nothing new,” said Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute.

“The state of California, for example, makes such data available under the moniker, ‘Public Use Death Files,'” Milloy said. “We used such data in the form of over two million anonymized death certificates in our recent California study on particulates and death.”

“Opponents of data transparency are just trying to hide the data from independent scrutiny,” Milloy added. “But the studies that use this data are taxpayer-financed, and they are used to regulate the public.”

SOURCE 





Can climate litigation save the world?

Global moves to tackle climate change through lawsuits are poised to break new ground this week, as groups and individuals seek to hold governments and companies accountable for the damage they are causing.

On Tuesday, action by 12 UK citizens reaches the high court for the first time, while on Wednesday in San Francisco, the science of climate change will effectively be on trial at a key moment in a lawsuit.

The litigation represents a new front of climate action, with citizens aiming to force stronger moves to cut carbon emissions, and win damages to pay the costs of dealing with the impacts of warming.

They are inspired by momentous cases from the past, from the defeat of big tobacco to the racial desegregation of schools in the US. Big oil is fighting back hard, but though victories have been rare to date wins are more likely in future, as legal experts say the attitudes of judges often shift with the times.

A flurry of billion-dollar cases against fossil fuel companies brought by New York city and communities in California over the rising seas has pushed climate litigation into the limelight. But cases are being brought across the globe, with more than 1,000 suits now logged by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia law school in New York.

The UK government is now facing its first major climate change lawsuit, brought by 12 citizens through a legal group called Plan B and which already has the support of the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King.

“The UK carbon target for 2050 does not match the Paris agreement goal and the government knows that,” says Tim Crosland, a barrister at Plan B. He says the purpose of the case is to make the government live up to its responsibilities: “It is about closing the accountability deficit which is one of the biggest problems with climate change – if everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible.”

The UK has had climate laws in place for a decade and is seen by some as a leading nation, but Crosland argues the great dangers of global warming make this irrelevant. “Either we don’t want to fall off the climate cliff edge or we do. Who is doing better than others is the wrong question.”

On Wednesday meanwhile, a landmark case in California, in which the cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing major oil companies for damages, reaches an unprecedented moment with a day-long hearing on the science of climate change itself.

Further cases are under way from India to Uganda, and across Europe including the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Norway, where campaigners are seeking to block oil drilling in the Arctic. In Colombia, 25 young plaintiffs are taking to the courts to halt deforestation.

Lawyers won a rare victory – now under appeal – in the 2015 Urgenda case in the Netherlands, with the court ruling the Dutch state must increase its cuts to emissions.

A Pakistani farmer has also won a ruling that the “lethargy of the state in implementing [climate policies] offends the fundamental rights of the citizens”.

And a Peruvian farmer is suing German energy company RWE over its alleged contribution to the melting glaciers near his Andean hometown.

But it is in the US, the world’s most litigious nation, that the greatest number of cases have been brought. The most high-profile suit against the government is the Juliana case, filed by 21 teenagers in Oregon, which saw off a Trump administration attempt to halt it earlier in March.

The basis of the case, says Julia Olson, lead counsel for Our Children’s Trust which is fighting the case, is failure of US administrations to protect its citizens by tackling global warming. “The US government has put these plaintiffs and other young people in a dangerous situation. First and foremost it is about personal security and the danger that exists presently. Beyond that, it is about protecting other fundamental rights under the US constitution – basic liberties such as to be able to decide where to live and to raise a family safely.

“I can’t convey how egregious and incredible this story is across every presidential administration of our government going back 60 years,” Olsen says. “This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue. Every president made those choices.”

While lawsuits against governments seek stronger action, those against the fossil fuel industry seek a simpler remedy – money. The argument is that these companies knowingly sold products that caused damage and a financial settlement is required, drawing parallels with the titanic legal battle fought and won against the tobacco industry.

