The Green Pope is wilting

By Elizabeth Yore, an international child protection attorney. She tries to pick up after pedophile priests

From the outset, the Heartland Institute spotted the potted papal plant in the climate change hoax of the Francis papacy. As the world was mesmerized with the merciful and humble green Pope, Heartland recognized a flawed and unreliable model, devoid of science, reason, and flush with politics.

In April of 2015, the Heartland Delegation went to Rome to attempt a dialogue with the Pope about his dangerous and incomprehensible partnership with the UN sustainable development climate change globalists. Yet, the dialoguer in chief was not interested in dialoguing with the scientific experts from Heartland. Rather, he chose his poison by dialoguing with the radical environmental socialists, assorted globalists, and Soros acolytes, like Ban Ki Moon, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs,  Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, to name just a few.

Call it climate gentrification. It was bound to happen. Bergoglio’s ceremonial term as Vicar of the Sustainable Development Goals appears to be ending, but not for lack of trying; Francis desperately sought to be the modern, hip, relevant, and the moral climate change protagonist. He even launched a new sin- an ecological sin!

Francis certainly gave it the old papal try. He surrounded himself with the foremost Soros greenie globalist, UN Sustainable Development chief, Jeffrey Sachs. At latest count, Sachs has spoken at least 25 times at the Vatican as a honored expert and guest during the Francis papacy. This population control globalist even drafted papal documents, causing Vaticanistas to speculate that Sachs might receive a green zucchetto from the Pope.

During the last 6 years, the incessant papal eco conferences, resembled  a Socialist Who’s Who featuring the hideous likes of Bernie Sanders, Joseph Stiglitz, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Gov. Jerry Brown, Naomi Klein, Population Bomb’s Paul Ehrlich. Francis threw his papal weight behind the Paris Climate Change Treaty, lobbied for support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, penned an Apostolic Eco Exhortation on the climate, and even demanded ecological conversion from the faithful. Whatever that is.

Francis rolled out his Pontifical Academy of  Social Sciences as the green platform to wage his climate change one world religion. Even the President of the Pontifical Academy, Bishop Sanchez Sorondo, elevated “climate change to Church magisterium,” deserving of a papal imprimatur and Vatican endorsement of the globalists’ precious Paris Climate Treaty. Francis joined the globalist tyrannical chorus of the “science is settled.” His global warming architect, Argentine Bishop Sanchez Sorondo mocked the global warming doubters saying that “we need to rely on coal and oil is like saying that the earth is not round. It is an absurdity dictated by the need to make money.” Sorondo also repeated the lame globalist slam that the deniers are funded by the oil industry. 

Despite plummeting popularity, Francis continues his eco jig with his global partners. This past month, Jeffrey Sachs (the green gift that keeps giving) was featured prominently at yet another Vatican conference on March 4-5, 2019! This latest Vatican/Sachs’ eco conference was immediately followed by the March 8, 2019 Eco Wingding with all the global heads of religions, entitled, (you guessed it) “Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Listening to the Cry of the Earth and of the Poor.”

Shockingly, the Pope does not mention Jesus Christ in his latest rambling and incoherent talk to the religious leaders. True to form,  Francis engaged in his personal rewriting of Catholicism, with green tropes like, “The key principle of all religions is the love of neighbor and the care of creation.” Francis makes it up as he goes along. Never mind that care of creation isn’t found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nor in the 10 Commandments.  Francis, the Vicar of SDGs is tasked with forming a new one world religion based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, driven by the evil of climate change. Gaia has now replaced Jesus Christ. Sins are now calculated by carbon footprints.

‘Bless me Father, I forgot to recycle and I turned on the air conditioner.

For your penance, your carbon tax will be doubled. Now, go green and go in peace.’

Francis deftly rode the climate wave for 6 years. Reveling in the media fawning, magazine covers, and globalist adulation, the climate change movement found its long lost moral voice in, none other than, the Vicar of Christ. How masterful and cunning of them to secure such a powerful advocate. As if on cue, Francis obediently moved the needle to ensure the Paris Climate Treaty was signed and SDGs overwhelmingly passed at the UN within just two years of his elevation to the papacy.

Yet, as they say, the climate suddenly changed.

Along came Donald Trump, who put the brakes on the global dealmaking of Obama and Francis, followed quickly by a tsunami (extreme weather event-noted) of clergy sex scandals raining down on Francis.

Francis is clearly annoyed that the world’s Catholics are more concerned about zero tolerance of clergy abuse, than a zero carbon foot print. The shocking scandal of the papal rehabilitation of the notorious serial predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who Francis sent on multiple diplomatic junkets, shocked the world. The Vatican’s  continual stonewalling on the McCarrick fiasco further enrages Catholics. Additionally, Francis faced cascading personal scandals of his own with papal cover ups of sexual predator priests and bishops in Chile, Argentina, Italy, and in America.

