Environmentalists Are Protesting A Clean Power Project

Environmentalists in New England are voicing concern over a proposal that would provide an abundance of clean hydropower, hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue every year.

Charlie Baker, the moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts, has worked relentlessly to reduce his state’s carbon footprint and is now looking to Canada for renewable energy sourced from a series of dams.

The environmentally-friendly governor is in negotiations to obtain a large swath of electricity from Hydro-Québec, a province-owned energy company that generates all of its electricity from its colossal system of 63 hydroelectric power stations.

If completed, the arrangement would power 1.2 million homes with 1,200 megawatts of low emission hydropower and reduce overall energy costs. Additionally, it would generate an estimated $18 million in annual property tax revenue and create 1,700 new jobs during its construction phase.

Central Maine Power — a company that provides power to central and southern Maine — has offered to build the transmission line needed to transport the power.

In addition to the jobs and tax revenue the transmission line will provide, the company is doubling down on its commitment to the local community by vowing to spend $50 million over 40 years on programs to assist low-income communities. Central Maine Power will also reroute the Appalachian Trail in order to be less intrusive to wildlife.

Environmentalists, however, are still questioning the project.

To get Hydro-Quebec’s electricity to Massachusetts, Central Maine Power will need to construct a 150-foot-wide path through New England and need 1,000 support structures. Some conservationists are opposing any sort of development in the region’s forests and surmising that the project will not even reduce carbon emissions.

A local resident opposed to the project compared the lure of added tax revenue to a bribe. “It’s hard to blame them,” Kevin Ross said to the Boston Globe in a report published April 23.

Ross was speaking of his neighbors who wish to see more economic development in their small Maine town of The Forks. “It’s like a school bully coming up to you and saying, ‘I’ll give you $10 if I can punch you in the face.’”

The director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Dylan Voorhees, is openly wondering if the hydroelectric power directed to Massachusetts would mean other areas would then need to rely on fossil fuel sources. “If they do that, we would see no benefit to the climate,” Voorhees said in the same report. “It would be a shell game.”

The Conservation Law Foundation — an environmental organization that works to promote renewable energy usage in New England — is among those questioning whether the project would mean an uptick in fossil fuels elsewhere, claiming Hydro-Quebec has been a “black box” with their business activities.

However, a spokeswoman for Hydro-Québec, Lynn St-Laurent, assured the public that there would, in fact, be a reduction in carbon emissions, adding that the Canadian power company has been planning to export more power to New England for years.

“We can commit to delivering more to Massachusetts — during every month of the year — all the while doing the same in all our other neighboring regions,” St-Laurent stated.

The project is slated to be completed by 2022 — if approved.

SOURCE 




Europe’s Green Madness: Ireland Faces Annual EU Green Energy Fines Of €600 Million

An IREXIT coming?

Ireland faces fines of €600m a year from the EU for failing to meet renewable energy targets and cutting carbon emissions by 2020.

New, more ambitious targets for 2030 do not let Ireland off the hook for the 2020 measures, it has emerged.

A report for the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, which calculated the potential fines within two years, said they will be a matter for the European Court of Justice to impose.

Irish EU Commissioner Phil Hogan said there was confusion in some quarters that the 2020 targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive would be merged into the more ambitious targets for 2030. This would give the Government some breathing space and lessen the risk of punitive fines.

“But that is not the case. The 2020 target must be adhered to,” Mr Hogan said.

The commissioner urged the Government to be more proactive in developing wind and wave energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels in line with EU agreed targets.

SOURCE 




Ending secret science at EPA

Administrator Pruitt initiates overdue changes to bring transparency, integrity to rulemaking

Paul Driessen

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has proposed to end the longstanding EPA practice of using secretive, often questionable, even deceptive science to support agency policy and regulatory initiatives. His proposed rules will ensure that any science underlying agency actions is transparent and publicly available for independent experts to examine and validate – or point out its flaws.

It also responds to growing concerns that extensive scientific research in environmental, medical and other arenas cannot be replicated by other scientists, or is compromised by cherry-picked data, poor research design, sloppy analysis or biased researchers. The situation has led to calls for increased sharing of data and methodologies, more independent peer review and other actions to weed out problems. There is no excuse for hiding data when studies are funded by taxpayers or used to justify regulations.

The situation has been especially acute at EPA. As Mr. Pruitt observed, “The ability to test, authenticate and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of the rule making process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives.”

That is particularly true for regulations that exact millions or billions in compliance costs, affect thousands of jobs, target industries and coal-fired electricity generators that regulators want to close down, or seek to replace all fossil fuel use with “renewable” energy. With the cumulative economic impact of federal regulations reaching nearly $2 trillion per year, research reform is absolutely essential.