Michael Burger, at the Sabin Center, says there is a similarity in that these growing cases threaten a level of legal and reputational risk to the companies that might eventually force them to settle or face financial oblivion.

“The other obvious similarity with tobacco is you have a long history of corporate obfuscation and attempts to blur the science and public understanding,” he says. Some of the characters involved are even the same – on both sides – with the same scientists defending both tobacco and oil companies and the same lawyers prosecuting them.

“But there is also a key difference,” says Burger. “Tobacco is a product individual people inhale and it gives them cancer. Fossil fuel production is the beginning of a long chain of causation that includes numerous corporate actors and individual consumers, as well as government licensing and permitting schemes. The causal chain is much longer.”

Scientists are now confident they can quantify the emissions resulting from each big company’s fossil fuels – just 90 firms are responsible for two-thirds of all emissions. But lawyers for the fossil fuel companies are robust in their response, saying a causal link to damages is “unprovable”.

The oil giants are also fighting back, with ExxonMobil in January seeking court permission to “investigate potential claims of abuse of process, civil conspiracy, and constitutional violations” by the Californian officials suing them. One of these, Serge Dedina mayor of Imperial Beach, says: “This appears to be the same kind of bullying tactic that the industry uses again and again to avoid accountability.”

Industry lobby groups are also mobilising against climate litigation in the US, with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) launching a campaign against “politically motivated legal attacks” in November. “It has become clear that these activist plaintiffs’ attorneys, sympathetic academics and agenda-driven media outlets are distorting the use of tort litigation to advance their narratives with the ultimate objective of undermining manufacturers and the engine of the American economy,” said Linda Kelly, NAM general counsel.

However, an international panel of senior judges concluded in January that many companies around the world may well already be in breach of existing laws in relation to their impact on climate change. “Very, very few enterprises currently meet their obligations – if they did [climate change] would mostly be solved,” said Jaap Spier, who was advocate general in the Dutch supreme court until 2016 and part of the panel that published the assessment.

Spier says judges are influenced by growing concerns in society, such as worries over climate change, and are increasingly likely to look favourably on climate litigation in coming years. “If you assume companies don’t [change] at some stage, I have not the slightest doubt that courts will understand that they must step in.”

More and more climate cases are being filed, with lawyers suggesting a range of factors, from the election of Donald Trump to more extreme weather events, to revelations about what fossil fuel companies knew about climate change dangers, and a growing awareness of the urgent need to act.

Despite this, major victories at a supreme court level still appear years off. But Burger says even wins along the way to the highest court add to the pressure for change: “There is a victory here which is just surviving the initial motions to dismiss. Having courts advance these cases towards a trial could itself move fossil fuel companies to want to start to seek some other solution.”

Nick Butler, who spent 29 years at BP and is now at King’s College London, says the companies do not believe the point has been reached where they are likely to lose cases but the pressure is real nonetheless: “The legal actions add a further dimension to the pressure for change in an industry that has begun to accept the need to reinvent itself.”

Olson argues that the courts are starting to recognise the urgency and highlights that the district judge in the Juliana case, Ann Aiken, said climate change needs to be addressed with “all deliberate speed”. That is a potent phrase in the US, taken from the 1955 supreme court judgment on the Brown v Board of Education case that ordered the end of racial segregation of schools.

“We need a decision that says you cannot discriminate against young people and deprive them of a climate system that will sustain their lives,” she says.

“[Aiken] very much understands that constitutional rights are at stake and that speed is the critical factor here. I think we will be on a very fast track.”

SOURCE 




Environmentalist Publishes Op-Ed on Climate Change… Covers it With Blatant Lies

An anti-fossil fuel movement proponent dubiously claimed Tuesday natural gas development’s methane emissions are hitting catastrophic levels.

Activist are failing to impress upon people the dangers associated with the fracking industry, according to Vermont’s Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben. He also suggested most research shows methane emissions from natural gas are pitching above a safe level, yet many studies show the antithesis.