His popularity is cooling faster than the polar ice cap while the Catholic faithful are steaming over his cavalier attitude and laissez faire environment toward sexual predators priests and bishops.

Suddenly, the green Pope has blood red on his hands.

An important moral lesson is unfolding in this papacy.

Mega stardom and popularity are unsustainable. Ask Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile, and Harvey Weinstein. Popularity, like pollution, obscures reality,  smothers humanity, and poisons the environment.

Francis desperately wants to change the subject from the scandal of clergy sex abuse to sustainable development. It won’t happen.

Instead of “Listening to the Cry of the Earth and of the Poor,” he should have listened to the cry of those children abused by clergy.

SOURCE 






USA launches test reactor project

The US Department of Energy has launched its Versatile Fast Neutron Source project to provide fast neutron testing capability to aid US development of advanced nuclear reactor technology. The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), as it is also known, could be completed by 2026.

The DOE said fast neutron testing capability would help the country meet its goal for advanced nuclear reactor technology development. These facilities are currently available in only a few locations worldwide and the USA has not operated one in over 20 years. This means US developers have not had the ability to carry out accelerated irradiation testing needed for the development of non-light water advanced reactor concepts. The VTR would provide a reactor-based source of the fast neutrons needed to test advanced reactor technology, fuels and related materials.

The Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act, which became law last September, directed the DOE to develop a reactor-based fast neutron source for the testing of advanced reactor fuels and materials, and to execute a programme for enhancing the capability to develop new reactor technologies through high-performance computer modelling and simulation techniques. The launch of the VTR was announced on 28 February by US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, during a joint press conference with International Atomic Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol.

Perry said the VTR was a key step to implementing President Donald Trump's direction to "revitalise and expand" the US nuclear industry.

"This cutting edge Advanced Reactor will give American companies the ability they currently lack to conduct advanced technology and fuels tests without having to go to our competitors in Russia and China," he said.

The VTR will eliminate a "research gap" and "drastically" speed up the time taken to test, develop and qualify advanced reactor technologies, as well as being pivotal in creating new fuels, materials, instrumentation and sensors, the DOE said.

"Having this domestic capability is critical to our national security and our ability to re-establish ourselves as a global leader in advanced reactor technologies," Ed McGinnis, principal deputy assistant secretary of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, said.

DOE's Idaho National Laboratory has previously selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy's (GEH) PRISM technology to support the VTR programme, and has subcontracted GEH to work with Bechtel to advance the design and cost estimates for a VTR based on the integral sodium-cooled fast reactor. DOE said on 1 March that it will now move forward with its conceptual design of the reactor, which could be completed "as early as 2026".

SOURCE 





It’s Not about the Climate—It Never Was

By David Legates

Generally, I conclude most of my climate change presentations with the phrase, “It’s not about the climate; it never was.” Here, I would like to start with that statement. In this brief article, I will discuss why carbon dioxide isn’t the dangerous gas it is made out to be, why climate change is not an ‘existential’ threat to the planet, and why the Green New Deal is not a solution to climate change.

Let me begin with a series of questions.

Is our climate changing? The answer is clearly “YES” because climate has always changed. We often define ‘climate’ as ‘average weather’ and averages are not supposed to change. If they do, the cause must be unnatural. Treating the climate as a statistical average further implies that it should be static; in fact, the Earth’s climate is dynamic, variable, and ever-changing.

Is global warming real; or, more specifically, has the surface air temperature risen about 0.6°C (1.08˚F) since the late 1800s? The answer also is “YES,” and on that there is little debate.

Do humans affect the Earth’s climate? Again, the answer is “YES” with little debate. We can point to the urban heat island—for example, the Washington metropolitan area is warmer than the surrounding countryside due to the urban city and this has been widely studied. Because of impervious surfaces and the increased water demand of urbanized areas, floods and drought frequencies and intensities also are affected.

Does carbon dioxide absorb energy? Yes, certainly. The Earth’s surface is warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere—by about 30°C (54˚F). But remember, the most important greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide; it is water vapor. Water cycles fast through the atmosphere, absorbing energy as it evaporates and releasing that energy as it condenses. The current amount of water in the global atmosphere will fall as precipitation in just the next ten days. Its mobility and efficiency in absorbing heat energy makes water fundamental in explaining the climate of the Earth.

If the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, what will the effect be on global air temperature? This is where the debate begins.

We seek to determine something called the equilibrium climate sensitivity—that is, the eventual rise in air temperature due to a doubling of carbon dioxide. Over the last twenty years, our estimates of the equilibrium climate sensitivity have decreased substantially, based on measurements of the climate system.