We need regulation and pollution control – but it must be based on solid, replicable, honest science.

Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has held hearings and championed multiple bills to address the problem. Several have been passed by the House of Representatives, only to languish in the Senate. With courts offering little or no help, Executive Branch action may be the only remaining solution.

Deceptive, faulty science on fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) was the bedrock of the Obama EPA’s war on coal. Particulates don’t just make you sick; they are directly related “to dying sooner than you should,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson falsely told Congress. There is no level “at which premature mortality effects do not occur,” Mr. Obama’s next Administrator Gina McCarthy dishonestly testified.

At the same time they made these claims, they were presiding over illegal experiments on humans – including people with asthma, diabetes and heart disease – who were subjected to eight, 30 or even 60 times more particulates per volume, for up to two hours, than what EPA claimed are dangerous or lethal. None of them got sick, proving that EPA’s claims were false. The agency refused to correct its claims.

EPA took a similar stance on mercury – asserting that power plant emissions were causing dangerously high mercury levels in American children and pregnant women. In reality, US power plants account for just 0.5% of all the mercury in the air Americans breathe, and blood mercury counts for US women and children are well below even EPA’s excessively safe levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

How did EPA’s junk science, illegal experiments and heavy-handed regulations pass muster? For one thing, politics too often dictated the science. In addition, the agency paid more than $180 million over a 16-year period to institutions represented by members of its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), which often rubberstamped studies and conclusions that failed integrity and transparency tests.

On global warming, EPA issued an Endangerment Finding, which claimed emissions of (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels threatened the health and welfare of American citizens.

It reached this conclusion by looking only at studies and computer models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while ignoring volumes of studies by independent scientists who found no such threat. EPA officials even told one of the agency’s own senior experts that his studies would not be shared with agency staff and he was to cease any further work on climate change, because his analyses “do not help the legal or policy case for this decision” that fossil fuel CO2 emissions endanger Americans.

EPA was also a principal force behind the “social cost of carbon” scheme that supposedly calculated how much CO2-driven climate change would cost the United States and how those costs would be reduced by slashing fossil fuel use. The alleged cost of damages began at an arbitrary $22 per ton of carbon dioxide released in 2010, then climbed to an equally random $30 per ton in 2013 and $40 per ton in 2016.

Incredibly, EPA modelers also claimed they can accurately forecast global temperatures, climate and weather, technological advances, economic development, living standards – and damages to global civilizations and ecosystems from US carbon dioxide emissions – for the next 300 years! Moreover, in the real world, the benefits of using carbon-based fuels and improving crop, forest and grassland growth via higher atmospheric CO2 levels outweigh hypothesized costs by at least 50-to-1 to as much as 500-to-1.

Deceptive, politicized, policy-driven “science” like this pervaded EPA regulatory actions for too many years. Reaction to Mr. Pruitt’s corrective actions show how poorly informed his critics can be.

* The changes will force researchers to reveal personal or confidential information about participants in health studies. No they won’t. Such information is not needed and can easily be redacted.

* EPA can keep us safe from harmful chemicals only if it takes full advantage of all available scientific research. Public health and safety depend on ensuring that research and data purportedly supporting it are made public and carefully reviewed by multiple experts, to ensure accuracy and integrity. EPA will take full advantage of all available research that passes these tests. Tax-funded studies should all be public!

* The rules will exclude studies that rely on outside funding sources which limit access to underlying data. Those studies should be excluded. The funders need to revise their policies to ensure integrity.

* The rules will exclude so much research that they will endanger public health. Not so. The only studies EPA will likely not see is what researchers know will not pass muster, and thus do not submit. The real danger comes from research that is based on shoddy data, algorithms, models and analyses that past researchers have been able to keep secret. That is precisely what the rules will ferret out and correct.

* Pruitt has removed scientists who receive EPA funding from participating in advisory committees. As noted above, those scientists had received millions of dollars in exchange for supporting EPA analyses, initiatives and regulations. Pruitt wants input from experts whose views can be trusted.

* Pruitt has criticized the peer review process. Too many peer reviews have been conducted by closed circles of associated scientists who rely on government grants and support regulatory decisions to maintain funding. Some refused to share data with experts who might critique their work – or worked to keep contrarian research out of scientific journals. The fact that some journals rarely require access to or review of underlying data further demonstrates why the peer review process also needs to be reformed.

Too many past EPA policies, policy-driven research and regulations have been employed to force the nation to abandon fossil fuels that still supply 80% of US and global energy – and switch to expensive, intermittent, unreliable wind and solar energy installations that will require unsustainable amounts of land and raw materials, while destroying wildlife habitats and slaughtering birds and bats by the millions.