“When I think about my greatest failing as a communicator — and one of the greatest failings of the climate movement — it’s not that global warming still continues,” McKibben wrote Wednesday for Yale Environment 360.

The movement’s biggest moral failing, he said, was not selling people on the danger unchecked methane emissions pose to the climate.

Democrats, Republicans and the public have generally accepted the idea natural gas is a fine alternative to other forms of fossil fuel production, but the general population is unaware methane emissions from such energy put the climate in a precarious spot, McKibben added.

“It turns out that there are lots of places for leaks to happen — when you frack a field, when you connect a pipe, when you send gas thousands of miles through pumping stations — and so most studies show that the leakage rate is at least three percent and probably higher,” he noted without citing any specific study buttressing his claim.

McKibben relied on data from Cornell University Ecology Professor Bob Howard’s studies to conclude methane emission leakage rates were nearly three percent, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Howard’s work has been criticized in the past for using too short a time frame. He uses a 20-year window to study the global warming potential of methane emissions in the atmosphere as opposed to the more common 100-year horizon.

Environmental groups have also scrutinized Howard’s work.

“While I can see an argument for using a time horizon shorter than 100 years, I personally believe that the 20-year GWP is too short a period to be appropriate for policy analysis,” former National Resources Defense Council director Dan Lashof said in 2011 of McKibben’s chronological methodology.

Environmental Protection Agency research and other studies, meanwhile, paint a much different story.

Actual emissions from gas power plants were “nearly 50 times lower than previously estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” a 2013 University of Texas study availed. Researchers at UT concluded methane emissions from the supply chain’s upstream portion are 0.38 percent of production.

EPA’s latest methane emissions data from 2017 show very low methane leakage rates of approximately 1.2 percent. The agency and UT’s data and research were concluded, using the more reliable 100-year time frame. McKibben has spent several years thrashing Democratic leaders for promoting the natural gas industry.

McKibben was singing a different tune in 2009 when he felt so strongly about power plants switching to natural gas he was willing to be jailed in support of the cause. He was one of several celebrities who protested on Capitol Power Plant’s front steps in Washington, D.C.

“There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law … We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested,” McKibben told reporters prior to the March 3, 2009, protest.

“(I)t would be easy enough to fix. In fact, the facility can already burn some natural gas instead, and a modest retrofit would let it convert away from coal entirely. … It would even stimulate the local economy,” he added.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Found

SOURCE 




Trudeau’s carbon tax plan is close to blowing up in his face

The carbon-tax system isn’t a tax grab. It’s an economic bulldozer. A carbon tax in a low pollution country with endless forests like Canada is ludicrous. The idea that it is to be collected by the provincial government, sent to the Federal government, and then returned to the provinces makes absolutely NO sense

Things have turned very much Jim Karahalios’s way lately, and they might not be done yet. If you haven’t heard of Karahalios, he was the noisy member of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives persecuted by his own party for refusing to let former leader Patrick Brown get away with making carbon taxes an official policy. Although Karahalios clearly spoke for most members, Brown was determined to stick with his carbon tax — and to muzzle Karahalios and his “Axe the Tax” campaign, which has since expanded to every province. Karahalios was even tossed out of PC events and stripped of his PC membership.

With Doug Ford now leading the party into a spring election, the Ontario PC party looks less like Brown’s than it does Karahalios’s, who got his official apology (and the lawsuit appeal dropped) earlier this month from the party. And with Canada’s largest province looking like it might soon be on the same warpath as other provinces against the federal Liberals over the carbon tax, the whole country could soon look more like Karahalios’s sort of place than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s.