In the early 2000s, estimates were that a doubling of carbon dioxide would result in between a 3 and 6°C (5.4 and 10.8˚F) warming. Since 2010, however, most estimates have placed the equilibrium climate sensitivity at less than 3°C (5.4˚F), and over the last five years, several independent assessments have placed the sensitivity at about 1˚C (1.8˚F).

This implies that the effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide has much less impact than the models suggest—their sensitivity has remained above 3°C (5.4˚F) over the last two decades—which helps to explain why their estimates of warming are much higher.

How do we know that carbon dioxide is a minor player in climate change? Both theory and models tell us that the biggest effect of carbon dioxide on air temperatures should lie in the upper tropical troposphere. The troposphere is the layer of the atmosphere where all weather resides. Over the last forty years, the warming of this layer has been small, whereas the models indicate the warming should have been much greater. This further underscores that climate models grossly overstate the climate warming.

Moreover, theory also indicates that daily maximum air temperatures should rise if carbon dioxide is the main driver of climate change. In fact, daily maxima have not changed substantially over the last eighty years, and before that, maximum air temperatures were much higher during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Minimum daily air temperatures have increased, but that is associated with the warming of urban areas. Averaging these two extremes to get a daily average and then reporting that “this year is the warmest in recorded history” is highly misleading since most stations have a short record length and the warming is not due to carbon dioxide.

Will this warming necessarily lead to more climate extremes—floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, sea level rise, etc.? I can write in great detail showing the data and explaining why these events are not increasing in frequency or intensity and why, under a warmer world, the physics indicate that they should not. Changing land use and increased demand for water are more significant than carbon dioxide in changing the impact of climate on our lives. Coverage of extreme weather gives the false impression that violent weather is becoming more frequent and intense when the data say otherwise.

Is a warmer climate and more carbon dioxide a net benefit to life on the planet? The answer to this question is a resounding “YES.” More people die from exposure to cold than heat. A longer growing season is more beneficial to feeding a growing population. Further, since carbon dioxide is plant food, under higher carbon dioxide concentrations, virtually all plants grow faster and are more efficient in using water.

So, what is the climatic benefit of spending trillions of dollars and fundamentally changing our economy and way of life? The Green New Deal is not about ‘stabilizing’ the Earth’s climate.  Carbon dioxide is a small player in climate change.

The United Nations has become the modern-day Robin Hood—creating wealth redistribution on a global scale. Industrialization has made developed nations ‘rich’, and by using fossil fuels, they are supposedly destroying our climate, for which the developed world must pay. Rich nations, therefore, must give much of their wealth to the poorer nations.  Climate change has become the cause célèbre to move nations to action.

The Green New Deal is not about stopping climate change. Climate always changes and always will. The United States has cut back on greenhouse gas emissions by about 13% since 2005 to virtually no effect on the Earth’s climate. The net effect of reducing the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 would be negligible.

Even reduction by 100% would have little effect on the climate, but the policies proposed by the Green New Deal would make Karl Marx proud. But realize this; any draconian changes such as these would necessarily change our fundamental way of life. And that, not addressing the ills of climate change, is what the Green New Deal is all about.

 SOURCE 






Dr. Happer will set them free

It was easy enough to predict that Trump would appoint Dr. William Happer to set up a Presidential Committee on Climate Science.

Two years have passed and have been lost.  The first years of the Trump administration were hobbled by poor Cabinet picks, a proportion of whom conspired against him and others who were just hopeless.  Scott Pruitt at the EPA should have got on with Dr Happer's appointment straight away but instead spent $3.5 million on his own security detail.  In the meantime, the climate juggernaut rolled on, producing 1,500 pages of alarmist nonsense in an official government report.

You can tell how important Dr Happer is by the forces that have been marshaled against him.  The three major lefty media organizations — CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times — all came out to say Dr. Happer's efforts would be wasted.  The Democrats are alarmed, calling Dr Happer's proposed panel "dangerous."

The deep resources of the Deep State were mobilized to send a letter to the president signed by some people who once had a connection with the military, such as John Kerry.  The 58 signatories to that letter have self-identified as foot soldiers for one-world government and impoverishing the U.S.  They are also so delusional that they can believe in global warming even as record cold temperatures are freezing a large part of the lower 48 states.

Calling those 58 signatories delusional is giving them the benefit of the doubt.  In one of his speeches in Washington, Obama was going on how dreadful global warming is when the audience started tittering.  That reaction indicates what Washington insiders really think of the issue.  But leaders of Obama's ilk can't afford to have people laughing out loud at their gravest causes.  So the next time he mentioned global warming was at a Coast Guard graduation ceremony.  Cadets couldn't laugh at Obama's inanities without their careers ending.