Those actions also killed numerous jobs and left many communities impoverished. Simply put, the danger to Americans’ health and welfare, livelihoods and living standards is regulations imposed in response to secretive, sloppy, substandard science that has ill-served EPA and the nation.

Ethics charges against Mr. Pruitt should be evaluated with all this in mind – and while acknowledging that members of Congress who are railing against him never complained about Lisa Jackson or Gina McCarthy’s CASAC payment abuses, illegal experiments on human test subjects, false testimony about particulates, EPA-orchestrated sue-and-settle lawsuits that imposed billions in regulations while enriching environmentalist groups … and junk-science regulations that cost the United States incalculable billions of dollars, brought no environmental benefits, and impaired the welfare of millions of people.

Pruitt’s reforms are long overdue. Honest politicians, journalists and voters will applaud him and them. Other government agencies should initiate similar science and rulemaking reforms.

Via email



Warm February: Proof of Global Warming. Coldest April Ever: Just Random Weather

Using cold snaps to mock the global warming cause is foolish. But using warm streaks to tout it is just good science.

I’m trying; I really am. I am trying to remember exactly how I am to respond appropriately to this kind of news:

April 2018 is expected to be the coldest month of April in the U.S. since reliable record keeping began in 1895.

The historically low spring temperatures have created problems for farmers in the northern plains and Midwest as the unseasonably cold soil prevents them from planting their crops on time.

On the one hand, I know it is completely anti-intellectual, un-cultured, and scientifically unsophisticated to point at this and say, “Hey, gotta love that global warming!” That’s just what silly conservatives and science-deniers do. They don’t grasp the difference between weather and climate.

When it’s really hot outside, we shouldn’t be surprised because that is a sign of our warming earth. When it’s unseasonably cold outside, we should just chalk it up to a random weather event and understand that it is insignificant in comparison to the much larger warming trend that we are a part of – a trend that goes back only to the start of the industrial revolution and man’s raping of the planet.

Bloviating pop scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson explained it for us:

“Weather is what the atmosphere does in the short-term, hour-to-hour, day-to-day. Weather is chaotic, which means that even a microscopic disturbance can lead to large scale changes…Climate is the long-term average of the weather over a number of years. It’s shaped by global forces that alter the energy balance in the atmosphere.”

But on the other hand, I know that all of the oppressively hot summers that can linger late into the fall is exactly what I should expect as a result of global warming. In that sense, I should be paying close attention to the hour-to-hour, day-to-day weather as a clear indication of what we are doing to our planet by pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. If I continue driving my SUV or keeping my thermostat set at 70 degrees, I am largely to blame for the sweat stains on humanity’s clothing.

Expert “climate scientists” and “climate journalists” like Sabrina Shankman all seem to agree on that point:

There are records—like Wednesday being the earliest 80-degree day in Washington, D.C., history—and then there are the eye-popping effects of those records, like seeing people wearing T-shirts on the streets of Portland, Maine, in February.

However you measure it, Feb. 20-21, 2018, were days for the books—days when the records fell as quickly as the thermometer rose, days that gave a glimpse into the wacky weather that the new era of climate change brings.

Let me just say I could very well be a slow-learner, but I’m making the effort. I just want to make sure I’m reading all this right, so let me see if I’ve got it:

If I use weather data from a record-cold April to suggest the planet isn’t warming, I’m a fool for confusing weather and climate. But if I use weather data from a record-warm February to suggest the planet is warming, I’m a genius who understands the correlation between weather and climate.

Is that what we’re all supposed to pretend is consistent?

SOURCE 





Satellite Data: 75% Of The World’s Beaches Are Stable Or Growing

Analysis of satellite derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world’s sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, while 28% are accreting and 48% are stable.

The State of the World’s Beaches

Abstract

Coastal zones constitute one of the most heavily populated and developed land zones in the world. Despite the utility and economic benefits that coasts provide, there is no reliable global-scale assessment of historical shoreline change trends. Here, via the use of freely available optical satellite images captured since 1984, in conjunction with sophisticated image interrogation and analysis methods, we present a global-scale assessment of the occurrence of sandy beaches and rates of shoreline change therein. Applying pixel-based supervised classification, we found that 31% of the world’s ice-free shoreline are sandy. The application of an automated shoreline detection method to the sandy shorelines thus identified resulted in a global dataset of shoreline change rates for the 33 year period 1984–2016. Analysis of the satellite derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world’s sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, while 28% are accreting and 48% are stable. The majority of the sandy shorelines in marine protected areas are eroding, raising cause for serious concern.

SOURCE 

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