Until now, most pundits have taken the federal Liberals’ word that the carbon tax is going to happen, whether provinces sign on to it or not. No one’s really questioned the legitimacy of Trudeau’s threat to use a “backstop” power that would see Ottawa collecting a price-fixed carbon tax within a particular province if the province itself will not. Even the National Post’s estimable Andrew Coyne suggested not long ago that the Ontario PC leadership candidates’ “declaration of opposition to a carbon tax is… meaningless”: Since Ottawa will levy the tax itself if it has to, “the tax will be collected” whether they liked it or not. In reality, though, a growing number of provinces are girding for battle in what could be a federal-provincial showdown for the ages. Far from being certain of getting its way, the federal government likely lacks the weapons it needs to win.

Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s tough talk this week warning the Saskatchewan government she was coming to get their carbon taxes (while revoking their $62-million low-carbon grant) could be a bluff. In a few months, she might be trying the same bluff on Ontario, if polls hold up and the next premier ends up being Ford. He has been fiercely decrying the carbon tax, insisting the “reckless” and “job-killing” tax would “do great damage to Ontario.” He promises to “take Justin Trudeau to court” to stop it.

And by next year, Ford could be teaming up in that fight not just with Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe, but likely Jason Kenney in Alberta, who is remarkably popular and currently on track for a landslide victory to become the province’s first United Conservative Party premier in 2019, with a campaign built almost entirely on a promise to axe Alberta’s carbon tax. Heck, even before then, Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday that she’s now refusing to raise Alberta’s carbon taxes to meet Trudeau’s minimum rates if he doesn’t stop B.C. from blocking the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Together, the provinces representing half the Canadian population now are or soon might be arming for a carbon-tax war with Ottawa. That doesn’t even count Manitoba, which is still refusing to align its own less-burdensome carbon-tax plan with Ottawa’s pricing scheme. Or New Brunswick, whose plan is also at odds with federal requirements. Or Nova Scotia, whose cap-and-trade scheme doesn’t come close to meeting McKenna’s stipulations. (Newfoundland and P.E.I. haven’t revealed their plans yet.)

So how many provinces exactly do Trudeau and McKenna think they can successfully fight? And if they thought trying to force wildly unpopular small-business taxes down peoples’ throats was a fiasco, wait till they see how ugly things get trying to force a carbon tax on hostile Canadians who loathe it even more than their premiers, who at least are tempted by the potential cash grab.

Yet McKenna sounded positively blithe this week about the ease with which she plans to deploy her “backstop” weapon, in responding to a letter from Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan, who said the province could not accept her carbon tax. McKenna’s response: If Duncan’s government didn’t start taxing carbon at the minimum price she requires, “we would have no choice but to ensure that a price on pollution applies …. We would do so by applying the federal carbon pricing system in Saskatchewan.” It sounds so simple. Except the closer you examine her position, the weaker it seems.

There is already the matter of the constitutional clash that will form the basis of the Ford court case, over whether the feds even have the power to tax carbon, especially connected to resources. University of Saskatchewan constitutional law expert Dwight Newman thinks the provinces have “more of a case than a lot of people are giving them credit for.”

More to the point, no one has explained the logistics that would let McKenna make good on her ultimatum. The ability of a Canadian government to implement policy has always relied on the co-operation of provincial governments, notes Newman. Indeed, B.C.’s current NDP government, with its pipeline-stalling mischief, is right at this moment revealing just how powerless the federal government can appear when a province refuses to play along with it. Besides that, Newman points out that the federal government has never tried exercising the power to levy a specific tax on Canadians of one province but not another. Even if this one were willing to try, in the face of so many obvious constitutional problems, does it really have the tools and the stomach to monitor and bill for the carbon use of every farmer, factory, fuel pump and furnace in Saskatchewan?

McKenna makes it all sound so simple and straightforward, from her perch there on the edge of a minefield of untold and unprecedented legal and logistical difficulties. But this is a government that has yet to succeed in executing on anything remotely this complicated. At least it will be entertaining watching McKenna trying to collect carbon bills from ill-disposed farmers in Melfort, without an ounce of help from the province or municipalities.

SOURCE 

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