Brazil had an election last year, and the corrupt and incompetent socialists were thrown out and replaced by people who seem to understand how the world works.  The first words out of the mouth of Brazil's new foreign minister were that climate change is a Marxist plot.  Why would he say that?  Actually, he is only repeating what the Marxists doing the plotting have been saying:

Senator Tim Worth, 1992: "We have got to ride the global warming issue.  Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Mikhail Gorbachev, former chief communist on the planet, 1996: "The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order."

Richard Benedick, U.S. State Department, 1992: "A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."

That's just a sample.  There are plenty  more such statements.  Why did the Marxists latch onto global warming as an issue in the early 1990s?  The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 meant that suddenly, the left side of politics had no basis for existence.  Socialism was discredited by its failure, and so there was no need to rule the world, interfere in people's lives, and take income from workers and give it to bludgers.  So the threat of global warming was conjured up on no evidence — thus that last statement that a global warming treaty didn't need to be based in scientific fact.  Science fiction will do the trick.

Some of the Washington insiders, such as those who tittered at Obama, are indifferent to the hoax that is draining the country.  They know that it is a hoax, but it is not their problem.  There are people who believe in global warming even as record cold temperatures are set in the U.S., year after year.  These people are too stupid to be helped.  They are Lenin's useful idiots for the Marxist plotters.  And then there are the likes of the 58 former military men and women who signed that letter.  They know that their status as retired military means that their letter to the president was delivered wrapped in the flag.  In their hearts of hearts, they might as individuals believe in global warming — which would mean they are incredibly stupid.  But, if they have any doubt of the veracity of global warming, then that means they are conspiring against the nation.  That is a very bad thing, indeed.  It is a binary choice with the gang of 58: evil or stupid.

How will Dr. Happer and his panel set the world free?  At the moment, the Marxist plotters bang on about the 97% scientific consensus on global warming.  They have created a sealed edifice of lies and have maintained it assiduously.  After Dr. Happer's report is released, the mantra of "Are you denying the science?" will be turned on its head.

Global warming has been a state-sponsored religion, with its priesthood funded from the public purse to the tune of $2.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone.  The priests of that cult will be plucked off the public teat, and the memory of what they preached will fade.  That frabjous day can't come soon enough.

SOURCE 





Jury-Rigging The Round Up Carcinogen Case?

Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser

That chemical has now been around for approximately 50 years and is likely the world’s most widely used herbicide. As such, it has been instrumental in increasing the agricultural yields of grains and perhaps is responsible for many plentiful harvests of corn, wheat, soybeans, canola and other grains around the entire world.

Glyphosate – Science

I do remember participating in an international scientific committee on Great Lakes Water Quality issues, some 40 years ago, reviewing glyphosate together with colleagues. At that time, the available relevant scientific literature was still scant compared to today and we did not find any cause for great concern.

These days, in 2019, the literature is vastly more extensive. A search on Google Scholar (accessible to anyone but meant to be a search facility for scientific papers on a subject) will return on a search for “glyphosate” some280,000 articles, a search for “Roundup” (the trade name for glyphosate containing herbicidal formulations) approximately 150,000 articles.

The knowledge base on glyphosate also includes detailed reviews by high-level scientific expert panels in several countries and on a variety of potential concerns. To my knowledge, none ever found reasons to ban this herbicide’s use.

One of such concerns was the question of glyphosate possibly causing some relatively rare but recognized forms of cancer, such as “non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma” (NHL). In that context, a review paper by J Acquavella et al. for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (published in 2016) found, quote “Only the Agricultural Health (cohort) Study met our a priori quality standards and this study found no evidence of an association between glyphosate and NHL; [emphasis added].”

Fast Forward To 2019

As widely reported in the news, for example on CTV News, a jury in California has found “Roundup weed killer is major factor in man’s cancer.” Specifically, the news report by S Thanawala says, inter alia, “Roundup weed killer was a substantial factor in a California man’s cancer, a jury determined Tuesday [March 19, 2019] in the first phase of a trial that attorneys said could help determine the fate of hundreds of similar lawsuits” and “A San Francisco jury in August awarded another man $289 million after determining Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; [emphasis added].” In fact, there are hundreds of similar court cases pending on the same or other effects that may or may not have any evidence on the potential or suspected danger of this or many other “chemicals.”

My Concern

What concerns me as a scientist is that a few (six to be exact) jurors with little or no scientific expertise can decide on the guilt or innocence of a compound that has brought untold benefits to mankind and that their decision could cause dramatic reverberations around the globe.

Regardless, Civil Courts ought not to be the venue for deciding questions of science, anywhere.

SOURCE 

***************************************

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

*****************************************